There have been a few times in my life that I’ve been afraid, most of them when I was a child. Sitting at my table, surrounded by cats and reading this letter was… not one of them. I am not reproducing it because to copy down such utter drivel would be physically uncomfortable. Nor will I include a picture because this is bad energy that must be destroyed, not trapped in a photo. The gist of it is this, witchcraft is illegal again and I am to cease my wickedness and accept god. I have been ordered to report to a re-education camp. If I do not report I will be taken by force. Good fucking luck.
I cut up the letter, mashed it together with Phallus impudicus and buried it under a pile of dog shit. This will leave a bad taste in the mouth of whomever is responsible for it. No amount of toothpaste, mouthwash, or trips to the dental hygienist will cure it. No one will be able to stand near them. Food and drink will taste like said stinkhorn and dog shit. And being surrounded by power hungry narcissists who lack empathy, their putrescent pie hole will absolutely get the guilty party fired.
Small consolation, though. Pulling one card will not make this sham house fall. But I’m certainly not the only witch who is sending curses, or who will continue to do so. Witches have a long history as political dissidents. We’re well practiced in this art. The key is to keep up the pressure until the foundations pop with fissures, drive wedges into the cracks, and then hammer them home.
Imagine witchcraft as energetic links. The letter I received held the energy of the person who wrote it, I used that energy as a conduit to send a curse back to them… It’ll also hit anyone who typed, printed, or mailed it, because “just doing your job” is no excuse for enabling evil.
Those who use magic know how to shut down our own conduits so we don’t get any rebound. Whispers black tourmaline into your ear.
“Oh but wait!” I hear you say, “What about the law of three?”
Yes, the “law” that anything you do comes back to you three fold, thus you should clutch your moonstones and cluck your tongue at doing anything harmful. Gatekeeping. An idea planted by our enemies that is meant to keep witches from reaching their full potential. Learn to protect yourself, and you can do all the big bad magic you want.
Where was I?
Right, the trick to destroying a regime is finding the right energies to utilize as conduits for curse delivery. Some regimes are more guarded, and more educated in the ways of magic, so they’re harder to get to. I don’t think this one is educated in much of anything…
So, how does one get an energetic link to someone? There are a few ways, paper being one of them, as we’ve seen. Some you’ve no doubt heard of, like nail clippings and hair, really anything biological is top of the list. A simple touch will do if you’re powerful enough. Possessions are excellent as well, like clothing or jewelry… or people, think children, wives, mistresses, and minions. Words spoken in public are also excellent, just be aware you’ll need to do stealth magic in that instance. You can’t exactly spread your travel altar out in front of the podium. Well not in these times anyway…. Sometime I’ll tell you about my days with Teddy.
However, contrary to what popular cinema might have you believe, words delivered electronically are subject to too much interference to still contain a viable energy link to a specific person. It’s a little more like cursed scattershot, with none of the shot maintaining the whole dose of malefic energy you’re sending. Not terribly helpful for our purposes, but if you only want to sew general mischief, fire away.
Feeling an energy conduit is something you learn through practice. If I pick up a stick in a park I can immediately feel any person who has touched it… or any dog, squirrel, ant, slug... you get the idea. This takes practice, but it’s a kind of dissociation. You touch a thing and let your own energy go. Step back from yourself. It can help to close your eyes and envision each stream of energy as a different color. You’ll then need to determine which is the one you want. This should be easy, just examine each stream until you find the one that feels right. You’ll know. Well you’d better know anyway, The Mother Earth will not take kindly to you cursing a dog, squirrel, ant, slug, etc.
Eventually this process happens naturally, you’ll see energy flowing from everything like rainbow heat waves.
Plants can help channel curses, too, of course. I’ll tell you the story of bloodleaf and a nun named Sister Leocrita. It was 1492, the Papal States were in the grip of an aging Pope Innocent VIII. You might, from the vantage point of this current century, imagine that popes were always celibate, but you’d be wrong (you’d be wrong about the modern day, as well, but who am I to cast stones…). Pope Innocent VIII had many illegitimate children. And, as was common during those times, buggered any pretty nun he came across as though it were some kind of divine imperative… it might have been, who knows? Copulation by proxy is not unheard of… I’ll cite the possessions of Loudun which were decidedly not demonic.
Anyway… some of the nuns were more than happy to have the diversion. Back then daughters who couldn’t be married off were frequently sent into convents, whether they wanted to be or not. Others, like sweet Sister Leocrita, truly wanted to be where they were, serving god. Living her quiet devoted life. Until the sixty year-old Pope raped her.
I wasn’t up here on this mountain back then, no, I lived in Rome. Hot, dirty Rome. And I’d been trying to get an energy connection to this pope for a while. He had issued the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus in 1484. Meaning “Desiring with extreme ardor,” the bull gave permission to the Inquisition to seek out and punish witches as they saw fit (that’s ‘with extreme prejudice’ in modern parlance). It was a death knell for many, many innocent women, and a few of us, too. The Inquisition was never too good at telling a witch from a woman. Lost in the fervor of misogyny, as it were, any woman looks like an enemy. Though very few actually were.
It was late afternoon, the young novice knocked gently at my door. I almost didn’t hear her. I lived in the middle of the city and it was a crushing wall of chaotic sound at nearly all hours. I loathed it. When I opened the door she stood there in her habit, a simple tunic and a veil, lifted from her face so I could see her eyes were swollen from crying. She trembled as I led her across the threshold and gave her some tea…. which wasn’t really a thing in Italy at the time, and took some convincing for her to drink. But as she did and told me how the Pope had seen her at a special mass and that the Mother Superior had arranged a room for them afterwards.
Clutching her rosary tightly in both hands she looked at me with a flame in her eyes I recognized at once, “She betrayed me. She betrayed god. Didn’t she? How could they be so holy and so wicked at the same time? I’m so angry. I want to kill him. Help me kill him.” The rosary snapped in her hands, beads fell softly to the dirt floor.
“Where will you go afterwards? Back to the convent?”
“I’ll never go back there, I’ll go back to my family. My father wanted me to marry, perhaps I still can.”
I went to my cupboard and took out a new herb I’d gotten from a witch adept in portals. She’d gotten the plant from what is now Brazil. I hate portals, personally, they give me motion sickness, but some witches love to travel.
“I’m going to give you something that will suck the life out of Pope Innocent VIII, but it will also kill the child he’s put in you.”
“I’ll be dead, too, if I have a child out of wedlock. My family will never accept me back. No one can know about this.”
She could have gone back to the convent, Pope Innocent would have had the child raised as yet another bastard. But outside of that, yes, her choices were death or poverty, aka death.
The light from the setting sun was fading and I stoked the fire. In a silver dish I lit a small fire with straw, then I threw a handful of dried bloodleaf into the flames.
“Breathe in the smoke, you’ll feel strange, don’t panic, let the smoke take you.”
She did as instructed and we both found ourselves in a state of euphoria, floating high above my wretched, dirt-floored hovel. Leocrita whimpered and I took her hands.
“Let it take you. You’ll be fine.”
“I see something, a black figure, like a shadow, but with long, gleaming fangs.”
“This is good. This is what you should see.”
“It’s coming for me!”
I stroked her soft hands, “Think of the Pope.”
She did and the scene shifted as though it were a stage, with sets on some kind of axel. Someone off stage had turned a wheel and a new set slotted into place.
click
We were at the Apostolic Palace. In the dining hall. Pope innocent sat at the head of the table, surrounded by plates of food on silver and gold platers. He reached for a goblet of wine and seemed to be telling a story. One of the cardinals with him appeared to laugh, but we heard no sound. Leocrita’s hands trembled in mine.
“Show the spirit where to go.”
Pulling her cold hand from mine, she pointed at the Pope. The spirit grinned, a long pink tongue slithering from its mouth. It floated down to the Pope, who didn’t notice it at all and continued regaling his guests with whatever tale it was he told. I tried not to be distracted by the opulence of the room. Such a disgusting display while so much of the city rotted in poverty. Leocrita gasped and I looked down, the spirit’s tongue had slipped around the Pope’s neck and it had inserted its long, hypodermic fangs into his nape on either side of his spine. It wrapped its arms around his shoulders and legs around his waist, like a child getting a piggy back ride, and held on. The Pope set down his goblet and rose, slowly, as if confused. Without a word he stumbled from the room.
The wheel turned.
click
We were back in my home. Leocrita pulled her hands from mine.
“That’s it? He’ll die now?”
“In a few days time.”
I let her stay with me, calling her by her given name, Gemma. We watched in my obsidian ball as the Pope withered away, becoming very thin. At his death he was described as “an inert mass of flesh, incapable of assimilating any nourishment but a few drops of milk from a young woman’s breast.”
When he died, Gemma hugged me. Which I hated, even back then. I gave her enough money to get back to her family. I don’t know what became of her, but I hope she had a peaceful life.
This had me hooked. Amazing!
So what you're saying is that revolutionary praxis can be supplemented by a good dose of witchy enchantment?
I'd say it can't hurt. Pynchon might agree with you by the way. In Gravity's Rainbow the effectiveness of witchcraft in "The Counterforce" subverting Nazism correlates with passion.
"Sometimes I can call up his face in a cup of tea. But the herbs have to be gathered carefully. I'm not that good at it yet."
"But you're in love. Technique is just a substitute for when you get older."