For fifteen years I was paid to put curses on people.
My name is Ren Kagetsuki. I was trained from the age of eighteen, in a Japanese family that has done this work for seven generations, and for most of my career I stood on the sending side of it.
I stopped. Now I only take them off, and I do not send anything for anyone at any price.
Everything I know about curse removal is on this page, including the procedures, in the order I would do them.
- 1 What a curse actually is
- 2 How to tell what you are dealing with
- 3 Simple curse removal you can do tonight
- 4 Full curse removal, in the order it is done
- 5 The return, written out
- 6 Tools, and what each one is for
- 7 Where people go first
- 8 Keeping it off once it is off
- 9 When it did not begin with you
- 10 Removing a curse from somebody else
- 11 Questions I am asked most
- 12 If you decide to have it done for you
- 13 What this comes down to
What a curse actually is
A line, an anchor, and a body
Strip away the tradition and every aimed working has the same three parts.
There is an anchor, which is whatever ties the work to one particular person. There is a line running from that anchor to the person. And there is the weight travelling down it.
The tradition supplies the language, the materials, and whoever is appealed to. Once the thing is on a person, none of that is what you are looking at. You are looking at a line, and a line has no dialect.
The four anchors
A full name and a date of birth. A photograph. Something physical of yours, usually hair or a garment worn against the skin. Or nothing at all, where attention has been held long enough and precisely enough to do the work without material.
The first is the commonest by a wide margin, and the last is a larger share than people expect.
Why it stays in one area of your life
People apologise to me for this. They say it cannot be a curse because their friendships are fine and they still like their job.
Something aimed has a brief. Money, or the body, or one relationship. One area comes apart with unusual precision while the rest holds together.
Precision is not evidence against. It is evidence that somebody asked for something specific.
What it is not
Some of what reaches me is residue rather than a curse. Something picked up from a place, a hospital, a house, a person going through their own collapse. It sits on you with nothing holding it there, and it comes off in a night.
A reading will tell you which you have, and I say so when it is the lighter one.
How to tell what you are dealing with
The travel test
Sleep somewhere else for one night. A friend’s sofa is enough and the distance does not matter.
If it comes with you, it is on you. If the night is clear and the trouble is waiting when you get home, the house is the subject rather than the person.
That single night decides which half of this page applies to you.
The brief test
Write two lists. What is failing, and what is untouched.
Scattered trouble across everything at once is usually a run of misfortune or a body that needs a doctor. Trouble with a shape is the other thing.
The date
Find the month it began and write down what else happened that month.
A promotion someone else wanted. A separation. A move. A refusal. Most aimed workings are placed within weeks of an event that made somebody decide, and people almost always know the event before they know the person.
Simple curse removal you can do tonight
This is the first thing done in every case, including mine. It takes the weight off and it costs nothing.
The salt bath
- Coarse salt, the cheap kitchen kind. Not table salt.
- A good handful into a hot bath. Fifteen to twenty minutes.
- Rinse off afterwards with clean water, from the head down. The rinse is not optional and it always goes downward.
- Wash, rinse, get out. Do not lie back in it thinking about the person.
If you have no bath
No bath is not a problem, and most of the world does not have one.
Salt in a bowl of hot water, poured over the shoulders. Or salt worked in wet palms over the neck, the throat and the wrists, then rinsed downward in the shower. The neck and the wrists are where people carry it, which is why they go first.
The door in the morning
- Dry-fry coarse salt in a pan, no oil, about five minutes, until it stops crackling and goes quiet.
- Let it cool. Two small cones on saucers, one each side of the door you actually use.
- In a building where nothing can stand in a shared corridor, put them inside the door instead, one each side of it on the floor.
- Change them every morning. Old salt into a bag and out with the rubbish, not down the sink and not back into the kitchen.
- A cone that goes damp, grey or collapses in a day is the salt working. Replace it and keep going.
What three nights of this tells you
Do it for three nights and watch one question. Does it lift and stay lifted, or does it lift and come back.
Lifts and stays, and what you had was residue. That is genuinely finished and there is nothing else to do.
Lifts and returns within a week or two, and the clearing worked while the line is still attached. That is the answer most people get, and it is the most useful thing three nights of salt can give you.
Full curse removal, in the order it is done
Six stages. The order is the whole of it, and most failed removals are a case of the right stages done in the wrong order or stopped halfway.
One: read it
Before anything is taken off it has to be identified. What is attached, how old it is, where it attaches, whether a person is behind it or a family line is carrying it or it is not a curse at all.
This is the stage most people skip, and skipping it is how someone ends up paying for a removal of something they did not have.
Two: clear what has settled
The weight that has accumulated on the person comes off first, because nothing else can be done accurately through it.
This is the salt, and it is the stage you can perform yourself.
Three: turn it
The direction of travel is reversed. Until this is done the line still runs one way, towards you, and clearing it only empties a channel that is still pointed.
Four: return it
What was sent goes back down the line it came along, to whoever sent it. They receive what they made, and nothing is added to it.
You do not need to know who. The return follows the line, not a name, and this is the part people find hardest to believe.
Five: cut the line
Once the thing has gone back, the connection is severed so that nothing further travels along it.
Six: seal the route
The anchor is still in the sender’s possession. Your name and date of birth cannot be taken back from anybody, and neither can a photograph or a lock of hair.
So the last stage closes the route rather than the anchor, which is what stops the same material being used a second time.
Why stopping at stage two fails
A cleansing is stage two on its own. It is real work and it takes the weight off, and then a week or a fortnight later the weight arrives again because the line was never touched.
The second arrival is worse than the first. Not because it is stronger, but because it lands on someone who has started to believe nothing works.
Stopping at the clearing is the mistake almost everybody makes, and it is the single most expensive thing on this page.
For people who need the whole sequence carried out rather than the first stage of it, I take the work on myself.
The return, written out
This is the version a person can do alone. It is not the whole of what I do, but it is complete in itself and I am not holding anything back from it.
What you need
A small mirror, a candle, coarse salt, and a bowl or dish of water. Three consecutive nights, the same hour each night.
The procedure
- Clear yourself first with the salt, as above. This is done before, never after.
- Set the mirror upright, facing away from you, towards the door or a window.
- The candle between you and the mirror, so the mirror holds the flame.
- The salt in front of the mirror, the water behind you.
- Say what is to happen, plainly, in your own language. What was sent to me goes back to where it came from. Nothing more than that.
- Sit with it until the candle has burned a finger’s width, then put it out with your fingers or a lid rather than blowing.
- Pour the water away down the drain. The salt goes into a bag and out of the building in the morning.
- Repeat on the second and third night. Do not extend it past three.
No name, and no wish
Do not write a name, say a name, or hold a face. The mirror does the aiming. That is the whole reason a mirror is used and it is why you do not need to know who.
And do not add anything to it. A return with a wish for harm inside it has stopped being a return and has become a second curse, sent by you, with your own name on it.
That distinction is the most important sentence in this section.
Tools, and what each one is for
Salt
Clears and guards. Coarse, not fine. It clears when it is wet and guards when it has been dried in a pan. Those are two different jobs and the same salt will not do both.
A mirror
Aims. It is the only tool in the list that decides direction, which is why the return uses one and the clearing does not.
A candle
Holds the interval. In Japan this job is done by a stick of incense, which burns for a measured time. Incense is not sold in every country and a candle does the same work, which is to mark a length rather than to purify anything.
Water
Carries away. It always goes down the drain and never onto a plant, a garden or the street.
A talisman or a stone
Holds a boundary after the work is done. These matter most in the weeks following a removal, when the route has been sealed and the habit of reaching for you has not yet faded.
Where people go first
Most of the people who write to me have been somewhere else before they got here. A church, a shrine, a reader, a cleansing bought online.
I have nothing to say against any of it and I will not tell you it was wasted.
What I will tell you is what usually happened, which is that a clearing was performed on a case that needed a return. Stage two, well done, and then stopped.
If that is your history, it is not evidence that yours cannot be removed. It is information about which stage was reached.
Keeping it off once it is off
Do not confront the person
It reopens the channel, and it confirms to them that the work was landing.
Do not go looking for the object
Not in their house, not in their bin. The anchor is the one part of this that is genuinely out of reach, and the removal does not require it.
Do not tell mutual friends
It arrives as gossip, and gossip completes the circuit you have just cut.
Keep the door
Salt at the entrance, changed in the morning. It costs a few seconds and it is the only part of this that is worth making a habit of.
When it did not begin with you
Some of what I take off is older than the person carrying it. In Japan this is called a kakei no noroi, a curse carried by the family line.
The marker is repetition with structure. The same failure at the same age, the same illness, the same collapse of money or marriage, arriving on schedule across three generations. Not a family that has simply had bad luck.
Removing it from one person leaves it in the line, which is why this is slower work and takes more than one night.
Removing a curse from somebody else
Parents ask for children. Children ask for elderly parents. Partners ask for each other, and often the person carrying it has no idea anybody is asking.
You do not need their permission and you do not need them to believe it. Their name and date of birth is enough, and nothing about the work reaches them as an experience they have to sit through.
Questions I am asked most
How long until something changes
It varies, and anyone who gives you a fixed number is selling you the number. Some notice within days, others over weeks. Work on a family line is slower by nature.
Will they simply do it again
In most cases the sender begins, without understanding why, to avoid you. They have received what they made, and that is a considerable weight to carry.
Is there a risk to me
Not in commissioned work. You do not perform anything and you do not stand in the path of it. Whatever risk it carries, I carry.
What if more than one person is involved
Then the reading takes in the whole of it before anything is done, because two lines treated as one is how a removal half works.
I have been unwell and doctors have found nothing
See a doctor, and keep seeing them. I do not treat illness and I will never ask you to stop anything a physician has told you to do. What I can tell you is whether something has been sent at you.
If you decide to have it done for you
Whoever you choose, judge them on five things, and judge me on them too.
A price shown in public before you make contact. A clear answer on whether a second invoice is possible. Evidence that they have ever told somebody it was not a curse. No guaranteed outcome, because anyone who guarantees one is lying to you. And identification before removal.
There are also five things that get said to people in your position which should end the conversation, and two of them I used to say myself: how to judge a practitioner.
My own success rate is not one hundred percent and I will not pretend otherwise.
What this comes down to
Find out whether it travels with you. Clear yourself with salt for three nights and watch whether it stays clear. If it stays, you are finished, and I would rather you were.
If it comes back, the line is the problem, and the line is the part that has to be turned, returned, cut and sealed in that order.
I built these things for fifteen years. I know where they attach because I attached them.
Tell me what has been happening, and I will tell you what I see before either of us talks about work.
