Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Temple >

How does a family put an end to a family curse?

The Photographer in Blowup

10:53 / 15.12.02

Let's suppose some ancestor dabbled in magic or messed with witchcraft and cast a curse upon his family for all generations to come.

How can the family then counteract the curse?

13:22 / 15.12.02

Going with your theoretical model I have to ask some questions as your statement is a little unclear. Is it that the ancestor's involvement in witchcraft is supposed to have caused the curse, or is it that the ancestor decided to curse his own family (which is a little odd I think)?

Anyway, curses are specific in that they usually involve a Deity of some form to lend the direction of ill-intent some oomph. Ancestral curses certainly can exist, and the way you can remove them depends on one's approach. I would generally say that members of the afflicted family need to gain outside help, unless one of the family is particularly adept at this kind of thing.

There are a couple of ways you can approach removing a curse. One is to go to the source (i.e. the person who applied the curse) and to get him/her to remove it. Second, you discover what deity was involved in the curse, and then discover a method for having His/Her withdraw His/Her involvement in the curse. You could also work on removing the curse in a kind of energetic/shamanic fashion by going to the ancestral line and literally removing it - warning, this is not something that someone with little experience should attempt.

Of course, if there is some family rumour about a curse being in force then that may be strong enough to keep reinforcing it - even if no such curse existed in the first place. It would be important to tackle the issue of the family curse with most of the family relatives in order to make them believe that the curse has been lifted. If that's the case then getting a priest in to bless a family group might be enough to stop all the conversation about the "curse".

The Photographer in Blowup

13:29 / 15.12.02

I'll clear my idea, as it is a bit confusing

Let's suppose an ancestor enraged with his family puts a curse on his relatives, like two centuries ago; let's assume he asks someone with mystical powers to perform a curse (a witch, for example)

If both the ancestor and the witch are dead, how can the family two centuries later undo the curse?

13:51 / 15.12.02

Hmm. As with most things there are a number of ways to go about this, and all I can detail is some of the things I might do.

One, it would be important to investigate the nature of the ancestor's beef with his relatives. I mean, it might have been quite justified after all (not that I'm justifying the use of a curse, btw). Just because someone is dead doesn't mean you can't contact him. For example, if I was armed with the information regarding the reason for the curse, I might do a journey to the Lands of the Dead and parlay with the ancestor. If he was the slighted one he might request some task to be completed before lifting the curse. Or, if he was just a cranky bastard, you can then use a variety of methods to cajole (or threaten) him into lifting the curse. Or, you could trace back the curse to the originating witch (that's entirely possible even if s/he is dead), and ask him/her to lift it. That's probably going to involve a bit of posturing and staring-down at the very least, but it's another method.

Or, as I said before, you could journey to your lineage, track down where the curse is located, and get rid of it.

There are a variety of ways of tackling this, it all depends on the framework in which you work.

A witch, for example, might suggest some kind of counter-acting spell, but I'm no witch.