Book Review: Have You Been Hexed? Recognizing and Breaking Curses

I've just begun writing my Magickal Defense II class over at Shadowkrafting.com.  One of the books I read as part of my research was Have You Been Hexed? Recognizing and Breaking Curses by Alexandra Chauran.  Like most books on metaphysics, it has its strengths and weaknesses but overall is worth reading if you're new to the subject.  If you already have pretty decent knowledge of common psychic attacks and how to deal with them you won't get a lot of new information.

Strengths

One of the things I like most about this book is that it distinguishes between deliberate, purposeful psychic attack (think if evil practitioners slinging hexes over black candles) and the "common curse."  The common curse, as Chauran refers to it, is the unconscious or unskillful sending of negative energy from one person to another.  Real, deliberate, skillful hexing is incredibly rare.  To cast a truly harmful hex requires skill, practice, determination, energy, and a willingness to accept the consequences.  Very few practitioners with the knowledge and skill to cast such a spell will do so unless you've seriously wronged them or someone the love, making real hexes quite rare.  Common curses are much, much more plentiful.  Anytime someone cuts you off in traffic and you swear and shake your fist at them you are sending a common curse - a batch of negative energy sent their way.  A skillful hex can ruin someone's life; a common curse might make someone miss a traffic light - maybe - if the person is unlucky and has terrible natural shielding.  This distinction is important and rarely made so explicitly; kudos to Chauran for this.

I also like that Chauran takes the time to warn readers about the potential of fraud from psychics and other practitioners that a person might go to for help.  Sadly, in every group there will always be those looking to make a quick buck from the frightened and naive. We've all heard stories of someone going to a psychic to ask if they're under psychic attack and the psychic saying "Yes, you're under attack and for just $500 I can remove it."  While this type of fraud is quite rare (and highly illegal), it does happen occasionally and it's important for folks to be aware.  Chauran gives good information on how to avoid this type of fraud and instead find genuine help.  

Chauran also does a pretty good job explaining what type of symptoms are potential evidence of a real psychic attack and how to go about determining their validity.  I'd say about 1 in 25 people who think they're under psychic attack are actually suffering from the negative energy of others.  It's very easy to think you're under attack when, in fact, you're just having shitty luck or are getting ill.  Chauran looks at all the different warning signs of a potential psychic attack, shows how to look for mundane causes, how to eliminate erroneous "proof," and how to look at things objectively to figure out what's really going on.  I really like this pragmatic approach.  Too many "resources" on psychic attack are alarmist or are just trying to sell you something.  

I also like her thorough explanation on how thinking you're under attack can actually place a self-hex.  I've been trying to get clients to understand this for years.  If you believe you're under attack you will be - from yourself if not from the outside, or in the worst cases from both within and without.  Chauran gives good solid info on how self-hexes work and gives some reasonable info on fixing the situation.

Weaknesses

There are, of course, things in the book that I don't agree with - quite a few really.  

The first thing that bothered me was Chauran's insistence that any practitioner skilled enough to sling a harmful hex must have their lives put together.  I call Bullshit.  You can be smart and skilled and still suck at life.  All it takes to sling a really powerful hex is skill, energy, and an acceptance of the consequences.  There are plenty of hateful, miserable people who generally fail at life that have developed the skill of hating on others to a potent and powerful degree.  In fact, the more miserable a person is the more likely they blame others for their misfortunes and the more likely they are to take retribution for their perceived slights into their own hands.  Further, the more miserable someone is the more negative energy they'll have on hand to throw at others.        

Another thing Chauran lists are being necessary evidence for a hex is a distinct start date for the symptoms.  In theory this sounds reasonable - if someone places a hex on Wednesday night, symptoms should start turning up by Thursday morning right?  Well, not necessarily.  If you're looking at a common curse then yes, symptoms are going to start right after the negative energy is sent your way.  If you're dealing with a deliberate hex then maybe not.  It's perfectly possible to place a delayed or gradual hex.  For example, a skilled practitioner would probably make their hex more gradual and insidious to avoid immediate detection and make it more difficult to pinpoint and thus undo the hex.  While a distinct start date is strong evidence for the presence of a hex, its absence is not dispositive proof of a lack of hex.  Nitpicky? Perhaps.  But hey, I'm a lawyer and nitpicky is what I do.

My biggest issue with this book is its hex removal and prevention strategies.  I'm a down and dirty results driven practitioner.  I will beg borrow and steal from any tradition whose techniques actually work and will gleefully chuck the dross to the wind.  This book places a huge emphasis on prayer as a hex removal and prevention technique.  Yes, if you have a good relationship with a higher power then prayer can absolutely help with common curses.  If you don't have an established relationship with a higher power then it's a little less helpful.  Further, in my experience prayer alone will do basically nothing against a skillfully placed hex unless your relationship with deity is essentially being their personal saint. 

Chauran does give some good magickal advice on dealing with hexes.  I particularly like her suggestion of creating a sigil to represent the curse (particularly if it's on a place or group of people) and then ritually destroying it to dismantle the curse.  With the right magickal precautions, and a few extra bits thrown in, it's a great technique.  I don't know how well it would work from someone without a magickal background, but it's a solid technique.

Conclusion

Overall, I would recommend this book for a layman looking to find out "Am I cursed?"  It gives very decent information on how to determine whether you're the victim of a psychic attack.  It also gives decent information on the first steps someone should take in dealing with a common curse.  However, if you determine that you're probably the victim of a deliberate hex, then the info in this book is unlikely to be sufficient and you should seek the aid of a skilled defensive practitioner.  

If you're a defensive practitioner looking for more information to add to your arsenal then you can probably skip this one.  If you don't already have a checklist for determining if you're looking at psychic attack, then the identification sections of this book could be quite useful.  If you already have some decent cleansing and banishing techniques in your skill set then you can skip the hex breaking and prevention sections.

9 Day Santa Muerte Hex Breaking

I'm normally a very calm, collected person.  Years of shadow work and mediation have given me an incredibly even keel.  Thus, as you might imagine, it takes rather a lot to get me worked up about something.  There's a bit of an unseen consequence to just how difficult it is to make me angry - once I am angry, really and truly angry, I am implacable.  I become the unstoppable force and woe to anyone who gets in my way.  So when someone had the gall to hex someone I care about (it was bad enough that I actually felt the effects) and decided to take drastic measures.

The following hex breaking ritual isn't exactly white magick, so if you're uncomfortable with doing harm it is just not for you. 

9 Day Santa Muerte Hex Breaking

 

Each day for nine days (ending on the new moon) light a black candle and copal incense.  Draw a drop of your own blood onto a piece of paper.  Burn the paper and say:

Bendita Santa Muerte,

Fortaleza contra mis enemigos conocida o desconocida.

Hoy te pido que alejes de mi toda maldad.

Que todos los deseos negativos de los que me rodean ser neutralizado y terminado.

Más alta santa muerte,

Rompe todas las maldiciones que se han puesto sobre mí o mis intereses.

Por el poder de tu guadaña santo, me libre de los lazos de mis enemigos y destruir a todos sea grande o pequeño.

Que sus huesos se convirtieron en polvo y dejar sus restos esparcidos sobre los cuatro vientos que ni ellos, ni sus aliados ni descendientes serán nunca más levantarse contra mí o mio.

Bendita Santa Muerte,

Fortaleza contra mis enemigos,

En tus manos me encomiendo.  

Mi agradecimiento dama oscura.

Por tu voluntad así debe ser.

Let the candle burn for at least an hour (no more than three).

* I should note that during the course of this hex breaking I suffered a higher than normal amount of bad luck.  Between hellish commutes, some utter nonsense at work, an unusual bout of depression, and some really weird behavior from my house I'm pretty sure that the power of the curse I was lifting was fighting back.  Only use this if you really need to because drawing out a hex breaking just isn't a great idea.

Also, when I finished reciting the incantation on the last day I was...instructed (commanded?) by Santa Muerte to not speak for the rest of the day as a further price for her intervention.  It's a bit odd, but not an unheard of price.

Curses and the Aura

Yesterday I promised you a good meaty entry so here you go.

I get a lot of emails from people with subject lines like this: “HELP VOODOO BLACK MAGIC CURSE!!!!!” - except the usually have more spelling errors and random punctuation.  These folks are genuinely frightened and upset by things that are happening in their lives and they do need help.  Are they cursed?  Unlikely, but you never can tell.

Now, of the many emails I get from people who believe themselves to be cursed I’d say about 10% or less of them appear genuine.  For me, a genuine curse is focused and potent negative energy sent from one person to another with the specific intent of doing them harm in a particular way.  This almost never happens.  In order to send a proper curse someone has to have a strong will, a deep understanding of energy work (including the consequences of lobbing a curse), a certain amount of skill, and the willingness to accept the consequences.  Most people that have a deep understanding of the way energy really works don’t want to burden themselves with the consequences of cursing – it’s just not a very good idea 99.999% of the time.  Most people who want to curse someone don’t have the ability to manipulate energy very well.  Yes, the co-worker or neighbour that hates you can flood your surroundings with negative energy but that’s not a curse it’s just being a dick.

However, when you believe yourself to be cursed you can effectively curse yourself.  If you look at everything that happens to you that doesn’t fit into your plans as some kind of deliberate attack you will make it so.  The mind has power to affect the physical world –this is the basis of all forms of magick.  When you believe yourself to be surrounded by the malefic you will draw it towards yourself.  The principle of like attracts like is the basis of all sympathetic magick and that holds true to the negative as well as the positive.  The more you allow your mind to unfoundedly color your experience negatively the more negative energy you will attract.  Once you’ve stepped onto the downward spiral of negative energy - voilà, you’re cursed. 

At this point it’s time to do a hex-breaking to help break the vicious cycle of bad begetting more bad.  In my book I’ve got several different levels of hex-breaking broken down into simple, easy to follow instructions so I won’t got over them here.  Performing a hex-breaking will sever any attachments to negative energies coming from within or without (so it doesn’t matter if someone’s actually out to get you or if you’ve worried yourself into things), clean up residual negative energy, and strengthen your personal shields to help protect you in the future.  Hex-breakings are great tools, but wouldn’t it be better not to have done this to yourself in the first place?

The best protection against curses, from within or without, is a strong personal energy field.  The aura, our personal energy field, is the natural shield that distinguishes us from our surroundings.  A strong, solid aura is a natural defense against curses.  Imagine a strong aura as a perfect sphere made of solid teflon – nothing sticks to it and nothing gets through it – if negative energy has nowhere to grab a hold of us then we cannot be cursed.  Unfortunately, almost no one has that perfect an aura.  As we go through life we experience annoyances, angst, and tragedy.  Those negative experiences can scratch and mar the aura, giving external negative energy a handhold, and real trauma can even shatter it completely.  The more we’ve been through the more pockmarked and scarred our aura can be, and most adults have at least a few decent cracks that make the very core of our beings vulnerable.  Thankfully the aura can be healed and strengthened.

The goal of modern psychotherapy, ancient spirituality, and a good chunk of religions is to heal the mind and connect the self to greater powers (be it the collective unconscious, archetypal understandings, or deity).  This is also the goal of shadow work.  Working with the shadow is basically the process of looking at the cracks and craters in our sense of self and doing what is necessary to heal them.  Each time we learn to accept a fragment of our shadow we heal a part of our souls.  Each time we heal a part of our soul one of those auric craters fills in; the cracks begin to mend. 

A whole, healed aura makes us curse-proof and it’s the only thing that can do so.  All the shielding and energy work in the world will still leave you vulnerable if you’ve got a crack in your soul.  If you think you’re under psychic attack take a good look at yourself and ask just what it is about you that left you vulnerable.  Worry less about what might be coming at you from without and more about what about you lets it in.

Thoughts on House Cleansings

A very special thanks to WSPIR for having me at their last meeting.  My presentation on Psychic Protection for Paranormal Investigators went over very well.  There’s nothing like presenting to an intelligent and engaged audience to really put the cherry on a good weekend.  Before my presentation I had the pleasure of attending their general meeting where several ongoing and recent investigations were discussed.  One of the issues that came up was house blessings/cleansings for clients and it got me thinking.

House blessings and cleansings are one of things I am asked about most frequently and one of the things most people have misconceptions about.  A house cleansing is not like having the kind of exorcism that you see in the movies or on tv, even the ones you see on “reality” tv being performed by “experts.” 

First and foremost, if you are experiencing a haunting of some kind a house blessing may or may not actually get rid of whatever’s causing the problem.  A house blessing/cleansing cleans out negative energies that are present in your house.  It does not necessarily address any of the underlying causes that brought that energy into your house in the first place and it may or may not ward against those energies coming back.  As Darren of WSPIR so aptly pointed out, doing a house cleansing is a lot like vacuuming; you can’t do it just once and expect to never have to do it again.  Energy flows; it changes all the time.  Sweeping out negative energy can stop the effects of a haunting, remove negative entities, and even positively affect your mental health for a time.  However, just like dust, energy moves around and negative energies can come back if you don’t do something about them on a regular basis.  I recommend that everyone, whether you think you’ve got a problem with negative energy or not, perform a house cleansing at least once a month (I prefer to do it on the new moon) to keep your home’s energy flowing healthily. 

As I mentioned, a house cleansing may or may not deal with whatever brought negative energy into your home in the first place.  Negative energy and entities can enter a home in a number of ways: it might have been there before you, it might be attracted to a psychic sensitive in the household, it might be attracted to negative energy given off by the household, it might drift in from a troubled neighbor, etc.  One of the things brought up at the meeting was the fact that many people who experience hauntings are actually psychic sensitives or empaths who simply do not understand what they’re experiencing and don’t know how to take control of the situation.  A sensitive could do a full house cleansing every day and still experience phenomena he found unsettling if he didn’t learn about his abilities and take control of them.  A person who constantly effervesced negative energy would probably attract negative entities regardless of how often she smudged.  A house cleansing will almost never make a situation worse, so please when in doubt perform a cleansing – just don’t expect it to be a cure all if that’s all you do.  

Sometimes what’s needed in a situation isn’t a house cleansing at all, but a cleansing of the person involved.  Sometimes it’s not the place that’s being haunted but the person.  Sometimes this is the result of attachment, though more often it’s the result of the person involved being shiny (certain people have energy that just attracts the paranormal – I call these people shiny because their energy is highly visible on the other planes).  In such cases a personal cleansing (often in the form of a mild hex-breaking) will help clear away energies and entities that have attached to that person, although it won’t keep them from coming back unless the person learns how to control their own energies (and that’s a whole different post).  And sometimes, if you’re really unlucky, you come across that terrible combination of mental illness and attachment.  Unfortunately, people whose personal energies are compromised by mental illness are both more likely to think there’s something pestering them if there’s not and are more likely to actually be afflicted by the paranormal.  Their mental imbalance actually makes them more vulnerable to the paranormal and there are many unsavoury entities that find them particularly tasty.  In such cases all you can do is work with their therapist to try and address both problems simultaneously.  A therapist alone can help heal the mental imbalance but won’t necessarily get rid of the attachments, while getting rid of the attachments without addressing the imbalance is only a temporary solution.  I generally stay away from these situations for fear of becoming liable if something goes wrong. 

House cleansings are both incredibly useful and important for maintaining a healthy environment, but they are not a magic bullet.  A one-time cleansing will make things better for a little while, but not forever – don’t expect it to.

Possession and Oppression

First a disclaimer – I am not a mental health professional.  I am not giving mental health advice.  I’m a witch relating personal thoughts and experiences.  Take what I say as nothing more than that.

Over the last few months I’ve had several people come to me with concerns that someone they cared about might be possessed.  At first I assumed these people were...well...overly concerned.  After all, possession is absurdly rare.  It’s far more likely that someone’s mood swings or changing personality are due to a mid-life crisis or simple growth than some kind of malevolent outside force.  Consequently, when I investigated further I was surprised to find that these folks seemed to be dealing with honest to gods actually cases of possession.  That’s what I get for scoffing.  I will admit right up front that cases of possession or oppression scare me.  More than any other magickal malady, possession and oppression cases have the potential to go very, very badly. 

Possession and Oppression occur when an intelligent malevolent entity decides it’s going to make someone’s life hell.  The entity will single out a particular person and systematically harass him until he can no longer function normally.  At that point the person is Oppressed.  Now, just because someone is experiencing paranormal phenomena that he or she finds upsetting does not mean that person is Oppressed.  The big difference between a malevolent haunting and Oppression is the focus.  Hauntings generally affect anyone who comes within the sphere of the haunting.  Oppression is specifically focused on one individual.  If several people are feeling the effects, then you are not dealing with Oppression.  In a haunting everyone (or at least everyone with sensitivity to the paranormal) will feel the cold chill, hear the disembodied voices, etc.  In a case of Oppression only the target will feel the chill or hear the voices.  Therein lies the primary difficulty – if only one person is affected how do you know that the person is genuinely suffering from Oppression or if they’re just hallucinating?

In my experience the only way to tell if someone is Oppressed verses dealing with a mental issue is to have that person examined by someone who can see psychic energies.  To someone with the sight, an Oppressed person will appear draped in foreign energy and that foreign energy will look awful (dark, splotchy, cracked, etc.) – and it will feel even worse.  That foreign energy will appear very distinct from the person’s native energies, and the native energies will probably appear pale and weak.  Even then, there are some mental illnesses (particularly schizophrenia) that can give someone very similar energies.  An experienced practitioner should be able to feel the difference in the energies by their intensities and the level of malevolence present.  However, even the most experienced practitioner can misdiagnose this.  It is for this reason that I always recommend that anyone who thinks they might be Oppressed seek professional mental care.  Even if your root problem is that a demon is trying to eat you, a good psychologist can probably do you some good (just be careful what you say – we wouldn’t want anyone getting committed unnecessarily), and in the more likely event that you’ve got a chemical imbalance it will do you a lot of good. 

Oppression can sometimes lead to Possession.  In my opinion Possession is just about the most unsettling thing that can happen to a person – and I can personally attest that it is highly disturbing to witness.  Possession is when a foreign entity actually takes over someone’s body and controls his or her actions.  I’ve seen someone whose demeanour, speech patterns, aura, and even eye color changed during Possession.  Sometimes Possession occurs after a long period of Oppression that wears down the natural defences; other times it happens seemingly out of the blue.    In all the episodes of Possession that I’ve seen, some kind of traumatic event that severely compromised someone’s sense of self and all his mental defences precipitated the Possession.  I’ve never seen someone with a normal, healthy mind and aura become Possessed (at least not involuntarily – voluntary possession by deity is a whole different issue).  I’ve also never seen someone become Possessed as a result of dabbling in the occult.   

Like Oppression, Possession can look a lot like mental illness.  Illnesses such as multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia look damned similar to Possession.  People can have radical mood swings, fugue states, personality changes, etc., while suffering from Possession and the similar mental illnesses.  As with Oppression, those who think they might be Possessed should seek out a mental health professional, and for the same reasons.  Like with Oppression, the only way I’ve found to tell the difference between Possession and mental illness is viewing/feeling the energies involved and that isn’t foolproof. 

All that being said - what do you do if you think you or someone you love is Oppressed or Possessed?  As I’ve mentioned, the first thing you do is seek the aid of a mental health professional.  If someone is genuinely ill and they are left untreated or their delusions fed it can cause serious problems.  If someone is genuinely suffering from Oppression or Possession they are probably being severely traumatized and could greatly benefit from counselling - I’ve seen a case of Oppression lead the target to a serious anxiety disorder.  Magickally, Possession and Oppression are nothing to mess around with.  Best case scenario you are dealing with a malevolent entity and deep seated emotional trauma.  Worst case scenario you are dealing with a malevolent entity powerful enough to destroy someone’s mind.  Only experts in energy work and dealing with malevolent entities should attempt to deal with serious Possession.

For most cases of mild Oppression or the very first seeds of Possession, a thorough and powerful cleansing should rid a person of the negative outside influence.  However, it will not address the crack in that person’s energies that allowed the negative entity to take hold in the first place.  That requires a full mental/emotional magickal healing – something I really can’t help you with.  (I seriously can’t do healing work of any kind, it all goes pear shaped.)  If personal cleansings are insufficient, then it’s time to move up to a hex-breaking ritual.  Hex breakings (such as those I outline in my book) are designed to sever ties between the target and outside energies, rebuild the person’s own energies, and ward against future intrusions.  In my experience Hex breakings are quite effective against most forms of Oppression and mild Possession.   

What if it’s not mild Possession?  What if you’re dealing with something powerful, insidious, and long standing?  Well, that’s when all amateurs leave the building and call in a professional.  The only way to deal with serious Possession is to flat out battle the entity doing the possessing.  If you’re religious you call in the appropriate clergy person, if not find yourself a local witch of good repute and let her work.  If you’re me then you suit up, grab your kit, and gird yourself.  On the one occasion I have personally gone to bat against serious Possession I gathered up my strongest friends, we all called in our patron deities, we all called in every outstanding metaphysical favour we were owed, we gathered every iota of banishing energy we could lay our auras on until we were bursting with it, threw everything we had at the entity and wounded it enough to make it leave our friend alone.  It was the scariest thing I’ve ever had to deal with.

If you think you or someone you care about it Possessed or Oppressed start with a thorough cleansing, then move to a strong hex breaking.  If that doesn’t work, get help.