How can one be cursed

May you give birth to a trolley car? The forebears of my people, the Israelites, cursed better or at least more earnestly. Here, the prophet Elisha curses a bunch of rambunctious boys. Come up, Baldy! From there, he headed to Mt. Carmel and afterwards returned to Samaria. Kings 2, , my translation. What might seem to a bystander as the disproportionate use of force is for Heaven to balance, not us poor mortals who might see such a scene as, well, overkill. The curse is the force of madness and rage, a different frequency from that of the supplicant murmuring gently prayers.

Curses are not sensible; they are not uttered in moments of reflection, and so the results can be messy. Zora Neale Hurston records a curse from the Algiers section of New Orleans so long and mean that simply hearing it would have made me faint dead away:. That the East wind shall make their minds grow dark, their sight shall fail and their seed dry up so that they shall not multiply. So be it. And that in itself is a partial remedy for impotent rage.

The simple channeling of that anger into a funnel of spite. In my own case, I put some curses on a group of summer campers in New Hampshire when I was eleven. Every time I cursed someone, something bad happened almost immediately.

I doubt he took the curses seriously, but he took the disruption of camp life quite seriously—drunk on my power, I had become a kind of curse kingpin in the days preceding his appeal to me, campers visiting me with requests in return for candy bars. Although my cursing days were over, I learned that the line of influence in this world is not always visible, rational, or wholly explicable. In the several years since the woman in India cursed me, how has my life been affected?

This is a tough question. My fortunes have not been terrible. A book I published that Spring was met with good reviews but somewhat lackluster sales. A movie deal was struck and then fell through. I suffered a few colds, an inexplicable rash, a mild bout of depression. I was not rich yet and I was getting less handsome by the day.

This is a difficult question to answer, but one I determined to determine. While in Hong Kong, I asked a friend, a reasonable person, if she knew of anyone who might be able to remove a curse? I finally had my chance when I brought a group of students to the Philippines and was making up the itinerary. I chose to visit Siquijor for a few days. Here, at last, was the opportunity to have my curse removed.

The healer we arranged to meet was a woman in her eighties who lived at the end of a dirt road in the hills of Siquijor. Her shack was a multi-purpose facility. Amid chickens and dogs, a few men sat around a videoke machine with large bottles of Red Horse beer. As I made my way across the courtyard, I banged my head smack into a post, probably not the most auspicious omen, but I tried to chalk it up to my clumsiness, rather than cosmic irony. On the other side of the ersatz karaoke bar was a small room that stank of ammonia from below the bamboo floor where the chickens hid from the sun, but otherwise the room was neat if Spartan, its only decoration a calendar from Japan.

From inside a dark room adjacent to the clinic wafted the sounds of the NBA playoffs, no more incongruous than the adjacent karaoke bar. The old woman, dressed rather stylishly in a purple blouse, her gray hair pulled back with a scrunchy into a ponytail, worked on a client, a woman suffering from asthma while I waited on a bamboo bench and watched her work. I was impressed. There were no snakes, but it was still tactile and sensuous, and this is what you want when working with magic, to physicalize the mysterious and ineffable.

A smooth stone lay at the bottom of the jar—the stone, she said, had been given to her by the Santo Nino. The stone was cold and incredibly heavy, my guide said. He had touched it once. Her brand of magic was an amalgam of local animism and Catholicism; she crossed herself before she began her work. Of all Western religions, Catholicism is perhaps best suited to mix and match with other ancient rituals and beliefs, its pantheon of saints, its incense, its holy water, all tactile and visible manifestations of the mysterious at work in the world.

Of all Western religions, none allow more for the intercession of the supernatural in the everyday lives of mortals. A friend of mine prays to Saint Jude, the patron Saint of Lost Causes to find parking spaces, and she claims he always comes through for her. The trick of crossing your fingers for good luck originated in the Middle Ages as a quick sign of the cross to ward off the devil and evil spirits. Certainly, even the most skeptical among us have crossed our fingers.

As the woman blew on her straw, the water started growing cloudy and little specks of dirt floated in the jar. She stopped blowing and examined the jar, withdrew a piece of something and showed it to her patient, then rinsed the jar clean and filled it with water again, repeating the process of blowing into the water until it clouded again.

She started in on me, blowing bubbles along my shoulder, my chest, my groin. My case was acute. I could have guessed as much. The evil eye is a human look believed to cause harm to someone or something.

The supernatural harm may come in the form of a minor misfortune, or more serious disease, injury — even death. Folklorist Alan Dundes, in his edited volume "The Evil Eye: A Casebook" notes that "the victim's good fortune, good health, or good looks — or unguarded comments about them — invite or provoke an attack by someone with the evil eye Symptoms of illness caused by the evil eye include loss of appetite, excessive yawning, hiccups, vomiting and fever.

If the object attacked is a cow, its milk may dry up; if a plant or fruit tree, it may suddenly wither and die. The evil eye is also said to cause a number of other maladies including insomnia, fatigue, depression and diarrhea.

In many places, disease is considered a magical as well as a medical issue, and the reason a given person succumbs to a malady may be attributed to a curse instead of random chance or exposure to a virus. It can even affect objects and buildings: The evil eye cast upon a vehicle may break down irreparably, while a house so cursed may soon develop a leaky roof or an insect infestation.

Just about anything that goes wrong may be blamed on the power of the evil eye. The evil eye is well known throughout history. It is mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman texts, as well as in many famous literary works, including the Bible such as Proverbs "Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats" the Koran and Shakespeare's plays. Though belief in the evil eye is widespread, it is not universal. A cross-cultural survey by folklorist John Roberts found that 36 percent of cultures believed in the evil eye.

The evil eye is essentially a specific type of magical curse, and has its roots in magical thinking and superstition. Let's say that a person experiences bad luck, ill health, accident, or some unexplained calamity — perhaps a drought or an infectious disease.

Before science could explain weather patterns and germ theory, any bad event for which there was not an obvious cause might be blamed on a curse. Curses, including the evil eye, are an answer to the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people. Eyes are said to have special powers; they are said to be the gateway to a person's soul. If you looked in my purse right now, you would find a flower vase, hand-sanitizer, a hair-bow, a protective face mask, an old glow stick, a pen, a tape measure, lotion, Zyrtec, a marker, a flashlight, and a microfiber cleaning cloth.

While random, each of these items is there for a reason: The mask, hand-sanitizer, and Zyrtec are in there to keep me safe, the flower vase is a gift and the tape measurer is for a project I am working on. The items in my purse are not directly related to my love life or yours. However, taking a look at our lives and what we carry around physically and metaphorically , reveals a lot about who we are and the impact this baggage can have on our relationships.

An example of a generational curse is divorce. Your parents grew up in homes with divorced parents, so they both lacked a clear picture of what a healthy relationship looks like. With this negative example, your parents developed unhealthy relationship habits and passed those on to you.

You might be afraid of commitment because you are afraid of passing down the same trauma or pain that you experienced as a child to your own children. And this fear of commitment may prevent you from experiencing the gift and freedom found in authentic love. You have the choice to continue in the footsteps of your ancestors and pass on these curses to your children, or with great diligence, you can end those curses over your life and future.

You get to decide if the generational curse continues or ends. There is great freedom in breaking a generational curse and creating a healthier relationship for yourself, the people you love, and the generations to follow. This exercise helps identify generational sin and its impact on an individual. There are a lot of ways to complete a genogram.

You can adapt it to your comfort level and needs. First, start by drawing a family tree and include generations if you can. This is you, your parents, your grandparents, and your great-grandparents. You can also include the siblings, spouses, and long-term significant others within each generation.

Once you have your family tree, start gathering information using the questions listed below: 1. Were you impacted by a divorce, separation or affair? Were you impacted by the abuse of drugs or alcohol? Did you experience any kind of physical or emotional abuse?

Have you experienced the death of someone close to you, including a miscarriage or suicide? Did you have cancer or serious health conditions? Have you had an abortion?