Four different communities use this phrase for four unrelated things, and the approach changes completely depending on which one you mean.
My name is Ren Kagetsuki. Most people inherited the words from a relative or a video and have never been asked which one they are describing.
It is worth ten minutes, because three of the four are not what I do.
The four things called black magic
1. Work that somebody was paid to do
The South Asian and Middle Eastern usage, and the most concrete of the four.
A practitioner was commissioned, something was constructed, and in most versions of it an object was placed somewhere near the person.
This one has a date, a person behind it, and often a physical trace. It is also the only one of the four I take.
2. A category of intent
The Western occult usage, where black simply means aimed at harm as opposed to aimed at help.
It describes the purpose rather than the method, which means it tells you nothing operational about what is on you.
Somebody saying they were hit with black magic in this sense has told you how they feel about the sender, not what was done.
3. Energies and attachments
The usage you will find in shamanic and energy-healing circles. Cords, attachments, heaviness picked up from places and crowds.
Diffuse by nature, with nobody at the far end. It responds well to clearing and there is nothing to return to anybody.
4. The word people reach for when nothing else fits
No tradition behind it at all. Everything has gone wrong at once and this is the only phrase available.
There is no shame in that one. It is honest, and it is where a good many of my cases start.
Four questions that sort it
On paper, in this order. Most people are answered by the first two.
- Is there a week you can point at? A datable beginning means work rather than accumulation.
- Did anything arrive in your home around then? A gift, an object, something left behind.
- Does it follow you, or does it stay in the house? One night elsewhere answers this.
- Does it come back on a rhythm after clearing? Regular return means supply, and supply means a person.
Yes to the first and fourth is the first kind. Yes only to the third is the house. No to all four, and it is most likely the fourth kind, which is real and is treated differently.
Looking for what was placed
In the traditions that use this phrase most, an object is buried or planted, and English-language articles almost never say where people actually put them.
They go where the person will pass over them or sleep above them.
- Under or beside the threshold of the door you actually use, inside or out.
- Under the bed, or between the mattress and the base.
- In the soil of a houseplant, which is the commonest one in flats.
- Sewn into a hem or a lining, in a coat or a bag that was a gift.
- In a car, under a seat or in the spare wheel well.
What you are looking for is knotted thread, hair, paper with writing, small bundles of cloth, or something buried that does not belong in the soil.
If you find something
Do not handle it with bare hands. A cloth, a bag, gloves, anything.
Do not untie it, unfold it, or read it. Undoing a knot is a deliberate act and it is not one you want to be performing.
Do not burn it in anger. Destroying somebody’s work while furious is a sending, and you would be starting one.
Wrap it in white paper and take it out of the building, the same day. Not the garden, not the car, not a cupboard.
Then wash and salt the door, that night and for three nights after.
Photograph it first if you can do it without unwrapping it. What it is made of tells me a great deal about who made it.
What finding nothing means
Very little, and this matters because people search for weeks and then conclude they imagined all of it.
Plenty of work is built with nothing but a name and a birth date. A great deal of what I was paid to construct involved no object at anybody’s house.
An object is evidence when it is there. Its absence is not evidence of anything.
Stop looking after a fortnight. Searching your own home indefinitely does more harm than most of what you are searching for.
If it is the first kind
Then the route has to be cut and closed rather than the weight lifted, and the weight will keep returning until it is.
It is done from here, with a name and a date of birth. Nothing has to come from the other person and you do not go near them: what the work involves.
If the tradition in your family names it differently, that changes nothing about the method: the same question under another name.
Tell me when it started, what arrived in the house that month, and whether it follows you when you sleep elsewhere.
Those three answers put you in one of the four boxes, and I will tell you plainly if it is one I do not take.
