How to break a curse: faith, skepticism and the fear business

How to break a curse: between exorcism and suggestion

For nearly twenty years, a man has been convinced that a woman cursed him at a beach bar in Valencia for taking her table. Since then, he says, bad things keep happening to him. Over the past year, almost every week. He antiestéticars for his health and physical safety. And he asks for help on a conspiracy forum. The answer he receives is a small treatise on twenty-first-century Spanish anthropology: exorcists, prayers to Saint Michael, evil eyes, rue baths, the law of attraction and a long list of remedies to ward off evil.

The case is serious, even if the diagnosis escapes no one. Curses have no demonstrable scientific basis, but the suffering of those who believe they are cursed is real. And that is where the business lies: calls to premium-rate numbers, amulets, cleansings and spells that, as one message warns, "will cost you a fortune and then they'll ask for more to finish the spell."

Is it a curse or self-suggestion?

The majority view in the conversation points to the self-fulfilling prophecy. "If you believe you're cursed, you're cursed; if not, you're not," one participant sums up. The idea, repeated in different words, is that selective attention to the negative turns a run of bad luck into a pattern. Another calls it "the power of attraction": stop thinking about bad things and, they say, the universe stops sending misfortune. Psychology would put it differently, but the mechanism they describe —believing something will go wrong and acting accordingly— has a name in the textbooks.

Some go further and talk about karma: what happens to you is what you have generated. "Most of what you receive is because that's what you yourself are generating," argues one voice in the thread, who adds the possibility of debts from past lives. It's the new age version of divine justice, no god required.

The Catholic kit: Saint Michael, confession and the rosary

The religious route has enthusiastic defenders. The recipe is repeated: prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, confession, communion, the holy rosary and, if necessary, having the parish priest perform a prayer of liberation. "Pray the Our Father and the Holy Rosary," advises one. Another recommends the book "Las seis puertas del enemigo" ("The Enemy's Six Doors") by exorcist Javier Luzón, and the self-exorcism prayers it includes. And there's a telling anecdote: the international association of exorcists, the story goes, advised against the book for being too accessible to the general public.

The man himself reports that something has worked: "I'm more relaxed, at least at home, where I felt I was sinking I'm somewhat better since I knelt down and did that, and falling asleep praying." Faith, or the placebo effect, or a combination of both, moves mountains.

The apartment, the plot and the poltergeists

The conversation drifts toward the property. Claims that spiritualism was practiced in the apartment, that the plot was a war zone and may have seen "rapes, murders, bombing." One participant declares: "The apartment must be infested with vermin from the underworld." The escalation is unstoppable: from the personal evil eye to the haunted house and from there to the national curse. "The curse of Spain goes way back, the serpent already dwelt here", writes someone, who links to the Villafranca manuscript and to Santiago. Another calls for returning Franco's body to the Valle de los Caídos. The level of abstraction is already cosmic.

The spiritual cleansing business

Between skepticism and faith, the thread offers a practical warning: premium-rate numbers and healers who remove an evil "at the cost of leaving you exposed to even worse demons." The warning is not trivial. The spiritual protection market moves money, and not always scrupulously. The most repeated recommendation, ironically, is the cheapest: pray, if you believe, and if not, ignore it.

"No one can curse anyone if the person the curse is supposed to fall upon doesn't grant it legitimacy," one message concludes. It's the thesis that runs through the entire thread, among amulets and exorcisms: the power is given by whoever believes in it.

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The conversation reaches no consensus, nor does it need to. Some pray, others laugh and others buy evil eye charms. The only thing that seems clear is that a curse, if it exists, is best fought with a closed wallet and a cool head rather than paid-for spells. Though for that, of course, you have to believe you're free of it.