There is not much written about black magic and curses in Swedish, even though it is a common phenomenon that occurs in many different forms even here in Sweden. In modern Swedish culture, black magic is often associated with great fear, is considered a primitive and untrue interpretation of what is ‘real’ and is considered by many to be a dangerous area of accusations against others without the possibility of proof. This is a healthy approach in itself, but it does not help those actually affected by black magic or curses.
What is black magic?
Black magic is when someone deliberately uses a ritual to harm or otherwise cause harm to someone else.
What is a curse?
The word curse originally means ‘exclusion from the community’ and banishment, but today it has come to mean a condition caused by negative spiritual or psychic forces.
How do people put a curse on someone?
In all cultures, there are both magical rituals and milder ways, such as wishing ill or sending evil thoughts, evil eye or tongue (gossip, slander, lies) to put a curse or destroy a person, animal or place.
In magical rituals, or incantations, personal traces of the target (name and birthday, things belonging to the person in the form of clothes or other objects, things touched by the person) are combined with read spells, herbs, colours and other materials that are considered to cause or enhance negative and harmful states of affairs. Personal items linked to the target can also be placed in places where the symbolism corresponds to what is desired for the person (placed between two trees rubbing against each other, in the cemetery, etc.) or manipulated (burnt in hot coals, hung upside down, etc.) and placed where the target will step over it or in a place where it will come into contact with the person (in food, drink, buried under the house, in the garden, etc.).
Lighter forms of curses often count as unintentional curses and are rarely performed with any type of ritual. People who may have strong thoughts and other abilities are not necessarily aware of the harm they can cause to others and envious people are not aware that their influence brings evil eye to the object of their envy. Ritual types of curses are always deliberate and can be constructed and directed to affect the target in various negative ways.
The most common symptoms/results of a curse are series of bad luck in one, several or all of these areas. Minor curses, such as the evil eye, often manifest as sudden headaches, backaches, stomach aches, mild depression, weakness, clumsiness and minor accident proneness. This is also often referred to as being courage-stolen or power-stolen in the Scandinavian tradition. More powerful curses, intended to seriously injure, kill or totally destroy a person, naturally produce more severe symptoms.
Even the lighter types of curses are considered to lead to recurring bad luck and long-lasting problems if a person has been repeatedly exposed to them over a long period of time.
It should be added that it is not only living people who are considered capable of causing a curse. The dead, Ancestor Spirits, Nature Beings, Deities, Goddesses, Saints, etc. are also considered to be able to punish a living person if they have been disrespected, insulted, dislike the visitor or have not received a promised reward for work done.
Can you find out who did it to you?
Make a list of potential enemies. People who were angry or jealous of you before the problems started. Once you have made a list, intuition and feeling usually do the rest. Once you have a list of suspects, there are many divination methods to find out who might be responsible. For example, writing the names on separate pieces of paper and putting them one by one in a boiling pot in complete silence. The first person to contact you within a short period is considered the culprit. You can also perform a ritual to send back what was done to you. Breaking a curse is not the same as sending evil on someone else, so such a ritual does not affect someone who is innocent in any negative way. On the other hand, if a person has done something evil and you turn it back, it can be unpleasant for the person who placed the curse.
It is often better to focus on merely breaking and dispelling cursed states and circumstances than on hunting down the guilty, so as not to end up in a vicious circle of suspicion and accusation and not to bother hunting down scapegoats.
How do you remove a curse?
The most common is to go to a "Klok" (a cunning man) or a Witch Doctor with experience in the subject, just like you go to the health centre if you get sick, but there are things you can try on your own too.
If you find a suspicious object in your proximity that has been placed there for the purpose of cursing or causing magical harm, the most common way to get rid of it, and thus avert the threat, is to burn it. Some people urinate or pour salt on it first and pick it up without touching it. Washing thoroughly from the elbows down under cold running water when finished is appropriate.
If you have stepped in a spilled powder or been poisoned through your feet, wash yourself and rub your feet thoroughly from the knees down to the toes. In these cases, the water should be thrown against a tree or at a crossroads or into other running water.
In the past, it was common to be suspicious if you received an apple of the opposite sex, as this was one of the most widespread ways of transmitting and imposing a love spell. Similarly, many cultures are suspicious of receiving red-coloured drinks or food from a woman (menstrual blood is a common ploy to bind a man to you) and similarly, curses can be placed on a person through other means in food. One way to counteract and break such a spell is to spill some of the food or drink on the ground and cross it with one's foot (drawing a corpse-armed cross over it to stop the magic) before digging into what is being served.
Lighter curses, evil eyes, evil tongues, with milder complaints and less bad luck as symptoms, there are many small things you can often do yourself to remove.
- Take a raw egg (with shell on) and read over it that it should pull out all the evil eyes and troubles you have and pull/roll it anti-clockwise and downwards from the head to the tips of your toes or where you have troubles. Slowly and carefully. At least 15-20 minutes. You may need more than one egg. When you have finished, throw the egg northwards over your left shoulder at a crossroads if the problem is severe, or smash it against the inside of the toilet seat and flush it down if it is only a minor problem.
- Washing the ears and the area around and just outside with a cotton bud dipped in hydrogen peroxide (available diluted from the chemist) is good for a day's listening to babble and bullshit and for removing milder symptoms.
- To wash the floor with an extra dash of ammonia and a fistful of sea salt in the scrubbing pan and always clean the apartment from the innermost room out and over the threshold at the front door.
- To take a bath with three bottles of dark beer and a tablespoon of salt, stirring anti-clockwise and bathing at least 8 minutes. Air-dry and go into the bedroom where you pray sincerely for relief from the troubles in your own words or with the traditional psalmody No 23 (‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want...’).
- In Iran and other Arab cultures, people incense themselves with an herb called Aspand, which is very effective against minor ailments, and wear blue-eyed amulets around their necks or on their walls.
- Leaving an offering (coins, pins, food, a doll or something to amuse yourself with instead of N.N., etc.) in the place where you think you have the problem with the words ‘Take this and leave N.N. alone.
What unites all these methods and all the others (which can be found for free everywhere online) is that they must be performed with seriousness and determination to be effective and they may need to be repeated often to produce lasting and good results.
If you lack the seriousness, energy and faith required to perform a strong ritual, it is better to save your money and go to an experienced "Klok" or other type of witch doctor to have curses and cursed states broken.
//Johannes.