Conservative Christians Really Do Cast Curses

I've been hearing rumors about Christian prayer groups casting curses at their enemies for years. Of course, they call what they do "praying" rather than "spellcasting" but for all intents and purposes it's the same thing. Recently this phenomenon was documented over at Orcinus.

American Fatwa

It seems that those rumors were probably true. So what can be done about it?

Here's what Dr. Wiley S. Drake, pastor of a Southern Baptist Church in California urged his followers to do via his radio program after a complaint was filed by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State over Drake's public endorsement of Alabama Governor Mike Huckabee for the Republican presidential nomination. Federal election law prohibits non-profit religious organizations from endorsing political candidates.

Pastor Wiley Drake Calls for Imprecatory Prayer against So-Called Religious Liberty Watchdog Group

Here is the response from Americans United, including some of the language found in the Biblical passages recommended by Drake.

Calif. Pastor Prays For Demise Of Americans United Staff, Following Watchdog Group's IRS Complaint

There's already plenty of traffic out there about the political implications of church and state separation issues. I'm more interested in looking the the spiritual technology employed here in what is essentially a magical war - though granted, one likely conducted by poorly trained casters. Many Evangelical Christians tend to downplay technical magical considerations since they simply believe that there are no real limits to God's power and that nothing aside from genuine faith determines whether or not their prayers are answered (that is, whether or not their spells succeed). For example, in Drake's press release the name of one of the Americans United staffers to be targeted is misspelled. That's a huge error to a ritual magician, and believe me, if I'm casting a spell I make sure that the target's name is spelled right.

What all practitioners of alternative spirituality should keep in mind is that this is probably not an isolated incident. It's likely that we, as "enemies of God" in the eyes of these Christian sorcerors, are being cursed all the time. Granted, vague curses are not that effective, but it also does not pay to be ignorant of what is going on and a generally negative spiritual environment might be part of the reason I don't meet very many wealthy pagans. Here are some ideas for dealing with hostile prayers - that is, spells.

1. Daily banishing rituals are a good idea for a lot of reasons, this being yet another. Most magicians don't do enough of them.
2. The mirror shield. Start with a banishing pentagram ritual and follow it with an invoking hexagram ritual. Then visualize your aura like an "egg" of light surrounding your body. Imagine the boundary of your aura shifting into a reflective surface that repels negative and destructive energy. Visualize this as vividly as you can for between 30 seconds and a minute. Close with the Qabalistic Cross or something similar.
3. The transformer. Enchant a magical tool or implement so that it catches all inbound negative energy, transforms it into raw magical force, and stores it for your own future use. There are a number of ways to do this, and it's kind of a cool way to go because the more energy gets sent your way, the more you wind up with. By contrast, the mirror just bounces the energy back to the caster.
4. The "whack-a-mole." This is really the ultimate magical weapon in a conflict such as this one. It's complex enough that it requires a skilled and trained magician to cast it properly and, in effect, it completely shuts down any of these "prayer groups" that appear within its area of influence. What you do is build a telesma or servitor that follows a simple program: (1) Watch for any "imprecatory prayers" to be sent out, (2) absorb the energy of those prayers to strengthen itself, and (3) unleash the most powerful curse possible at whoever sent out the prayer.

Let's hope that more of this comes to light and can be documented. The more we know about these insidious folks, the better we can be at protecting ourselves and those around us, not to mention taking care of these dark sorcerers if necessary.