No One Has the Right to Control the Mind of Another, for Any Purpose

William Quan Judge · Black versus White Magic Series · 9 pages

The question that prompted this is a good one, and entirely sympathetic: has a mother the right to use her will power to throw off disease, or the consequences of an accident, from herself and her children? And the questioner adds the request that gives the piece its point — please draw the line clearly between white and black magic in such work.

Judge's answer is the least comfortable one available, and the title states it: no one has the right to control the mind of another, for any purpose. Not for healing, not for a child's good, not from love. The reasoning is that the interference is the same act whatever the motive prompting it, and that the person whose will is overridden is diminished by it regardless of the outcome. It is a hard line, and it is the same line as the Society's position on hypnotism elsewhere in this section — but stated here in the domestic case, where it costs most to hold. Nine pages, from The Theosophical Forum.

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