Magick Without Borders

An important proposal for the occult community at large.

Many of you reading this know who I am, either personally or by reputation. I am Alice Adora Spurlock, aka Soror Alice. Soror Alice has loved the world gently, more or less, and I will always be Soror Alice, a sister to all.

Many of you reading this also know that the world is pretty fucked up right now. And as always, the people who are suffering the most are the weakest, the most marginalized, and the most vulnerable.

I find this unacceptable.

The governments of the world and their leaders, the rich and the powerful, the people who would harm, kill, exploit, and enslave, they want us all to feel like we can’t do anything about what is happening. They want us weak so they can be strong. They have made shows of force and silly attempts at pageantry, Twitter memes and TV news shows. They have threatened and doxxed, kidnapped and murdered, all to make us feel weak.

But we are not weak.

We are mages.

I have wrestled with this issue for a while now. Since well before the 2024 US presidential election. My gods, especially my mighty patron Ares and my beloved mother Demeter, have been clear on what must be done. But I have delayed and stalled out and failed to find my own resolve on the subject. I have allowed my heart to be moved by dear friends who mean well, friends who are full of the sort of beautiful sentiments of love, care, and community that I truly admire. These sentiments have come from people I have known well for years and I wouldn’t want these wonderful people to change. I value each and every one of these dear friends and their counsel immensely.

But because of my love for these people, I have let myself be convinced that we will solve the problem of hate with love, of harsh severity with sweet mercy. And to a degree, I agree with those ideas. I am a priestess of Aphrodite, after all, and the simple symmetry of love quelling hate appeals to me.

I would love for it to be that easy.

But the sort of love that turns its cheek, bares its neck, and bends its knee while those who are the most vulnerable suffer and die is not love at all. It means well, truly, and it is trying so hard to be good, but it is this sort of false love and false goodness that does nothing while an abuser burns the world down around the whole family.

That is not love. That is codependency. Needs must often be fought for and boundaries must often be held.

By force when necessary.

Know this:

• Aversion to conflict is not love, and it often allows the most vulnerable to continue to be harmed and exploited while the good people hem and haw and have discussions and then a vote and then discuss some more and then maybe have another vote, all while vulnerable people suffer and die.

• Aversion to violence is not love, and it often allows the people who need protection the most to become unwilling sacrifices to the high-minded (and often condescending) pacifism of others. The world is stinking with the corpses of those who would be alive today if all of the otherwise good people among us would actually fight to protect those who need it.

• Aversion to accountability is not love. No one will be treated more leniently by the fascists if you refuse to hold those fascists accountable. You cannot appease them. They will not be moved towards peace and reconciliation if you are just nice enough. No amount of apologizing for existing and having needs will help. Your only rewards for your compliance will be a bad conscience and getting to be among the last to be murdered…dubious honors indeed.

So since I love the world and the people in it, I am completely unwilling to let them be persecuted, exploited, enslaved, and murdered. I must act, and I must act from within my profession and vocation. War has changed, and we need to change with it.

So I have a proposal.

Magie Sans Frontières. Magick Without Borders.

Magie Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international organization of spirits and mages that provides protection, healing, and prosperity magick for those threatened with harm, oppression, or exploitation by the forces of authoritarianism, bigotry, and colonialism.

• Mutual protection, mutual support, and mutual aid.

• Large-scale, hived, and nested healing, prosperity, and protection spells shared across the organization.

• Spirits and mages working together in concert to help those in need.

• Active, targeted, and sustained magick to help those in targeted areas and populations.

We will fight for those who cannot. We will protect those in need. And we will push back against those who would harm, exploit, and oppress the people of the world.

This is what MSF is about.

HOW IT WORKS

MSF works like a worker-owned business. We all put in work (magick, mostly done solo, and organizational work for officers and command staff), we all get to enjoy benefits, and the most vulnerable and marginalized people in the world get protection and aid.

I have access to a very large storehouse of magickal energy. Be assured, I came by it completely legitimately. It was a sort of inheritance. A legacy. I am putting up this energy to start MSF. Consider it the magickal equivalent of a startup investment. This is the “bank”. This energy bank has been placed under the management of a highly trusted spirit ally. I have known this spirit for 22 years and we have worked together intimately most of that time (my health issues kind of knocked me off-mission for a few years). Members of MSF will be given a seal for this spirit and a specific variant of their name. This spirit will act as our energy regulator and actively maintain permissions and accounts for what energy gets used, by whom, and when. This spirit has more than enough power to defend themselves and the bank and has several other powerful spirits ready to help them do so, so the bank is well-protected.

STRUCTURE

Membership has three levels: enlisted members, officers, and command staff.

Enlisted members will be assigned missions from an available pool, such as “cast a protection spell encoding intent X as a sigil with the activation phrase P”. The member will then do their magick at the next opportune astrological moment.

Continuing the example, the enlisted member would create the sigil, do magick drawing energy from the MSF energy bank to charge the sigil, and then turn it in to command staff to be deployed.

The sigil would then be sent by command staff to those who requested aid (the client) so they can activate it to help protect themselves when they need it. When the client activates the sigil, they will use an activation phrase that includes the variant form of the regulator spirit’s name. This spirit, who is always listening for their name spoken in earnest, will then use that magickal link to opportunistically pull in negative ambient energy from the surrounding area where the sigil is activated. The sigil will activate, protecting the client, and the spirit will suck in the energy of the danger itself, the fear and desperation being beamed out by the client, and all of the hostile, violent energy that is being caused by the threat. This energy is purified by the spirit and sent into the MSF energy bank. This is the payment for services rendered, and with barely any of the client’s own energy involved. Most of the negative ambient energy in the situation will actually be that of the attackers or the danger of the situation itself.

Obviously this is just an example. Another example would be aid for Palestinians who are currently suffering under the attacks of the Israeli military, Uyghurs suffering under the policies of the Chinese government, or Ukrainians suffering under the attacks of the Russian military. In cases like this, we don’t have specific people who are asking for help. This would be a form of philanthropy or general aid. So a team of enlisted mages coordinated by an officer would put together a mixed set of general protection, healing, and prosperity spells, turn them in, and then a member of the command staff would assign an enlisted spirit (or hired spirit) to actually go to the area of operations and activate the spells as necessary on the scene. This allows the spirit to aid the people there using their own senses as the magickal link for the spells, which means the spirit can intelligently use the spells where (and for whom) they are most needed.

Realistically speaking, of course, such a situation as those in Palestine, China, or Ukraine would require many teams of spirits, each loaded up with a whole selection of spells (along with their own natural abilities) and sent in waves over time until the conflicts and persecutions ended. This sort of ongoing mission would also involve martial spirits to engage in active and intelligent defense of those who are threatened with harm, exploitation, or oppression. All of the spirits on the scene would work together to protect, heal, and support those in need and at the same time they would opportunistically harvest the negative ambient energy to send back into the MSF energy bank using the variant name of the energy regulator spirit.

Another example is even more martial. Right now ICE agents in the US are attacking people they have deemed “illegal immigrants” and are engaging in massive abuses. I find this unacceptable. So a possible mission would be for a team of enlisted mages coordinated by an officer to evoke and contract a mixed squad of mercurial and martial spirits to both warn and actively protect those endangered. Such hired spirits will be contracted on a case-by-case basis and are paid with energy out of the MSF bank when necessary. Some spirits will actually be MSF members, of course, but otherwise MSF mages assigned to a mission will still have to do all the magick to establish working relationships with the necessary spirits. These spirits would also be instructed to harvest the ambient negative energy from the environment and send it back into the energy bank using the variant name of the energy regulator spirit. So the people in danger get helped and MSF gets paid.

This method of harvesting the ambient negative emotional (Water) and causal (Fire) energy will also have the side-benefit of helping to cleanse these areas of the sort of astral pollution that can contribute to keeping these conflicts going over many generations. If we can absorb the energy of all of that violence, hatred, and vengeance, purify it, and use it to power magick that is oriented towards protection, healing, and support, we can help remove the psychic pollution and help people (including ourselves).

Officers (both mages and spirits) will get a voice in governing the Big Three Spells, our large-scale, hived, and nested protection, healing, and prosperity spells of MSF and have internal support with working with the most powerful spirits known to MSF as a whole. However, with rank comes responsibility. In addition to coordinating teams of enlisted mages and spirits engaged in fulfilling missions, officers will be tasked with actively looking for new missions through a combination of media sifting, solicitation of those in need (yes, I want you to go around and ask people expressing serious distress if they need magickal help), and divination. Officers will find clients or situations where we can send out general aid, devise potential missions, and then pass the mission files up the chain of command for approval, processing, and assignment.

Let me be clear: we want specific, actionable missions with specific magickal solutions to the problem, presented in a form accessible to mages coming from various traditions.

If your mission is approved by command staff, it will be carried out by an enlisted member of MSF or a team of enlisted members and a coordinating officer. Officers will never be assigned to coordinate a mission they devised, and officers will never decide who is assigned to the missions they coordinate. This sort of distribution of tasks and separation of activities is meant to prevent abuse and exploitation of the system. We can’t have officers pursuing personal vendettas or abusing their authority.

Mages and spirits will be assigned to teams that match their abilities and aptitudes, which means that mages that aren’t good at seeing/hearing spirits will primarily be assigned to working with other mages and spirits who are devoted to the cause but don’t work well with humans (for whatever reason) will primarily be assigned to working with other spirits. Embodied non-human spirits, rare and unique beings as they are, will have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

Command staff is a small team led by myself. Our job is to pick through the missions found and devised by officers, approve them, process them by figuring out the magickal details, and split them up and assign all the tasks to different mages and spirits as necessary so all the spells get cast, all the spirits get evoked, and everything gets coordinated as a whole to get missions accomplished, all without overtaxing any one member (spirit or mage).

NO BURNOUT

This last bit is very important. To be very clear, this is not a burnout model of activity. MSF is meant to be accessible to those with chronic illnesses and disabilities and to support those who have limited economic resources and have to work for a living. We are all meant to be able to do MSF work as part of our daily lives without it requiring us to harm ourselves. That’s why our large-scale spells are going to be hived (everyone does a little bit ongoingly over time to build up big cumulative effects) and nested (the spells are anchored to ongoing sources of “slow” energy that just keep on going: rivers, the tides, the movement of a particular planet, the roiling, molten core of the Earth, and so on). This allows us to get the optimal overall results with the least energy input and maintenance.

Your application will include sections to let command staff know exactly how much magick you can do each lunar cycle and to let us know about any special access needs you may have. If these change at any time, please let command staff know.

We will never be able to just “set it and forget it”, of course…we must still actually do magick to structure our energy into spells, to work with spirits and deities as necessary, to do divination to detect threats and to find prospective clients and missions, and so on. But by splitting that work up over the whole of MSF as much as possible and trying to be as accessible as possible to those who need support, we can avoid the burnout model that has typified so many occult organizations over the years.

BENEFITS

By joining MSF you gain:

• Access to a massive energy bank for your own magick.

• Access to Outer Olympus, a shared astral community space staffed by powerful spirits and protected by multiple layers of active and passive defenses.

• A community of mages and spirits to help support and protect you.

• A share in the Big Three Spells, our ongoing healing, protection, and prosperity spells.

All of this on the condition that you have to fulfill the missions you are assigned in a timely manner and help make sure that enough energy is flowing into the MSF bank to stay in business.

STAYING IN BUSINESS

Staying in business means keeping the Big Three Spells running, the spirits paid, and keeping enough energy in reserve for the personal use of MSF mages. We want that, so please try to make sure that more energy is coming in than is going out. Yes, we have a very large energy reserve to start with, but that reserve will disappear quickly if we play too fast and loose with it. Our own protection, healing, and prosperity spells partially depend on that energy and being in debt to spirits (or anyone) is never a good thing, so everyone needs to do their part to help keep MSF afloat.

Please note that the energy regulator spirit actively manages the bank and keeps track of energy draws and deposits. That’s most of their job. If you try to drain the bank or pull more than would be reasonable for any single mage, even in an emergency, the regulator spirit will stop the flow of energy to you completely until your case is reviewed by the rest of the command staff. The regulator spirit isn’t stupid and has a whole family to help them sense motives and react intelligently to what is happening, so please treat them with respect.

That said, I understand that everyone has emergencies. No one will penalize you for an “oh shit” moment where you did 20 massive healing spells for your sick child in a week and used MSF energy to power them all because you were exhausted from taking care of that sick child. Let command staff know you are having an emergency as soon as you can and we will figure it out. If you are having more long-term problems and need ongoing aid, please ask command staff for it. Support will be forthcoming from within MSF in the form of missions assigned to members for your aid. That’s what mutual protection, mutual support, and mutual aid are all about. I want MSF to be an organization that always takes care of its own as well as helps and protects others. Please ask command staff if you need support.

Those of us who can work easily with spirits (see and hear them, etc) also need to be ready to pass requests for support from the spirits we are working with up the chain of command. The spirit members of MSF are full members and deserve care and support (after the manner of their kind) just as much as the rest of us. Mutual protection, mutual support, and mutual aid includes our spirit members.

ACTION LOOP

So the action loop is:

1. Officer finds a potential client or general aid mission. They take the client’s contact information (including enough stuff for a basic magickal link) so we can send them spells if appropriate, devise a basic action plan detailing both the problem that needs to be solved and a potential magickal solution to the problem, and then pass that action plan up the chain of command to the command staff. EXAMPLE: Officer sees someone asking for help online (let’s say they need healthcare). The officer asks if the person wants magickal aid, with the understanding that the negative ambient energy in their situation will be harvested for our use. The person agrees (becoming our client) and the officer takes their contact information and writes up a breakdown of the situation that details the needs of the client and a basic magickal plan (let’s say the creation and charging of a talisman) for meeting those needs. The officer then passes that file up to the command staff via standard messaging systems.

2. Command staff reviews the client and their needs, approves the plan, and turns the basic action plan the officer came up with into an actual mission, a set of assignments of specific spells or evocations to specific members, as well as assigning a coordinating officer to work with a team if necessary. So to continue our example of the person needing healthcare, the command staff member would work out a tradition-agnostic (as much as possible) outline for the necessary magick and would assign the mission to an enlisted member or a team of enlisted members (perhaps one to create the talisman and one to charge it) and an officer to coordinate them if necessary. NOTE: I am aware that splitting up magickal tasks this way can make the overall magick less effective. My goal in doing things this way is to make sure MSF work is accessible to everyone…many hands make light work. But we can offset the loss of effect using magickal technology. Coordinating officers are not just there to guide…they are there to do their own magick that allows the team as a whole to work together without loss of magickal effectiveness.

3. The enlisted members then do their assigned parts of the mission and turn them in to the command staff. If they are assigned to a team, they work with their coordinating officer and turn in their assignments to that officer, who turns it in to command staff. Coordinating officers are ultimately responsible for the missions they coordinate. In some cases, command staff will oversee missions themselves, sometimes acting as a coordinating officer for multiple coordinating officers and multiple teams to put together complex spells (second-order spells made up of spells) for larger missions or possibly coming in as a “big gun” on missions that require it.

4. Command staff then assigns the spells to be deployed or, when it makes sense, deploys them personally. This may involve something as simple as emailing a picture of a sigil and its activation instructions to a client or be as complex as assigning a team to go to a particular location or number of locations (astrally or in person) and deploy the spells in various ways.

5. Then the whole loop starts over with an officer finding a client or prospective general aid mission.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND ETHICS

Ethical behavior is the standard for everyone who is a part of MSF (especially officers and command staff). Any behavior that causes unnecessary harm to, exploits, or interferes with the will of anyone will require accountability and repair processes to repair the harm caused and rebuild trust with the rest of us. If someone refuses to participate in accountability and repair processes, they will be disciplined with measures up to and including expulsion from MSF. This absolutely extends to behaviors like bigotry and using magick to alter minds or power dynamics to exploit other sentient beings (love spells on unwilling targets, domination spells, enslaving spirits, lesser black magick, etc). We must set a standard for what we want to see in others. If you have a problem with ethical behavior being the standard, MSF isn’t for you.

The energy regulator spirit also keeps track of what members are using MSF energy for. This spirit thinks of this as a living network, tunnels of fiery light and life, with each mage and spirit who is connected to the bank as nodes in that network. This spirit will sense persistent abusive uses of their energy as corruption in that network of light, as red inflammation and even, in the worst cases, infection and disease. Anything that harms, poisons, or rots that network or the energetic connections that make up MSF itself will be seen as an enemy or disease (depending on situation), and this spirit will act accordingly. They will attempt to fight or heal that corruption in their own fashion. If they cannot do the job on their own, they will actively enlist the aid of their spirit family, escalating to include the rest of the command staff and eventually officers and enlisted members of MSF as necessary. They will be very passionate and intense in this pursuit. As someone who has been burned by this particular spirit (it was part of an initiation, they are not malevolent), I can attest that this will not be pleasant for anyone involved.

So please, do not use the MSF bank to fuel any magick that unnecessarily causes harm to others or in any way compromises their free will. This includes spirits…the policy of MSF is always to freely contract or establish personal relationships of goodwill and cooperation with spirits, and never, ever to attempt to enslave them.

SECRECY AND POTENTIAL OPPOSITION

Identities in MSF are not secret unless a given member wishes their identity concealed. I assume many members will use their magickal names or titles, but my identity is public and I am willing to stand by all of this. Someone has to, after all, so there is at least one visible and reasonably reputable point of contact for recruiting. And we are not doing anything wrong…from the point of view of non-mages, I think we count as the equivalent of a church prayer team.

That said, there are some who will be our enemies simply because we want to support and protect endangered and marginalized populations and because we are providing magickal support to those under attack by state actors. That is the reality of this sort of work, and if you can’t stomach that reality, MSF is not for you. Doctors Without Borders runs into opposition by various state actors, too, as do many charities, such as Planned Parenthood and homeless shelters, that provide services and aid to marginalized and threatened populations.

The sad truth of this world is that opposition is to be expected when you try to help people.

For a while, perhaps several years, we will be seen as fools and kooks, deluded and insane. I mean, we are talking about magick, spirits, and spells. Most of the world doesn’t like to believe that it believes in stuff like that. But since magick works and has real consequences in the real world and spirits are real and can cause real effects, those who wish to harm, exploit, and oppress those who we wish to help will eventually see us as a threat. Thus they will become threats to us. We will have to deal with that as the problem comes and in ways appropriate to both the situation and our shared profession. Until then, we are focused on protection, healing, and support.

THE MISSION

1. We are in danger. We need to protect ourselves.

2. People are dying and suffering all over the world and more are in danger. They need help.

3. Fascism is rising. It needs to be stopped.

These emergent situations and urgent needs define our goals. We will come together to serve the world with the unique skills we have. We will fight magickally for those who cannot fight for themselves physically. We will protect, heal, and support those who need it and oppose those who would cause harm, exploitation, or oppression.

As our legend grows, we will come to act as a deterrent for those who have no other recourse. It will come to be known that the weak have protectors, that the marginalized have support, and that oppression and exploitation will have consequences. Those who would harm, exploit, and oppress others will have a reason to hesitate, and the world will be better for it.

Hopefully, this will give us a beginning, a way to forge a new path through the Long Night of oppression that we have lived in for so long. If we have courage, wisdom, the blessings of our gods, and, yes, a lot of luck, we will find the Road To Dawn, a path through this crisis in which as many people survive, are free, and thrive as possible.

This is the mission before us.

CONCLUSION

Many of you reading this know who I am, either personally or by reputation. I am Alice Adora Spurlock, aka Soror Alice. Soror Alice has loved the world gently, more or less, and I will always be Soror Alice, a sister to all.

But we are defined by our times, whether we like it or not. Our purpose is defined by the era and place in which we live. The Fates weave the tapestry and we live it out. None of us get to choose the stage.

But sometimes we get to sing.

So now I am someone new because I have to be. I am singing a new song, a fierce song, because I love the world fiercely.

Call me Despoina.

APPLY TO JOIN MSF

Art: Magie Sans Frontières (Magick Without Borders) logo. Image Credit: Myrrthyn Emryss.