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Are curses and hexes real, or just mystical mumbo jumbo?
You’ve probably seen movies and read books where someone gets cursed. Often done by a witch or voodoo priest, but sometimes by a bumbling rebellious teenager, but always bad news. But are curses real, or is it just wishful thinking of a twisted mind?
Curses have been around for ages, probably since the beginning of time. Someone gets really angry at someone else and uses some form of magick to put a curse on them. Horrible things then befall the cursed party, or at least that’s the intention. In the books and movies curses always work with vicious results, but do curses really work in real life?
Let’s break it down… What is a curse? A curse, in really basic terms, is a magickal spell cast on someone with the intention of causing harm to the cursed party. Curses can range from simple incantations like “I curse you to lose all your hair” to complex rituals using herbs, stones, photographs, locks of the intended victim’s hair and even poppets (“voodoo dolls”). The person making the curse uses these things to will harm onto another.
Some people absolutely swear by the existence of curses. They greatly fear them, and in some cultures people will go to great lengths to avoid having a curse placed on them, and even more extreme measures to have a curse removed if they believe that one has been placed on them. Others feel that curses are simply superstitious nonsense that hold no real power.
Some of the naysayers believe that a curse has no more power than typical angry words. For instance, if someone got mad at you and said “I wish you would shrivel up and die!” Interestingly enough, believers feel that such words could easily be a curse, if there is enough emotion and power behind the words. Now, if you suddenly get diagnosed with a degenerative disease and you are shriveling up and dying, you might actually believe you were cursed.
Many believe that a curse, whether accidental or intentional is only as powerful as the belief of the person who was curse. To use the example above, if you were superstitious you would likely attribute the disease as having come from the curse. However, a non-superstitious person would probably think it was just coincidence.
In the same line of thought, one might think that a curse is only real if you believe in it. The person who cursed you may have no real power over you, magickal or otherwise, but you give the curse power yourself. If I truly believe that someone put a curse on me to ruin my life, I might actually sabotage myself with my belief. I would see every bad event as part of the curse, and continue creating a chain-reaction of life-damaging events.
I would have to say that there is no real way to know if curses are real or not. For those who believe, they are real, and for those who do not, they aren’t. It’s all a matter of perspective, and it’s likely that either side could be convinced in the other direction if information was presented to them from the right perspective. I’d say it’s just a good idea not not tick too many people off, just in case!
Read More: Can You Unintentionally Curse Yourself?
