Tips for getting rid of curses

Note: This node deals with Magick. Not sleight-of-hand, not misdirection. Not card tricks. This is real, live, will-working. If you think that sort of thing is complete and utter garbage, I wish you well, and ask that you go away. Thank you.

A curse is a nasty business to be under. While it's nice to think about the karmic implications of throwing a curse on someone, it can still seriously ruin your day. So, here are some suggestions for getting rid of the nasty things once and for all.

1. Disbelieve - Refuse to believe that the curse exists.
   

         Magick is primarily a discipline of the mind, and more specifically of will. If you disbelieve in a thing hard enough, especially something magickal, you can generally destroy it outright, or weaken it sufficiently that one of the other tactics gets rid of it, in the case of especially strong curses.

         Try to bolster your disbelief. Find reasons that the curse is nothing to worry about. For example, most magickal practicioners who have been at it for long enough to get good don't put curses on people. People are generally quite good at messing themselves up without any magickal help. It's very likely that the person who laid the curse on you in the first place is just trying to scare you, and maybe look cool.

Purify - Burn out that curse!

      If you're given to visualization, imagine a bright white light at the core of your being. Slowly expand that bright light throughout all of your body, head to toe, out to a distance of about 6 to 12 inches past your skin. As you're doing this, imagine the light burning (but I wouldn't recommend imagining this as a painful process, unless you really like that sort of thing) out every trace of negative energy in you, until there is none left.

      If you're not given to visualization, use whatever works for you. The important thing here is to imagine some sort of purification that goes through your entire body, and about 6 to 12 inches past your skin. That takes care of the aura region as well.

Absorption - Suck that curse right out.

      Use a candle for this, if you like. Candles are quite good for this sort of thing, as they already have a somewhat mystical air about them, and they provide an easy focus item. Imagine (and imagine hard) that as the candle burns, it sucks out all the negative energy from your body and takes it into itself. As the candle burns down, the negative energy is dissipated.

      I recommend a black candle, as black is a very absorbing color for me. However, if you don't care to use a black one, use whatever color or combination of colors that has the most absorbing connotations for you. Also, if you're very nature-oriented, try to use beeswax candles rather than paraffin. Beeswax is much closer to nature.

Ritual - Lots of people make for stronger magick.

      Sometimes, there's a curse that you just can't seem to shake. Maybe you really pissed somebody off, or maybe you just stepped somewhere you shouldn't. Whatever the case, you just can't manage to get the curse whipped on your own. So get with your ritual group (if you have one), or see if you can guest with an existing ritual group (if you can find one), and dedicate a significant amount of time to breaking the curse.

      Note that if you do guest, make sure you explain your problem to the group before the ritual begins. Knowledge is a good thing. Talk about it beforehand, to find out just how everybody wants to get rid of the curse. Make sure everybody has the same idea before you begin. Things could get messy otherwise. So long as everyone stays focused on the task at hand, things will go splendidly.

Ask for help - Call in the big guns.

      If you've tried everything you can think of to get rid of this curse, and you still can't shake it, take some time and talk to your Deity or Deities of choice. Explain the situation, and ask very nicely for help in lifting the curse. With any luck, your deity will smile upon you and give you the helping hand you need. If not, it might mean that there's something you haven't tried yet. Don't be afraid to do research, and to pick the brains of older and wiser heads.

With any luck, one of the easier avenues will do the trick. Maybe a combination of tactics. Hey, it seems to work for AIDS, so why not curses? If you're still having problems, it might not be a curse laid upon you per se. Rather a series of obstacles placed in your path for you to overcome, often by a Deity or Deities. This sort of thing tends to lead to personal growth, which a lot of gods these days are keen on. Or it might simply be something you've done catching up with you. We're all subject to karma.

If you have a suggestion, post a writeup, or you can /msg me in the Chatterbox. And with all advice, please take this with a grain of salt. What works for me might not work for you. Above all, think about the thing you are doing before you do it. That will save you a world of trouble.

Lets face it, the days of text driven menu systems are over. Lets get rid of curses. There are a few simple steps that can be taken to get rid of curses in your environment.

1. Learn Tk. Tk is a reasonably powerful toolkit (thats where the name comes from) for working with a gui. This is especialy true when coupled with another scripting language such as TCL or Perl.
2. Migrate to the web. Web based interfaces are a growing movement for getting away from the command line and all those confusing switches that may be necessary to get someone's program to work.
3. Use a real editor. Not vi. Not emacs. Something that really works with words. Notepad or Microsoft Word are recommended, possibly Star Office if your tastes run that way.
4. Java's AWT. You will never have want for another character based interface after getting deep into the innards of the abstract window toolkit.

With perseverance, you can get rid of curses in your environment. Not all programs will be easily mapped to one of these methods, sometimes it may take a few to get all aspects of the program to work properly.

I love NetHack. Vi is my editor. This was spell checked using gnu ispell. Long live the command line! My apologies to PopeFelix for the inspiration.

Here are all the ways I know of removing curses in Nethack and Slash'Em. Many of these tips were taken from ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/games/nethack/General/Spoilers/NH31/trouble. Some of them will not uncurse the item, but will free you from being stuck to it.

1. Read a scroll of remove curse. If the scroll itself is cursed, this will do you no good. An uncursed scroll will remove curses on your worn and wielded items, and on any loadstones in your inventory. A blessed scroll will uncurse all cursed items in your main inventory (note that this will not work on cursed items in bags).

2. Dip a cursed object into a potion of holy water. This requires one potion per object or stack of objects to be uncursed. Uncursed or cursed water can be blessed (made into holy water) by being dropped on a coaligned altar and prayed over, assuming you are in good standing with your god. You can also make more holy water out of many uncursed potions of water by dipping them, in a stack, into a single potion of holy water. Uncursed potions of water can be made by diluting other potions.

3. Dip a cursed object into a fountain. There is a 2/15 chance that the item will be uncursed with the message "The water glows for a moment". Metal items might rust, and you may attract water demons or water nymphs, so be careful.

4. Pray. Your deity treats cursed blindfolds and levitation items as a major problem, and other cursed wielded or worn items (plus loadstones and luckstones) as a minor problem. If your alignment and luck are good enough, all these items will be uncursed. Also, a "light blue aura" surrounding you after a prayer will uncurse all cursed objects in your main inventory, as per a blessed scroll of remove curse; however, this effect cannot be guaranteed.

5. Zap a wand or spell of cancellation at the object. If possible, drop it first before zapping it; otherwise (i.e., it's welded to your body), drop all magical items, including enchanted and/or blessed armor and weapons, and zap yourself (direction .). Failing to remove magical items from inventory before cancelling yourself can result in the unpleasant effects of loss of armor/weapon enchantment, blanking of scrolls and spellbooks, changing of magical potions into uncursed water or fruit juice, etc.

6. Cast a spell of remove curse. If you're at least skilled in the appropriate spell school, it will have the same effect as a blessed scroll. Otherwise, it will have the same effect as an uncursed scroll.

7. If the cursed object is armour or a weapon, enchant it.

8. If the cursed object is armour and you don't mind losing it, take off all other armour and read a noncursed scroll of destroy armour.

9. If the cursed object is armour, let an incubus or succubus remove it.

10. If the cursed object is causing you to levitate, float over a sink. You will crash to the floor, and the item will be removed, although it will remain cursed.

11. If the cursed object is a chargeable ring, charge it up until it explodes. This is probably a waste of scrolls of charging. In Slash'EM, you may be able to pay a shopkeeper to charge the ring for you.

12. If the cursed object is armour or a weapon, polymorph into something that can't wear armour or wield weapons.

13. Drop everything else and let a nymph steal the cursed items.

14. Loadstones only: drop everything but the loadstone, a wand of digging and your armour, enter a shop, pick up something in the shop, and dig through the floor. The shopkeeper will grab your backpack.

15. Step on a magic trap. There is a 1/20 chance of this acting like an uncursed scroll of remove curse. Be careful, because the most common effect of a magic trap is to blind you and summon monsters.

16. If the cursed object is a ring, a blast of lightning may cause it to explode, but may also explode useful rings and wands.

17. High-level spellcasting monsters can destroy armour if you're not magic resistant, in the order cloak, suit, shirt, helmet, gloves, boots, shield, but watch out for their other spells such as touch of death.

18. Dip the cursed item into a potion of polymorph.

19. In Slash'Em, pay a shopkeeper to uncurse the item. The cost is no more than 250 GP. If your Charisma is low, ensure that the item is marked as cursed in your inventory, because otherwise the shopkeeper may cheat you by not uncursing it.

20. In Slash'Em 6E4F8, dipping a cursed worn or wielded item into a potion of gain level will remove/unwield it. However, this is a bug and has been fixed in the development version.

How to remove curses, according to IT:

#rm -f /usr/lib/libcurses.*

This is said to work on linux...
Craftier magicians wil prefer:

#rpm -e curses