Sime~Gen Inc. Presents

Recommended Books

April 2004

"The Power To Curse Effectively"

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey, Tor Fantasy, pb June 2001

Kushiel’s Chosen by Jacqueline Carey, Tor Fantasy pb March 2003

Kusiel’s Avatar by Jacqueline Carely, Tor Fantasy pb March 2004

Devlin’s Honor by Patricia Bray, Bantam Spectra Fantasy, pb June 2003

Devlin’s Justice by Patricia Bray, Bantam Spectra Fantasy, pb March 2004

Which are you more afraid of, cursing someone and having it "work"? Or being cursed? Does a curse hurled from a deathbed have more power? How do you tell the difference between a curse and a blessing? Which should you fear more?

When was the last time you spat out a casual curse? When did you growl, voice dripping outrage and hatred, "Damn you!" – at another driver who cut you off and made you miss your exit? Do the words you say, even when you’re alone, matter to you?

If you have been through one of the power-bestowing initiations, they better matter – a lot. Whatever you put out into the world will come back threefold. The more power behind the output, the more intense the rebound.

So how do you learn to control your mouth? And is controlling your mouth enough? If your mind is shrieking out a curse with all the power of your emotions and focused concentration behind it, can it manifest even if your teeth stay gritted shut and no words come out?

Mister Rogers used to say to the children who watched his television show, "Scary-mad wishes don’t make things come true." That’s great psychology for children but is it true? Or is it only true for children who have no sexual power to put behind their wishing?

What does maturity mean, in magical terms? Is it just the awakening of sexual awareness? Does an older magician past the years of desire lack enough power to curse? Or bless?

Well, the blessing of Abraham to Isaac seems to have lasted a while, so maybe the blessing of an elder isn’t powerless. Maybe there are other sources of power for the manifesting of intention than mere sexuality?

Kushiel’s Dart, Kushiel’s Chosen and Kushiel’s Avatar, 3 huge long fantasy novels, dare to push the envelope dealing with the darker aspects of sexuality ruled by the god Kushiel. These books treat the issue of pain as the flipside of sex. In Kushiel’s Dart, the main character, Phedre, is adopted by a man who trains her as a political spy because she was born with the signature of Kushiel, a red "dart," in her eye, and so is destined to experience pleasure through pain.

Phedre is the only one of her generation to bear Kushiel’s Dart. This mark is considered a curse by some and a blessing by others. Her adopted father sees it as a political opportunity because some of the lords of the court he wants to spy upon have a taste for sadomasochistic sex.

He raises her in a land where nobody ever thinks to question the morality or propriety of finding pleasure only in inflicting pain. He raises her to be proud of her innate ability and to work assiduously at acquiring every possible skill in evoking sexual pleasure/pain. He raises her to be a royal whore with him as her pimp which is morally correct in that land. She gets to keep her tips to buy her freedom, so she’s motivated to perform skillfully.

Trained by this master of intrigue, she becomes an important political figure at the hub of social change in her world. At various points in her life, she regards the mark in her eye and the requirements of her body as curse – or blessing.

These books are tastefully written, but no holds barred with the sexuality – yet they avoid being pornographic. They look directly at the issue of pleasure through pain, unvarnished and unalloyed. I can’t recommend them for all readers, but if these subjects are an issue for you, these novels are worth their price in paperback.

The last few months we’ve looked at some books which are about trauma, the fears that traumas leave in their wake, and the importance of confronting those fears in order to avoid becoming a power-abuser.

It is subconscious fears, the fears you can’t recognize as fears when they motivate you, that incline you to power abuse. When you just know that something is right, or wrong, when it is self-evident "what that so-and-so deserves" and it feels good to be the one to deliver justice, chances are good you are operating from such a subconscious motivation – maybe fear, maybe a desperation for parental love.

If that motivation is rooted in some complex fear left in the wake of some forgotten childhood trauma, chances are also very good that what you want to do is power abuse.

The simplest and yet hardest way to avoid falling into this trap is to dig up the old trauma, identify the current fears, and confront them and make your peace with them.

The Path of Initiation leads to such confrontations in your real life. While treading that Path, you can defuse much of the explosive force of confrontations by reading well written fiction that can bring you inside another person’s mind and heart, and let you live through their initiations vicariously. Reading back issues of this column, especially from 1993 and ’94 which discuss Intimate Adventure, will give you a good idea of how to identify (or write) such books. Find them all at simegen.com/reviews/

Before Devlin’s Luck, (reviewed here in May ’03) Patricia Bray tells us that Devlin gave up his position as a premier smith and went off with his young wife to homestead and become a farmer.

In Devlin’s Luck, Devlin fled his country of birth because people thought he’d murdered his family. He hadn’t, but he incurred the penalty anyway. He was disowned, cast out of family and clan, exiled. In his culture, this was the worst thing that could be done to him – far worse than being executed.

Being thus kinbereft, he still owed a huge monetary debt. He went off to win the money by becoming The Chosen One – geas-bound to defend the conquerors of his homeland who still were an occupying army there.

He won the position, accepted the geas of his own free will knowing Chosen Ones didn’t live long, and set out to die honorably defending his enemies.

In Devlin’s Honor, Patricia Bray has given us a very good example of a man running from his fears while telling himself he’s being heroic by confronting them.

Then the "gods" who hold the reins of this geas that binds his will require him to retrace his steps and confront his fears of seeing the faces and hearing the voices of those who he still loves as they shun him. He has learned he can’t resist the geas, so he goes home knowing the pain he will feel. He discovers a truth he could never have imagined.

Unknown to him, another family has accepted him as their own. He is in fact not kinbereft. He discovers this by braving contact with his oldest and best friend.

But another, far greater enemy, casts another curse upon him, sapping his will to live. He doesn’t even know it’s a curse that’s terrifying him into the grave until a friend brings a wizard to diagnose his problem, and lift that curse.

Once freed from the burden of fear, he is suddenly able to solve the biggest problem before him. But he is freed from his fear by discovering that what he’d feared is in fact not-so. He didn’t get to confront his fear and so he doesn’t get through this initiation in this book.

The fears that drive us to abuse our power (just spanking a wayward child merely because you’re tired and irritated is an abuse) usually are of something that doesn’t exist.

It is the fear of imagined pain that drives us. Remember the most basic rule of white magic is that it cannot be used for personal gain. If you use your power to avoid pain, or the fear of pain, even emotional pain, you are doing black magic. (some would say gray) And the effect will rebound upon you threefold.

Devlin used the power of his physical body to flee emotional pain, and ended by becoming physically maimed (half his right hand is now missing).

Is that maiming a blessing or a curse? He now owns a magical sword he can wield in that right hand as if the hand were whole. But he’s learned that his entire life and all his painful losses are the result of the gods manipulating him.

As I write this column, that third book Devlin’s Justice has yet to be published. However we know that the incompetent King whom Devlin is geas-bound to serve has, unknown to Devlin, sold his services to an allied Kingdom. We suspect that Kingdom is the very one Devlin is geas-bound to protect his own Kingdom against.

Will the geas burn his mind out at this contradiction? Is it a blessing or a curse? Is there a difference?

To send books for review in this column email Jacqueline Lichtenberg, jl@simegen.com for snailing instructions or send an attached RTF file.