CURSE

It can get to you. It can grip you, turn you inside out, and even kill you. At least, that’s what some people believe. But even if you don’t believe, the idea of the curse can still send a frightening tingle down the spine.
From witches sticking pins in an effigy, to the Voodoo bokor placing a curse on you, occult literature is full of incidences of successful curses, driving people mad and making them have accidents. But is there a reality to the curse?

COINCIDENCE

The usual sceptic’s answer to the curse is that life is full of coincidences, and some time, some place, life will throw up incidences that suggest a curse could be at work. But in reality, it is nothing at all. It’s just the inevitability of chance.
Those who take a Jungian view would add synchronicity to coincidence. Here, coincidences become meaningful, as if your own mind is affecting the world about you. In this scenario, if you believe a curse can work, then you make it happen yourself.
And then there are the people who just seem to have bad luck. Obstacles rise up before them, and they can form an attitude that they are cursed throughout life. Studies suggest luck is all to do with being able to calculate odds. Is this important to the issue?

A CALCULATING MIND

Clearly if you can calculate odds better than the average, good luck will seem to cling to you; and equally clearly, if you cannot, then you’ll go through life from one disaster to another. In one sense, this can be related to an optimistic or pessimistic state of mind.
For instance, the optimist tends to walk through life, whilst the pessimist expects to see disaster and so he does. Indeed, pessimism can have an effect if you think you’re cursed. And it is all to do with a feeling of absolute hopelessness.
There is a medical term called ‘vegal inhibition.’ This is a state where a sense of hopelessness slowly shuts down the autonomic nervous system. If it goes to the ultimate, death can be the result. A belief in a curse can, it seems, be a killer.

SUPERNATURAL REALITY?

At the other end of the scale is the idea that a curse really does involve supernatural forces. Some malign power invested in an adept can literally change the world about the person and cause ill to befall them.
One possible explanation for this can be the power of telepathy. For instance, if it exists, then can a thought be implanted in the person at a distance – a thought that directs them towards fulfillment of the curse?
Some researchers claim to have successfully done this – a form of telepathic hypnosis. But whether it really could work, we have to invoke a possible reality in that hypnosis cannot, it seems, make someone do something that is against their morality.

MAGIC MOMENTS

Even telepathy should not be able to make a curse happen – unless the person believes it can. But what about magic? Is there a reality to this – a means through which a curse could work? Many researchers believe magic is all to do with the mind.
An adept spends an eternity learning exact ritual in order to perform magic. In a real sense, this hones the mind and allows the adept to see a clear way through life. This gives him confidence, and fortuitous events seem to fall as they are ‘magically’ demanded.
We could be back to calculating odds, the clear mind allowing it to occur. But in a diluted form, we all live this form of magic. We call it routine. We all have our morning rituals to clear the mind. But what happens when these rituals are disturbed?

CHAOTIC MIND

When our routines of life are interrupted, our path through life becomes chaotic. Nothing goes to plan, and obstacles appear before us. We say it has been ‘one of those days.’ Our mind has been knocked out of equilibrium, and this is reflected in our actions.
Perhaps the answer to the curse can be found in this reality. There seem to be definite rules to the curse. Primarily, the person must know, or at least suspect, that a curse is upon him. What would this do to his routines of life?
If he believes the curse could work, his actions would be different. He would be more careful of everything he does. But in doing so, his routines – his rituals – have been shattered. And the odds increase that, in trying to avoid disaster, disaster will strike.

CULTURE AND INEVITABILITY

Could this be the reality to the curse – a mind knocked out of equilibrium by the belief that a curse has been made? Possibly. But to truly make the curse work, something from ‘outside’ the person may, indeed, infect the mind to increase the possibility of success.
One outer force we are all infected by is culture. It is the sociology of our validation. For it is culture that defines your place in a society, and the knowledge you live by. But what if you live in a culture that says a curse is a reality?
The chances of the curse working increase. Your mind is predisposed to its reality, and as you analyse the culture to which you belong, you seek out, and find, further validation. The culture to which you belong is a guarantee that death or injury awaits you.

IN CONCLUSION

We do not need to invoke the supernatural to find a ‘mechanism’ through which a curse can work. A mind knocked out of equilibrium, within a culture that offers validation, is all that is required for the curse to work.
Sometimes, a culture can even build up around a curse. Consider the Curse of Tutankhamun. As more and more ‘victims’ seem to fall to the curse, could the culture of those involved change, and within it they see the validation they dread?
A curse, it seems, is not to be taken lightly. But there remains a defence to the curse. Fundamental to its success is the belief that it will work. It seems skepticism may well be the one factor that can render a curse benign.

© Anthony North, June 2007

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