Halloween Column: Hexes for Your Exes

Love makes creatures of us all

Oct 31, 2023

Last week, as part of my general declaration of witchcraft and retirement from society, I offered to hex your exes if you wrote in with a request. Today is the day I fulfill that promise, to the best of my ability.

But, boy, can I say, the letters were pretty intense? And there were so many of them! On the milder end I was asked to hex the coach of the Padres (I hope he falls in a ditch, I guess?) and on the more intense end, well … so many memories, hoarded privations, wounds, parents and step-parents and uncles, rapists and abusers, old love gone rotten.

It got me thinking about the ways love—romantic love, but also parental love or lack thereof—can twist us into monstrous shapes. Love cuts to the marrow of us and frees us from the shackles of logic even at its sublime best. When it goes wrong there is rage and fawning subservience and terror and raw need and a continual attrition of the self under an onslaught or continual trickle of cruelty. Every adored feature becomes an inversion of itself, the fuel of hatred.

It is these sublimated selves you have shown me, slightly overwhelming my persona as a semi-ironical aspiring witch. I would like to give you freedom from your pain, or vengeance, or both. I don’t know that I can, but I can try: I can give you some words and rituals that carry power in the speaking and doing, and tell you that in unburdening yourself to me you have already moved a pace across the black earth toward deliverance.

While, my faux-witchery has largely been driven by vibes—a grab-bag of culturally osmosed influences, and improvisation—I felt moved to take a look at other sources, including The Little Book of Curses and Maledictions for Everyday Use, by Dawn Rae Downton. From that almost frighteningly straightforward volume, I offer an all-purpose hex for exes as a prelude to your letters and my responses. (I wasn’t able to include all of the letters for space reasons, but these hexes are adaptable: use them if you want some aid in moving on!)

Onward to the rituals.

Hex-Your-Ex

From The Little book of Curses and Maledictions—the author claims it was “engraved in haphazard Latin on a small metal disk,” from the southern Italian city of Minturno. The would-be hexer is warned against the possibility of karmic backlash.

You need:

some small belonging your ex left (clothing, a note, a hair from a hairbrush)
a short length of twine
a square of black cloth

Choose a private spot where you can dispose of your ex's possession by burying it or throwing it in a river (not the ocean where it might wash back up on shore). No garbage cans; no Dumpsters either. It needs to stay where you put it.

Arrive at dusk. Using the twine, tie up your item in the cloth. Dispose of it.

Make three counterclockwise turns on or near the spot and say, “Spirits of the underworld, I consecrate to you [say your ex's name here]. Whatever she does, may it all turn out wrong. Spirits of the netherworld, I consecrate to you her limbs, her head, her hair, her brain, her forehead, her eyebrows, her mouth, her nose, her chin, her cheeks, her lips, her speech, her breath, her neck, her liver, her shoulders, her heart, her lungs, her chest, her breasts, her fingers, her hands, her navel, her entrails, her groin, her knees, her heels, her soles, her toes. Spirits of the underworld, I consecrate and hand over to you her shadow in addition.”

Thank the spirits politely—don't forget and discharge them. Depart, and don't look back.

Hex for a Cruel Ex

“Years of tiny stabs at my tender spots made it just seem normal, until other people pointed out that partners who love us aren't so petty & mean all the time. The decision to leave kicked the meanness into high gear but it's almost done now, soon we'll be totally free of each other.”

—

“Friedrich lied and cheated his way through our last 8 years together. I stayed in that relationship for so long because of my love for my stepsons. And now here we are. Divorced and an aching hole in my heart where the kids should be.”

—

“Such an innocuous name for a major asshole. He had the audacity to dump ME just before I could dump him.
Luckily I was very young and we were only married for a little over a year.”

—

“To top it off, I helped this asshole move his shit to his new place after we moved out but he didn't bother to return the favour!”

—

“His name is Friedrich and an incomplete list of his crimes is as follows:
Cheating
Lying
Slandering me
Slandering his ex-wife
Threatening to kill his ex-wife
Hurting my son (not physically but with his words and actions following our breakup)
Celebrating my father’s death
Stealing ideas
Profiting from the war effort in Ukraine in unseemly ways
Telling vulnerable people online to go kill themselves”

A Hex:
May every time he opens a door, let it wound him, leaving blood on the lintel. May every time he crosses a threshold, trepidation comes upon him. When he enters a room, may he feel a pressing desire to exit; when he exits, a desire to return; until he feels no welcome anywhere. May he thus wander from room to room, into and out of each abode he tries to find respite, without surcease, for the rest of his days.

Ritual:
Find an oak door and rap on it eight times in succession. Each time you make contact, say your ex’s name. Prick your middle finger with a sewing needle and let one drop of blood fall on the lintel, one on the knob, one at the threshold, and one at the door’s center. Use white thread to bind the puncture. Dispose of the bloodied thread at a crossroad.

Hex for a Lying Ex

“I'd like to throw my ex husband into the ring/out into space. We've been divorced for three years, but I'm still bitter, and maybe a hex will help me move on, you know?

I was with Friedrich for 13 years, married for six of them. I met him when I was 23 and should have left him many times before I finally called it quits. His sins were many, but the final straw was lying to me about how his business was doing, despite me asking many times to see his books, and tanking my credit before declaring bankruptcy.”

—

“I have barely a scintilla of life and fight left in me after living with a covert narcissist for 18 years now. I'm finally fully aware of what is going on here and I am working towards freeing myself and moving the fuck out of this Texas shit hole I was dragged to 42yrs ago with being consulted. I want to return to the midwest.”

“I'd be thrilled to find that he suddenly has no capacity to lie, cheat, lie more, and play his god damned games, and pretend to be the bumbling idiot he is not.”

May he doubt his own tongue until he falls silent, because only silence is neither lie nor truth. May his silence last for seven years, and after the seven years, when he opens his mouth, his own uncertainty will have undone him: may he live always in doubt of himself and of what is true, having confounded truth so often.

Ritual:
Bury seven cents under wild grass after a rain. Throw seven cents into running water. Cast seven cents into the air from a height and let it drop. Save seven cents, then spend seven cents. Give away seven cents. Finally, bury seven cents beside the roots of a tree that is fifty years old or older. At the foot of the tree say, “You have lied, and through your lying stolen; by your thefts I bind you, seven years I bind you, to your doubt I bind you, to the truth I bind you, by Aletheia goddess of truth I bind you, by Apate goddess of lies I bind you. Seven times seven I bind you. By copper and nickel I bind your tongue, by penny-piece I bind your heart, by earth and tree, by water and by commerce I bind you to your doubt.”

Hex for Sexual Abusers and Rapists

“There are a thousand ways Dymphna hurt me. We dated for a couple years. We lived together. Every time we argued or I put up a boundary she threatened herself and I relented. It was an impossible way to live.

When I finally broke up with her she couldn't take it. I was so burnt out and in free fall after coming out as trans and being harassed and threatened by people about it. I broke up but I said we could share the apartment. I came home one night and drank to sleep. I had given her the bed so I slept on the couch. I woke up to her assaulting me. Drunk, I tried to push her off. It was hard. She was bigger than me then. She made a horrible sound that my mind won't let me remember. I got free and ran out the door with my keys. I was drunk, I couldn't drive myself anywhere. It had to be 5 am. I lived in North Dakota back then and the nearest gas station was still some distance. I ran away, she chased for a while.

She said she'd move out but she took months. I finally moved to Minneapolis and didn't tell her.”

—

“We split ways, amicably (haha), after ‘dating’ for 11 years and 3 years of a civil union, because I'd become chronically ill and disabled.

He'd been telling me for years he still wanted to get married (to me, even). But everytime I asked him to talk to my parents, somehow it never happened.

There was the coerced sex. And then, after, he said it was ‘difficult to be with me because he felt guilty for all the times he'd coerced me into having sex over the years’.”

—

“Pray heed to this poor petition of mine. I have no ex with which I would want ill fate. They have mostly been cool tbh.

My hope is to feed the names of those who have harmed me that were a fair bit closer to my blood and birth.

My eldest brother. My nightmare. A ghastly force following me, a poltergeist of sorts. Memories of misdeeds flash like dynamite around what came before and after. The one who chased me somehow naked into the bathroom, I was faster and saved by the locked door, but I only recall being in the room alone, his voice begging me to let him in, so he could count the freckles on my body. Like he owned me. The one who taunted me for my black wild curls, my brown skin, my differences from him (we had different fathers). Begging me another time to look up from my book, please, look, look at him, his nakedness I could almost see. While I never had the eyeglasses I needed growing up, it was only then that I was grateful for the broken blur of everything beyond my touch. On those days when I woke up with my pants on backwards, it is him that I suspect. I have been told that I would swing my fists at anyone trying to wake me, to touch me while I was sleeping.

My stepfather. The only father I ever had. Could have had. Alcoholic rages. He hurt us. I didn't mind when it was me, but. My little brother. He was only 4. He got it more than any of us. I remember screaming so much that I blacked out. Or maybe I kept screaming, but the memories stopped forming when I knew there was nothing else worth remembering. He pulled me from bed once, in the dark it was hard to know why. He said that I kicked the cat. It scratched me and ran over my legs. I didn't. I would never. It didn't matter. I hid my head as much as I could. It still hurts there sometimes.

My uncle. Who baptised me. Who I knew from age 10. One day when I was 18 he took me to his secret apartment. Told me how he wanted to shoot porn with me. How pretty I was. How much alcohol he could get for me. I nodded and set my mind to record. I told my grandmother. My aunt. I took her there. I tried to show her. She never forgave me.”

My curse on these bastards:
May every organ they use to hurt another wither: may the cruel tongue lose its power of speech, the genitals their ability to pierce or to accept, the hands that claw and grasp go weak and falter, the legs that carry them to prey lock and refuse to move. May they feel every pain they have inflicted, in dreams and in waking. May they never find respite. May every harm they do redound on them a hundredfold and a thousandfold.

A ritual to let go:
Take a silver fish (it is best if it is a saltwater fish but any fish will do; canned sardines are fine, but the larger the fish the better) and cut it into pieces. It is essential to preserve the silver skin. Carry the scraps of skin to a garden or a plot of land in which plants may be grown. Bury the fish and, above it, plant the seeds of a climbing vine. I recommend clematis, ivy or trumpet vine: these seeds are easy to obtain and very cheap.

Say to the vine seed: As you grow, I rise. As you climb, I leave the pain behind. As the silver skin of the fish turns to earth, I turn my pain to earth. As you consume and devour what is left behind, water and flesh, consume and devour my pain, and take it from me. As you cling and climb, I will part from my pain. Hold it for me in your green hands, take it from me, and grow in strength as I grow in strength.

For vengeance:
Carry two handfuls of coarse salt in your pockets for a day and sleep with it under your pillow (I recommend using a cloth bag but a Ziploc is fine). The next day, take the salt and go to a plot of land that is fallow and unused; if no empty lots are nearby, find an area paved with black asphalt.

Scatter the salt in two lines, reserving a pinch to complete the ritual.

Walk between the two lines, saying:
As salt draws the water from the earth, I draw joy from your heart.
As salt dissolves in water I dissolve your joy.
As roots wither in the presence of salt may your joy wither.
As salt makes hunger and thirst, so I hunger and thirst for vengeance.
As you have hurt my body and my spirit I bind you with salt and I bind you with pain. In the name of Huixtocihuatl goddess of salt and sister of the rain gods I bind you and condemn you.

Draw your fingers across the lines of salt and break them. Turn away from them and throw the pinch of salt over your left shoulder. Do not look behind you as you walk away.

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Hex for a Father

“A hex upon my father Friedrich, whose abuse and isolation nearly cost me my life… My father is a wealthy man with a six-figure salary, takes regular vacations to expensive locales, and has built up expensive antique collections. I still wish to be left his fortune, not out of daughterly care, but because that financially could be payback for the immeasurable harm my father has enacted upon my life, where I feel I will never be free until he is gone from this earth.”

This is a good application of a Yiddish curse: “May he have ten ships of gold and the money only make him sick.” Or another: “A hundred houses shall he have, in every house a hundred rooms and in every room twenty beds, and a delirious fever should drive him from bed to bed.” Or a third, the simplest and most chilling: Zol er krenken un gedenken. “Let him suffer and remember.”

A Simple Ritual
Take a handful of barley and separate it into three piles.

Burn the first pile: This is the rejection of your father, who seeded you.

Bury the second: This is what may yet grow from his abandonment of duty, the potential for your enrichment.

Hide the third, wrapped in a cloth: This is the secret.

A Slavic Hex

“For Halloween, I would like you to send a hex in the direction of my ex husband, Friedrich. Although we may have divorced last year and you could say I should have moved on by now, I am Eastern European in origin and I don't just let go of a grudge, especially when it's someone who hurt me so badly.

Not only did he have an affair with a coworker, he led me on for over a year.

Some other things that count as hexworthy: belittled my appetite for reading, constantly asking me why I needed to buy books. When we divorced, yours was the first book I bought.

He constantly put down my interests, in film, in music, in TV, until all I was was a reflection of his interests. Then he called me boring. That I was teaching him nothing new.

He made me feel small and unimportant and dreary.”

To satisfy your desire for a specifically Eastern European brand of vengeance, I found a truly excellent book (after a couple of absolute duds) called Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine, 1000-1900: A Sourcebook. Its editors and compilers, Valerie Kivelson and Christine Worobec, gathered nine hundred years’ worth of primary-source documents relating to Slavic witchcraft, in English translation. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, although it does feature a lot of trials of illiterate peasant women executed for scattering salt at doorways, et alius. Anyway, I went rummaging in this gigantic treasure box and found you a very good hex.

Hex:
This curse was taken from the notebook of a medical student attached to a Novosibirsk military regiment named Ivan Vasiliev Molodavkin Bezsonov in 1734. He wrote a book of extremely lyrical spells, mostly to attract women, succeed at hunting, and protect against malevolent authorities. He was said to have been instructed by a wizard-serf-monk named Matvei Nikitin Ovchinnikov, and here is his spell to send hernias to people. It’s potent as hell. Hernias (gryzhi) are mentioned forty-six times in this book.

I shall arise without blessing myself, and without crossing myself shall leave the hut not by the doors, I shall leave the yard not by the gates, and the foyer not by the foyer; rather I shall go out of the hut with smoke, fire and steam and out of the yard by way of a wind, and I shall go out into an open field, where I shall stand facing west with my back to the east and shall look up at the sky and down at the earth. Open, wide earth, and create a deep hole and through there the evil, fierce, grave ailment of the bewitched and inflamed hernia shall exit. And I, slave [your name], shall scream: “Where have you flown, you evil, fierce, serpent-like, grave ailment of the bewitched and inflamed hernia?” And the hernia shall say to me: “I have flown beyond twenty-seven seas, rivers, and lakes to dry up the lakes and rivers and to drink out of the seas. And I, slave so-and-so, shall kneel down and pray thus: “O, you evil, serpent-like ailment of the bewitched and inflamed hernia, do not fly past twenty-seven seas, rivers, and lakes to dry up the lakes and rivers and drink out of the seas. Come here instead and fly into this other slave of God So and so’s white body, passionate heart, and black liver, in all seventy of his veins and seventy joints, and three and two and one tendons, eat his body, chew on his bones, bite his brains, incessantly during the day, without peace at night, for all twenty-four hours, for all its quarter-hours and minutes. And I shall kneel again and pray thus: “O you evil, fierce, serpent-like grave ailment of the inflamed hernia! Do not fly to the tall mountains and deep caves, to the Babylonian kingdom of burning logs and smashed stones. Fly instead, you evil, fierce, grave illness of the inflamed hernia into this other slave so-and-so, into his white body, his bones and brain, and tear his body apart, and drink his blood incessantly during the day and at night, for all twenty-four hours, quarter-hours, and minutes.” Once again I, slave of God so-and-so, shall go out and shall go further on the open field to the pagan sea, to the pagan island. On that island is a red bloody stone and on that stone sits the fierce, grave illness of the inflamed hernia. And I, slave so-and-so, shall say: “O you fierce, grave illness of the inflamed hernia, do not chew the red stone, but chew this other slave of God so-and-so's white body, his passionate heart, bones and brain. Now and forever more.”
With these words I lock the spell, and the hernia will gnaw at you. I place the key in the lap of Satan himself. For all eternity.

So, you know, do that.

Hex for a Stalker

“I'll admit to dating him, years ago, but in my defense I was young and brainwashed and had zero self-esteem and he paid me a crumb of attention. He was cartoonishly controlling, right down to things like what medication I could take according to his religious beliefs (which I didn't share).

I broke it off over a decade ago, but he stalked me for years and still pops up online wherever I'm forced to use my legal name. I keep a folder in a safe place full of his creepitude and his personal information in case I ever turn up suspiciously dead.

The stalking alone should be enough for the hex, but if you need more: he's a tradcath with the usual assortment of antisemitic, racist, queerphobic and misogynistic beliefs that go along with that. He writes godawful right-wing "thriller" novels, too (think Dan Brown with a head injury), and the content and style are what you'd expect.

At least, all of that is what he was like a few years ago. I've tried to ignore him except for playing whack-a-mole with the block button. Based on the fact that he's still being a pain in my ass, though, I assume he hasn't grown much as a person.

Mostly, I just want him to stay out of my life and quit hurting other people. There's far too much pain in the world as it is.

Feel free to hex him to your heart's content.”

Man this guy sucks. Stalkers are particularly evil; I’ve had my own brushes with persistent surveillance from enemies and it just. Blows. You have to be so careful about your name and records and life! Here I make consideration of the Jewish principle mida k’neged mida—essentially “what goes around comes around,” or, as Isaiah put it, “as his hands have dealt, so it shall be done to him.”

In this spirit I issue this malediction: Just as you must be careful with your name lest he visit harm, so his name will cause him harm. Those who hear it will be repulsed by it. Those who encounter it will reject it. Those who see it will feel pain in their eyes and blame him for it. When he speaks his own name it will burn his tongue. When others speak it they will fall ill and blame him for it. His name will be a curse to him. He will be nameless as an ill wind and pass over your life like a wind passes.

A Spell for Victory in Battle

“Hi Talia,

I appreciate your willingness to send me strength in battle. While I cannot name my rapist, you know my name and the trial is set to begin in January. I am being sued for defamation for naming my rapist. What would be ideal is for the case to implode and be dismissed before it ever goes to court but if it must go to court a swift victory for me and the other victims being sued with me would be appreciated.”

Lovely one, I am sending you a spell from the notebooks of the defrocked priest Petr Osipov, subject of a witchcraft trial in St. Petersburg in 1732, from Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine 1000-1900 cited above. Say what you like about the guy, he knew how to write a spell. This one is specifically for making authorities obey your will! It also invokes some powerful Slavic mythology and I am confident it will aid you in your coming legal battle, and lead you to triumph over your rapist. It invokes the Sirin, a powerful figure in Russian myth, with the head of a woman and the body of a bird. She is the most powerful of birds and will lead you to triumph.

It’s an incantation. You’ll need hot wax and a necklace.

I, slave of God [your name], arise, blessing myself. I go into the open field, in the green oak forest and the blue seashore. I go, slave of God [your name], to the holy Mount Tabor, and I stand, slave of God [your name], on the holy Mount Tabor, with my face to the east, and I look and I see, slave of God [your name], from that holy Mount Tabor, all woods and all mountains, and all sails and all birds of paradise and the heavenly bird of paradise, the Sirin. And as all forests bow to and obey the three holy trees—the pine, the cypress, and the cedar, so may all authorities and important state officials [name the judge and other relevant authorities] bow to and obey me, slave of God [your name], whether on the road or on the path or in any place, and in their own government courts of law, on any day and any night, at any hour, and at any of the twenty-four hours, and for all eternity. Amen.
And like all grasses bow and obey the tsar of grasses, and bow low before him, so may all authorities and important state officials [name them] bow to and obey me, slave of God [your name], whether on the road or on the path or in any place, and in their own government courts of law, on any day and any night, at any hour, and at any of the twenty-four hours, and for all eternity. Amen.
And as all birds of paradise flock to the heavenly bird of paradise, the Sirin, and gather to hear her sweet songs, just so should all authorities and important state officials come together and gather around me, slave of God [your name], on the road or on the path or in any place, and in their own government courts of law, on any day and any night, at any hour, and at any of the twenty-four hours, and for all eternity. Amen.
As no one can catch the heavenly bird of paradise, the Sirin, and no one can look upon her, just so may no one, however wise, with his oh-so-wise words, triumph over me, slave of God [your name], before any official of the sovereign's judicial chambers, on any day, or any night, or at any of the twenty-four hours. Amen.
And as this my bright wax shrinks in the flame, so may fury and anger and ferocity and evil human scheming of any authorities and important state officials [name officials] toward me, slave of God [your name], diminish, whether on the road or on the path or in any place, and in their own government courts of law, on any day and any night, at any hour, and at any of the twenty-four hours, and for all eternity. Amen.
Thrice. Say this spell over hot wax thrice, and wear that wax on a necklace around your neck, a drop the size of a small poppy seed, and keep it clean, when you engage in fornication or nighttime emissions, then remember to take that wax off, and the next day say it again and tack on another piece. The end. Amen.