It has been my experience that conventional cursing techniques, while generally effective against individuals and plants, often fail to deliver satisfactory results where a corporate target is involved. Moreover, it is not safe to assume that a corporate target will be unprotected on a magical level. A number of large companies, particularly in the multi-national category, though they might be reluctant to admit it, do appear to employ some style of magical defence. Sometimes this is Masonic in character, as for example with some large banns. Elsewhere it looks as if the mirrors may be erected by a single individual, perhaps an employee acting on their own initiative. This can lead to some interesting and unexpected associations. A leading provider of electronic information, for example, appears to use Voodoo style defences.

Making the assumption that no defenses will be in place can result in material loss and/or personal injury to the assailant, so beware! It is not unknown, for instance, for cars to be written off under strange circumstances.

There are some who would argue that magical techniques should not be used in conflict, but I disagree strongly. In many cases where legitimate commercial disputes arise, for example, where a large company takes an unreasonably long time to pay for work done, or where unreasonable threats are made against one's home or family, it is simply impractical to depend solely on the legal process. The large company will probably have it's own legal department, happy to make work by stringing the issue out while watching their luckless opponent keel over under the burden of legal costs and the risk of an eventual miscarriage of justice.

In disputes of this kind magic is certainly a valid and useful artillery piece. Most magicians are humanitarian minded however, and the following apophthegm of Peter Carroll's in relation to hierarchies is worthy of some meditation:

"Most individuals are sane and reasonable, but corporations often behave as if mad or stupid."

This is suggested to be an inevitable consequence of the rigid hierarchical structure they adopt. What one is seeking to do in most cases is to inflict influence on the corporate structure and it's internal systems rather than wreak ruin or worse on the hapless employees. Therefore, for example, the ritual internment in a Plague Pit of an advertisement for a target company, while probably quite effective in terms of body count, is not necessarily going to achieve the intended outcome. Definitely not recommended to those potential assailants who subscribe to any notion of a Law of Karma.

The first job is to probe the targets defenses. I have found some of the techniques in Charles Cosimano's "Psionic Power" quite useful in this respect, and the equipment required is fairly simple to construct. A logo or letterhead or an annual report from the target serves as a sample. Where a corporate adversary is concerned these items represent totems of the target in the same way as would the hair or nail clippings of a victim to a practitioner of natural magic.

If it is possible to determine the technique used in erecting any defensive mirror by telemetric means, it will sometimes be simple, by reference to the same system, to dismantle it. For example, the shield erected using an Abra-Melin acrostic would ordinarily be susceptible to demolition by another device from the same set.

A more general technique would be to visualise strongly the target companies headquarters covered by an umbrella, then to visualise this being eaten away by acid rain. Total immersion of the mental image in oil of Vitriol, Aqua Regia, or HF would work as well, unless of course, specific protection was built into the defence.

Perhaps more satisfying is the use of the magical equivalent of an armour piercing shell! There is little that can resist a skilfully targeted Chao-Bolt, and one compacted to include a few lines of cyber-code can be amusing or devastating in it's effects, depending on your viewpoint. The bolt sunders the deflector shields and the cyber-code gets to work, promising an overtime bonus to Murphy's Law. Computer systems with so-called Uninterruptible Power Supplies are particularly vulnerable. I know of at least one instance in London this year where the failure of such a system has been attributed to a magical attack.

The Enochian language of John Dee and Edward Kelley has been found useful for composing cyber-code. Although some guesswork is involved in syntax and pronunciation, and the vocabulary is a bit restricted, it is possible to convey a wide breadth of meaning in a satisfyingly barbarous style.

Further work is currently being carried out using homunculi and other directed entities. Some successes have been achieved using these techniques to cause documents to become lost or accidentally shredded, but the entity can suffer the usual distractions of an office environment and fail to discharge it's duties with sufficient diligence.

Another consideration is whether the magical offensive should be overt or clandestine. Traditionally magical operations are clandestine, but for many things these days I prefer to be quite open, even public about it. Public attack is perfectly appropriate against a public company. Taking magical action is not much different than taking legal action, and is appropriate in similar circumstances. If one takes legal action, one accepts that the issues and any virtue which may attend them will be put before a court and the public in the final analysis, so I have no problem with stating a grievance publicly, and applying a magical antidote, also in public. There is nothing illegal (at least in the U.K.) about performing magic; the Witchcraft Laws were repealed in the early 1950's, and although there is a Fraudulent Mediums Act on our statute book, this would presumably not apply to the genuine manifestations, and so would scarcely be relevant to the readers of Thanateros.

If you are working magically in parallel with a legal action against the same target, it may be desirable to avoid mentioning your target directly by name in a public context; aside from the risk of libel, you might inadvertently weaken your legal case. It is often effective phonetically to transpose your target's name or corporate acronym to Enochian, as in 'en-ah-tou-ess-teh' or 'areh-oo-teh-ress'; this is appropriate for written as well as enunciated representation.

As regards maintaining your own defenses, I strongly advise doing this, and renewing them regularly. A general method usually involves banishings and the construction/visualisation of some sort of mirror or repulsive spring structure to ward off any incoming attack, and to provide protection against any bounce-back or recoil from your own efforts. In visualising mirrors it is prudent to expand these to cover your home and any car or other vehicle you may have. The material of the mirror may be visualised as being of stainless steel, lead, titanium or some other corrosion resistant material; but why stop there? Grutelium alloy from the Asteroid Boksenberg is resistant to every reagent in the universe and can only be worked or shaped by a process of magical visualisation; why not use that or discover some similar material on your own travels?

Adequately defending something as amorphous as a multi-national corporation by magical means is no straightforward task. Techniques deriving from Masonry are sometimes applied, but these tend to be more effective against legal attacks than purely magical ones; anything constructed from such a monotheistic and misogynist philosophical basis can be demolished as easily as Euclid's parallel postulate by a single Chao-bolt, or even a good fuck with an Austin Spare type sigil under the mattress.

Big companies are vulnerable creatures though. They like to present a solid immovable appearance, but an unfavourable market rumour can chop 10-20 % off of a share price in one go, and that can sometimes be the start of a terminal slide. Perhaps not now, but in the not too distant future, all that might be necessary to initiate such a rumour would be the information that a systematic program of psychic attack was in progress. Hence the advantage of working in public, at least to a limited extent, when it is warranted.

The atmospheric effects of outdoor public work can, on occasion, provide quite a rewarding boost. At a recent working in a London park, a 4000 watt P.A. system was used to recite a well-focused cyber-message over some historically charged rock and roll, ("Out Demons Out', by the Edgar Brought Band, the live version performed from the Pyramid at Glastonbury Rock Festival in 1972). The target company obligingly responded by implementing a new release of systems software so bug-ridden that it has made them a laughing stock in the City- that's Cyber Magic! During the operation a cloudless sky became overcast, and a credible storm blew up. The stage area back-drop was actually blown over as the cyber-code verses were broadcast. If something like that happens, you know it has worked, so don't wreck it by rushing to lust over result, and don't rely wholly on magic. As Oliver Cromwell once said, "Trust in God and keep your powder dry."