A Witch's World of Magick (19 page)

[contents]

90.
Dr. Alan Massey, “The Reigate Witch Bottle,”
Current Archeology, no. 169
(2000): 34–36.

91.
James Macdonald,
Religion and Myth
(London: David Nutt; New York: Scribner, 1883), 104–105, accessed May 5, 2012, http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/ram/ram08.htm.

92.
Walter E. Roth, “An Inquiry into the Animism and Folklore of the Guiana Indians,” in
The Thirtieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1908–1909
(Washington, D.C.: 1915), Chapter VIII, “The Spirits of the Bush,” section 109, “Why the Drink Turned Sour,” accessed June 1, 2012, http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/sa/aflg/aflg08.htm.

93.
W. J. Hoffman, MD, “Folk-Lore of the Pennsylvania Germans, Part II,”
Journal of American Folk-Lore
, 2:4 (1889): 31, accessed May 5, 2012, http://www.sacred-texts.com/ame/fpg/fpg02.htm.

94.
Montague Summers,
The Vampire: His Kith and Kin
(London: K. Paul Trench, Trubner, 1928), 148, accessed February 14, 2013, http://www.sacred-texts.com/goth/vkk/vkk05.htm.

95.
Ibid.
, 328, accessed February 14, 2013, http://www.sacred-texts.com/goth/vkk/vkk07.htm.

96.
“Nazar Boncugu or Turkish Evil Eye Bead Amulets,” accessed March 11, 2013, http://www.nazarboncugu.com/.

97.
Theresa Flores Geary, PhD,
The Illustrated Bead Bible: Terms, Tips, and Techniques
(New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 2008), 115.

98.
Frederick Thomas Elworthy
, The Evil Eye: An Account of this Ancient and Widespread Superstition
(London: J. Murray, 1895), 82, accessed February 15, 2012, http://www.sacred-texts.com/evil/tee/tee04.htm.

Eight

Cursebreaking and Countercharms:
Magick to Undo

T
hough the infamy of cursing has given us sorcerer types a bad rep, much of the magick humanity has cast throughout the ages has been defensive and healing in nature, meant to counteract and ward off both present and potential dangers, curses, threats, and injuries. Not nearly as much attention has been given to the methods used to
undo
a curse as to the methods used to
cast
a curse, which is a shame considering most modern witches agree, it’s much better to heal than to harm. Decoy magick, we have seen, is one technique that can be used for cursebreaking, but it’s by no means the only technique. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at a sampling of other methods magicians around the world have employed to break curses, neutralize spells, and otherwise defend themselves against both magickal and mundane attacks.

Cursebreaking and Countercharms
Around the World

Hair of the Dog

Just as body-derived ingredients can play a role in decoy magick, so too can they act as key elements in other forms of defensive spellwork and cursebreaking. In 1940, the Georgia Writer’s Project published
Drums and Shadows
, a collection of folklore assembled from interviews conducted during the 1930s with elderly African-Americans living in the coastal areas of Georgia. Many of the interviewees had been slaves, and their magickal practices were directly reflective of older various African beliefs and techniques. One of the essays in the collection interviews Nathaniel John Lewis, mayor and resident of Tin City, a very small, very impoverished settlement to the east of Savannah, Georgia. He explains how a person in his community might counteract an act of conjure:

“ … cunjuh must be fought with cunjuh. If I know my enemy’s name I could get somethin frum a cunjuh doctuh to help me seek revenge.

… The toe nails, the finguh nails, even the scrapins frum the bottom of the foot are all very powuhful. If the doctuh could get any of these frum my enemy, he would mix them in whiskey an make my enemy drink.”
^99
,
100

Here, we again find the assertion that body-derived ingredients such as toenails, fingernails, and skin can be used to combat negative magick; in this case, however, it’s ingredients derived from the body of the
enemy
that does the trick. In contrast to the witch’s bottle, which defensively employs as a decoy body-derived ingredients originating from the people to be protected, here we find the curser’s own bodily substances used offensively against their own person. As if the act of casting a curse leaves its mark within our very flesh, the curser’s skin, toenails, and fingernails have turned toxic. Karma shows her hand, and the body-born, energetic signature of the curser proves to be their own undoing. One wonders if such a charm would work equally well on the innocent.

In other cursebreaking formulas, we find ingredients derived from the body of the curser acting as a medicine for the afflicted rather than as a poison to the guilty. In Texas along the Rio Grande, one countercharm used against
el ojo
—the evil eye—employed the curser’s saliva as a key ingredient. In her 1923 essay highlighting the Mexican influence on local folk beliefs, Florence Johnson Scott described a common
remedio
—or cure—for the curse of el ojo. The procedure began by cracking an egg over the head of the victim. If the evil eye curse was indeed at work, a small eye would become visible in the egg yolk. Whenever this happened, a search for the person responsible for casting el ojo would begin. It was believed that the curser would be sure to have a terrible headache, and in this way, the guilty party would soon be discovered. The offender was then brought before the sick person, where he or she was expected to administer the cure:

The offender found, he must go to the sick person, take a mouthful of water, and from his own mouth transfer it into the mouth of his victim. This remedio is supposed to effect instantaneous cure, but if it does not, there are other prescribed treatments. In each and all of them, however, the offender takes the place of the nurse.
¹⁰¹

The transference of the water from the mouth of the curser to the mouth of the victim would surely transfer also a good dose of the curser’s saliva. Here, the bane becomes the balm and the ingredients derived from the body of the curser provide a magickal healing. The act of eating a part of something else imitates having complete power over that something else; by ingesting someone’s saliva, the power inherent in that saliva becomes your own (along with all their germs, too). Since the saliva here would contain the energetic signature of the curse, consuming it becomes an act of imitative magick that consumes the curse, as well. There is also an element of mixing magick going on here. As the curser’s saliva mixes with that of the victim, the energies combine, transforming and diluting the magick of the original curse.

In New England also were body-derived ingredients employed to break curses, though here the ingredients were derived from the body of the victim rather than from the body of the curse-caster. In
The Salem Witch Trials Reader
, Francis Hill includes an excerpt from Chadwick Hansen’s book
Witchcraft at Salem
describing a popular method of cursebreaking:

One of the commonest countercharms for a bewitched animal was to cut a piece off of it—frequently an ear—and burn it or boil it … This kind of countercharm verged on black magic because it was supposed not only to break the witch’s spell but to injure the witch or compel her presence. It could be used with people as well as with animals, although you did not, of course, cut off the person’s ear. You cut some of their hair or took some of their urine, and boiled it.
^102
,
103

Sometimes, nails or thorns were added to the urine, making this charm quite similar in form to that of the witch’s bottle. In both recipes, we have a vessel filled with bodily fluid from the person to be protected, and we find also the inclusion of sharp objects in both formulas. The witch’s bottle acts as a pro-active decoy, there to stand guard and fool any future curses into hitting the bottle rather than the witch. The witch’s bottle is used most often not to break an active curse, but rather to preempt any future threats that might come into play. The urine contains the energetic signature of the person to be protected, and through the connection forged through this similarity, future curses may be decoyed and diverted. The urine boiling formula, on the other hand, is used after the fact, as a healing, defensive measure to break the spell of suffering caused by an active curse. The bodily fluids of a curse victim contain the energetic signatures of the curse and the curser as well as that of the victim; through the imitative act of heating the urine and adding sharp objects to it, the energies represented within the urine are likewise affected. The curse is broken, the curser is tormented, and the energies of the newly cured victim are purified. Of course, the witch’s bottle could be utilized in this same manner, providing relief to those already under the influence of a curse. In such a scenario, the magick would be in the imitative action of physically containing the urine within the bottle, thereby containing and trapping the energies of the curse and thus isolating the infection away from the victim. While the outward form of methods may look very similar, the heart of the magick, as usual, is in the subtle difference of intent.

Destroying the Curse Object

If you’re not into cutting off locks of people’s hair or squirreling away toenail clippings, no worries—there are lots of other ways to counteract a curse. One method that has been widely used for cursebreaking is to destroy, or at least remove, the curse object, those material components used to cast and contain the original curse. This method only works if there
is
such an object, of course, and only then if you can find and properly dispose of said item. A resident of Sunbury, a small rural community in Georgia, described in an interview conducted in the 1930s an incident of conjure involving a curse object and its destruction. The woman relayed the story of an old man who was terribly bothered with eye problems. He dug up his yard and eventually discovered the cause of the trouble: a curse in the form of a doll, its fingers stuck in its eyes, buried right beneath the door step. The man reportedly threw the doll in a river, bringing an immediate end to both the curse and the eye trouble. Similarly, a resident of Sandfly, another nearby rural community, shared a story about a woman she knew who was able to stop a curse caused by a conjure bag:

A woman that lived in Homestead Park jis couldn’t seem to have nothin but bad luck. She thought maybe an enemy had conjuhed uh, so she looked in the yahd an sho nough theah wuz a cunjuh bag. It wuz a queah lookin bundle with a lot of brown clay in it. She destroyed the bag an the bad luck stopped an the evil spirits didn’t bothuh uh none.
¹⁰⁴

We can see in these anecdotes the sheer amount of hard work and physical labor that might be involved in destroying a curse object in order to break a spell. The man and woman here mentioned must first dig around their yards until the suspicious object is found. Depending on the extent of a person’s property, discovering a curse object through this method could take anywhere from ten minutes to ten months—potentially a great deal of work that could fail to yield any benefit.

Of course, there are things a person can do to help shorten the search. Divination or dowsing may be used to obtain clues to the object’s whereabouts, and likely places for cursed object deposit can be checked first. Top spots to check include near thresholds and door frames, near or below gates, around the four corners of your yard or the four corners of your home’s exterior, in pillows, and in mattresses.

If and when a curse object
is
located, disposing of the curse is then quite simple. Destroy the conjure bag, destroy the curse; plunge the doll in the river, and drown the spell. The aim of destroying the curse object is to disrupt the energetic structure of the magick as much as possible. Effective methods include breaking, burning, burying, and sinking. Although the initial search for a curse object might be quite tedious and potentially unfruitful, if you find what you’re looking for, destroying or even banishing the physical form of the magick is one of the most efficient and surefire methods of cursebreaking that a witch can use.