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Does Magick Work?

I slammed a sigil at the wall of a noisy and obnoxious neighbour whose bedroom was next to mine. After months of noise nuisance from music, wailing, screaming, etc his stereo immediately, IMMEDIATELY blew up and he ran out of the house.
Technically not a curse, but a magical manipulation forcing your will onto others is not recommended. It works, but there is a price to be paid. I'm guilty of it too.

I had shrill neighbours when I was in Korea who would regularly come home pissed from the talan-junjom at 3am. I had no magic sigils, but, being a bear with a sore head I eventually got so sick of it one night I rapped on their metal door with a maglite and told them in no uncertain terms to shut the fuck up. They didn't pack up and leave but it did get me the extra 3 hours of sleep I needed.
 
i can never understand why some people enjoy 'not knowing'. For me, the enjoyment is in understanding the world.
Because it's boring to know everything. Think of something like HP Lovecraft's works - they are great because he doesn't tell you everything, lets your own imagination fill in the blanks.
I look at the world the same way. The Unexplained is so interesting because you can imagine for yourself how it - ghosts, UFOs, clairvoyance etc - all works!
 
Technically not a curse, but a magical manipulation forcing your will onto others is not recommended. It works, but there is a price to be paid. I'm guilty of it too.

I had shrill neighbours when I was in Korea who would regularly come home pissed from the talan-junjom at 3am. I had no magic sigils, but, being a bear with a sore head I eventually got so sick of it one night I rapped on their metal door with a maglite and told them in no uncertain terms to shut the fuck up. They didn't pack up and leave but it did get me the extra 3 hours of sleep I needed.

I'm going to be controversial and suggest that there isn't necessarily a price to be paid, or if there is, it's one that the worker manages to extract from themselves

We once "encouraged" some seriously threatening neighbors to move with a piece of witchcraft, after having failed at convincing our sketchy landlord to do anything about it. It worked quickly, thank goodness. Then we did the same to the sketchy landlord, who was busted for thieving from the tenants soon after that.

We didn't experience any backlash and things were hunky-dory at the apartments for the remainder of the time we lived there (several more years after that.) Also, I think I've mentioned that my great-aunt Clara had a special gift for hexes and she lived a long and happy life.
 
Ulalume: I would love to read more about your aunt Clara if you would like to share!

It runs in my family. There's a saying that a witch who can't curse can't heal (as they're two sides of the same coin) which makes sense, but I have to wonder. Clara's mother and grandmother were both healers but it was hexing that really seemed to be in Clara's wheelhouse. To all appearances she just seemed like a rotund German woman who wore men's overalls and loved fishing, but none of her enemies could ever get ahead in life including her sister's husband (my grandfather). He was terrified of her, by the way. :p None of them were educated women but they were all very smart.

My family seems to have produced an unusual number of both scientists and witches and occasionally both at once.

ETA - Clara had 11 children and a long and happy marriage, and all her children have done well and also had happy marriages.

ETA again - according to Clara's sister, it was Clara who retained possession of the books that belonged to her uncle - a respected "wise man" in their town.
 
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I dunno, I've become used to seeing people who hurt or cross me come to grief one way or another with no input from myself. It's their own twatty attitudes and behaviour that bring down trouble on their heads. What we see of them is a tiny fraction of how they treat the world in general.

Like that nasty workmate who constantly tried to drop me in it at work. He failed a random drug test and was sacked on the spot.
Also my main much-derided ex. Heh.
 
I dunno, I've become used to seeing people who hurt or cross me come to grief one way or another with no input from myself. It's their own twatty attitudes and behaviour that bring down trouble on their heads. What we see of them is a tiny fraction of how they treat the world in general.

Like that nasty workmate who constantly tried to drop me in it at work. He failed a random drug test and was sacked on the spot.
Also my main much-derided ex. Heh.

It's true, many such people are hoist by their own petard, but then there are those cases (like the threatening neighbors and the landlord) who seemed like nothing could shift them until we took action. (Believe me, it was tried!)

Oh, yes, I should add - if a person is troublesome already, it doesn't take much to turn their own situation around to bite them.
 
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Oh, yes, I should add - if a person is troublesome already, it doesn't take much to turn their own situation around to bite them.

Absolutely. I've advised people on'ere and IRL about troublesome druggies and drinkers. They don't tend to live long, or stay free.
 
hoist by their own petard

That's such a beautiful metaphor. It's apt because a petard was a late mediaeval bomb. Unreliable, dangerous, something intended to hurt others that could instead blow up in one's face.
(That's a further use of the same metaphor!)

A soldier would light the petard's fuse then charge off to plant it next a castle wall or doors, dodging enemy fire; then turn and run, hoping to be clear before the explosion.

The petard could blow up on the way or as it was placed. So while going about one's calculated business of wrecking and causing havoc, one could be suddenly killed.

No doubt planting several petards made a soldier over-confident about his luck and ability. Then BOOM. Just like when that idiot in the Beamer cuts you up and then gets stopped for speeding a mile down the road.
 
I've gone beyond pantheism. I pat and encourage and thank appliances. I admire our poor refrigerators in this 100 degree weather. I don't want to think of living without them. I congratulate our toilet on "swallowing" everything, since we do "if it's yellow, let it mellow." I want to know house magick.
 
I accept that magic works. As to the mechanisms behind why it works, those are less clear. I have seen the arguments around confirmation bias in psychology and stage magic, but they don't explain some of the things I have seen other people do and done myself. I think there is an unrealised potential in humans that can't be explained away flippantly, even if it doesn't play well in labs. Frankly, I think most people who are genuine practitioners are well advised to stay away from scientists. How much worse would the world be if muggles started to try to regulate magic?
 
I've gone beyond pantheism. I pat and encourage and thank appliances. I admire our poor refrigerators in this 100 degree weather. I don't want to think of living without them. I congratulate our toilet on "swallowing" everything, since we do "if it's yellow, let it mellow." I want to know house magick.

Household magic is a thing. For example, kitchen witchery.
http://www.witchipedia.com/def:kitchen-witch
 
.... Frankly, I think most people who are genuine practitioners are well advised to stay away from scientists. How much worse would the world be if muggles started to try to regulate magic?
Agreed. At least until science realises it has a cousin in the arts. They're very forgetful about the history of integrated studies, wilfully so regarding their common ancestry. It's true. Look into the long and colourful life of Dr John Dee, for instance. I should think today he'd be known as a stem student. Interesting biological colloquialism, stem student.

What is STEM? - Department of Education
https://www.education.wa.edu.au/what-is-stem


STEM is an approach to learning and development that integrates the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
 
Agreed. At least until science realises it has a cousin in the arts. They're very forgetful about the history of integrated studies, wilfully so regarding their common ancestry. It's true. Look into the long and colourful life of Dr John Dee, for instance. I should think today he'd be known as a stem student. Interesting biological colloquialism, stem student.

What is STEM? - Department of Education
https://www.education.wa.edu.au/what-is-stem


STEM is an approach to learning and development that integrates the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Dee was a spy who used occult texts as cyphers as he operated across the courts of Europe posing as a doddering old duffer who was interested in alchemy. Brilliant cover.
 
Dee was so very much more than that.

Try Jason Louv's Empire of Angels for the complete picture. Louv's also an Enochian magicel adept. His introduction to living life with magic is excellent for the beginner, although the sound is shitty at times.
 
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Dee was so very much more than that. Try Jason Louv's Empire of Angels for the complete picture. Louv's also an Enochian magicel adept. His introduction to living life with magic is excellent for the beginner, although the sound is shitty at times.
It is quite possible to decode Dee's texts via their integrated ciphers and they reveal his secret correspondence regarding international politics. Angels and devils of an entirely human variety. The fact that people are able to get the texts to work as magic despite their true purpose provides an important insight into what magic really is. Some will dismiss it as confirmation bias, while others will see it as giving people a structured means to unlock their minds' powers.
 
It is quite possible to decode Dee's texts via their integrated ciphers and they reveal his secret correspondence regarding international politics.
this is very interesting but do you have a source showing such conversions?
 
this is very interesting but do you have a source showing such conversions?
Here is a taste of what I am talking about: LINK
Back prior to WW2 the Black Chamber (precursor to the NSA) used to decode occult texts for practice and John Dee's works were among them. Suffice to say this was a very interesting exhibition. I went for the Voynich Manuscript and stayed for the Black Chamber.
 
I'm going to be controversial and suggest that there isn't necessarily a price to be paid, or if there is, it's one that the worker manages to extract from themselves

We once "encouraged" some seriously threatening neighbors to move with a piece of witchcraft, after having failed at convincing our sketchy landlord to do anything about it. It worked quickly, thank goodness. Then we did the same to the sketchy landlord, who was busted for thieving from the tenants soon after that.

We didn't experience any backlash and things were hunky-dory at the apartments for the remainder of the time we lived there (several more years after that.) Also, I think I've mentioned that my great-aunt Clara had a special gift for hexes and she lived a long and happy life.
I know this is an oldish thread but just thinking about this some more.

The stock in trade of the village cunning man/woman was selling curses. I think that the fear of "hexing" in case it comes back on you magnified has to really just be a sort of Gardnerian mid 20thc Wiccan type thing - with no basis in the actual history of magic.

It's just a comparatively modern invention, which reflects the broadly christian society it came from. You can be naughty - but there'll be consequences. I once got a group of pagans - online friends of many, many years in a now defunct, once brilliant forum - to put a hex on someone and from what happened to them subsequently, and ever since, sort of suggested it might have worked. For some reason, I didn't trust myself to do it right (but I never did believe in the law of threefold return). But I knew people who knew how to do it better than I could.

Sick of my vile neighbours now and although the law is about to run its course - they've ramped up as they now have a court date and it's not for a few months. I'm sorely tempted to dig out some bind runes... which I have long forgotten. And send something interesting in their direction.
 
I know this is an oldish thread but just thinking about this some more.

The stock in trade of the village cunning man/woman was selling curses. I think that the fear of "hexing" in case it comes back on you magnified has to really just be a sort of Gardnerian mid 20thc Wiccan type thing - with no basis in the actual history of magic.

It's just a comparatively modern invention, which reflects the broadly christian society it came from. You can be naughty - but there'll be consequences. I once got a group of pagans - online friends of many, many years in a now defunct, once brilliant forum - to put a hex on someone and from what happened to them subsequently, and ever since, sort of suggested it might have worked. For some reason, I didn't trust myself to do it right (but I never did believe in the law of threefold return). But I knew people who knew how to do it better than I could.

Sick of my vile neighbours now and although the law is about to run its course - they've ramped up as they now have a court date and it's not for a few months. I'm sorely tempted to dig out some bind runes... which I have long forgotten. And send something interesting in their direction.
How are they vile?
 
I once got a group of pagans - online friends of many, many years in a now defunct, once brilliant forum - to put a hex on someone and from what happened to them subsequently, and ever since, sort of suggested it might have worked.

There is no need to hex people. What I've found is that people who've behaved badly towards myself and those I care about, to the extent that I hate them and wish them deformity/cancer/death etc always come to grief one way or another.

They are reckless people who take chances. They drink, smoke, take drugs, drive too fast, fall out with the wrong people, lose their jobs and homes, have disastrous relationships with other chancers, you name it.

I don't have to lift a finger. But I can and do enjoy the schadenfreude.
(In fact we have a thread on that.)
 
There is no need to hex people. What I've found is that people who've behaved badly towards myself and those I care about, to the extent that I hate them and wish them deformity/cancer/death etc always come to grief one way or another.

They are reckless people who take chances. They drink, smoke, take drugs, drive too fast, fall out with the wrong people, lose their jobs and homes, have disastrous relationships with other chancers, you name it.

I don't have to lift a finger. But I can and do enjoy the schadenfreude.
(In fact we have a thread on that.)
I dunno, snail, I've had the opposite experience. The vilest people I have known in life have all been teflon, endlessly lucky and never seemed to get their come uppance...
 
I dunno, snail, I've had the opposite experience. The vilest people I have known in life have all been teflon, endlessly lucky and never seemed to get their come uppance...

Give it time. You don't have to dwell on it. The comeuppance arrives when it's ready. It's often cancer.

Scallies burgled my house years ago. To my delight they've all long since thoroughly bollocksed up their own lives now.

Apart from one, who'd turned respectable and was thriving until a most dreadful tragedy struck his family.
Yeah, I thought, that, it's MUCH worse than being burgled. Give me a ransacked house any day of the week. :cool:

It's just life and the risks people take. Nothing magical or intentional about it.

In fact, it's best to let go of grudges and forget about the harm they've done. That way, you can have a pleasant surprise later. :chuckle:
 
If you wait long enough, most people get cancer. I haven't noticed the bad people getting it any sooner.
 
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