Spells

[dusty]

Hi folks,

Today whilst making another post on another thread about guitars, I recalled another rather odd event that occured when I worked in a guitar store years ago.

This branch was located in Harlow new town (Essex), and like every shop of it's kind we had a lot of regular customers. Some famous, some very talented and some down right strange. Who we all got to know to varying degrees.

One chap in particular became the source of much puzzlement to my manager and I. Re seemingly endless supply's of cash. As we knew he was unemployed and had been for many years. He was very sick looking, gaunt, palid, slightly unpleasant smelling, and overall not someone you would want to be around for too long.

The thing was, just about every week for about a year he started buying new guitars and components. Not all the most expensive stuff all the time, but within a couple of weeks he would return and trade most of it in, and then go right ahead and buy a couple more guitars and do the same thing all over again. Not so weird you might think but bare in mind this went on for about a year with someone who we all knew wasn't working. I know this is lengthy but there is a serious point.

Eventually one day when I sold him an Epiphone Sheraton and Epiphone SG I think. I asked in as tactful a way as I could, where he was getting his money from (Things were relaxed enough by then) so I didn't come across as rude. His reply was immediate, serious and as I later found out
completely true.

"People pay me to put spells on People" and "They keep coming back".

Now, as I said things were relaxed back then and I kinda probed him a bit about that, made a few mental notes and then still wanting to make a sale found that he wanted to trade last weeks guitars but had left them at home, and could I take him back to his place to pick them up, return and do the deal.
At this point I hadn't the oppurtunity to tell my manager,
who was a good mate, all the weird shit so he said yeah go do it.

Long story short.
We arrive, black front door opening to black carpeted black walled interior, throughout I might add. Lounge, I'm waiting for guitars to appear, I look around, Mein Kampf, Crowley's Magiks, SS daggers, black three peice suite, black curtains, black candles. Had enough yet?

You get the picture, I'm rattled. Guitars appear, brief chat I leave, get called back because I forget guitars and oddball. Pick up both, head back to store deal done Cheers, goodbye, then big laugh relating story to manager.

Now all that has dark dangerous and forbidding conotations, and rightly so. From what I know personally, and from what I knew of this guy and saw of his world, dabbling like that is a recipe for disaster. The physical toll on his body for instance was horrifying.

Black magic, voodoo, santaria, Crowley and the Abramelin. Whatever.

What do you guys think? Can mere words conjure, manipulate or otherwise alter what we percieve as reality, dont we all do that to some degree all the time anyway?

So that's enough now, what d'ya think about Spells?

Please,

Mark

 

[Bixyboo]

Being an occasional user of my own 'spells' as it were
(always did lean to a bit o' Pagan since very young), Idk what I think of them as far as if they in and of themselves hold real power or not....

I just do it if it feels good and if it makes ME feel better that whatever-I-did-the-spell-for is gonna come true, then fine.

I do not personally 'pray' to any deities of any kind, tho. I adhere to no 'path' anymore, I choose to follow no structure or 'group' as it were.

My 'spells' are more like personal affirmations kinda thing with ritual, nothing more.

 

[Kevin Daly]

If the human mind (or some component of it) is able to influence the world around it, it may not matter so much whether the words and formulae have any power as whether someone thinks they do. Especially if they induce an altered state of consciousness (hence all the chanting and stuff).

There's more to it than that though:
In the past people didn't think of words as arbitrary symbols but as things that had an intrinsic connection to the things they represented, and therefore having power in themselves. For related reasons writing was considered magical by its nature (the Etruscans certainly seem to have thought of it that way, among others).
Poetry has been considered to have magical power (in a real sense): the right words chosen in the right way could maim or kill. The spell is an attempt to engineer reality: the appropriate formula switches words from describing to generating. In its own way it's a perfectly logical approach (and no, I don't believe a word of it).

As an aside, all those nifty cave paintings suggest our ancestors had a general belief in the ability of symbols to control the things they symbolise.
And of course we still have the phrase "Speak of the Devil", because you know what saying the name does...

 

[AnnetteMarie]

I tend to lean away from them, having some experiences out of my comfort zone with the weeji... (I know that is not how it is spelled, but I don't like using the correct word) board.
However, I do a little thing that usually results in me getting a parking spot, but I am keeping that one to myself and no, no rocket launchers are involved, nor grenades!

 

[bsvalley]

how bout a spell to loose weight. or I would actually settle for loosing wait. (I'm not very patient).

 

[The Pair of Cats]

Please correct me if i'm wrong, all you Wiccans out there but placing spells on people (with the intent on harm or bad luck etc.) = bad karma!!!???

 

[Bixyboo]

Please correct me if i'm wrong, all you Wiccans out there but placing spells on people (with the intent on harm or bad luck etc.) = bad karma!!!???

That's why you should ask the person before you do a 'spell' involving them....
Most do them on themselves.

 

[subject x]

An old girlfriend of mine was doing the Wicca thing for many years and was always "casting spells" of one sort or another, alone or with her little group. They were all 100% sure that they worked. I was, and am, much more skeptical.

As an example, one of her group was working at a pet store. She shows up one day all a-flutter about some adorable little puppy the store got that day. For some reason that I could never quite understand, she was worried that no-one would buy said puppy, so they got together and did a "spell" to ensure that the pup would not not spend all it's days in a cage at the store.

Lo and behold, the very next day, someone actually purchased the puppy!! Can you imagine? What are the odds of someone going to a pet store and buying a puppy?!?

Needless to say, they were all rather self congratulatory, celebrating the fact that their spell worked. They wouldn't even listen to me when I mentioned that the pup probably would have sold without their mystical contribution.

As all "successful" spells I have seen were of similar amazing circumstances, I really don't put any stock in them, classifying them with the folks who claim they can dissipate clouds through sheer will.

But, if it makes the "spell caster" happy, I say have a day!!