Binding spells are a powerful tool to have in your magical repertoire. There is plenty of controversy around the use of binding spells but I am always for having more tools in your toolbox so that you can use the correct tool for whatever situation you find yourself in. Whether you need to stop someone from spreading gossip about you, prevent a stalker from seeking you out, or bind another witch from casting spells on you, sometimes the best way to resolve a situation peacefully is with a well-placed binding spell.
Today we’re going to be discussing why and when you want to use binding spells, how to cast an effective binding spell, and 7 ways you can use binding spells in your own life.
Why Use A Binding Spell?
Binding spells are controversial because in essence, when you use a binding spell, you are encroaching on someone else’s free will. You are binding them from taking action that they might otherwise want to take. Many people feel this is wrong and some people would even call such spells “black magic”, but I disagree with them. I think we encroach on each other’s free will all the time, both through magical and mundane means, and that is simply part of how the world works.
For example, if you have a stalker or an abusive ex, and you want to prevent them from continuing their abusive or threatening behavior, you can encroach upon their free will by getting a restraining order. This very clearly limits their free will, but as a society, we have determined that this is an acceptable thing to do when it comes to protecting yourself. And because magic is real, it follows the same ethical and moral rules as everything else that’s real, meaning that if you are protecting yourself from a harmful individual or harmful behavior, it’s perfectly okay for you to use magic to bind another person from taking an action against you. Just because we’re working in the realm of magic doesn’t mean we suddenly have to follow different rules.
Now, the situations in which you might want to use a binding spell are incredibly varied. I cannot possibly cover all of them in one post. Essentially, you would use a binding spell anytime you need to stop another person from taking an action, but you don’t want to hurt them in any way. This is essentially skirting the line between offensive and defensive magic. You are not outright attacking them. You are not causing anything horrible to happen to them. You are simply making it so they are no longer able to take a specific action, whatever that action may be.
This is useful in many situations, from legal disputes to dealing with exes, to dealing with sabotaging behavior in your workplace, or even preventing another person from trying to steal your lover. You want to reach for a binding spell as the first step in resolving these kinds of situations. There are many more aggressive forms of magic that you can use if a binding spell has not resolved the situation satisfactorily, such as banishing, using baneful magic or hexes, and using domination magic. But I always suggest that unless the situation is already quite bad, we start with binding magic because it is one of the least disruptive forms of magic that we can use when dealing with conflict.
A Simple Binding Spell
You Will Need:
- A full spool of black thread
- A section of stick or branch
- A slip of paper
- A taglock (a link to the target of your spell like hair, fingernails, personal items, or a photo of them)
- Black pepper
- Cinnamon
- Cloves
- A piece of white cloth
- A pen or pencil
Begin by awakening your herbs and petitioning them to bind your target and protect you from harm. Be specific about the actions you want to bind them from! This is one spell where specificity is incredibly important. What are you binding this person against? What specific behaviors do you want to stop? You don’t want to just do a general binding, you want to forbid specific actions they might take. If you’re using a photo, write on the back of the photo, otherwise use your slip of paper. Write out your petition paper, outlining exactly what you want the spell to do. This might look like:
“I bind and forbid [name] from speaking with, interacting with, or even thinking of me. I bind him from going near me, looking at me, and from causing me any form of harm.”
Take your taglock, photo, herbs, and petition paper and wrap them into a bundle in the white cloth. Wrap or tie the cloth bundle to the center of the stick. Take your black thread and begin wrapping it around the stick and cloth bundle. As you wrap, imagine the person and behaviors you want to bind. Imagine this tread wrapping around the person and halting them in their tracks. See the energy of the spell wrapping around your target and binding them from the actions you want them to stop. Take your time and visualize this energy wrapping around them completely, covering them from head to toe.
Continue wrapping until the cloth bundle is completely covered in black thread and no longer visible. Tie off the thread with three or nine knots. Now place the branch with its bundle somewhere safe and secret. If the bundle comes unwound it will undo your spell so keep it safe for as long as you need it to work for you.
7 Ways To Use Binding Spells
Now there are many, many ways that you can go about using binding spells in your life and your magic, but I wanted to give you 7 solid examples of how you would go about utilizing this magic in your life and how you might want to adjust or change the simple binding spell given above to suit a variety of situations. This is all about tailoring your magical practices to your individual needs so that they work effectively in the actual circumstances of your life.
1. Protection from stalkers or threatening individuals
If you are dealing with an ex who is threatening you, a stalker, or anybody in your life that is making you feel threatened and afraid, a binding spell is an excellent first measure to create some breathing room. That said, when we go about binding people in dangerous situations, we never want to stop with only a binding spell. You will also want to employ many other methods of removing this person from your life, both magical and mundane.
On the magical front, I suggest doubling up your binding spell with an additional banishing spell to remove this person from your life and get them far away from you, as well as preferably multiple layers of protection on your home, on your person, and on anybody that this threatening person may use to get to you.
On a more mundane level, you’ll want to take every proportion possible to document the threatening behavior. Save texts, save emails, write down everything you can remember about events where you felt unsafe around this person, and if possible, file this with the police and get a restraining order. If you really feel like you’re in danger, you can take additional steps, such as literally moving, and making yourself much, much harder to find.
When we’re dealing with people with bad intentions and threatening behavior, whether that threat is psychological, emotional, or physical, we want to create as many layers of protection and distance between us and the threat as possible. This is a fundamental principle of good magic, use every tool at your disposal. Do not simply rely on your magic to keep you safe. Your safety is too important for that. You always want to use every possible means to make sure that you are safe.
2. Preventing someone from spreading gossip or rumors
Spreading rumors about you may not be actively threatening, but it is still a deeply harmful behavior. Your reputation is part of how you stay safe and solvent in the world. It is absolutely appropriate to use a binding spell to prevent another person from spreading gossip or lies about you. Reputation destruction has very real consequences, and you should take it seriously.
Now, as before, it’s a very good idea for you to utilize both magical and mundane means to deal with this problem. If the behavior is particularly egregious and this person has a history of singling you out for their malicious behavior, then you might consider going a step further and hexing them to lose their job or be removed from your social circle. You can also take mundane actions such as bringing the behaviors up with HR, counteracting any manipulation that this person is attempting, and exposing the malicious behavior.
3. Blocking potential romantic rivals
Using binding spells to block a romantic rival or keep your existing relationship safe can work very well, but only if you do it right. The mistake I see so many people making is that they use the binding spell on their romantic partner instead of on the person who’s threatening the relationship from the outside. This is a horrible idea if you’re trying to maintain a loving relationship.
The thing is, people can tell when they’ve had magic used against them. They may not know exactly what has happened. They may not realize that it is you who has put a spell on them. They may not realize that the negative emotions they are feeling are caused by magic. But they can feel that something is not right.
You do not want your lover feeling smothered, feeling as if their free will has been taken, feeling as if they are being forced to remain in the relationship. That is not going to lead to a long-lasting love. In fact, it’s an almost surefire way to cause massive problems and negative consequences in your relationship. Instead, you want to use the binding spell to prevent the other person from pursuing your partner and luring them away from your relationship.
Now, this will not work in all cases. I see a lot of people trying to use love binding spells to save relationships, where their partner is almost determined to cheat. If you are in this situation, your partner doesn’t want to be with you and the only magical solution for that is going to be forcing them to stay. In the long term, that will result in a massive amount of pain and anger and likely the end of your relationship anyway. It is not a good foundation for a romantic relationship, and it will not make you or them happy.
In all other cases, where this is not a repeat behavior and your partner is not prone to infidelity, simply binding the third party who is trying to lure them away will work just fine. I would suggest coupling this with any other action you may need. This might include mundane methods such as going to relationship counseling, working on effective communication with your partner, and developing a deeper understanding of your own behaviors in a relationship. And it might involve using some magic to show off the foundations of your relationship.
Again, this is not coercive love magic, but rather magic that helps to assist the deepening of your emotional connection. Magic to help you feel closer, magic to reduce stress in your life, and create more breathing room so that you can focus on one another. We want to avoid all forms of coercive magic in our romantic relationships because that is simply necessary for the health and longevity of your relationship. There is a lot of magic that you can do to improve your relationship, to foster happiness and health within your love relationships that do not cross that boundary of encroaching on free will.
4. Stopping workplace harassment
This is similar to stopping someone from gossiping or reputation destruction, but it includes a wider array of behaviors such as sexual harassment, bullying, name-calling, and other problematic behaviors in the workplace. Now, when we’re talking about the workplace specifically, there are a number of different ways that we approach these kinds of problems. Of course, as I keep saying, always use all the mundane methods at your disposal. Report it to HR, discuss it with your manager, and make sure that the behavior is known and documented.
But from a magical perspective, you can use a few additional spells on top of binding a person from this behavior. This might be something like using sweetening spells to endear HR or your manager to you. You can use domination magic to ensure that your boss takes your side. You can use magic to get them moved to another department or removed from the company altogether.
This is not something that I would take lightly, your job is necessary for your survival. If you have tons of other options and you can find a new job elsewhere that you might like more, then you can absolutely focus your magic on finding a new job and simply get away from the harassment entirely. And if that option is available to you, I would absolutely suggest taking it! Improving your situation in life in a way that solves the root issue is always going to be a more elegant solution than simply trying to force another person into stopping their behavior.
But that is not always an option. You need to recognize that this behavior is a threat to your survival, it is a threat to your job and your ability to provide for yourself. Because of that, you need to take it very seriously and use all of the magic at your disposal to stop the behavior and ensure that in any altercation that results from this, you come out the winner.
5. Limiting a family member’s destructive behavior
Unfortunately, sometimes the destructive or abusive behavior that we need to stop is coming from family members. And this does place limitations on how we can deal with this person. In contrast to dealing with workplace harassment, dealing with the harassment and threatening behavior of a family member cannot be solved by simply getting them fired. In many cases, the person who is receiving the abuse and harassment is often seen as the problem for being too sensitive and calling attention to the bad behavior of another family member.
If you find yourself in this situation, you want to ensure that you are using your magic to create an environment within the family that is more favorable to you. So start with a binding spell on the person who is harassing you, but then continue this with sweetening spells to endear the rest of the family to you and cause them to take your side in any potential altercations that might arise.
This can also be paired with situational magic. For example, if you are going to a family reunion or Thanksgiving dinner and you know that this other person is going to be there, cast additional binding spells before you see them. This kind of short term magic can be of great help on top of more general long-term use binding spells. You can also use magic to simply make it so that they can’t make it to Thanksgiving dinner, whether they come down with some kind of non-life-threatening illness, or they have car trouble, or their flight is delayed. There are many ways to create some situational distance between yourself and this person to give you the breathing room and the emotional safety that you need.
6. Binding yourself to financial stability
Using binding spells on other people is not the only way to use this kind of magic. We can also use binding spells to prevent or lessen behaviors that we would like to discourage in ourselves.
Now, this needs to be done with care. Binding spells, when done correctly, have a variety of effects on the target. The initial goal is to cause the person to not want to perform the behavior, however, if they persist in attempting to perform the behavior, the binding spell is likely to create circumstances in their life that will make it considerably more difficult or even impossible for them to perform that behavior. So if you are casting a binding spell on yourself to prevent yourself from spending unnecessary money, but then you continue going on impulsive shopping sprees, you are essentially inviting the spell to create some kind of event or catastrophe in your life that makes it impossible for you to continue this behavior.
This means you always want to pair this kind of binding spell with some kind of personal action plan to hold yourself accountable. The magic is there as training wheels, but that does not mean that your bike cannot crash. It absolutely can if you make poor decisions. You need to approach this kind of problem with a mundane action plan to manage your finances, curb your spending, and prioritize the behaviors that you are trying to instill in yourself. I would recommend, at minimum, making financial education and financial literacy a priority, learning how to budget in a way that actually works for you, and confronting the emotional issues that may be causing your impulsive spending in the first place.
7. Using binding spells for self-sabotage prevention
Self-binding spells can also be used outside of your financial life. You could use a binding spell to help you quit smoking, to help you lose weight, to help you not return to your toxic ex-boyfriend, to help you focus on your studies, to help you quit any kind of bad habit or behavior that you are ready to get rid of.
In this instance, the exact same rules apply. You want to pair this kind of binding spell with all of the mundane actions that would help you actually accomplish your goal. Do not simply rely on the spell to stop this behavior. Again, you are essentially asking the spell to create extremely limiting circumstances in your life if you do this.
Instead, you want to put all of your effort into quitting this behavior and making positive changes. Get all the resources you need to quit smoking, stop drinking, learn the study methods and habits that work well for you, educate yourself on losing weight and create a solid weight loss plan, get help, get therapy, or join support groups. Do whatever it is that you need to do to make this behavior easier for you to quit.
Binding spells are an incredibly useful and versatile form of magic for problem solving in your life. I hope that you don’t need to use them very often, but if you do need to use them, please don’t hesitate to do what you need to do to make your life safe, comfortable, and a happy place for you to live! Your well-being is important, and your magic should support you in creating a life of ease and joy for yourself.