5 Ridiculous Ancient Beliefs (That Thrive on the Internet)
Here in the information age every one of us is a few keystrokes away from all the discoveries and wisdom that built modern civilization. Yes, long gone are the dark days of magic and mythology, when men worshiped the stars and paid witches and warlocks to cast spells on their enemies...
Oh, are they?
Oh, wait. Sorry, it turns out the witches and warlocks just moved their operation to the Internet. And raised their prices.
All you have to do is pull up your browser and search for...
Voodoo
Are you suffering from ill fortune? Is life getting you down? Want revenge on your boss? The power of Voodoo is here to help!
What's that? You think poking Voodoo dolls to get back at your enemies is a ridiculous ancient tradition practiced only by low-budget horror movie villains with fake accents? You're behind on the times, friend. This is 2009, and a quick look at suggested Google searches shows the Voodoo business is a boomin':
There are Voodoo news groups, Google groups, online shops, how-to guides, you name it. Holy crap! How do we get started?
Well a quick check of the Wikipedia page lets us know that we would need a gris-gris, or voodoo doll, for most spells. Pausing only to take a quick shot of our own brand of cure-all, Jack Daniels and sterno on ice, we sprang into action. Googling Voodoo dolls soon got us all the information we needed.
Corporate gifts?
You can buy pre-consecrated Voodoo dolls online, complete with an instruction manual on how to use them, for $20 to $100. What could be more convenient for today's frenetic lifestyle?
Meanwhile, Voodoo spell kits are also popular sale items. Costing $38 a pop, they are one-shot spells that have to be disposed of within 24 hours of casting, though this clashes a bit with the one year unconditional guarantee offered by the site.
What, you still think this whole thing is a money-making scam for stupid people? Then, you haven't read the testimonials!
Hmm... we hate to be pedantic here, but the "retrieve a lover" spell didn't actually work, right? You got a new one instead. Eh, probably just as good.
See? For only $200 worth of spells, her lover came back to her! Or, the ex realized he was going to have to go through the whole "find a woman to have sex with" thing again and cut his losses.
Nearly every page started with a stern warning not to take this lightly. Howtodothings.com gave us this particularly useful bit:
"Voodoo dolls are not something to take lightly. Whether you believe in the faith behind the tradition of making Voodoo dolls or not, you may want to take precautions before making these dolls."
No, it never explains what the precautions are. Hell, all we're doing is casting magic spells here, surely a little common sense will guide us through!
Ghost Hunting
Don't believe in ghosts? Well have you thought maybe it's because you're just not very good at hunting them? Fortunately the 21st century has given us advanced ghost-hunting tactics that our primitive, superstitious ancestors would never have dreamed of!
Type "Ghost h" into Google and it'll take over from there:
The logical place to start, we found, was with The International Ghost Hunters Society. Started and run by David and Sharon Oester, they offer a three-part certification course on ghost hunting.
Yes, certification. Look, if you walk into the Human Resources office of a major ghost hunting firm, you better have a certification in hand or you're getting laughed out of there.
Fortunately, for only $250, that certification can be yours! If that is not sufficient, an extra $50 will get you the course materials to become a certified dimensional shifter. Which... actually sounds more useful (you'd be God, right?)
But don't even think about going into the field without the right tools, unless you want to end up with severe ghost... burns or whatever happens when you mishandle ghosts (if you're prepared you won't have to find out, will you?).
Head on over to the Ghost Hunter Store and pick up some pieces from their mind-boggling selection of equipment. There's a Ghost Meter for only $29.99:
Holy water for just $3.50:
And Geiger Counters for detecting, uh, ghost radiation:
Once you've hunted down your ghost, don't forget to take some incredibly blurry pictures for the Internet!
Astrology
Astrology has been around pretty much as long as humanity has. It is the study on how stars influence the daily lives of one species on a tiny planet 10,000 light years away.
When we saw there were 39.6 million results for astrology...
...we were encouraged. After all, that's fewer than the 40.2 million you get for "astronomy." Then we noticed that "astrological signs" had 57 million.
Hell, you can get 4.5 million on "sexual astrology" alone:
So how can you unlock the amazing power of astrology? Well you can get a series of qualifications from the International Academy of Astrology at $100 and up per course. That's cheaper than a community college!
But of course this is 2009, and if you can't use the power of your PC to help you find love in the stars, why the hell do you even have it? Luckily, you can buy "professional" astrology software for just $400.
Damn, that seems kind of pricey when we can get Astrology for the Nintendo DS for just $19.99.
Hell, for that matter The Only Astrology Book You'll Ever Need is just $13.57 on Amazon. But be warned. From the customer reviews comes this scathing two-star critque:
"...the section on synastry, or chart comparison, which is bad to the point of being harmful."
That's right. Do astrology wrong, and the stars will give you bad advice.
Dowsing
Why are you scraping by paycheck to paycheck when precious metals and oil are right under your feet, waiting to be found? If you thought finding that stuff required all sorts of, you know, experts and equipment and such, you've not heard of dowsing!
Dowsing, or witching, is the centuries-old process of finding water, oil, gems and precious metals using a bent stick or a pendulum. And magic!
Today, dowsers even have their own professional associations, both Americanand British versions. There's a mailing list for you to join, at a small cost. Trust us, that's the last time the costs will be "small" here.
Sure, there are online guides to dowsing available for free and e-books for the low low price of $20 - $70. But if you're serious, you can take courses with an experienced dowser for $99.
Not bad, considering that "find water via magic" professionals can charge $200 an hour.
Worth every penny.
Of course, just as with ghost hunting, the right tools are everything. Online catalogs sell state of the art water witching tools that boast, "...energy mineral ore is used to stimulate the crystals in the power tube... with a newly developed power load formula in a second power tube."
The top of the line is the Power Master Rod III which can be had for the bargain price of... wait for it...
$2,495.
Be careful before you call bullshit on this, these guys can probably use that thing to "witch" out where you live.
Witchcraft
Witchcraft isn't quite as cool as Voodoo, but the whole dancing naked with the devil thing almost makes up for the lack of zombies. Many witches will complain that we are taking them out of context and that magic is not evil, only the intent of the caster is evil. Fine. We believed Charlton Heston when he said something similar, we'll believe you too.
We went searching the Internet for an information-age solution to our spellcasting needs and, sure enough, found plenty of grimoires (spell books) available online:
Guess which caught our eye.
Shop for grimoires on Amazon and you find dozens of them in print (though the classics can be found freely available as PDFs, such as the Grimoire Verum, Heptameron and The Black Pullet). But we want to be up on only the most modern witchcraft techniques, such as those offered by Summoning Spirits: The Art of Magical Evocation.
We had almost clicked to order this one when this undoctored two-star review warned us off:
"I'm a student of an esoterical order, and I have quite some knoledge about Magick and Summoning technics. Although this is an interesting book, with a really nice definition of the Art, it takes this Art too lightly in my point of view... I wondered if the author is aware of the real nature and wiseness of this kind of Spirits, and how they can create ilusions in one's mind."
Hmm... that's a good point. We decided to try the less advanced Gothic Grimoire by the same author, but then we saw this one-star review:
Eight of 52 people found that review helpful, which is odd because when we read it out loud our hair burst into flames.
Perhaps this is a subject best left to the experts. And by that we mean an online spell-casting service. Yes, they do curses too. All for the low price of $27, or $54 if you want it triple cast. Or $189 if you want it cast by the coven. If you don't want to wait the usual two or three weeks, add an extra $54 for an urgent cast. All major credit cards accepted, a one year unconditional guarantee on all spells given--provided you maintain a positive frame of mind!
And it's all done via email! No awkward face-to-face interaction required!
What do you mean? Of course we trust her to actually do the spell! The testimonials say it all:
Hmm... but you are still fat, right?
And just look at how happy Michelle K is with the service:
What? Holy shit! She had three people killed! With magic!
We hereby take back everything we said.
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Discover some real-world applications of the above, in 6 Insane Sports Stories That Will Make You Believe In Curses. Or check out some baffling how-tos, in The 11 Most Unnecessary 'How To' Guides on the Web.
And stop by our Top Picks to see Jack punch his DOB Voodoo doll repeatedly in the genital area.
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