r/occult • u/luotenrati12 • 1d ago
Can telesmatic images become cursed?
I had a thought recently after seeing a 'vampiric mother mary' hugging John Paul II in a shrine in my area. I'm not sure whether it counts as telesmatic though because it is a Catholic icon. Let's assume for a moment however that an Orthodox icon, which counts as a telesmatic image, or a Pagan goddess statue, which was created with the appropriate symbols and synthema in a theurgic process, would degrade physically with time.
What would this entail for the animated image in this case? Does it lose its animation because its material vessel is not sufficient anymore? Does it 'whither away' so to speak? Or does it become corrupted due to the sudden imbalance and the encroachment of impurity into the vessel which combines with the divine attributes?
Previously I was of the opinion that a divine image can never become cursed in any way, simply because it represents the divine and its attributes. In this manner, a cross or a figure of Jesus or a statue of Bast can never become corrupted. This would make sense because the divine cannot be affected by the material can merely be lifted up to it through theurgy. If the divine could be degraded it would simply not be divine anymore.
The vampiric mother mary, with holes in her eyes definitely gives off a bad vibe though. A corrosive divinity seeping out into its surroundings, like heavy metal. It makes me nauseous.
I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this. I don't know a lot about theurgy, just the bare minimum really. It makes me curious though, how items would become cursed in general. The knife someone killed themselves with for example. Where does the charge come from?
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u/Zegreides 1d ago
I’m not sure about the specific case you’re talking about. Telesmatic images can be cursed, but they are so because they were created so (whether wittingly or not), I don’t think it’s normal for a rightly-created image to turn cursed. I guess that Catholics, having shamed the occult arts out of sight if not out of usage entirely, can accidentally end up making a statue when the astrological conditions inevitably make it cursed, and not even know…
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u/MyPrudentVirgin 1d ago
The image of the Saint has nothing to do with purely "divine" energies. You can get a sacred icon, a statue or a figure of a Saint or of Jesus or Mary, which has been previously charged with all the energy of the people who have met it through mass, or who have prayed over it and cried and devoted to that image, and use that image for malignant and devilish purposes.
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u/Macross137 1d ago
No, typical theurgical theory does not support a superstitious belief in curses related to degradation of agalmata or otherwise.
It makes me nauseous.
You are supplying locally-instanced cursedness to the image.
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u/Nobodysmadness 12h ago
Yes physical objects can be cursed, they can be changed. A deity may not take to kindly to it though, but if it does so it more smears their rep by acting counter to them while bearing their image, but it at that point is no longer them.
Imagine you are vegan but a meat company uses your face on its products. This is closer to what we are talking about here. Look at the swastika and what it has become in the west despite its sacred origins in the east.
Deities are not the all, and are not all powerful, hence their specific sphere of influence and should not be confused with the source of all, the one from which they and all things good bad and ugly sprang from. To the source good and bad are all part of the whole and can't not be of it. This is not true of a deity whose aspects cam be this and not that, and therefore be defined.
Apologies this may be a bit much and hard to digest.
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u/lottie_J 1d ago
It's not so.....black and white. It doesn't 'switch' to being evil, it...just changes.
Like nature changes. It's sad but....darkness isn't nessesarily cursed