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To: alt.paranormal.spells.hexes.magic,alt.lucky.w,alt.magick.tyagi
From: catherine yronwode 
Subject: Re: Spell to destroy someone
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 20:37:20 GMT

Regarding destructrive and revenge spells --

Green Knight wrote:
> 
> Everyone I have ever meet that is so self absorbed as to use 
> spiritual forces for revenge have been personally affected 
> by their work. 

Here is one clue to the root of our difference of opinion: the word
"spiritual." Some would prefer the term "magical." In my opinion, a
practitioner's experience of after-effecrts around spell-casting will be
directly linked to his or her understanding of the differences or
similarities between "spirituality" and "magic." 

> I have never known a mage, witch, magician or whatever you want to 
> call a practioner of the arts that did not claim that his/her magick 
> for others rebounded in some form into their own lives. 

I have. 

> If you can say that, I will take you at your word that you 
> believe it. 

Thank you. 

> Then I will assume one of two things (and yes my assumptions may 
> be way off). Either you are completely incapable of seeing/feeling  
> the results of your own magick or your talent is indeed extrodinary.

The third assumption -- the one you did NOT make -- is the one i would
like you to consider the most deeply: Each "school" of magical training
-- particularly each culturally-endorsed coherent system of folk-magical
practices -- carries embedded within it certain premises, assumptions,
and "rules," and if one sincerely works within a given  system, one will
achieve results consonant with the terms of that system. 

I don't know your background, age, or experiences, so forgive me if i am
restating the obvious here, but people of different cultures have
different experiences with magical work and its aftermaths. These
experiences are generally cohernet within a given cultural framework.
Anyone who runs a store catering to customers from various ethnic
backgrounds will tell you this. The reason for it is that magic is in
large part a product of the mind, and each culture trains the mind in a
slightly different way. There is no one "universal culture" and there is
no one "universal magical law." 

I'm going to give three examples of how different cultures base curses
and cures around different presumptions. Belive me, if this were an
anthropology newsgroup, i could multiply examples for page after page.
But here are three:

1) Susto: 

This is a particular condition of spiriutal or magical fear or fright
that only affects and is understood fully by people raised in the
Mexican and and Tex-Mex cultures. It has certain typical forms of onset
and certain typical magical forms of cure. If you don't know what susto
is, you are not part of that culture. If you are part of that culture,
you know what it is, can recognize its symptoms, and can recount certain
spells used to cure it.  

2) Evil Eye: 

This is a magical belief system that apparently originated in ancient
Sumer and spread through the Middle East. It is mentioned in the Jewish
Scriptures (which Chistians call "The Old testament"). In historic times
its range expanded from the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea areas to as far
west as England and as far east as India. It is not found in China and
was never part of American belief until Spanish, Portugese and English
colonization. If you don't know what the evil eye is, you are not part
of those cultures that have it. You will not fear it, you will not
suffer from it, you will not recognize its symptoms, and you will know
of no way to avert or cure it either. 

3) "Confused in His Mind": 

This is my name for a common magical condition found among
African-American men who have gotten involved with two women (either two
lovers, a wife and a lover, or a lover and the man's mother who is
trying to break up the love affair). As with other culture-specific
forms of bewitchement, this one has a known etiology (known to members
of that culture, at least), it has some very specific symptoms, and it
also has known cures. People outside the culture have little or no idea
about the spiritual causes, symptoms, or cures for this condition. 

It is all very easdy for someone outside of a culture to say,
 
   "Oh, well, 'susto' is just an extreme case of fright, i'm sure,"
 
or, 

   "The evil eye -- that's just when an ugly old cross-eyed hag 
   looks at you funny," 

or 

   "'Confused in his mind'? -- who wouldn't be, with two lovers?" 

I have heard those explanations given for the above three conditions by
MANY middle-class Anglo-American neo-pagans. And those three
explanations are DEAD WRONG. 

Explaining how they are wrong would take too long to go into here, but
suffice it to say, for starters, you can read more about the evil eye at
my Lucky W Amulet Archive web page at:
     http://www.luckymojo.com/evileye.html

Why did i bring these three seemingly irrelevant examples up? Because it
seems to me that your absolutist belief that those who perform revenge
spells will be punished is part of YOUR CULTURAL MINDSET. By intorducing
other examples of how cultural mindsets affect the premises emplopyed by
practitioners of witchcraft and magic, i hope you to get a feel for the
cultural relativism of the "rules" that govern magic. 

You believe that revenge spells must of necessity harm the sender in a
spiritual way. But that belief does not exist as a universal cultural
law. It does not accord with my personal experiences. It does not make
sense to people who KNOW it to be false, based on their cultural
assumptions and long experience with magical practrices. 

cat yronwode 

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This post copyright 2000 catherine yronwode. All rights reserved.