3. Start small, and focus on yourself

Want to hex the current political administration? So do many others, including the group Witches Against Trump. But it's probably best to deal with smaller stuff at first.

If you have something like a job interview coming up, try a good luck or a confidence spell. And rather than cast a spell on your hopeful employer to make them like you more, it's best to focus your energy on yourself instead. That way, you can more readily tell whether something is working and avoid any unintended consequences that would befall someone else. In other words, it’s better to use yourself as the Guinea pig — at least to start.

4. Always be prepared for unintended consequences

"When you're dealing with an entity that has a mind of its own," Carlin said, "sometimes things won't go exactly how you plan for them to. And if you pull one string, sometimes the web will come with it."

She recounted a time when she cast a spell to help herself learn a new style of coding more quickly and invoked Iron Man’s alter ego Tony Stark to do so.

"I was calling on his technical genius to help me out, to see if I could borrow his brain for a minute," she explained. "And it worked!”

But it worked in more ways than one. For a while afterwards, she wasn’t able to shake the nagging feeling of Tony Stark’s presence and it became a major distraction for her.

“Tony Stark [was] following me to work and bothering me all day," Carlin said.

She eventually managed to shake him off and get through her work days alone, but it was a good reminder that when you invite something into your life, it sometimes might be difficult to get it to leave.