Maleficium

We're all mad in here


A few years ago a friend of mine got involved in some serious witch warfare. With his group scattered and destroyed, he naturally wanted his revenge. Long story short, the antagonist group got away yet again with their actions unpunished and with an even firmer standing and the others receded and licked their wounds, one of them even changing country. Whilst I wasn't personally involved in such an event, it served as a lesson. In the magical community, especially when you come out of your room and start interacting with others and putting forth actions and words, there are going to be those who want you in their game or dead. Territorial law and magical supremacy, one rooster to fuck all the chickens and so on. Sometimes it seems you are powerplaying influence more than learning magic, or maybe the both just walk hand in hand. Also, if you are in working in group, your group is as strong as the weakest person. Always foresee that, when the shit hits the fan, your mates will gather their belongings and make a run for it leaving you alone to contend with the raging maniacs after your carefully built egregore. In the end, what counts is your ability to stand on your own two legs and protect your castle. 


Take a highway to the end of the night

A LOT of people seem to think that what I told just now are fantasies. Magical attacks don't exist and people don't use magic to hurt one another. You cannot believe my amazement when, having the internet freshly installed and thus access to the world, I read such things. You see, here in this little corner of land, sewing the toad's mouth to cause someone to wither and die is common. It is also common to go to the local knowledgeable person and get powders to mess your neighbor's life, bind a lover to you and witches do dance at night and tempt the unwary. To each cursing method there is a counter-curse and the Portuguese equivalent of cunning folk are still very much in business offering remedies to cure the evil eye and other enemy tricks. These people are still in business because what they do works. So yes, when I read in forums and in imported books that "if you don't believe, it doesn't affect you" my reaction was of surprise, mostly because this statement –however logical and even legitimate- was so against previous magical tradition and praxis. The surprise got even bigger at seeing the success that recent magical literature on cursing is having however mediocre and watered down those books are. I guess more and more modern witches are done with the "harm none" policy and are starting to warm up and even desire a closer connection with the hag that rides the night and who is a much more ambivalent moral character. 


Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live

Despite the poor translation work of Exodus 22:18, the sentiment displayed here is seen throughout European cultural history from the Greek Circe to long after the witch-craze of the Renaissance. Echoed by both African and Asian counterparts, the witch, more than the sorcerer, is an object of fear and persecution for she is like an arbitrary force of nature who, antagonistically, fulfils her tasks not with the greater good of the society in which she is inserted, even if on the fringes of it, in mind but with her own and in some stances, that of her master(s). Whether by worshipping perceived evil spirits or simply exploiting them to do her bidding it's the conjunction of the manipulation of natura and self serving motives that links the Witch across the globe. Of course, this is the perspective of those that, rightly so, fear her. I can assure you that, for good or for evil, witches know better than to go about flailing curse after curse simply because they can.