In Search Of, page 16
In verbalizing a spell, especially when it is done with emotional force, the spell-caster sends out an action-tinged thought or phrase that reaches his victim. In huna, the ancient Hawaiian form of magic, there is a whole set of rules on spell-casting, and also ways to break spells. In a series of books, especially The Secret Science Behind the Miracles, Dr. Max Freedom Long describes the practices, which still exist today. Hawaiian magic is essentially the same as its European counterparts, only the terms are different.
To cast a spell, one need not adhere to medieval gibberish, concoct awful-smelling drinks, burn incense, or do strange things. That much is pure theatrical effect and works only to the extent that the onlooker needs it to work. But the mental discipline involved is very real indeed, and conforms rather closely to what we already know is possible within the existing framework of the effects of ESP.
According to Emile Grillot de Givry, "two kinds of spell must be distinguished—the harmful and the useful. The distinction enables us to get a clear idea of what may properly be called the 'double life' of the sorcerer; a personage all-powerful in the countryside, hated and feared in his one aspect on account of the misfortune he could bring upon a household or family, but resorted to in his other when it was a matter of avoiding misfortune or assuring success" Certain spells were profitable only to sorcerers themselves, and gave them advantages much envied by the common run of mortals. Those who wished to make themselves invisible need only speak the following incantation, according to a manuscript entitled The Secret of Secrets, kept at the Bibhothèque de l' Arsenal, Paris.
O thou, Pontation! Master of invisibility, with thy masters [here follow the names of the masters], I conjure thee, Pontation, and these same masters of invisibility by Plim Who makes the universe tremble, by Heaven and Earth, Cherubim and Seraphim, and by Him who made the Virgin conceive and Who is God and Man, that I may accomplish this experiment in perfect-ability, in such sort that at any hour I desire I may be invisible; again I conjure thee and thy ministers also, by Stabuches and Mechaerom, Esey, Enitgiga, Beilis, and Semonci, that thou come straightaway with thy said ministers and that thou perform this work as you all know how, and that this experiment may make me invisible, in such wise that no one may see me. Amen.
There are two basic groups of curses. The one uttering the malediction can formulate his curse in general terms or it can be exactly tailored to one individual whom the cursor wishes to reach. In the case of the former, general group of curses, anyone coming into contact with the accursed person, persons, places, or objects will be affected by it. In some cases, general curses are merely protection against unauthorized interference such as with the Egyptian royal tombs.
But there is a third group of curses that is even more powerful than the other two. That is when the one originating the curse is not satisfied with drawing the utmost of his own energies of hatred and anger from the depth of his self and formulating them into words but invokes the powers of darkness as well to support him in his negative quest. This is done by following certain ritual magical formulas and can be understood or undertaken only by those well versed in the black arts. By combining his own forces with outside energies derived from the psychic world around him, the magician then forges a thunderbolt of hatred that is both extremely effective and difficult to discover. It is even more difficult to counteract.
On the surface at least, the result of successful curses seems to be within the natural law and could perhaps be explained by a chain of misfortunes not necessarily connected with one another. Taken in the context of a known curse, however, they become part and parcel of a deliberate attempt to take revenge on those who have perpetrated a crime in the past, and frequently on their descendants. Curses can occur among the rich and the poor, the powerful and the humble, just as the motivation for uttering a curse can differ widely among individuals, so the incidence of curses is spread among every culture, every type of social background.
Professor Hans Holzer, in The Habsburg Curse, traces the curse leveled against one of Europe's most distinguished royal dynasties back to its origin in the eleventh century. He examines the many branches of the Habsburg dynasty; explores, with the aid of well-known sensitivities, the castles and battlegrounds where ill-fated dramas were enacted; and pursues the malediction down through successive generations to its apparent demise in the twentieth century. Murder, suicide, mysterious disappearances, and madness-—all were manifestations of what Professor Holzer demonstrates to be the result of a magnetic, evil force: the original Habsburg Curse.
To this day, juju, a system of magical threats and sanctions, works very smoothly in the deepest jungles of Africa. The record shows that many people have died as a result of direct intervention by a magician, without ever realizing that this was taking place.
Much more so than in the Western world, African curses depend on elements of fear and ostracism for added effectiveness. Nearly always, the victim is informed that a curse has been uttered, usually in a roundabout way to increase the uncertainty of the matter and to prevent the victim from arguing the originator of the curse out of his anger. But associating with an accursed person is equally undesirable, consequently it is customary to let the community know as well that so-and-so has been cursed. The victim will find himself isolated, and sometimes the curse takes effect in a manner not relying on magic but on brutal force, when someone in the community does away with the accursed person to protect the other from the effect of the curse.
Astrologer-historian Arthur Gatti, in The Kennedy Curse, analyzes thirty individual Kennedy charts and concludes that no evil witch crashed any of the christenings, but a kind of curse does haunt the Kennedy family fortunes, bringing with it extraordinarily bad luck. Besides indications of great personal gifts, ambition, wealth, and power, the charts show signs of confusion, hard choices, self-sacrifice, illness, disaster, grief, guilt, enemies, and hidden conspiracies!
15
Witchcraft, Sex, and the Devil
Much has been written, and even more rumored, about the connection between sex and witchcraft, very little of it corresponding to fact. There is, first of all, the notion that witchcraft rites are predominantly sexy, and it is this idea that both attracts some people and repels others. Those who are attracted to witchcraft rites because they expect an orgy had better stay away to begin with, for if it is anything at all, witchcraft is a spiritual-intellectual "thing," not a flesh concourse.
Anyone even slightly familiar with the teachings of the Old Religion will recognize its insistence on "perfect couples" in the rites and its reluctance to admit single people on their own. This is not out of false prudery but because the witches know how much better people work when they work in unison and with both spiritual and physical closeness. Witches are concerned with results, not with morals. Promiscuity and overemphasis of the sexual aspects would hinder rather than help the results of the circle, so naturally they do not care for it. The tensions engendered by one person about the sexual aspect of another to whom he or she is not yet close are bound to detract from the overall effort put forth by the group, and consequently are usually discouraged.
The impression that witchcraft has sex as its preeminent feature persists. In 1969 the News of the World, a London newspaper, published a senes of articles that lumped together witchcraft, ritual magic, the Black Mass, and the desecration of church yards by vandals. During the course of this scries the paper uncovered the fact that a schoolteacher-priest had planned to hold Black Masses using virgins as an altar, that a couple in the Isle of Man exposed their young daughter to the danger of moral corruption by allowing her to attend naked coven meetings, and that a West London housewife had been the prime mover at similar coven meetings for years without the knowledge of her husband. If the first two allegations were true, of course, the News of the "World performed a public service by exposing them. But by and large the articles tended to overdo the sexual aspects.
Modern witchcraft, like any other emotive concern, has been exploited by the unscrupulous. So-called black magic groups that persuade newcomers to undress and indulge in all kinds of grotesque sexual activity, secretly photograph them, and then use the photographs for blackmail, are not unknown in most large cities. Also, overt or covert prostitution is sometimes the purpose of magic-cum-witchcraft circles. Because the great advantage of ritual is that it can take many forms, any perverted but imaginative mind could invent ceremonies cloaked in a quasi-mystical veil of mumbo-jumbo that would make most witch cults look rather tame.
The greatest psychic power imaginable is raised in sexual intercourse between two fully attuned partners. This, of course, is the crux: the partners must be truly in tune, one with the other; they must be psychically, physically, and spiritually aware of their purpose and never lose sight of the reasons for their sexual union. If sex is the excuse for practicing witchcraft, it is perversion; but if sex is used for ritual purposes by properly prepared people, it can contribute to the overall results of the ritual far beyond anything that purely intellectual efforts or ritualistic movements may furnish.
We must remember that erotic elements were not objectionable to the ancients, who saw in the performance of sexual intercourse during a religious ritual a symbolic act encouraging the forces of nature to commit union likewise and thus make things grow. Every primitive religion contains such elements whether expressed symbolically or in actuality. Only by the fusion of the male and female element in nature, and thus also in man, does nature move forward. Ultimately, the polarity of things is the essential element. Through the interaction of male and female polarity, power results; or, if you prefer, by the union of the male and female polarities in a single effort, the original purpose of the power structure is fulfilled: for at the beginning there was neither male nor female, but one single force. Having been split into the female and male half, the two polarities have been trying to rejoin each other ever since.
Hans Holzer quotes a "Very ancient" Anglo-Saxon spell, which illustrates the feeling of erotic-ecstatic union with the Goddess:
In love I come to Thee, O Mother Goddess, to fill me with the joys of life. Let there be union between thine own self and me and between my companion and me and let the union be so complete as to enshrine our trinity within and without; let the force of thy love permeate our bodies and minds, let the power raised from that union rise up to Tree so that thy works may be accomplished. I join hands with my companion in sacred union of body, mind and spirit, through which the power be raised; may the power thus raised be directed to—[predetermined purpose of ritual] and in token thereof, O Mother Goddess, instill into us your greatness, your splendor and your eternal wisdom, for the force of love is a force of life. As we come together and are one, the force within us is joined into a still greater force by the touch of your hands, O Mother Goddess, Protector of love. So mote it be.
Nowadays, it is no longer illegal to worship the devil. Probably the best known Satanic leader in America is Anton Sandor La Vey. Hans Holzer, in The Truth About Witchcraft, describes vividly how he met the quixotic Satanist at his San Francisco temple:
Paintings of traditional representations of hell, haunted houses, and devils adorned the walls. They were remarkably fine paintings, and the works of the high priest himself. The table was a marble slab which used to be a tombstone and still bore the inscription of the late gentleman whose earthly remains it once guarded. A skeleton leered at us from a glass cabinet in the corner and stuffed owls completed the atmospheric feeling. Soon the high priest himself arrived, wearing black pants and a black leather jacket. His face was deliberately made to appear devilish by the removal or cropping of all hair on top and the addition of a small beard. La Vey did indeed look the part.
Later that day, the amiable artist-high-priest was a totally different person. The house also seemed different . . . the decorations no longer looked like whimsical touches of a tongue-in-cheek devil worshipper, but as authentic relics closely tied to the ritual about to be performed.
By midnight, the room was filled with fifteen or sixteen congregation members. They were young and old and looked like a good cross-section of San Franciscans. Mainly men had come that night, and a goodly number of them wore small beards, perhaps in honor of their high priest. The small number of women present were average type. They all sat on folding chairs toward the rear of the room. In front of them was an altar occupied by the stretched-out body of a young woman covered by a leopard-skin. A man completely covered with a black hooded robe with slits for the eyes entered the room. He was followed by four or five other men similarly dressed, who stayed a little behind. With one quick gesture, the man in the black hood yanked the leopardskin off the girl on the altar. She was, of course, nude. Her head rested comfortably on a specially built neck rest while her feet dangled somewhat over the other end of the altar. The light, provided by candles only, was sufficiently bright to highlight her body even to those seated in the rear of the room.
Now one of the other black-robed fellows handed the leader a small cup. Someone played the organ all during this opening ceremony, but it was not, of course, La Vey himself, who had not yet appeared among his flock. The music was properly atmospheric and reminded one of the old background music for Hiss the Villain in an old-time music hall. The cup, it developed, contained a mixture of semen and urine, the Satanists' answer to holy water. With a dispenser in the shape of a human phallus, the man in the black hood then sprinkled the congregation with this mixture, while a bell rang in short intervals to announce the opening of the service. The stage was set for the entrance of the high priest, Anton Sandor La Vey.
After the appropriate organ music cue, he strode in with showmanly stance, dressed in a tight-fitting black headpiece with red horns and wearing a black robe over black leotards. Taking the sword from the high priestess, he addressed the four corners of the room. "In nomine dei Satanas, Lucifer excelsi! In the name of our great god, Satan Lucifer, the ruler of the Stygian pits, I command thee to come forth out of the black realms. Come forth, in the name of the four dark princes of hell, Satan! Lucifer! Belial! Leviathan! Satan, take the chalice of ecstasy . . . which is filled with the elixir of life . . . and instill it with the power of the Black Magic . . . which diffuses and supports the universe. . . " With that, the high priest was handed a chalice from which he drank a toast to the Prince of Darkness. He then placed the chalice right on top of the pubic area of the girl on the altar, where it rested comfortably for the rest of the service.
La Vey took pains to point out that the First Satanist Church of San Francisco should not be confused with medieval superstitions or worse. No unbaptized babies are killed in the rites, no ritual murder takes place, and no Black Mass. This is a cult dedicated to the enjoyment of worldly pleasures free from all restrictions, guilt feelings, or, hell forbid, original sin. Satanists do not believe in a personal devil as a living individual. Their devil is the devil within every man, that part of his nature that longs for full enjoyment of worldly pleasures. By invoking Satan, his congregation was merely calling upon its own unconscious desires to encourage their fulfillment.
As for the sacrifice of adult human beings, they do not do this either, although La Vey admits they have many candidates for this practice. But they do it symbolically through "the hex"
Ever since Pope Paul declared publicly that the devil was a real person to him, and, of course, the antagonist of the Roman Catholic Church, clergymen all over the world and laymen with religious orientation have looked into the matter of the devil and whether or not he is in fact still among us, Gregory Peck, after doing the current movie The Omen, says he cannot believe the devil is a person. In fact, anyone seriously suggesting that there was such a thing as the devil as a person a scant ten years ago would have been looked at with horror, or a smile, depending upon the viewpoint of the onlooker. Today, austere publications have devoted many pages to this matter; the New York Times Magazine's article by Andrew M. Greeley, entitled "The Devil, You Say," rehashes much from the past, most of it false, some of it correct, to come to the conclusion that evil in man is really the kind of devil one should worry about. The author leaves unresolved the question of a personal devil, but points to the continued existence of evil in this world as certain proof that the forces of darkness do prevail at times.
According to Sigmund Freud, the devil is a father substitute for those who have no luck, are too poorly gifted, or are too ineffective to make a living. William Blatty's novel The Exorcist, allegedly based upon a real case in St. Louis in 1959, has given new impetus to the whole business of the reality of the devil. Catholic priests are divided between the acceptance of the reality of a personal devil and consider the business of demonic possession more properly treated by the psychiatrist. Pope Paul VI, in his address about evil and the devil, assured his listeners that he was convinced of "an intervention in us and in our world of an obscure agent, the devil. Evil is not merely a lack of something, but an effective agent, a living, spiritual being, perverted and perverting. A terrible reality. Mysterious and frightening" Is the devil a real person or a principle? In either case, the point is that the devil represents "the negative force"
The people who call themselves Satanists today are "anti-witches"; that is, they use certain elements of witchcraft but pervert them to their own point of view, which is frequently diametrically opposed to that of witchcraft. Those who are truly devilworshipers in the worst sense of the term might lead a furtive existence in secret meeting places, indulging sick impulses that have very little to do with a true cult. They do not number many, either, but, unfortunately, their actions invite negative comment in the press. Whenever word is received that an animal has been sacrificed, or that murders have occurred, in which the perpetrators claimed Satanic impulses, the public is quick to lump all pagans into the same pot. There is a certain shock value in being able to say you're a devilworshiper or Satanist just as there is undoubtedly shock value in being a witch, but the impact of those words is based upon largely erroneous images. In the mind of the average person, witches and Satanists are evil, and practically the same. Only to those who understand the vast differences between a follower of the Old Religion and a Satanist, the images become separate and distinct.
