Covens Are Cursing Unborn Babies...

...at least, according to Pat Robertson, who should probably get his own tag here on Augoeides one of these days. On a recent episode of his 700 Club television program, the evangelist warned a viewer that posting an ultrasound of an unborn child could lead to a "cultist" or "coven" cursing the baby. Apparently in Robertson's imaginary world this is a likely occurance, so I'm glad I don't live there.

“Young parents now regularly post fetal ultrasound photos as their Facebook photo,” the woman wrote. “From a spiritual point of view, is there any harm in doing this?”

At first, Robertson said that he didn’t think that posting ultrasound photos was harmful, but then he seemed to change his mind.

“There are demons and there are evil people in the world,” he said. “And you post a picture like that, and some cultist gets a hold of it or a coven and they begin muttering curses against an unborn child.”

What I've never understood about this evangelical mindset is why anyone would bother. While it's certainly possible to use an image of anything as a spell focus, cursing an unborn baby seems unbelievably pointless. Evangelicals seem to have this idea that people who use magick just do it for the sheer joy of being evil or something, when that couldn't be further from the truth.

The magicians I know who use curses use them sparingly and there's always a reason, usually that the target has wronged them in some particularly egregious way. An unborn baby has done nothing to anyone, pretty much by definition. And anyway, it's not like a magician couldn't just take a profile picture of a mother-to-be and throw a curse that way.

Personally I think posting ultrasounds on social media is dumb and my wife and I never did it. However, I can't see how it's any more dangerous from a magical perspective than a regular profile picture, even if you believe in that sort of thing.