But how can you avoid something that hasn’t (hopefully) happened yet? The simple answer is that you can’t. But there are some relatively easy precautions you can take to reduce both access and effectiveness that go beyond the usual wards and shielding.

Reciprocal relationships
One of your most important lines of defense against nastiness, is the reciprocal relationships that you nurture and maintain with your numinous powers. Sometimes it may be gods who help you, and sometimes Fair Folk. However, mostly it’s going to be ancestors and house spirits that do the bulk of the heavy-lifting here, so these are the relationships you really need to cultivate.

That’s not to say that the gods and Fair Folk wouldn’t get involved though, or that it isn’t worth taking the time to develop reciprocal relationships with them too. It’s just that they have less reason to be involved than the aforementioned groups, and unless there are already signs that you have their favor, their prices tend to be much steeper.

When you have good reciprocal relationships with your ancestors and house spirits, detecting, diagnosing, and dealing with magical attacks become much easier. Because when you have those relationships, you can get a lot done by simply calling to them with some offerings and checking in. I recommend checking in in this way on a weekly basis (at least).

Cleanliness
This is where I tell you to clean your house! No really, regular cleaning is one of the best steps you can take to create a layer of protection from some major whammy.

You see, sometimes witch wars involve sending [malevolent] spirits to mess with you, and those asshole spirits tend to gravitate to the [messy], cluttered areas of your home like mosquitoes do to buckets of water. (This is pretty much why paranormal teams get people to clean up as part of the solution.)

Another reason why cleaning is an important activity (you know, aside from regular old health, hygiene, and decency), is that if you are in the slow moving kind of war, then you may find items planted in your home that come with…extra ‘gifts’ (in the German sense of the word). Regular cleaning keeps you familiar with what’s in your home and what doesn’t belong.

Lastly, and most importantly, there are layers of protection you can build into your cleaning regime. You can clean with apotropaic herbs and washes (especially if you make your own cleaning supplies like I do), and you can get into the habit of regularly fumigating your home to cleanse it. This helps to prevent a build up of magical nastiness over time, which is useful all the time, but invaluable if you ever end up having the misfortune of dealing with a protracted campaign.

To Gift is to Connect
One of the worst things about witch wars, is that most of the people you are likely to end up in magical altercations with, will have likely started out as friends. They are usually the people you’ve “talked shop” with, considered working with, or maybe even worked with. This is part of why your slow-moving witch wars are like car wrecks that you can see coming in the distance – you can see the wreck coming, but there’s also this desire to try and prevent it if you can. I don’t mean to be the plot spoiler here, but most of the time you really can’t. Because it’s usually not about you or your friendship, but simple ego and dominance, and that’s an ill that lies solely within the person that starts the war.

But in those early days of friendship before you get to know a person, it can be really easy to gift freely. However, until you know how things are going to roll out (or oaths are in place), it’s important to be careful with both what you gift, and also what you accept.

To give or receive a gift is an act of trust, especially among magical practitioners. Gifting connects and provides either leverage, or a way into someone’s life (the Trojan horse principle). Because when you gift – especially if that gift is something you made or have had for a long time – you’re essentially giving them something they can use to connect you to them in a spell. Alternatively, the gifts you accept can come with some added…”extras” that can make for some really unpleasant times.

So be careful who you give gifts to, and what presents you accept from others. If you really want to give gifts in those early stages of friendship, opt for gifting by Amazon or another online service. They still get the gift, but none of the “you” to leverage....

Personal Concerns
Even worse than a gift though, is when a rival gains something of you. The term “personal concerns” is quite delicate-sounding for what is being referred to here, but basically, it’s your hair, nails, blood etc. Any enemy practitioner (or practitioner yet to out themselves as an enemy) that gets access to any of these things, gains the keys to the kingdom. There is so much more that they can do to you with this stuff- trust me on this....

Protecting your personal concerns requires both cleanliness and diligence. Don’t leave hair brushes, toothbrushes, or anything else with your hair lying around anywhere where any guests can get to them. Be extra careful with sharp objects when others are around. If you cut yourself, pocket any tissues you use to staunch bleeding and take them home. Count them as you pocket them and keep track. Try to wash away any blood spilled with whatever is to hand. Got flyaway hair? Tie it up or cover it while meeting with new folks. Get the idea?

Basically, adopt the level of paranoia a hated Roman emperor would have found admirable.

Final Words
Witch wars of this variety are thankfully relatively rare, and it can be all too easy to become a little too paranoid. There is a balance to be had here, and in the next post I’m going to discuss some of the things you can look at to try and discern whether or not someone is working against you.

But for now – and most importantly – don’t give this topic too much space in your head. Stray thoughts can be dangerous things for people who use their emotions, visualizations, and will to change reality.

Finding the Right Balance
Belief in being cursed or being subject to magical attack, can become a curse in of itself – especially when you’re already encountering a run of bad luck. So it’s important to have the proper perspective when it comes to the subject of magical attack. Because if you place too much belief in the possibility of being cursed or attacked, then it’s all too easy to see malefic magic and psychic attack at every turn and become paranoid. There’s also a lot to be said for self-fulfilling prophecy here – especially with the more magically-minded. But if you refuse to even consider the possibility, then you run the risk of missing some of the earlier warnings and allowing things to become far worse....

So how do you find the right balance with this?

In truth, unless you have physical evidence that someone is working against you, you need to be looking at multiple factors. But what are they?

Luck
The most obvious thing that is going make you suspect attack is a run of bad luck that just doesn’t seem to end. But sometimes [stuff] just happens!

...This is where it gets pretty tricky, and also why you shouldn’t just rely on one thing when assessing whether or not you’ve been cursed. However, a good starting question to ask yourself is if what is happening is logical given the surrounding causes and conditions. For example, if you happen to lose your job and your house is foreclosed on during a time of economic downturn, it’s easy to see the circumstances at the root of your situation.

However, if (for example) you find yourself applying for a college hardship fund and being rejected for being “too poor” after a run of being told you’re overqualified for student jobs you’ve applied for as a student, then something is probably going on. (It was. Those were some “fun” times.)

See what I meant when I said “unbelievable”?

Dreams
For a lot of people, dreams are just randomness bundled up with a combination of wish-fulfilment and stress. However, for magical practitioners dreams are a [heck]of a lot more....But for us, dream can often also turn out to be a place of entrance into the Otherworld, or a common ground upon which we may interact with Otherworldly beings.

And other practitioners…

See the problem?

So if you’re not keeping an eye on your dreams, especially around the 15th lunar day, you’re missing out on one of the biggest canary warnings you could possibly have. Dreams on this day that include arrows, snakes, or any form of attack really, can be indicative that someone is working against you. Moreover, it’s often possible to divine the person (when a human is doing the cursing, but that’s another story) attacking you, and what their beef is (beyond simple ego).

For example, you may find that the attacks in your dreams are conditional on you avoiding or carrying out a certain behavior. For example, if someone wants to keep you in what they see as ‘your place’, then the attacks in the dream may only happen when you disobey instructions to not cross a boundary.

So pay attention to your dreams!

Feelings and Foreign Thoughts
...But what do I mean when I say “negative feelings” here? Generally speaking, the kind of negative feelings that come with an attack are an impending sense of doom and dread, and a nose dive in self-esteem. Depression is also common, as is a feeling of helplessness....

However, when you take the time to examine why you normally have those feelings, you can usually point to concrete reasons why....

The point though, is that when you get down to it, when you take the time to examine these feelings, you generally find causes that are usually highly logical (and not the result of outrageously abnormal examples of bad luck).

This is part of why meditation is important – because it gives you the tools to carry out that kind of introspective examination.

But most importantly, meditation helps you get to know your own mind. This is incredibly important when you’re subject to this kind of attack. After all, how else will you recognize which thoughts are truly yours, and which belong to a hostile party? However, for all the danger of implanted thoughts (especially the kind that ensnare the mind and have you picking out a death day on autopilot), this is also often the area where a lot of attackers ‘overplay’ their hands and give themselves away.

As the old adage says, “know thyself”.

Health
In the Old English sources, the concepts of ‘health’ and ‘luck’ (as well as wholeness and holiness) are expressed by the same word – ‘hælu’. This collocation of concepts into a singular term tends to make great sense to anyone who has worked extensively with either the paranormal, Good Folk, curses, or all of the above. Because it’s never just luck that tanks, but personal health too. For some of the more metaphysical (and scholarly) reasons for this, you can check out this essay here (https://greatvalleykindred.com/mapping- ... then-soul/).

However, for the TL;DR version, let me just say that both curses and interference from the Other have very similar effects on the body, and especially the torso. So keep an eye out for gastric and other torso-related issues that are accompanied by a loss of physical energy – especially if medical investigation leads nowhere.

Dying Plants and Eggs
Finally, a lot of witches look to their plants. If a lot of your plants suddenly start dying off, then there’s a chance that someone is working against you. This is especially the case when this happens in conjunction with any of the other factors mentioned here. Some folks also keep an egg on their altar as a kind of hex alarm and watch for it breaking. Of course, you may go through quite a few eggs, and will need to remember to change them out if you opt to do this.

Being Off-Balance
Find yourself taking more trips and falls recently? Perhaps you’re experiencing the kind of clumsiness that you only normally get before your period (if you have those), but at the wrong time?

It’s not uncommon for people to experience more falls and injuries when subjected to psychic attack – part of this is down to that luck thing.

But in my opinion, there’s also a wider theme of keeping you off balance here too. This is something you may also see reflected in your thoughts. You may find yourself fixating on something or someone completely random and illogical – just out of the blue, to the point where it’s taking over everything to a really unhealthy degree. And it’s smart too – part of keeping you otherwise occupied so you can’t do the things you need to to fight back.

Now I’m not saying that every weird crush or obsession with a thing or person is the result of magical attack (especially if you’re already predisposed to obsessive behaviors). But it’s another factor to take into account along with everything else.

Next Steps
So what do you do if you suspect that you have been hexed by another practitioner (or even the Other)?

Your first next step is to perform divination and find out if your suspicions are reflected in a reading. Depending on what’s been done to you though, you may find yourself unable to read for yourself (assuming you could do it before), and in these cases you will need to get a reading done by someone else. Honestly though, regardless of whether or not you can read for yourself, it’s advisable to get a reading done by a trustworthy person anyway. In my experience, the role of divination in the diagnosis and management of malefic attacks is one that is often forgotten. And I get it, it’s easy to lose your head when you suspect that magic is being thrown around – especially if you’re already a little battle-scarred before figuring out what’s going on. However, if someone is working against you and you give into that fear, you help them in their cause.

Divination can provide a chance to catch your breath and at least run your thoughts by another human. This is important for two reasons: firstly, running it by another person can provide a valuable “checksum” that you’re not experiencing some kind of mental breakdown; and these kind of experiences tend to be pretty isolating (which is never good when you’re vulnerable). Most importantly (?) though, divination can help you take stock of the situation, and may sometimes even give you information on how best you can defend yourself or otherwise end the attack. In other words, it’s a critical first step on the path to resolution and healing.

In this post, I’m going to take a look at the less-discussed aspects of dealing with and surviving magical attack.

First of all though, I’d just like to clarify something here. The kind of magical attack I’m talking about here is the more serious kind, the kind that goes beyond a simple case of the evil eye....And for those of you who have never experienced this, I truly hope you never do. I’m not going to argue about the existence of this, you can either take this seriously or not.

But if you have experienced this kind of thing, or simply take magic seriously enough to recognize its potential for completely [messing up your life] to and including taking your life, then read on.

There’s been a lot written in various places about how to respond to curses in terms of getting it off you, uncrossing, protection, amulets, and magical counter response. However, there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t seen discussed about magical attack -stuff I consider important to management and survival -so that is what I’m going to discuss here.

The Fear Response
For most people who find out that they’ve been cursed, or are the subject of a magical attack of some kind, the most common response is fear. This is completely normal. For someone who hasn’t experienced this kind of thing before, it can be one hell of a wake-up call to realize what others can do to you, your loved ones, and your life with magic....

However, the hard truth of it, is that you cannot give in to that fear. Because it’s too easy to make stupid moves, and at a time when you really cannot afford to do so.

So the first step to keeping your [act] together when you’re on the receiving end of some magical whammy, is to recognize the fear. Take some time to sit with it (but not too long), lean into it and find out where its roots lie.

Then put that [fear] aside for later. You haven’t got time for that right now.

Attacks Are Often Multilayered
In the majority of cases, ‘curses’ are generally more rightly thought of as “multilayered campaigns”. ...

They will attack you on multiple fronts (if they can), and some of those attacks will fall more into the “curse” category, while others will fall into the “psychic attack” category. They may even bind spirits and send them after you, and you need to also realize that they will probably come after your family too....

But if someone has decided that you are sufficient enough of a threat to their ego, then nothing in their capacity is ‘off the table’. I mean, let’s get this straight: there is no such thing as honor here, it’s down and dirty.... And even if you have cleared or gotten free of the main attack, you will probably find other minor fronts coming to light months down the line.

So recognize that this is likely not going to be a ‘one working and done’ kind of deal. If they have launched a campaign, then you are fighting a campaign, and you need to plan accordingly.

You May Need Help (And There’s No Shame In That!)
Unfortunately, being able to set aside the fear and recognize the breadth of the campaign being waged against you, is no guarantee that you’ll actually be able to fight it. Remember all those things I mentioned in my last post? Well a lot of them like that feeling of helplessness, sapped energy, and decline in mental (and physical health) can all affect your ability to respond. Depending on what has been done to you, you may not even be able to do anything at all!

To make matters worse, a lot of witches tend to take pride in being able to handle things alone. But don’t fall into that here – this isn’t the time for more ego. If you find yourself in this situation you need to reach out and get help. And the chances are that if you’re involved in your local community enough to cop an attack, you already know someone in your community that you suspect could and would help you.

Just be aware that you may have some difficulties getting to meet or communicate with your potential help. The spirits involved in curses will often take measures to prevent the subject of their nastiness from escaping. If you find yourself in this situation, it’s the ideal time to dig out any older amulets you have lying around. Depending on what you have, they may not help with the wider attack, but they may help with the simple issue of getting to your help.

Destroy Connections
One of the least discussed parts of being attacked that I’ve noticed is the matter of connections. Now on one level, when I talk about connections here, I’m talking about connections created by gifting. But on another level, you may have more subtle connections to a person that were either created through working together, or that were planted on you in order to influence, spy, or drain you.

The physical connections are clearly the easiest to sever. Seek out anything they gave you that still feels connected to them (again, you may need help here) and either destroy it or put in some kind of containment for leverage down the line. If it can tie them to you and used by them to affect you, it can tie you to them for the same thing.

As for the subtle connections – this is another area where you will need help. Even if you can deal with the rest of the attack alone, you will need help to get rid of these.

Freeing the Mind
For a bunch of people who basically work to change reality with our minds, breath, bodies, incantations, and wills, we often forget our minds in our training, our work, and in surviving magical attack.

If you are subject to magical attack and the person wants to let you know it without directly saying it, they will work to keep themselves front and center in your consciousness. This is incredibly empowering for them, because on one level it helps to build upon the fear and feelings of helplessness their previous work has created. However, on another, it’s still giving them access to your mind.

This is something you need to resist; but how?

After all, it’s not like you can pretend they don’t exist or what are you fighting against? The key to this is figuring out the right level of access. Sounds confusing, right?

Try imagining your mind like an onion of many layers. Now think about where certain people in your life are in the onion -see your nearest and dearest in the central layers as clearly as you can before moving outwards from the center and mapping where different people fall in the layers. One of those layers should be some kind of defense that is impermeable from the outside, and it’s in the layers beyond that where any enemies should sit in your mind. If you find your enemies within that barrier, or yourself without a barrier, then you need to do some evicting.

Your goal is to be able to talk about them and think of them with no more weight to their names and faces than you would give turd you scraped off your shoe.

Tu Quoque
Finally, you need to realize that if you send things back to them, then you are sending them exactly the same as they originally meant for you, and you need to be ok with that. You need to really walk through the ethical and moral implications of it and figure out if you’re good with it or not. The morals of witchcraft are the morals that each individual witch carries. So work deliberately. Because it doesn’t matter that they started it, you are choosing to take the same action and will be just as responsible for the ensuing consequences.

Which all sounds easy to live with when you’re angry. But could you really live with something that (for example) was targeting your kids, targeting other children?

See what I mean?

Just…be aware of the scope of what you choose as a response before you do it, and recognize that you will have to live with whatever rolls out from that course of action.