From the notebooks of Sylvia Moon, Mystic Reads, Falmouth

There’s a curious misunderstanding about curses, particularly among people who have read too many novels involving witches in pointed hats.

They imagine a curse must be something theatrical. A cauldron bubbling away, a black candle, perhaps a thunderstorm arriving at precisely the appropriate moment.

Well, my dears, most curses are considerably less impressive.

A woman loses her temper with a neighbour. A farmer accuses another of stealing his sheep. Someone is passed over for an inheritance, or a young lady discovers that the gentleman she fancies has taken up with someone altogether less deserving.

And before you can say Saint Piran, someone has been ill-wished.

In Cornwall, the old people understood such things rather differently from the modern enthusiasts who purchase their witchcraft from the internet.

An ill-wish was not necessarily a grand invocation of supernatural powers. Sometimes it was no more than an expression of resentment, spoken with sufficient conviction to make the unfortunate recipient believe that something dreadful is bound to follow.

Of course, there were more deliberate methods.

A name might be spoken over an object. Pins might be driven into something intended to represent the offending party. A charm could be prepared to turn misfortune back upon whoever was believed to have caused it.

And there were the pellars, those cunning men and women who made their living removing curses, identifying ill-wishers, and supplying protective charms.

Some were undoubtedly wise practitioners of the healing arts. Others, I suspect, possessed a remarkable talent for separating frightened people from their money.

One must be fair about these things.

Why people cursed

Now, the question that interests me is not how curses were performed, but why anyone imagined they were necessary.

The answer, I believe, is power.

Or rather, the absense of it.

Imagine a widow whose landlord has treated her abominably. She has no money, little influence, and precious hope of obtaining justice.

What can she do?

She can curse him.

For one breif moment, she possesses something he cannot purchase or command: the possibility that forces beyond his understanding might intervene on her behalf.

Whether those forces exist is almost beside the point.

The curse gives her a voice when nobody will listen.

It transforms helplessness into intention.

And intention, as any wise woman will tell you, is a powerful thing, even when its consequences are not what one expects.

What was supposed to happen?

The desired result was generally straightforward.

The person who had caused the offence would suffer.

Perhaps their cattle would fall ill, their business would fail, their health would deteriorate, or some unforeseen calamity would disturb their comfortable existence.

The curse might also be intended to complel restitution.

The thief would return what had been stolen. An unfaithful lover would repent. An enemy would withdraw an accusation.

In the old accounts, a curse could sometimes be removed only when the offender acknowledged the wrong or when a pellar intervened.

There was, there, a certain rough notion of justice underlying the practice.

But justice according to whom?

Ah. There’s the difficulty.

The person casting the curse naturally assumes that their grievance is justified.

And I have yet to encounter a thoroughly vindictive individual who did not consider themselves the injured party.

What actually happened?

Here, I’m afraid, we enter rather more troublesome territory.

Sometimes the person supposedly cursed did experience misfortune.

But people experience misfortune without anyone cursing them, and there is no reliable evidence that spoken curses or magical ojgects can supernaturally cause illness, accidents, or financial ruin.

The old accounts seldom distinguish coincidence from consequence.

A famer curses his neighbour, and six months later the neighbour’s horse dies.

Proof of witchcraft?

Hardly.

Horses die. Businesses fail. People fall ill. Nature continues its business without consulting the moral grievances of the local population.

Yet there is another kind of consequence, and one I find rather more convincing.

A curse can change the behaviour of the person who believes themselves cursed.

Someone who becomes convinced that misfortune is approaching may grow anxious, suspicious, and fearful.

Every accident becomes confirmation.

Every dissapointment acquires significance.

A neighbour’s innocent remark becomes a threat.

And before long, the unfortunate person may begin making desicions based not upon what is happening, but upon what they fear will happen.

In that sense, a curse can become remarkably effective without requiring any supernatural intervention whatsoever.

There’s also the damage done to the community.

Once someone is accused of ill-wishing, suspicion spreads. Old quarrels acquire new meanings. Innocent people become objects of fear. And sometimes the supposed remedy causes more harm than the original grievance.

One might say the curse succeeds by persuading people to do its work for it.

The matter of returning a curse

Now, there is a practice sometimes called returning a curse to it sender.

The principle is simple enough; if someone has directed malicious intention towards you, those intentions should be sent back where they belong.

I have known practitioners who regard this as an entirely reasonable form of protection.

And I confess that there have been occsions when I found the idea rather attractive myself.

After all, why should an innocent person suffer because someone else has behaved wickedly?

But lately I’ve become wondering whether returning a curse is quite as innocent as its advocates imagine.

Suppose I believe someone has harmed me.

Suppose I perform a ritual intended to return that harm.

And suppose the person subsequently suffers some misfortune.

Have I achieved justice?

Or have I simply claimed responsibility for an event that would have happened regardless?

Worse still, have I allowed my resentment to become the organising principle of my own life?

That’s an uncomfortable question.

And I dislike uncomfortable questions, particularly when Lillian is likely to agree with them.

A Wise Woman’s confession

I have practised the old ways for most of my life.

I know the charms, the rhymes, the herbs, and the rituals. I know which traditions have been handed down through families and which owe more to the imaginations of enthusiastic Victorian antiquarians.

And I believe there is wisdom in these practices.

But I am beginning to suspect that wisdom and power are not quite the same thing.

A curse is an attempt to impose one’s will upon cicumstances.

It assumes that because we have suffered an injustice, the universe ought to recongnise that injustice and arrange a suitable correction.

Yet the universe has never shown much interest in human notions of fairness.

The sea does not punish the wicked fisherman and spare the virtuous one.

The winter storms do not inquire into the moral character of those whose roofs they destroy.

And the earth does not withhold its flowers from people who have behaved abominably.

Nature simply continues.

Perhaps that is what troubles me most.

For if nature is indifferent to our grievances, then justice must be something we create between ourselves.

Not something we can demand from the wind, the stones, or the stars.

And that leaves us with a rather greater responsibility than any spell book ever suggested.

I shan’t pretend I’ve entirely abandoned the notion of curses.

There are still occasions when a particularly disagreeable individual makes me think that a little magical correction might be beneficial.

But these days, before reaching for the black candle, I try to ask myself one question.

Am I seeking justice, or merely the satisfaction of believing that I possess the power to deliver it?

The distinction is a small one.

And, I fear, a good deal more important than I once imagined.

---