Many pagans think nothing of binding a person from harming another or themselves. While preventing any harmful behavior may be helpful in the person's current state, one must consider the consequences.

If a person has truly done awful things, binding them can not only prevent them from doing further harm, it may also prevent their Karma for harms past from occurring.

According to Liber Al, I:22 "... Since I am Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof, do ye also thus. Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt."

On Thelemic principles, Karma will take her price as she determines fit. To bind another is also to interfere not only with their Will, but also with the Karma that is coming to them naturally. One must weigh out whether or not the personal Karmic debt is something that they want to take on. If they are willing to run up their "Karma charge card," that is their choice - but where I am in my magickal life right now, I have seen the downside of binding a person.

Not long after being introduced to Thelema, I took a bottle that I had bound previously, and I dashed it out on some rocks. Everything that had been building up bound suddenly manifested - KARMA INCLUDED!

The problem for me was that even after leaving the person, I still was not truly able to heal the damage that I codependently allowed him to inflict upon me. I have come to consider that being unable to truly heal myself the entire time that he was bound was Karma's way of taking long, slow payment from me for binding him in the first place. It was only after I broke that binding that I truly began to heal and get past what had happened in my life, and grow with my lessons. On the other hand, although I haven't attempted to contact that person in a very long time, I have heard scuttlebutt that very Karmic-looking things started occurring in his life rather suddenly right shortly after I destroyed the bottle.

So next time you go to pack that bottle, think very carefully what it is you are doing. You will be bound to whomever you are bottling no matter how hard you try to get past them - preventing yourself from healing while most likely preventing them from receiving their Karma. If that is a bond that you can live with and a price you are willing to pay, well, that is your decision, make it wisely. Do what thou wilt.