I need someone real bad, are you real bad?

[Frater Theodbald]

Cursing.  Doing vengeful magick to people with the obvious intent that they get hurt a lot.

Not the wishy-washy fluff-bunny method of "sending bad vibes their way" through a method of kitsch visualisation; while it may be good for neo-pagans who like to have "energy" wars, I'm looking for something that will hit the target more than just "on the astral plane."

Cursing is never something I've bothered with very much.  My philosophy has always been, "the worst punishment you can give someone is to let them live with themself" and "forgiveness makes one invulnerable." 

On the few times that I've tried, I've never been even remotely good at cursing because the only times I ever want to curse is when I'm pissed off to the point of not being able to magically concentrate.  When my anger dies down, I stop wanting to actually curse the motherfucker, despite feeling hatred or spite.

But there are situations where I believe my feelings are justified and I would need a more "pro-active" approach to dealing with things.  Yes, I can do all sort of other types of magic, but I think it's time I read up and learn more about the agressive styles that aim to do actual damage to peoples' lives and selves.

Now, if anyone says to me that if I'm not a good enough magician that I can't figure it out for myself then I shouldn't be posting here, you are correct.  Yes I know, that I can simply adapt the techniques I'm already used to doing, but I'm looking for things specifically geared towards hurting others.  Hence, I'm not asking for anything other than references. 

I've read a few medieval French grimoires, and some chaos magick ressources such as the excellent Chaostar! and Toastar! by Francis Breakspeare, if anyone has any other titles or authors to recommend, it would be greatly appreciated.

Some people say that to be efficient, you have to practice a lot and, quite honestly, I can't bring myself to randomly hurt people for the sake of practice.  That's why I want to look into the theoretical and then adapt what I already know to new methods that I could learn.

Reading moral takes on this doesn't interest me, I couldn't care less about "the law of return" or any other hogwash interpretation of punitive karma.  I'm interested in technique and perspectives aimed towards results.  Vengeful results.

[Aliga]

I know pretty much jack and shit about cursing firsthand, but a good friend has done a few very successful curses, and his advice was always to remove emotional attachment from the working. Rather than being a hurt, angry person lashing out at someone, be impartial as Judge, Jury, and Executioner (so to speak). But I haven't ever had the need to test it for myself, so take that for what you will.

[Vortex7]

This is one of those things I've had a lot of practice with. There was no short supply of human pieces of garbage in prison to test on. Honestly to get good at this shit you have to be willing to practice it otherwise you'll never know how effective the technique is. I would suggest checking your local sex offender registry for rapists if that's possible, finding out where they live and checking up on them every time you curse the shit out of them. And as far as people talking about the law of returns and all that shit, I am a gambling man and I would wager that almost every person that practices magick is a closet curser. They do it but don't want anyone else to have a shattered view of their fluffy demeanor. Read up on tribal magickal traditions like Palo Mayombe or Voodoo. Sympathetic magick is really easy to figure out. The other thing I can say is that a willingness to violence changes the game intensely, if you sincerely wouldn't cut someone's throat with your own hands you might have a hell of a time coaxing the energies up or convincing a demon to do it for you.

[arjil]

It's just like any other spell. Intent>Will>Magick>Throw it.  Living with what you've done is the trick.  Poppets, sigils, raw malevolence, they all work.  You've just gotta have a decent connection and Mean it.

[Frater Theodbald]

Thanks for your replies, this is giving me food for thought.  :)

[A.M.R.J.]

Cursing is one of those fun little fields of study that every paradigm has in common. For starters I'd recommend following Vortex7's advice and  practice getting creative with misfortune,pain,fear and disease sigils,some experimenting with creating a haunting or two won't hurt either. pending on your skill with spirits and servitors I also recommend getting a copy of Frater RO's Modern Goetia. Very user friendly.

[The Cusp]

This is the House of Cards sigil.  Actually, it's the anarchy variant, I usually use it without the big circle on the outside.  It's a curse I came up with based on childhood paradigms, and it's proven to be very effective.

A house of cards does one thing inevitable, which is fall down.  The purpose of this curse is to cause everything the victim has built up around them to come crashing down.  Manifestations are surprisingly literal, with lots of falling, which creates disasters the likes of which I've never seen before.  Keep in mind you may not know if it's working, as people tend to keep such tragedies close to the chest.


I was going to put this in the DKMU grimoire, but I guess I'll just post it here for now.  The images are posted in another thread around here somewhere...




THE IMPLICIT SIGILIZATION OF CHILDHOOD PARADIGMS
Anything can be used for magic, and yet not everything is an ideal choice.  How then does one choose from an infinite selection?  There are circumstances to be considered, implicit associations, and overall strength. 
For simplicity's sake, lets call anything you can focus your attenion on an arcehtype.  This could be any idea, concept or thing, and it's associative baggage is what will provide structure to your magic, creating a framework.
In brief, an archetypal structures overall realiability is determined by how robust and well defined it is.  The more familiar one is with a concept, the better one will be able to use it in a reliable manner.  Recognizing stable structures can be difficult, but it can genrerally be assumed that childhood paradigms, having survived the ravages of time unchanged, are both strong and stable.  This allows us to make reasonable predictions as to what kind of effects their mythologies will manifest when harnessed.

THE HOUSE OF CARDS
It's possible a house of cards might eventually become an enigma to the digital generation, but in the meantime it still has some universal appeal.  If you've ever built a house of cards, or even seen someone build a house of cards, the the groundwork for this spell is already laid.

The defining property of a house of cards we will be utilizing in this curse is the fact that a house of cards inevitably does one thing and one thing only.  It comes falling down in a chaotic mess, no matter how intricate it's constructiont.  The intent of this curse is to cause everything the victim has built up around themselves to come falling down around them.  Having had this cursed used against me first hand, I can tell you the manifestations are surprisingly literal.
We begin by capturing the essence of a house of cards with a graphical representation.  The simplest card structure you could build and still call a house.  This acts as an access point to the general concept of what a house of cards is, through which it's implicit programming can be brought online.

[Figure A]

After using the above sigil as is, I later evolved it to it's current form.

[Figure B]

When using Figure A, I found it lackign a clear link it to my victim.  It almost required an extra step that was missing from my initial spell design.  In the revised version, I've added a small circle to the peak of the triangle, which now gives the sigil the impression of a stick man.  It is now two things at once, a representation of a person (the victim), and an effective description of the intent of the curse.  It forces the curse and the victim to occupy the same space just by looking at it!  What's more, you can just picture the victim's head falling to the ground as the structure collapses underneath it.

To mix our metaphors a little further and add another level of reinforcement to this working, consider that the symbol for Anarchy is contained within the house of cards sigil, which is rather appropriate for this spell's intent.  If you can no longer loot at the original sigl without seeing the anarchy "A",  this will add some oomph to your spell, another layer of reliability.  Anarchy it's self could be considered a teenage paradigm, because odd are that's when most of use were introduced to the concept.

[Figure C]

Recommended Usage
Draw the sigil on a piece of paper using your own blood.  Spit on it, light it on fire, and blow on the flames like you are trying to blow down the house of cards with your breath.  After that, forget about it.  If your victim happens to cross your mind, blow them away with a few breath until you are no longer focused on them.   Invoking the Big Bad Wolf from the Three Little Pigs (see below) before blowing down your house of cards will add another layer of stability and reinforcement to this spell.

Bonus Sigil.  Fuck Monsanto

[Figure D]

Counter Measures

Having posted this curse online for public consumption, I probably should have expected some troll would use it against me.  It was fucking disastrous, let me tell you.  I needed to come up with a quick and simple counter measure.

What I did was take a small mirror, and incribe the House of Cards sigil on it in blood.  Being a mirror, my intent was to reflect the curse back on the caster.  Because it's a physical object, this raises the possibility that it might someday be destroyed, possibly invalidating my counter measures.  To avoid this, I am very clear in my intent that it's the moment of completion in creating the sigil which protects me.  Not the object, that moment in time.  The object can decay an break, but that moment in time is there forever.

Then I place the reflecting mirror with the blood sigil someplace I'll never see it again and forget about it.  Some place I wouldn't even know if it was disturbed.

Another effective way to remove this or any other curse is to use another childhood paradigm.  Ever seen a mother lick her thumb to remove schmut from their kid's face?  Lick your thumb and draw the sigil like you are rubbing it off.

[Maelhavok]

I grew up in the American South. You want curses? Look at hoodoo (not voodoo) . It's all sorts of curses and hexes.