Magic Online

by Leighton Gage

Want to “make yourself irresistible even if you’re ugly”?

Or “cause someone you don’t like to lose their teeth”?

From the comfort of your own home”

At zero cost?

Well, now you can.

Here’s what you do:

1.      Grab your Portuguese/English dictionary.

2.      Go to http://macumbaonline.com/ and register.

3.      Choose a spell.

4.      Fill-in the email address of the individual to be blessed or cursed.

5.      Hit enter.

There are 86 different mandigas (spells) you can choose from, about equally divided between achieving one’s heart’s desire and complicating the lives of people you don’t like.

In the former department you’ll find things like coming into money, getting a job, becoming pregnant and having your team win their next football (soccer) game.

(No, I don't know if it works with American football, baseball, or basketball, but you can try.)

In the category of complicating lives, you can cause someone to acquire permanent body odor, go bankrupt, have hair grow on their backside, or have their male organ fall off.

Voodoo?

Yeah,, that’s what the folks call it in Haiti.

(We, here in Brazil, don't stick pins in dolls like the Haitians do.)

Santaria?

That’s Cuba.

We call it macumba.

All three refer to spiritualist religions derived from the Yorubá people of central Africa.

All three enjoy a high degree of credence in their individual countries, even among the best-educated of people.

And all three make ample use of spells.

Here are some (loosely) translated excerpts from the home page of the site:

Ever think about casting a spell? Don’t want to go to the trouble to visit a terreiro? (Translator’s note: a terreiro is a place where the orixas, the spirits, are worshipped.) Like home deliveries? Whatever your motive for wanting to use magic, you’ve come to the right place. On this site you can cast spells for yourself, or send a curse to your neighbor, your mother-in-law, your cat, or anyone else you think deserves it. Best of all, it’s free! Do it the easy way. Everything you can get by visiting a terreiro, you can get here. Let us do the work. Macumba Online, to make your life easier.

Up to now, the site has had more than 2.5 million unique visitors. On the home page, there’s a listing of the most popular spells to date. The top three are:

1. Securing the affection of a loved one.
2. Losing weight.
3. Coming into money.

The top three curses are:

1. Giving someone diarrhea.
2. The screwing up (it’s not stated that politely) of someone’s life.
3. The separation of someone from their current partner.

Some of the ones that make me think there’s a story behind them are:

1. Causing someone to choke on semen.
2. Causing someone to stop lying.
3. Causing someone to be expelled from the country.

On the left of the home page, you’ve got the public spells, the ones you want everyone to know about. Recently, a woman by the name of Adriana Flavia Carvalho Timotéo cursed someone with chronic laziness, separation from their mate, contracting an inflammation, to be cheated upon by the selfsame mate and to gain at least 100 kilograms. And she did it all within the space of five minutes. It is not specified who the recipient was of all this venom, but considering the 100 kilogram item, I suspect it was a female.