curse

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Look up curse in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A curse (also called execration) is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or unhappiness will befall another person or persons. In particular, a wish that harm or hurt will be inflicted by any supernatural power, such as a spell, a prayer, an imprecation, an execration, magic, witchcraft, a god, a natural force, or a spirit. In many belief systems, the curse itself (or accompanying ritual) is considered to have some causative force in the result.

The word "curse" may also refer to the resulting adversity, e.g., "the curse of Eve" (menstruation).^[1]

The study of the forms of curses comprise a significant proportion of the study of both folk religion and folklore. The deliberate attempt to levy curses is often part of the practice of magic. In Hindu culture the Fakir is believed to have the power to bless and curse^{[citation needed]}.

Special names for specific types of curses can be found in various cultures:

• African American voodoo presents us with the jinx/Haitians and crossed conditions, as well as a form of foot track magic, whereby cursed objects are laid in the paths of victims and activated when walked over.
• Middle Eastern and Mediterranean culture is the source of the belief in the evil eye, which may be the result of envy but, more rarely, is said to be the result of a deliberate curse. In order to be protected from the evil eye, a protection item is made from dark blue circular glass, with a circle of white around the black dot it the middle, which is reminiscent of a human eye. The size of the protective eye item may vary.
• German people, including the Pennsylvania Dutch speak in terms of hexing (from the German word for witchcraft), and a common hex in days past was that laid by a stable-witch who caused milk cows to go dry and horses to go lame.
• Indian people use the word Shaap in Hindi and Marathi, shapam in Malayalam, and Sabam in Tamil.

Celtic curses

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In the Celtic world there were also many different forms of curses. Some of the most well known from Ireland are Curse stones, Egg curses, New Year curses and Milk curses.

Curse stones generally involved particle stones with the power to curse. One example involved turning a stone three times and saying the name of the person you wanted to curse.

Egg curses are a fertility curse. If you buried/hid eggs on someone else's land it was believed you could steal their land's fertility and therefore their luck. There are also some well documented methods believed to break these curses.

New year curses are like egg curses. If you took something from someone on the new year you took their luck for the year. People used to not clean their house or throw out water for this reason. In Munster you can see a similar form in the may bush and the stealing of may bushes. Stealing back the item or bush is believed to return the luck.

Milk curses were curses put on a household where the milk from others cows went to yours.

Cursed places

Certain landmarks or locales are said to be cursed. Various lakes, rivers and mountains have been called cursed, as has the Sargasso Sea^{[citation needed]}. However even when there is a tradition of a place "taking someone" every number of years it is not always considered cursed. For example, someone is said^{[by whom?]} to drown in Lough Gur in Limerick, Ireland every seven years but the lake is not considered "cursed" by the locals^{[citation needed]}. The alleged Bermuda Triangle effect is believed by some^[who?] to be some form of curse (and by others^[who?] to be some unexplained natural phenomena).

Babinda's Boulders, Babinda township, near Cairns, Queensland on Australia's mid-north coast, is a place known for the Devil's Pool, a group of waterholes known to be dangerous to young male travellers, but never claiming the lives of locals or females. There is some dispute about the dangers, that the geography of the place is naturally risky with the rocks and fast moving currents – yet an Aboriginal legend exists giving it the context of a historic curse.^[2]

Curse to the United States presidency

Tecumseh's curse was reputed to cause the deaths in office of Presidents of the United States elected in years divisible by 20, beginning in 1840. This alleged curse appears to have fallen dormant, since Ronald Reagan, (elected in 1980) survived an assassination attempt and George W. Bush (elected in 2000) survived his eight-year presidency.

Sports-related curses

A number of curses are used to explain the failures or misfortunes of specific sports teams, players, or even cities. For example:

• The Curse of the Billy Goat is used to explain the failures of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, who have not won a World Series championship since 1908, and a National League pennant since 1945.
• There was the Curse of the Bambino, on the Boston Red Sox major league baseball team, who had not won a World Series since 1918 until the 2004 World Series, when the Sox defeated the St. Louis Cardinals, 4 games to 0.
• The "Krukow Kurse" is used to explain the San Francisco Giants' failure to ever win the World Series. It is attributed to Mike Krukow (a former pitcher for the Giants and a current broadcaster for the team) based upon his yearly pre-season predictions that the Giants "have a chance" to win the World Series. Once Krukow stops making such predictions- says the legend- the Giants will, in fact, win the World Series.
• All of the sports teams of Philadelphia have been characterized as being under a curse since the mid 1980s; fans blame this on the Curse of Billy Penn. The Phillies seem to be free from this curse now, having recently won a World Series championship.
• Cleveland and San Diego are two cities said to have cursed as no team from either city has won a championship since the 1960s.
• Marketing experts have highlighted "the curse of Gillette", given the mishaps that happen to sports stars associated with the brand.^[3][4]

The Curse of 27

The Curse of 27 is the belief that 27 is an unlucky number due to the number of famous musicians and entertainers who have died at the age. Robert Johnson, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Janis Joplin, Jonathan Brandis and Kurt Cobain are all believed to have been affected by the curse of 27. This is also known as the 27 Club.

Cursed objects

Cursed objects are generally supposed to have been stolen from their rightful owners or looted from a sanctuary. The Hope Diamond is supposed to bear such a curse, and bring misfortune to its owner. The stories behind why these items are cursed vary, but they usually are said to bring bad luck or to manifest unusual phenomena related to their presence.

Egyptian curses and mummies

Limestone donation-stele from Mendes, 3rd Intermediate Period, Dynasty XXII. The inscription celebrates a donation of land to an Egyptian temple, and places a curse on anyone who would misuse or appropriate the land.

There is a broad popular belief in curses being associated with the violation of the tombs of mummified corpses, or of the mummies themselves. The idea became so widespread as to become a pop-culture mainstay, especially in horror films (though originally the curse was invisible, a series of mysterious deaths, rather than the walking-dead mummies of later fiction). The "Curse of the Pharaohs" is supposed to have haunted the archaeologists who excavated the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, whereby an imprecation was supposedly pronounced from the grave by the ancient Egyptian priests, on anyone who violated its precincts. Similar dubious suspicions have surrounded the excavation and examination of the (natural, not embalmed) Alpine mummy, "Ötzi the Iceman". While such curses are generally considered to have been popularized and sensationalized by British journalists of the 19th century, ancient Egyptians were in fact known to place curse inscriptions on markers protecting temple or tomb goods or property.

Curses in Hawaii

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In old Hawaii, some curses were in the form of praying people to death. The one that had the power to do this was the kahuna 'ana 'ana. However, their ability do perform this curse depended on several factors. First, the targeted person needed to believe in the power of magic and curses. Second, the kahuna needed a part of that person, like finger nails, hair, and so on. Sometimes curses were given in a pu'olo, or a bundle of death. It was to bring sickness, pain, and death to the person who received it and sometimes relatives would be cursed as well. There were also prayers to reverse a death prayer.

Curses in politics

In Israel

In modern Israel, the Pulsa diNura (a controversial Kabbalistic prayer taken to request God to block any further forgiveness of sin for an individual, causing death or some long-term misfortune to shut the individual from functioning in society) has allegedly been used against politicians by religious conservative opponents: one was claimed to have been used against Yitzhak Rabin one month prior to his 1995 assassination, and another was reportedly performed against Ariel Sharon six months prior to a catastrophic 2006 stroke that placed him into a persistent vegetative state.

In the United States

In the United States, California Baptist pastor Wiley Drake achieved notoriety for boasting that he had prayed for the death of current president Barack Obama; he had previously used such prayers against employees of the Internal Revenue Service,^[5] Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and George Tiller; while serving as a party for the plaintiff in a 2009 case regarding Obama's citizenship, he later retracted his prayer, and called for other Christians to abstain from similar action "until [Barack Obama] can be tried for treason"^[6].

Similar prayers requesting a divinely-sanctioned death for Obama were publicly pronounced by Tempe, Arizona Baptist pastor Steven L. Anderson and LaPorte, Colorado Baptist pastor Pete Peters.

See also

• Book curse
• Curse of Turan
• Kennedy Curse
• Nocebo: see "Ambiguity of Anthropological Usage".
• Profanity
• Sports-related curses
• Superman curse
• Tecumseh's curse
• The cursed videotape

References

• The Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
• Curse tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World by John G. Gager ISBN 0-19-506226-4
• Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression ISSN US 0363-3659
• Supernatural Hawaii by Margaret Stone. Copyright 1979 by Aloha Graphics and Sales. ISBN 0-941351-03-3
• The Secret Obake Casebook Tales from the Darkside of the Cabinet by Glen Grant. Copyright 1997 by Glen Grant. ISBN 1-56647-183-4

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Curse

• Rotten Library Article on Hexes