When Ghosts Speak - Mary Ann Winkowski [100]
• Cyprus. Known as the tree of death, cyprus wood is used for protection.
• Geraniums. Dry the flowers and make sachets to put in corners and basements.
• Myrrh. The oil of this tree has been used for centuries to offer protection. You can find myrrh in oil or incense forms. If you feel that there is negative energy in your home, smudge the rooms with a stick of incense made from myrrh.
• Rosemary. Used for cleansing, often in combination with sea salt.
• Rowan wood. Also known as mountain ash. I have used this protective wood in children’s rooms. You can break small twigs off a tree (be careful, because the berries are very poisonous) and form them into a small cross. Bind the cross together with red yarn or thread. This age-old protective amulet can be carried with you; it’s also particularly effective when hung in the doorway of a child’s room.
• Tobacco. Shredded tobacco leaves (not the processed kind of tobacco found in cigarettes) can be scattered around the corners of your property to offer protection. Be careful that children and pets do not ingest it.
• Violets. These beautiful purple-and-white flowers are very good for cleansing and protecting. You can iron a flower between sheets of waxed paper and carry it in your purse or wallet for protection.
13
CURSES AND OTHER NEGATIVE ENERGY
What You Can Do to Prevent, Remove, or Weaken Negative Energy
WHEN YOU hear that a person “has a curse on them,” or that a particular location or item is cursed, it can sound very hopeless and maybe a little dangerous. But the most important thing to understand about curses is that they are simply a form of energy. To put it in the simplest way: Energy that is good, or brings a positive force, is called a charm or blessing. Energy that is negative and brings an adverse force is called a curse.
How Someone, or Something, Becomes Cursed
It’s important to remember that a curse can be put on only by a living person. People who call me often want to know if an earthbound spirit has put a curse on them, their family, or their home. I assure them that there is no way a ghost can put a curse on anyone or anything.
Every culture and every ethnic group has its own version of a curse. It can be known as a jinx or hex or evil eye. To keep things as simple as possible, I will talk about two general categories of curses: those that I call Old World curses—negative energy specifically put onto someone by a skilled person using certain rituals—and curses that are really more a general accumulation of negative energy.
Old World Curses
There are definitely people who can put on curses, often very particular types of curses. If you go to any major city with ethnic neighborhoods, you will find a number of people with this kind of knowledge. When my grandmother first taught me, at age sixteen, how to remove a curse, I thought that only Italians knew how to release negative energy. And I thought that only Italians could put it on. And why not? All the men and women who came to see my grandmother so she could remove the malocchio, evil eye, were from the Old Country.
When I was older and I shook hands with people, I could tell if they had a curse or negative energy on them. My hand would feel uncomfortably tingly—as if it had fallen asleep and was getting that pins-and-needles sensation that meant it was waking back up. What surprised me was that I sometimes got this sensation even if the people I was greeting weren’t Italian. I was quite curious about this, and luckily I had a lot of friends from different ethnic backgrounds. I asked them all to introduce me to their grandmothers or aunts or great-aunts, most of whom were first-generation immigrants, and I asked these women about the type of curses in their homelands. I learned a lot about curses, as well as how to avoid the unpleasant physical