Hi, Lumes. Welcome back.
I had pondered whether my neighbour had done a working to move me on. We never locked horns but they did cop a lot of startsmoke from my endless chiminea burns, not to mention some withering blasts of sonic incompetence from my amp late in the evenings. I sold up and left very unwillingly in late 2019. Went back to look at the old house some months later. Guess what. Their house was entirely gone and the vacant lot was up for sale, so hm.
Hey, Skinny! Nice to see you again.
You know, I think sometimes people get caught in the same tide of events, even when the cause is not visible or obvious. The pattern may be hard to detect. Just for example, maybe there's some stressor in the community, or a wobble in the local economy and a greedy property developer gives things a nudge, or something along those lines. If it's widespread enough, the cause may become known - like when so many houses in our old neighborhood were suddenly empty. It seemed
weird, but soon enough was revealed as an early expression of the subprime mortgage crisis - no magic required. So was there witchcraft in your case? It's hard to say for sure.
Should there be a situation where the dominoes are already falling in a certain direction and someone gives it a magical push, it can be really hard to get ahead of it. I'm quite sure this happened to me in the time leading up to my disastrous year of 2012, due to a foolish mistake I'd made. I'll tell you because it sounds so ridiculous, but I do believe it had an effect.
That year, things were building up to a crisis point in the town where we lived. We were just about staying afloat (but only just) because we'd been relatively unaffected. We'd been renting a nice house for a decent price and my husband's job was stable. One morning, I was brushing my hair out on the front porch. I set the brush down, and my husband, liking to fiddle with things, began to pull the hair out and arrange it in a long ponytail, which he tied with a red ribbon. He laid it on the porch table with a flourish, claiming it was art. I found this pretty amusing, but reminded myself not to forget to take the ponytail indoors. It had a sort of sinister look about it as it was, and I wouldn't want it to fall into the wrong hands.
Except I did forget, and it did fall into the wrong hands - the witch rival I mentioned upthread.
Our husbands were friends (which is how we knew each other) and as it happened, he stopped by that morning on an errand. When I opened the door, I could see the ponytail right out there in plain sight, but I couldn't think of any natural way to slide past him and take it away. I just prayed he wouldn't notice it. No such luck. When I walked away to get the thing he'd come for, I could swear he was
smirking. I waited until he'd got into his car to leave, then went to look. Yup, the ponytail was gone.
Not too long after that, it seemed like the rug was just pulled from under us. There were pay cuts at work. The landlord wanted his house back, like immediately. Nearly $10,000 went missing from the bank (it was found, but only when it was too late). Circumstances in the town had caused rents to spike, making it impossible to find something on short notice. Meanwhile, my mother's health took a downturn and a crisis in my brother's life had made it impossible for him to look after her. Before I knew what was happening, I found myself packing up my kids and pets, leaving my husband behind and going home to look after mother. I felt like I'd been jettisoned from my old life. Awful.
Do I think my witch-rival was responsible for each and every thing that happened? Nah, she's not that clever. But all she had to do was push things in the direction they were inclined to go. I firmly believe that magic will take the path of least resistance, and there were a lot of weak places in my life so that - say, if you wanted to get rid of me - could be encouraged to flow that way. One of the most overlooked parts of witchcraft, IMO, is noticing that path of least resistance and how it's going to affect you.
Case in point - my rivals did not get off without a cost - they both ended up suffering serious trouble themselves. But I claim no responsibility. It was just nature taking its course.
