Do not knock three times
2026-10-24
I owe you an apology for my brief abandonment of this blog. I have been deeply involved with work, and at some point I had to decide where to place my attention. Something had to wait. For a while, that something was this site.
I am also deciding what its future should look like. I want it to become a little less personal, less dependent on the daily weather inside my head, and more willing to wander through ideas, artifacts, histories and things that refuse to sit quietly inside a category.
So, naturally, let us begin with black magic.
An impeccable editorial decision, obviously.
Andries Stock after Jacques de Gheyn II, Witches Preparing for Sabbath, ca. 1610. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0.
This is not an initiation. There are no spells hidden in the punctuation, no instructions for summoning anything and no demon waiting behind the image captions. I have found no reliable evidence that a symbol can tear open reality or that a curse can make physics accept new management.
That does not make the game harmless.
The danger of black magic is easier to see when we stop staring at the alleged supernatural machinery and look at the people, objects and choices gathered around it. Fear is real. Fire is real. Poisoning, fraud, coercion, sleep deprivation, desecration and cruelty are painfully real. Sometimes the horned thing in the room is only a person who has learned how to invoice terror.
[](#the-label-is-already-haunted "Jump to this heading")The label is already haunted
"Black magic" sounds precise until you try to hold it still. Across history, practices now placed under the word magic have mixed with religion, medicine, protection, divination, politics and scholarship. In first-millennium BCE Mesopotamia, incantations and protective objects belonged to the same intellectual world as medicines and omen reading. An Egyptian ivory wand made around 1850-1640 BCE carried protective figures and was probably used to guard vulnerable people, especially infants.
That is not the horror-film version of magic. It is closer to a shield.
Magic wand, Egypt, ca. 1850-1640 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0.
The darker label has often depended on who was doing the naming. Christian missionaries and colonial officials described Indian Tantra through fantasies of black magic and sexual corruption. European colonists, followed much later by Hollywood, flattened Haitian Vodou into witchcraft, zombies and sinister spectacle. Vodou is a religion, not a costume department for somebody else's nightmare.
I am using "black magic" here in a narrow sense: an attempt to harm, threaten or control through occult claims, plus the trade that grows around curses and their removal. The definition follows the intended injury, not the unfamiliar clothes, language or gods of a living tradition.
That distinction matters. Ignorance has spent centuries dressing itself as moral certainty.
[](#europe-learned-to-draw-its-fears "Jump to this heading")Europe learned to draw its fears
European printmakers gave witchcraft a body. They filled the page with cauldrons, smoke, bare skin, bones, nocturnal animals and women who refused to behave. The images were not neutral records of secret events. They were mixtures of theology, rumor, satire, erotic fantasy and social panic.
Hans Baldung, The Witches, 1510. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0.
The crowded engraving near the beginning of this article was designed by Jacques de Gheyn II around 1610. People certainly believed in witches, yet the Met notes that De Gheyn may have approached the subject with skepticism and bemusement. That ambiguity makes the picture more interesting. It may depict belief, mock it and sell it at the same time.
These old images still work because they understand a basic trick: do not show the monster clearly. Put it behind smoke. Give it a crooked limb. Let the viewer finish the job.
The mind is an enthusiastic unpaid assistant.
[](#the-mind-supplies-its-own-smoke "Jump to this heading")The mind supplies its own smoke
Suppose someone tells you that a curse has been placed on you. The next headache feels suspicious. A nightmare becomes evidence. The dog barks at an empty hallway and, for one unpleasant second, you wonder what it can see.
Nothing supernatural needs to happen. The story has already changed the way you inspect ordinary events.
Medical research on the nocebo effect shows that negative expectations can produce or intensify genuine symptoms. The evidence comes from health care, not haunted houses, so it cannot explain every strange experience. It does establish something important: expectation is capable of hurting us without pretending to be imaginary pain.
Now add hunger, isolation, intoxicants or a sleepless night. The NHS notes that temporary hallucinations can occur with severe hunger or sleep deprivation and can also be associated with drugs, alcohol, medicines and health conditions. A ritual that deliberately strips away sleep and food may feel like a door opening. It may be a nervous system under strain.
Henry Fuseli, The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches, 1796. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0
This is where "just playing" becomes a poor description. If the experiment is designed to make you frightened, exhausted and hypervigilant, then fear is not a side effect. It is the engine.
If someone begins seeing or hearing things, becomes suddenly confused, or feels commanded to hurt themselves or another person, the answer is not a stronger ritual. It is medical help.
[](#the-first-real-demon-carries-an-invoice "Jump to this heading")The first real demon carries an invoice
There is a remarkably efficient business model hiding inside curse removal.
First, someone discovers an invisible problem that only they can detect. Then they explain that the problem is urgent, personal and likely to become worse. Finally, they offer the only available cure. The first payment rarely solves it. New layers of contamination appear. More cleansing is required. The victim is told not to discuss the work because doubt, disclosure or refusal will strengthen the curse.
The United States Postal Inspection Service describes this exact pattern in psychic scams: promises to remove bad luck or curses, followed by repeated demands for money. The supernatural claim cannot be audited, which makes failure profitable. If nothing improves, the ritual was interrupted, the payment was insufficient, or an even darker force has appeared. The seller never runs out of invisible inventory.
José Guadalupe Posada, The Sorcerer, ca. 1900-1910. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0.
The useful rule is brutally simple. Anyone who frightens you with a curse and then charges for the exclusive cure is not rescuing you. They are monetizing the fear they created.
No pentagram is as dangerous as a payment system connected to panic.
[](#the-circle-can-become-a-cage "Jump to this heading")The circle can become a cage
Occult groups are not automatically abusive. Secrecy is not automatically sinister either. Privacy can protect a community, especially one that has faced persecution. The problem begins when secrecy stops protecting people and starts protecting power.
The warning signs are ordinary because control is ordinary. A leader claims exclusive access to truth or protection. Questions become betrayal. Members are pushed away from family and friends. Money, sex, illegal acts, self-harm, animal harm or obedience become tests of commitment. Fear of supernatural punishment keeps people from leaving.
Anonymous German artist, Scene of Witchcraft, 17th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0.
None of this requires a working spell. It requires a charismatic person, an isolated victim and a story that makes resistance feel fatal. Mystical language can make familiar abuse harder to name. "Obey me" becomes "the spirits demand it." Financial exploitation becomes sacrifice. Sexual coercion becomes initiation. Humiliation becomes purification.
Changing the vocabulary does not change the act.
[](#fire-does-not-read-sigils "Jump to this heading")Fire does not read sigils
Occult aesthetics love an open flame. Unfortunately, open flames have no respect for aesthetics.
From 2020 through 2024, U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated annual average of 5,894 home structure fires started by candles. More than half began when something combustible, such as bedding, curtains, clothing or decorations, was too close to the flame. A candle does not care which alphabet surrounds it. It will set the curtain on fire in Latin, Enochian or plain English.
The same dull physical law applies to smoke, powders, oils and plants. "Natural" is not another word for harmless. An unknown herb may be toxic, contaminated, irritating or capable of interacting with medicine. Burning it creates a different route into the body. Drinking it creates another. Rubbing it into a cut creates a particularly foolish third.
Psychoactive substances add uncertainty to a setting already built around suggestion. Hallucinogens can distort perception, produce panic or paranoia and impair judgment or coordination. Unknown mushrooms add the possibility of poisoning. Mixing an intense supernatural expectation with an unknown substance and dose removes several layers of safety at once.
Francisco Goya, Out hunting for teeth, 1799. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0.
Goya's woman is reaching into the mouth of a hanged man because teeth taken from the dead were believed to have magical use. Whatever the promised result, the scene has already crossed into desecration. The superstition did not need to work. It only needed to persuade someone to do something terrible.
[](#harm-does-not-become-sacred-in-costume "Jump to this heading")Harm does not become sacred in costume
This is the line that should not require occult scholarship.
If a practice demands assault, non-consensual sex, cruelty to an animal, grave desecration, theft, weapons, poisoning or harm to yourself, the symbol placed above it changes nothing. A victim remains a victim. The law does not evaporate because someone drew a circle on the floor.
Black magic can become a story people use to step around responsibility. The spirit wanted it. The book required it. The ritual would fail without it. Each sentence moves the decision away from the person making it.
Do not grant that escape.
[](#curiosity-without-surrender "Jump to this heading")Curiosity without surrender
I am not arguing for a world scrubbed clean of the occult. That would be boring, historically illiterate and probably impossible. Grimoires are fascinating objects. Magical diagrams can be beautiful. Demonology reveals what a society feared, desired and tried to control. Old witch prints are among the strangest things human beings have put on paper.
Study them. Read critical editions. Visit museum collections. Learn what the symbols meant to the people who used them. Notice when an archive describes an object as protective, medical or devotional instead of forcing every unfamiliar ritual into a horror story.
Keep a few plain rules nearby. Never ingest, burn or apply unknown substances. Avoid mixing ritual intensity with sleep deprivation or intoxication. Walk away from anyone who claims that only they can remove a curse. Reject secrecy that isolates you, authority that cannot be questioned, or symbolism that requires a victim. If an experience becomes frightening or begins to interfere with daily life, speak to someone outside the belief system. Medical and psychological help do not make an experience less meaningful. They make your safety more important than the story attached to it.
Thomas Rowlandson after George Murgatroyd Woodward, Witches in a Hay Loft, 1807-1813. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0.
Occultism deserves curiosity. It does not deserve your judgment, your health, your money or another living being.
The old engravings will still be there in the morning. That is where I prefer my demons: on paper, safely unemployed.
--
Chamber of Reflections
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