Is there anything a Voodoo Doll Can't do?

Question: I have seen many other sites dealing with voodoo dolls and their uses my question is this is there anything a voodoo doll can't do aside from bringing a loved one back from the dead?

Answer: Well, if we look at Voodoo dolls for what they are supposed to do, which is to function as focusing tools in ritual and meditation, and to act as conduits for connecting with the divine, then I would say that their limitations pretty much reflect our limitations. If you can imagine it, you can make a voodoo doll to help manifest it.

How do you get rid of a cursed Voodoo doll?

If you feel that you are in possession of a negative Voodoo doll, there are two basic ways to properly dispose of it. The first way is to put it in a white cloth and sprinkle it generously with sea salt. You can then take it to a river or stream or deep in the woods with an offering of fruit and some coins and ask the spirits of the water or the trees to transform the negative energy through the power of the earth. Walk away without looking back and when you arrive home, light a 7-day protection candle and take a bath with cleansing herbs, including sea salt.

Here's a purification bath you can take after getting rid of a negative Voodoo doll:

White Bath  for Purification

This is good for when you feel spiritually dirty, feel the need to cleanse your aura, need spiritual revitalization, or for cold and flu symptoms.

First, light a white or blue candle and burn either coconut or blessings incense. Add the following to your bath water:

2 to 4 cups of evaporated milk or powdered milk
2 to 4 tablespoons of anise

Wash with sea salt.

Another way to dispose of a cursed Voodoo doll is to place the doll in a clean white cloth on a Saturday. Dig a hole in the earth on sacred ground if possible, far away from your home. Place the cloth wrapped doll in the hole and burn it. Then, cover the ashes which remain with Holy Water and cover the hole over with the dirt. The earth will recycle that negative energy very quickly and turn it into positivity and blessings. When you return home, bathe very well, adding some Holy Water or May Water to your bath.

If you do not have access to the items necessary to safely dispose of your cursed Voodoo doll, you may order a Cursed Voodoo Doll Disposal Kit from Planet Voodoo, or take advantage of our Cursed Voodoo Doll Disposal Service.

Can You Like, Kill a Person with a Voodoo Doll?

Murder, torture, abuse, maim, dismember...these are some of the words commonly associated with Voodoo dolls in the popular culture. People turn to the extreme to get even, gain control over, torture, and even kill their enemies. But before I answer this burning question, let's look at the process of torturing an enemy with a Voodoo doll.

So, what is torture by Voodoo doll?

1. the inflicting of severe pain by sticking pins in the groin area to force information or confession, get revenge, etc.

2. any method by which such pain is inflicted, such as binding, burying alive, or cutting and dismembering

3. any severe physical or mental pain, agony, and anguish caused by crushing the head of a Voodoo doll that resembles or represents an intended victim

4. a cause of such pain or agony, such as fire (burning a voodoo doll), knives (stabbing a voodoo doll), scissors (cutting a voodoo doll), or brute force (beating a voodoo doll)

5. physical abuse of such severity that it results in the ultimate Voodoo death.

Seriously, it never ceases to amaze me the questions that I receive about Voodoo dolls. Believe it or not, people want to know, "can you like, kill a person with a voodoo doll?"

I have this video on YouTube called How to Make a Voodoo Doll, and this question has appeared there on a number of occasions. Here are some of the responses to that question:

"I think you only go to hell when you abuse the doll & kill people"

"omfg dudes think about wat ur saying killing someone with a doll i mean come on how can u do that with just an doll?"

"how do you make it work...i want to to make it but not kill people!!! i just wanna teach them a lesson e.g. when you poke the pin in their heart you draw (i think) their love but it can cause a heart attack...I'M NOT A MURDERER PLEASE HELP ME!!!"

"i want to make a voodoo doll but i dont wahant to kill somewan onistly is this tru duse it work and if it dose do you know how to use it safly"

"does this work?? and how do u make a person love u without physically harming them?? I heard that a blue pin in the heart makes them love you, but it can bring a heart attack. I dont want to kill him. I just want him to love me like before....Please reply!!"

First, can I just ask, are people really this flippin' illiterate? I mean, omfg lol wtf?

Now that I have that off my chest, I can answer the question.

Then again, do I really have time for this?

Well let's see, in the Pirates of the Carribean game, voodoo dolls can kill. You can obtain a pirate voodoo doll by "completing a quest to release a spirit from a shard of a relic of Tia Dalma's. This quest will involve you to kill any enemy at every island and main port save those of the Privateering islands" (http://piratesonline.wikia.com/wiki/Voodoo_doll).

And, in a game called Blood, you can create a Voodoo doll weapon that allows you to send your victims screaming in pain to their ultimate demise.

In fact, I am certain that there are countless games now that allow you to create and kill with Voodoo dolls.

But I don't think that is what the question is about. There are people who seriously want to know if you can kill someone with a Voodoo doll...like, for real.

Hmm, there is the Santa Clara County murder case involving Damon Wells aka Son of the Devil.

Apparently, Damon experimented with voodoo and devil worship, and would frequently talk about demons and black magic at home and at high school. He claimed to hear the devil's voice and claimed he could read other peoples thoughts. He made several voodoo dolls which he would use to hurt people, one of which depicted a bully from school. His school mates tended to avoid him, except this bully, an older boy in the 12th grade, who would delight in teasing him.

According to investigative records, years later Damon sought revenge against this particular tormentor. He took the bully's picture from their high school yearbook, created a special voodoo doll, and repeatedly cast spells and called upon the Devil to destroy him. Coincidentally this bully is reported to have stabbed and killed his pregnant wife, finally turning the knife upon himself. He claimed to have been possessed by the devil.

Is this story true? I haven't a clue. I found it here in case you want to read the whole article.

Then, there is the case of the whole population of Taiwan looking to Voodoo dolls to topple their president Chen Shui-bian in 2006. reportedly, 7000 Shui-bian Voodoo dolls were snatched up in a matter of hours at an anti Shui-bian rally.

I guess Taiwan is not the only country/province/state/region in China (I'm not sure what the politically correct term is at this point so I thought I would cover all of my bases) to resort to Voodoo dolls to topple their presidents. I mean, look at the popular George W Voodoo dolls, Osama Bin Laden Voodoo Dolls, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton...the list is endless. Oh, and let's not forget the Saddam Hussein Voodoo doll; I guess that one worked.

For years people have believed they can hurt or kill others with Voodoo dolls. Just recently, for example, the city commissioner of Deltona, Florida found a voodoo doll complete with pins and her face attached to it, next to her mailbox this weekend. Apparently, someone is not too happy with the state of affairs there. Check out the story below.



So, can you like, kill someone with a Voodoo doll? For this question, I will let you be the judge.

Is a voodoo doll like a person so you can like...hurt someone?

Interesting question, and one of the most commonly asked. Voodoo dolls in the New Orleans Voodoo tradition are meant to be used as focusing tools in ritual and meditation. However, because of the portrayal in popular media of Voodoo dolls are something to stick pins into in order to put a hex on someone, it has unfortunately become a common practice by those who are not true followers of Voodoo to use them in this way. Some people believe that you can affect a person in any way you want following the principles of sympathetic magic. Sympathetic magic suggests that you can influence a situation or person by imitating that which you desire. So, in theory, if you "harm" a Voodoo doll that was created to represent a specific person, then you will also harm the person that the doll represents.

There is a strong psychological component to sticking a pin in a Voodoo doll. It can actually be quite therapeutic for the one doing the sticking. If you are the intended target, just the suggestion of someone hexing you with a Voodoo doll is enough to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, if you believe things will go wrong, they will. Indeed, Voodoo magic is faith based, which means you have to believe in order for it to work. However, the idea that you can influence things to come simply by thinking about them has been challenged.

For example, several years ago, a team of psychologists at Harvard took "several dozen college-aged men and women, a fake Voodoo doll and an obnoxious man wearing a "Stupid people shouldn't breed" t-shirt...Each test subject and the confederate were ushered into the lab and seated at a table in front of a handmade twig-and-cloth Voodoo doll...For background, the experimenter told the pair they would be partners in a study of "physical health symptoms that result from psychological factors...in the context of Haitian Voodoo'" (Morin, 2006). Both partners were given a scholarly article on Voodoo deaths to read." The twist was that one of the participants was a confederate and instructed to act in an annoying fashion in the presence of the other participant. The other participant, coined the "witchdoctor" because of the role he was to play, did not know that the other participant was a confederate.

"The confederate dressed and behaved normally with half of the participants -- and very badly with the other half. He arrived late wearing the obnoxious T-shirt, and muttered, "What's the big deal?" when the experimenter said she was beginning to get worried. He tossed an extra copy of a consent form toward the trash can, but missed and left it on the floor" (Morin, 2006).

The confederate (victim) wrote his name on a piece of paper and pinned it to the voodoo doll. Both participants were then asked if they had any of 26 physical symptoms, including runny nose, sore muscles, and headache. The victim stated he had no symptoms, a statement overheard by the witchdoctor.

"The witch doctor was then left alone and instructed to think "concrete thoughts" about the victim. The researchers assumed that those participants exposed to the confederate in his offensive guise were more likely to harbor "evil thoughts" about their victim--an assumption that was later borne out when they asked them if they had thought badly about their ill-mannered partner. When the victim was brought back into the room, the witch doctor, again acting on instructions, stuck five pins into the Voodoo doll. The victim was again once again asked if he had any ailments. This time, he complained that he had a headache.

The witch doctor-participants were escorted from the room and completed a questionnaire asking whether they felt responsible for the victim's headache, whether they believed they had actually caused them harm and whether they actually had caused the headache. "The participants led to generate evil thoughts about their victim were more likely than the neutral-thinking participants to believe that they caused his headache" the researchers reported.

In fact, test subjects who had thought bad things about the creepy victim were, on average, twice as likely to feel they were at least partially responsible for causing the headache than those who had neutral thoughts, they found. "These feelings of responsibility were apparent on each of the individual items in the composite," they reported, indicating that evil-thinking participants were more likely to feel that they had caused the symptoms, that their practice of Voodoo caused the headache, and that they had tried to harm the victim" (Morin, 2006).

Check out this video. It is related to the present discussion and demonstrates the power of suggestion. Atheist, sceptic & mentalist Derren Brown challenges the beliefs of a New Age believer with the use of a Voodoo Doll.






Reference

Morin, R. (2006). Who do that Voodoo at Harvard? Pew Research Center Publications. Retrieved: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/66/who-do-that-voodoo-at-harvard

Is Burning a Voodoo doll bad?

Well, that all depends on where you burn it. One rule of thumb is that if you ever have an object that you believe has negative energy attached to it, you should dispose of it away from you home…the farther the better. If you don’t do that, you essentially plant or attach the energy to your self and/or your home.

If you have burned a Voodoo doll that you believe was sent to harm you on your personal property, you can dig up some of the ground where it was burned, and gather as much of the ashes that you can. Put everything in a white cloth and sprinkle it generously with sea salt. Take it far from your home into the woods somewhere or some other remote location and bury it along with an offering of some fruit. Bury all of it together. Ask the deity of your choice to take the energy and transform it through the power of the earth, and ask deity to remove any negative residual from your home. Walk away without looking back and when you get home, take a purification bath and light a white candle or 7 day protection candle if you can get one. You can make a purification bath by adding sea salt, Epsom salts, and a handful of juniper or cedar leaves to your bath water, and by asking your Higher Power for protection.

Visit the forum at PlanetVoodoo.tv and discuss.

What does a Cursed Voodoo Doll Look Like?

You have found an unusual looking doll on your doorstep or in your parking garage at work. You get a creepy feeling just looking at it. Come to think of it, you have had a streak of bad luck lately. Was this doll put there for you to find? Is someone sending you a message on the downlow?


A person who wants to lay a trick on you can use any type of doll they wish. It does not have to be the stereotypical ugly Voodoo doll with some of your personal effects attached to it. Sometimes, it can be as innocent looking as a sweet baby doll that is the object of any little girl's affection.

For example, above is a picture of a Voodoo doll believed to be put in the path of someone at their place of employment. It was strategically placed in the parking lot facing the individual's car. This looks like one of those Brat dolls you can find in any department store. But how would you know it is carrying a curse?

Well, the first clue is rather obvious - her face is painted black. This is a good indication that it is a tool in someone's ritual work. I mean, they don't come with their faces painted black, do they?

Secondly, she has no feet. This is another indication that this doll may have been intentionally tampered with in an attempt to lay a curse on someone. Painting the face black and removing the feet are both consistent with the general principle of using shocking imagery to psych out an intended target. Also, what is done to the doll can be viewed as a metaphor for what is intended for the victim. For example, removing the feet is consistent with restraining and rendering a person immobile.

The doll on the left is another example of a doll that is believed to have been used as a cursed Voodoo doll. In this case, the doll bride was used to represent the daughter-in-law of the the son of the person casting the spell. At first glance, she seems like a beautiful baby doll. But upon closer examination while removing the veil, it became evident that her hair had been clipped off.

Why the hair was clipped off can only be surmised. A healthy head of hair is symbolic of health and youth. Perhaps the perpetrator was jealous of the targeted individual. Maybe she wanted to make her ugly, unhealthy, or remove her femininity. Or maybe she just wanted her hair to fall out. Either one of these are good guesses.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the focus of a hex or curse is when it comes to Voodoo dolls. This type of magic is extremely metaphorical. Let's take the second doll here as an example. Historically, hair is linked to power, punishment and status. Head shaving was done in concentration camps as a form of punishment and humiliation, and shaving the hair off of a woman has been practiced as a form of punishment for women with long hair, especially. Remember the story of Samson and Delilah? Samson foolishly tells Delilah that the source of his strength is his hair. So what does she do? She tells her servants to shave his hair off. Not only does this make him lose his strength and power, it is a direct violation of an order from God. So God no longer protects him, he is captured buy the Philistines, blinded with hot pokers, and imprisoned. Now that is brutal! But the argument could be made that he deserved it. After all, he was apparently a raging murderous maniac who was no less brutal to dozens of people.

Join the forum at PlanetVoodoo.tv and discuss.