Welcome back to DEAD Time. Magic, and the belief in magic, spans centuries and many different traditions around the world. The ancient Mesopotamians believed that magic was the only way to defend themselves against demons and ghosts. In ancient Egypt, magic was an important part of religion and culture. Magic was forbidden by Levitical law in the Hebrew bible. Curse tablets, or Katadesmoi, contained curses carved on wax or lead tablets that were buried underground, and were used by all classes of Greek society. But is it really possible to curse someone?
British-born filmmaker Liam Le Guillou, known for An Unknown Compelling Force, a documentary about the true story behind the Dyatlov Pass Incident, set out to find out if magic is real by asking someone to put a curse on him, and documenting the outcome. Written and directed by Le Guillou, A Cursed Man follows Liam as he travels around the world to find someone who would be willing to curse him. It proves to be more difficult than you might think. From witches in California to Voodoo practitioners in New Orleans to Tantrics in India, and a Satanist Shaman in Mexico, Liam explores different cultures and traditions around magic and curses. The result is a compelling documentary about magic and what he experiences after being cursed.
Bloody Disgusting was excited to have the opportunity to talk with Liam Le Guillou about his experiences while making A Cursed Man, magic, and the power of the mind.
Bloody Disgusting: What inspired you to seek out someone who would put a curse on you?
Liam Le Guillou: That’s the number one question and also the hardest one to answer [laughs]. The concept was born out of a conversation I had with a friend. My friend said, “It’s hard to get proof of anything spiritual or magical,” and I said, “Would you let a person put a curse on you?” They instantly said, “No way!” That’s coming from a skeptic, so it made me think, “Well, what’s in that? Why do we feel that way and what actually would happen if you went out looking for a curse?” So, that’s how the idea began and it kind of ran away with itself [laughs].
BD: I would absolutely say no.
LLG: [laughs] I have yet to meet anyone who would say yes.
BD: Have you ever experienced anything you thought might be paranormal prior to making this film?
LLG: I’ve been fascinated with everything to do with the paranormal since a very young age. I probably watched too many horror movies as a kid. I’ve also been fascinated, but also very much a skeptic, but a very open-minded skeptic. So many people are believers and have these viewpoints. Why is that? Why are we so hard-wired to believe in the supernatural? I’m definitely one of those people who wants to know, so that sent me on this journey to look.
I speak about this in the film, but I had an experience when I was rock climbing a long time ago that I had a potentially near-fatal fall. Luckily, I wasn’t injured at all, but I have to say that before that moment that I fell, I first of all experienced the worst terror I’ve ever experienced in my life; but the moment I realized there was nothing I could do and I was going to fall, I was deeply and profoundly overcome with a sense of absolute bliss, which to this day makes no sense to me. I think it’s really a feeling of connectivity to something. It wasn’t a near death experience in the sense I was badly injured, but I’ve since heard of people having similar experiences like this without being injured, or near-fatal accidents. So, that’s been on my mind, and I wanted to know what that experience was and what’s on the other side of our known world. Those sorts of things have really opened my mind to the idea of searching for what it is to this world.
BD: You had two curses put on yourself—one by a Hoodoo practitioner in New Orleans and one by a Shaman in Mexico. You said you had nightmares and suffered from increased anxiety afterward. Did you ever feel truly afraid for your safety?
LLG: I mention this in the film to a degree and we have some visuals that kind of represent the bad dreams I had. I probably don’t do justice to how bad I started to go through things. There were a number of things that were happening that at the time I didn’t think were very good visually for the film, so I didn’t really record them. I started having incredibly severe headaches, migraine level headaches which I hadn’t had before, enough to make me go to the doctor and they did some x-rays and couldn’t find anything wrong; they couldn’t explain it. I actually had, for the first time, a nightmare so bad that I felt paralysis. I woke up and was unable to move and I swore I saw a shadowy figure in the doorway. Whether or not you believe in spirits and magic, or psychology, these things were having a real effect on me. It did get to the point where I realized that I was absolutely beginning to do damage to myself, and I got to the point where I felt like I had to try and correct this before things got worse.
Visually on film, it’s kind of hard to really show the amount of anxiety one is going through. Every time the phone rings, instead of wondering who that is, I’m thinking, “Oh no, what’s happened?” Every time my wife came home late from work, I would panic and kind of nervously look at my phone to make sure that there were no traffic accidents in the area. The sense of anxiety and fearing the worst all of the time starts to do really strange things to you. One question people have asked is, “Are you changed from having done this?” As I said, I was an open-minded skeptic going in. What I would say now is, “I definitely would not do this again.”
BD: You had a coven perform a ritual to remove the curses, which I found to be very interesting. How quickly did you notice an improvement in the way you felt? Did you need time to process it, or did you feel an immediate weight lifted from you?
LLG: The Ced Coven, based here in Los Angeles, was wonderful in helping me kind of undo this. I slept through the first night I had in months and months the night I went through the ritual [laughs]. That was an immediate thing. My first great night’s sleep in such a long time was such a relief. I think what I used the ritual and that moment for was that I think I personally chose to draw a line under how I was feeling about everything at that point. So, after they did that ritual for me, whenever those bad thoughts popped into my mind, instead of exploring them, I would say to myself, “I’ve been cleansed. It’s over. Drop it.” I was mentally making a very strong mindset to try and be over this based on that action.
There is a part of me at the back of my mind that still thinks, “Well, if it’s spirits and demons then they don’t care what I think and I could still be in trouble.” Something I’ve realized more than ever is that the only thing I am in control of is my mind. So, I am choosing with authority to push those negative thoughts out of my mind from that point. But I’ve done this now, so the rest of my life I will always remember, to some degree, that I did go out looking for curses. I guess time will tell whether or not I can still have that mental fortitude to say that it was done.
BD: What would you say is your most important takeaway from this experience and do you now believe that magic might be real?
LLG: The most important thing to say is that the hardest thing about making this film was actually finding anyone who would be willing to put a curse on me. Across the board, one hundred percent, everyone I spoke to in these spiritual practices said, “That’s not what we do. This isn’t like the movies. This isn’t all about negative magic. We do things to help people, to help people’s lives.” That said, in a number of traditions, there is such a thing as performing negative magic, so they can do some of this stuff. There are a number of reasons for that, and we speak about some of that in the film. It’s important to say that these people aren’t out there looking to put curses on people, and it was incredibly difficult for me to find anyone who would be willing to do that.
In terms of my takeaway, I would say that I’ve always been a believer in the power of the mind and the stories we tell ourselves. But that’s almost anecdotally, and almost kind of superficially, I think going through something like this has deeply made me think about the way we allow the world to affect us based on our own beliefs. So, I think it’s really important that you think carefully about what your beliefs are and the stories you tell yourself because they will have an effect on your world, on your life, and perhaps even on you physically. Be careful what you tell yourself. Words and thoughts have power.
BD: Since going through this experience, do you feel that maybe magic is real?
LLG: It’s difficult to answer the question “is magic real?” It depends on what your terminology of what magic is. I think for a lot of people magic is very mystical and spirits and entities that are operating under their own volition. What I believe magic might be is the power of the mind and I do believe the mind has the power to affect things around us and the direction we take our lives. So, to a degree, depending on your terminology, I would say yes, I believe in magic.
A Cursed Man is now available on all major VOD outlets.
You can check out Liam Le Guillou’s website for more information on his work.
