Guest Post: Power Words

by Porsha Williams

“Thou hast obeyed the Law. But mark well, when thou receivest good, so equally art bound to return good threefold.” – ‘High Magic’s Aid’ by Gerald Gardner

DISCLAIMER:  This story in no way advocates lying curses on people or doing drugs

The first time I ever laid a curse on someone, I was completely unaware that what I was doing would reverberate through time, seemingly never-ending.

You thought I was going to say I was completely unaware that I was doing it, didn’t you? *chuckles* Well I wasn’t.  Not at all.

I was not a Pagan yet, which translates to mean that if I was then where I am now, I would’ve known NOT to do what I did.  I would’ve known that what goes out, must come full circle in its completion before it could find its end – and that I might possibly find myself as part of that ending.

What I tell you next is as close a recount, to what was a very painful night, as I can possibly give based on what I remember.  At the time I was just beginning to dabble with cocaine.  I’d done so in order to bring myself closer to the boyfriend I had at the time.  This boyfriend and I had been together for about 8 years.  I loved him more than life itself and had no shame in admitting that then or now.  He was my world.  He was a broken spirit, one that I constantly found myself in some sort of pickle over – trying to ‘fix’ him.  What I didn’t know then, but know well now, is that you cannot fix people.  Their path, whether right or wrong, is their path.  Some people use the light within themselves as their beacon; others follow the dark glow towards their fate.  It’s what nature intended, and the gods & goddesses I know demand be fated.

I’d found out that this boyfriend had found a younger, more naïve girlfriend to call his own. He had left me with no rent money for the month, a smashed-in vehicle a’la DEER (my recently paid-off graduation gift, that he had wrecked) and the beginnings of a year-long battle with cocaine addiction. It was hot that night, yet you could smell rain on the air.  I’d come in, from some bar or some party with my co-workers, edgy and in need of a bump.  I recall putting all the cocaine I had left on my kitchen’s cutting board and snorting it up my nose as I started to cry.

I was SO Angry.  I deserved better than this, didn’t I?  After all I’d done?  Why didn’t he love me?  Why wouldn’t he love me like I loved him?  Why did he keep hurting me over and over again?

Well, I was going to FIX him.  I was going to fix him for good this time.

I closed my eyes, the fog of the booze wearing off as the sharpness of the cocaine hit me like a hammer in the head.  The specific words are not important.  What I recall was telling the powers that be that I needed their help.  I needed punishment.  I called on the names of every female ancestor that I knew; my great-grandmothers, my grandmothers, my mother.  I called on those strong ancestral names for help, to be strong like they had been strong when rendered low by a man.  I called on their strength and guidance to find my way out of the darkness that I was in because I couldn’t do it alone.  I asked them to make him suffer, as I had suffered, so that he understood what it felt like to give your everything and receive nothing every single time.

While there was no answer, no sign, no spark of lightning at my words – I felt it.  I felt those words as I repeated the ancestral names that I’d called upon again, take a form of sorts.  It’s too hard to describe or explain this many years later what it was but I felt it; Acknowledgement by something or someone.  A chord was struck, a bell had been rung.

To this day I have no idea who or what had acknowledged my plea.

What I do know is that years later what I had asked for came true but at the time that it finally did I didn’t feel any comfort about it.  At first I felt a bit of smug satisfaction, knowing that what was owed was finally paid.  What I didn’t realize then was that I’d inadvertently tied myself to this person’s fate for an unspecific amount of time.  In giving my forgiveness finally, I’d opened some door into their psyche, to think that all would be well again when it never would.  I was so far removed and past that stage of my life and those feelings for this person that I didn’t understand; didn’t know how they could possibly feel the way they thought they felt.  Either way, what I had failed to realize at the time is that my ex-boyfriend would finally know how I had felt.  Their disconnection had become a connection again – and the irony of that still burns me to this day.  Regardless, I had unknowingly learned a very good lesson, one that every Pagan should know as they begin the study of any of the various Pagan paths:  Words Have Power.

You don’t need any grand ritual to make things happen.  Our words, our deeds, our thoughts and actions have the power to reverberate through time for an eternity if deemed so by the powers that be.  What we put into play will always ever come back to us – which is why it’s so very important to understand the full scope of our intent before ‘intending’ it.  Know the direction of your energy before sending it out into the world as magic, or suffer the consequences!

Magical intent should be foremost on the Witch’s mind before pressing forward into whatever action one intends.  Or as a good friend always told me, ‘Be Careful What you Wish For.’

Until we meet again…Brightest Blessings!

~PW

Porsha Williams is a recently converted Pagan of the Greco-Egyptian and Kemetic paths. She enjoys Anne Rice novels, knitting, writing poetry, mani-pedis and all things Lumpy SpacePrincess! When not having the best time ever as a recently engaged, stay-at-home mom of one, she enjoys her “hobby turned career” as a contributing writer onThePaganHousehold.com, the African-American Wiccan blog, and http://www.ColumbiaFAVS.com.

So how did all of this wonderfulness come to pass? Due to the exacerbation of her Mitochondrial Myopathy (muscle disease), she found it necessary to retire early from 11 years of life in “Corporate America.” Finding herself disabled and out of work for the first time since she was 14 years old, it was time to face facts without giving up on the option of making a career from something she loved. Writing had always been a past-time; with all this extra time on her hands, she knew it was time to give what she’d never believed possible her fullest effort. What better to write about than her exploration into her new path as a Pagan, fresh out of the “broom closet” and living in the Midwest?