[1][2] It is seen as falling into a continuum between white and black magic.
According to D. J. Conway, practitioners of white magic avoid causing any form of harm, even to enact positive outcomes.
[3] Ann Finnin states that many practitioners of gray magic employ the term because of its vagueness, and to avoid having to consider ethical questions.
[4] A rather different meaning to the term was given by Roy Bowers, a British Neopagan witch of the 1960s.
For Bowers, it was a technique of baffling, bewildering, and mystifying everyone he met to gain power over them; by doing so, he was always more sure about them than they were about him.