ESOTERIC | OCCULTISM | MAGIC | SPELLS | BLACK
CHINESE and AFRICAN-AMERICAN CURSES

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CHINESE RICE-PENNIES-OIL CURSE
and
AFRICAN-AMERICAN TONGUE-SHUTTING CURSE

Date:1997/11/06
Newsgroup: alt.lucky.w

David Silberberg wrote:

Catherine -

Thought you might be interested in the following
article from today's (11/6/97) Wall Street Journal:

Thank you, very much, David! This is of interest on
several accounts, as you must know. It is unusual to see
accounts of spell-casting reported by the Wall Street
Journal, to say the least!

Before anyone reads the two curses that follow, i want to
note that i believe there is a fundamental error in the
reporter's ascription of the beef-tongue-names-and-needles
spell described below to "Santeria."

This spell is used in court cases or legal matters to bind
the tongues of hostile witnesses. It seems to be African in
origin, but it has been collected dozens of times (e.g. by
Harry Middleton Hyatt in the 1930s and by Jim Haskins in the
1970s) from the Protestant Christian, *non*-Santeria,
African-American hoodoo culture.

Hoodoo is essentially folk-magic and not a religion in the
sense that Santeria is. I think it is safe to say that the
perpetrator of that tongue spell in Lancaster, California,
was more likely to be an American-born black person than an
"immigrant" and i sincerely doubt that the spell was "a
religious act to solicit the gods to get these people to be
quiet," as theorized by the (Asian-surnamed) detective on
the case.

The falsity of calling Santeria "a Caribbean religion based
in part on old African voodoo rites" should also be obvious
to anyone who has studied Ocha, Santeria, Vodoun, or related
African-diaspora religions.

The same uneducated mind-set that equated hoodoo folk-magic
with the Santeria religion and then with the Voodoun
religion also seems to have led the writer to posit that the
Chinese curse which is the basis of the story may be
religious.

I doubt that it is, except insofar as folk-magic and
religion are entwined in most cultures. Note that the prayer
to Buddha that opens the story is to REMOVE the curse. This
is asking a deity for intercession. It is not the same as
using a deity to curse someone.

Futhermore, the reason that FOUR pennies were used in the
Chinese curses described here seems not to have been
understood by the reporter or the police. In Chinese, the
number four is pronounced "sha" and that is the same
pronunciation given to the Chinese word for "death." Chinese
homonym magic -- where words that sound alike acquire
identical symbolic meanings -- is very powerful, and for
this reason, no Chinese person would give a gift of four
objects, for it would be tantamount to giving death. Many
Chinese and Chinese-American people will not accept a
telephone number with a four in it or live into a house with
a four in the street address. To them, "Sha is death and
four is sha." That is why the pennies in this curse are so
malevolent -- they are money, but only a little money, and
they connote death to the one who receives them.

Having taken all that in, you can now see why i archived
this story, for it provides an interesting glimpse into an
Asian form of "crossing" that is not too well known in
America.

November 6, 1997

Dueling Chinese Restaurants
Accuse Each Other of Cursing

By JIM CARLTON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

REDMOND, Ore. -- Qing Wua Chan places
three oranges and three cups of wine
before a Buddha altar overlooking the
lunch-time dining room of her empty
Stockton's New China Cafe.

"If I pray to Buddha, maybe he will
take away the curse," she says.

At dinner time two blocks away, Emily
Lin sits in her half-empty Full Moon
restaurant, shaking her head over
business setbacks she too attributes
to curses -- cast upon her, she says,
by Mrs. Chan. Mrs. Lin's complaints
caused Mrs. Chan to be charged with
criminal trespass and criminal mischief
for allegedly harassing her for three
years with spells. "I think it is
because we make better food," Mrs.
Lin says.

Bad Medicine

Call this a battle of the hexes. Ever
since Mrs. Lin's Full Moon opened three
years ago, two Chinese restaurants
in this high-desert ranching town
have squared off in a war of rice,
pennies and cooking oil. Mrs. Lin
alleges that Mrs. Chan has deposited
rice and pennies on the doorstep of
the Full Moon and splashed cooking
oil across the windows and doors. Many
Chinese believe the three items add
up to bad medicine, a meager amount of
rice and a few pennies signifying poor
fortune. The oil just makes things worse.

Mrs. Chan denies hexing Mrs. Lin,
although police recently did catch her
outside the Full Moon with a cup of
oil. She claims Mrs. Lin has hexed her
with rice and pennies. Mrs. Lin denies
that, but there is no denying this:
Old-time residents, many of them
farmers and ranchers whose families
have lived here in the shadows of the
Cascade Mountains for generations, are
baffled and alarmed.

"This is our version of the Chinatown
gang wars," says Police Chief Jim
Carlton, with a sigh.

Across the country, casting spells
seems to be on the rise. Anthropologists
cite as a reason immigration from
parts of Asia, Latin America and the
Caribbean where casting spells is
sometimes part of everyday religious
practice.

In Lancaster, Calif., last month,
someone left an herb-covered cow's tongue
outside the local welfare office.
The names of 14 workers there were pinned
to the tongue. "It was a religious
act to solicit the gods to get these
people to be quiet," theorizes detective
Brian Moriguchi. No arrests were
made, but police believe the incident
was related to Santeria, a Caribbean
religion based in part on old African
voodoo rites.

From Tucson to Tampa

Other hexes are more serious. In
Tucson, Ariz., police recently arrested
Ecuadorian immigrant Deborah Vollmer
and her roommate, Christina Ramirez,
in an alleged murder-for-hire plot
against another woman that also included
black magic. The supposed victim,
tipped off, called the police. Witnesses
told police the women had burned a
cardboard voodoo doll with the name of
the intended victim written on it,
after soaking it in snake oil. The
women, charged with conspiracy to
commit murder, have pleaded not guilty.

In Redmond, nobody can recall anything
like the hex war, though a local
hotel is said to be haunted. It began
in early 1994, when Mrs. Lin, newly
arrived in the U.S. from China's
Guangzhou region, formerly known as
Canton, opened the Full Moon. At the
time, Mrs. Chan's Stockton's was
thriving, in competition with only
one other Chinese restaurant across
town. "It was so nice then, no trouble,"
recalls Mrs. Chan, 42 years old, a
fellow Cantonese who came to the U.S.
in the early 1980s. She and Mrs. Lin
are among a handful of Chinese among
Redmond's 11,178 inhabitants.

According to Mrs. Chan, she was running
Stockton's with her husband and four
children when the first bowl of rice
appeared mysteriously on her back
doorstep. On the rice, she says, were
four pennies. Mrs. Chan says rice and
pennies were left at Stockton's on at
least 10 subsequent occasions,
sometimes with cooking oil spattered
on her window. She suspected her new
rival but didn't have proof. Her
12-year-old son, Chiu, says he saw Mrs.
Lin hurrying away from the Stockton's
back door after one of these deliveries.

Business Is Off

Mrs. Lin denies she did it. Indeed,
she says, she has found rice and
pennies at her back door. Both women
say their businesses, already
suffering, will collapse if the
hexes aren't lifted. According to Arthur
Wolf, a Stanford University China
specialist, the Redmond incidents appear
to be a version of a generic Chinese
curse. Leaving any sort of offering on
an enemy's back steps does the trick,
he says. It invites supernatural
"bandits and beggars," instead of
ancestors and friendly gods.

Some locals believe that business
would be off at both restaurants
regardless of hexes because the town's
other Chinese restaurant, Chan's (no
connection to Mrs. Chan), has better
food. But Mrs. Lin, 34, doesn't buy
that, and she filed the first hexing
complaint with police in January 1994.
When she filed a second the following
November, saying that hexers were leaving
rice-and-penny curses nightly and
accusing Mrs. Chan, officer Tom
Jones noted in his report: "Guess it's
time to have a chat with Stockton's
owner."

When police notified Mrs. Chan of the
accusations, she dialed 911 to complain
about the charges and requested that
police round up her accuser, according
to police reports. Soon, Mrs. Lin
reported an escalation in the spells,
with wet toilet paper and sand added
to the rice and pennies.

In Possession of Oil

A break came this year, on April 24.
According to police reports, Mrs.
Lin's mother reported she had seen
Mrs. Chan "throw dirty water" and saw
her "spitting" on the front window
and door of the Full Moon. Mrs. Chanwas
then cited for criminal mischief and
was told by police to stay away from
the Full Moon. But shortly after
midnight on Sept. 18, Officer Jones
spotted Mrs. Chan in the alley behind
the Full Moon. Although she explained
that she was out for a walk, the
patrolman said he found a fresh coating
of oil on the Full Moon's back door, and
a cup of oil in Mrs. Chan's jacket.

The police report says she admitted to
dousing the door. But Mrs. Chan now
maintains the oil was merely a Chinese
herbal remedy she had prepared for
her husband and that she was there
waiting for him to leave a tavern. "In
China, women aren't allowed in bars,"
she says.

Charged with criminal trespass and
criminal mischief, Mrs. Chan awaits a court
hearing set for Nov. 13. The town seems
divided over who is at fault. But people
agree on one thing: They would like all
the cursing to stop.

© 1997 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

commentary © 1997 catherine yronwode (cat@luckymojo.com)


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