Grey Magick Options

Greetings all of SM ~
I've come to ask a question on "Grey Magick", regarding the various outcomes that would lead to it either being white or black. As I've heard many examples as to how different spells can in turn become w/b, I've yet wondered in great detail if other variables of performing any spell can in turn overcome the initial goal and turn that spell into the opposite sort of magick.
I'm not entirely sure if this statement clarified my question well enough so I'll provide an example. Let's say perhaps you perform a spell to help a stranger come out of a coma, a coma that this stranger would never wake from, with no other background information on this stranger whatsoever, you decide being in a coma is just a terrible thing to endure in the long run. You run the divination process to put your mind at ease of what you want to accomplish and it turns out you have the green light. In this case, divination has told you no real negative influence has befallen your wish to return the stranger to his health. You go through with the spell, the man awakes and all is well. Two years later you understand this very stranger woke up one morning and decided to grab his own personal automatic rifle and go down to a super market and wreak havoc on 12 other lives before turning the gun on himself.
Now, I'm currently not a practicing magician. Perhaps, divination would enlighten you to events like this, though theres also so much the divination process can tell you about what you currently want done. Is an example like this accurate? Can it be? If so, to what incentive do the rest of us have to continue with magick if it will have unknowingly dramatic feedback.
I base my life on, everything having a purpose, every action causing a reaction that can potentially be bad or good. Even though I do a lot of good in my life through natural means, Im not going to truly know if that bit a good I just did, will take a turn for the worse. Is this how we're supposed to view magick?
Please, put my mind at ease. Thank you all in advance. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/egypt1.gif)

I agree with what everyone else has said so far, so I won't add anything else about the arbitrary naming of magic as "black" or "white" or "gray." But I will add to your hypothetical scenario. You save a guy from a coma, and you find out that two years later, he wakes up in the morning and decides to shoot 12 people and commit suicide himself. Investigations later show that the man was under considerable stress, suffered from depression and just couldn't take it anymore and he snapped; otherwise, however, he was a very caring man. In fact, he felt so blessed when he woke up from his coma that he decided to do something more meaningful with his life. He joined a mentoring program and became a mentor to a young man who was on the verge of getting involved with gangs and drugs. In the two years before he went postal, he was a very positive influence for the boy, who completely turned his life around, avoided gangs, and started college. As a result of the man's actions, the boy went on to become a doctor.

Now let's add even more: It just so happens that one of the 12 people the man shot was a serial rapist, and another would have gone on to have children and beat them regularly. The man did some good by getting rid of those two people, thus avoiding the future harm those two people would do. Also consider that abuse is a cycle, and many people who abuse their children are those who were abused themselves, so by stopping the would-be abusive father, you potentially saved several generations of people from abuse (granted, they wouldn't even exist because the original guy killed the father but I digress).

The point, which was already touched on, was that there's no telling how your actions will turn the tide of future events. In my opinion, it's quite likely that every action you take holds equal potential for causing harm and for doing good. Many actions will cause both positive and negative outcomes at some point.

How much karma do we collect for our actions? Is it all about the end result, the net balance of positive vs. negative? Or is it about what we do consciously? I think anyone who believes in karma would say that you'd create a karmic debt by picking up a knife and slashing your neighbor's tires. But do I incur bad karma for running over a squirrel if I didn't see it and had no idea that it happened? All I wanted to do was drive home from work--I didn't want anyone to get hurt.

I think the matter is simple: Live in the moment, and in the moment, do what seems right.

This post has been edited by Daathvader: Dec 18 2007, 07:00 AM