Curses and Voodoo Dolls

If we want to understand how witchcraft works, we have to plunge deeper into the knowledge about this ancient spiritual practices. When we talk about black magic or witchcraft, we are talking about esoteric processes and mystical knowledge that go back to the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Babylonian civilizations.

Witchcraft and curses

Most ancestral knowledge was lost over time, but we can find in these Greco-Roman civilizations and Egyptian civilizations of antiquity, very enlightening sources of knowledge. It is curious to see that in the practices of ancient magic, the whole witchcraft was operated through curses.

In Greco-Roman and Egyptians times, there were several types of curses for various purposes. There were five types of purposes of curses in witchcraft:

1. Dispute: made to overcome disputes, in court, in personal life, or politics
2. Competition: held to win sports competitions or in art
3. "Officio": made to win in business, and financial or professionals issues
4. Erotic: made to unite or separate people in love or sexually involved
5. Justice: made for revenge

We can conclude that the objectives of witchcraft stay unchanged. The curses that witchcraft produced in these times, were carried out with the five purposes described above and in the background, and the whole witchcraft was (and still is), done by using necromancy.

However, see that the curse that they spoke in ancient times was not exactly equal to the concept of curse as today is commonly understood. Today, when we speak of "curse", we immediately think it as a king or plague made to kill or eliminate someone.

Furthermore, the curses produced by witchcraft, did not aim for killing, (at least, not always...), but they could and were directed to cause a certain effect in the life of the person concerned. Curses would act temporally, condemning someone for purposes as: Having a crazy sexual desire for a certain person, loosing a cause of justice, loosing a big business in favor of others, loosing a sport event in favor of another person or condemning someone to marry with a certain person...

The curses were inscribed into plaques of curses, (which were flexible plates of papyrus, but made of lead), as well as voodoo dolls.

Voodoo dolls

Indeed, the voodoo dolls type are much older than commonly known. These voodoo dolls were pierced through pins that included both prayers and requests of witchcraft. In fact, this kind of voodoo doll dates back to Ancient Egypt.

We can find examples of those in the Louvre Museum (Paris, France) where there’s a display of ancient voodoo dolls used for magic going back to II-III AD, and even earlier periods of ancient Egyptian. The voodoo dolls were called "Kolossoi" between the ancient Greek wizards.

The curses were executed through the doll, twisting the forms of its members violently, as a horrible mutilation. This kind of procedure wasn’t intended to disable the victim, or to cause any physical destruction, but was rather targeted for confusing their desires, their will and their efforts.

For example: If someone wanted a woman or man, the black magic procedure was intended to cause such a level of disorientation, that the person would fall right into the arms of the one that ordered the witchcraft; If one wanted to win a business to a competitor, the aim was to make your opponent so confused and weak that he would lose control of the situation and eventually would lose the deal.