Curses!

Another note from ‘anonymous’ (this is like listening to ghosts):

Know you don't believe in most supernatural phenom, but where do you stand on curses, Romulus.Seems to me, at least where your internet connection is concerned, you may want to double check that you haven't recently angered any curse flinging sorts.

If I believed in curses, I’d be using them. My copy of ‘Spells, Curses and Magical Recipes’ would be falling apart. In case anyone wants to try, the author of that book is Leonard Ashley, and it’s published by Souvenir Press, London.

I don’t believe in curses. That’s why I don’t use them, and it’s also why they don’t work on me.

Many magical practitioners (aka charlatans) will tell you that it is not necessary for the victim to believe. They will tell you the curse is effective if the caster believes. They tell you this for a reason: they want you to pay them.

You will read of many instances where curses ‘work’. Where the witchdoctor/shaman/priest or whatever tells a victim he will die, and he dies. They tell another he will recover from a disease, and he recovers. Lo and behold, the disease is cured without antibiotics! How can this be?

Antibiotics were discovered sometime around 1940, I’m not certain of the exact date, by a fellow called Fleming. How do you think we survived for millions of years before that? We just lay in bed and waited for the illness to go away. You don’t need antibiotics for every illness. You don’t need spells either. Mostly, what you need is a positive attitude and the will to get better.

That works. Really. You’d be amazed at the effect a positive attitude can have on your real, physical well-being. People have convinced themselves they’re ill, and manifested all the symptoms. Others have refused to accept the inevitable when faced with a terminal illness, and have made ‘miraculous’ recoveries. A positive mental attitude produces tangible, measurable effects on immune system efficiency and general health. If you believe you’re in good health, you will be.

There are diseases that no amount of positive attitude can overcome. On balance though, if you believe you’ll get better, you will. If two people catch the same disease at the same time, the one who thinks positively will recover faster than the one who just lies around feeling sorry for themselves.

It all comes down to belief. That’s how curses work.

Consider this. Most people were brought up to believe in something. Some God or other. Santa. The Easter bunny. The bogeyman. There is a time in a child’s life when they cannot be convinced that the creatures of their stories are not real. Some are convinced there is a monster under the bed, or in a closet, and experience real terror when they ‘see’ or ‘hear’ it move.

Of course, almost everyone grows out of belief in Santa or the Bogeyman. By some logic which I have not been able to determine, many people retain, or even intensify, their religious convictions. Within a society, these beliefs can be absolute.

The Celts were a formidable enemy because of their absolute belief in reincarnation and in predestination. They wore no armour to fight. Their belief can be summed up as ‘If today is your day to die, no amount of armour will prevent it. If today is not your day to die, you don’t need armour’. Armour was superfluous either way. This gave them a massive advantage in agility over an armoured foe.

Their belief in reincarnation was so strong, they would lend each other money, to be repaid in the next life. Nobody, it seems, questioned why there were no instances of repayments in this life for debts incurred in the previous ones.

The effect of their belief was that they didn’t care if you killed them. They would not retreat, or surrender. All because of the beliefs instilled in them by their priests.

Insular or remote societies still hold definitive beliefs. The power of the shaman is unquestioned. If the shaman says you’ll die, then you die. It would be impolite not to.

People can, and do, manifest physical symptoms if they believe themselves ill or injured. These are psychosomatic effects. Try looking up stigmata, for a start.

People can, and do, convince themselves they are going to die and promptly do just that.

The shaman, the witchdoctor, the priest, all play upon the people’s conviction that they represent the Word of God, or some other spirit entity. Some might be doing this deliberately, as a form of vicious manipulation. Others, most likely, convince themselves they are, indeed, messengers from the other side. After all, if you tell someone to die, and they do, aren’t you going to wonder if maybe you have The Power? In a small village, you’d soon convince everyone else of this.

It only has to work once. If it doesn’t, you claim your intended victim employed a rival magician to deflect your curse. One success, and everyone will believe. Tell a villager you’ll curse them, and they’ll do whatever you say. Tell a stranger the same thing, and he’ll shrug it off.

The Aztecs were amazed that the Conquistadores were impervious to their shaman’s power. Okay, that’s mostly because the conquistadores had no idea what the shaman was saying, but to the Aztecs, these steel-plated men were a marvel. Belief in the apparent godly status of the Conquistadores was their downfall.

Curses work only on those who have absolute faith in the power of the curse. Words, especially words you don’t understand, are harmless.

Calling up a demon and setting it on your enemy is rather more effective.