What Is Black Magic? The Real Truth Behind the Fear

What is black magic, and why does the mere mention of it make so many people nervous? Can a love spell really bring a lover to your feet? Can magic win you a dream job or cure any disease? Millions of people still believe so. This article follows a sceptical speaker who set out to explain what black magic is, where it came from, and what is really going on behind it. This is his view, and readers hold many different beliefs, so please read it with an open mind.

What Is Black Magic and Why Do We Fear It?

What do people fear most? The thing they cannot see. From childhood we absorb the belief that some things exist even though we cannot see them. People fear the sound that points toward an unseen shadow. They fear the situation where they are helpless and can do nothing, where their knowledge runs out, no path is visible, and all they see is darkness. And it is from this darkness that jinn and magic were born. The very names make our hearts race and leave us restless, because we feel they could harm our lives.

For thousands of years people have been afraid of these things, and they have tried many ways to protect themselves. Some recited duas and wazifas, some went into chilla, a period of forty days of prayer in seclusion, and some read the Quran to protect themselves from magic. Even today, people get nervous at the words black magic, witchcraft or Illuminati. In societies like Pakistan, where superstition and rigid belief run deep, people accept such claims very easily. So the real question is, what is black magic, and does it truly exist? That is the question this article tries to answer.

Is Black Magic Real? Illusion Versus Belief

Since childhood you have watched magic shows on television. A magician pulls a pigeon out of a handkerchief or makes an apple vanish from his hand. One of the most famous magicians in the world, David Copperfield, once made the Statue of Liberty disappear. You have also seen street magic many times. None of this is magic. These are techniques and sleight of hand, methods for fooling the eye, and it takes real skill.

But when black magic comes up, people become frightened, because they think a satanic power stands behind it. Black magic is generally understood as the use of supernatural power for harmful purposes. In many parts of the world, people believe there are people among us who hold powers outside the laws of nature. Such a person is called a magician or sorcerer. People imagine him as a man without morals who belongs to a separate, dark world. This dark world is not the gangster world of Bollywood films. It is the world hidden from our eyes.

Most people believe these sorcerers have jinn under their control, which they call a muakkil, a servant jinn. These jinn bring them news of who is doing what and what is going on in somebody’s life. Through these jinn, the sorcerer is believed to take control of a person’s mind and body. The speaker’s claim is that, in truth, all of this is an illusion.

Black Magic History: Where Did It Begin?

The roots of black magic go back to ancient civilisations. In his earlier video on jinn, the speaker spoke about Mesopotamian civilisation. The people there believed deeply in supernatural forces. When lightning flashed, a storm came, or someone fell very ill, they felt that an evil force was behind it. They believed so strongly in such forces that they wanted to control them by some means, through magic, charms or chants. Interestingly, they believed that everything has a spirit inside it, in stones, in water, in air, in the human body. If a person could please that spirit, he could do anything in the world. And if one could reach that spirit, it could be used for spells on other people, even black magic.

Seeing people’s growing fear of jinn and supernatural powers, some people started to exploit it. There is a saying that the food of the person who frightens you is your fear. The more you fear, the more the one who scares you will torment you. From this fear a new character was born in society, the sorcerer. These people began to claim that they could tame jinn, and that these jinn brought them news from the sky. People then began going to them for all their problems. Magic was used to hurt someone, to win a woman, to get money and success. Sorcerers even started to kill people on request.

From ancient civilisations, the idea of magic and jinn spread across the world, and every culture took it up in its own way. Some called it witchcraft, some sorcery, some black magic. In societies where education and understanding were weak, the speaker says, such as in Pakistan and India, people went completely mad for it.

Today this has become a whole parallel industry with its own business model. Each kind of spell has its own price. There is a price for causing a divorce, a price for causing an abortion, a price for blocking someone’s marriage, a price for starting fights in a family, a price for increasing your influence over people. And do you know which spell costs the most? It is called Sehr-e-Ishq, the love spell. According to the speaker, it is the spell men have used the most throughout history, usually to win beautiful women. It is said that when a man cannot get a woman, he has Sehr-e-Ishq done on her, and it is so powerful that the woman walks backward all the way to him.

Looking at it through religion, Christianity, Judaism and Islam all advise staying away from those who claim to have knowledge of the unseen. In the history of Christianity, people of that time believed in many folk tales, and the idea of witchcraft was deeply rooted in Christian culture. They thought witches flew at night, changed their shape, spoke with the dead, and stayed in touch with them. Women especially were victims of this idea. People thought a witch could be a very old woman, or an old woman who took the form of a fairy and appeared in front of you.

The speaker says that clergy of every religion play with people’s fear and confusion. The Christian priests of that time came to fully believe in exorcism, jinn and sorcery. The biggest driving force behind that belief was the wish to increase the church’s influence and take hold of people’s minds. In Europe’s Dark Ages, and for centuries before, Christianity always accepted that evil forces exist. This idea they took from Judaism, because the Jews believed that Satan, Iblis, was not a single person but a variety of evil forces. Magic was therefore very common among them. But as a religion, Judaism always opposed magic, so that people would not waste their time on such bad things.

The Catholics really did fear black magic. They accepted that evil forces and black magic could create problems in our lives, so they always told people to keep away from it. But Martin Luther’s Protestant movement shook the foundations of that belief system. Protestants held that all this magic, black magic, and sorcery was a performance, and that these ideas were used to exploit the poor, the innocent and the uneducated.

As for Islam, many Muslims believe that magic and black magic exist, and so many Muslims also turn to black magic to fulfil their wishes. But the speaker says the Quran states clearly that this magic is only a trick of the eye and cannot harm you at all. He cites Surah Taha, verse 69, which tells Moses to throw what is in his right hand, and it will swallow what they have made, because what they made is only a magician’s trick, and a magician does not succeed wherever he comes. He also refers to the time of Sulayman, when devils taught people magic. Sulayman did not disbelieve, he says, it was the devils who disbelieved, as they taught people magic. People also followed what was sent down to the two angels Harut and Marut in Babylon. They learned from them magic by which a husband and wife could be separated, yet they could not harm anyone through it without Allah’s permission.

In his reading, every verse about magic in the Quran tells you again and again that there is no need to fear it, and that no sorcerer can harm you. So, he says, the real meaning of the word magic is illusion, a trick of the eye. We feel that the magician truly makes things vanish, that he has knowledge of the unseen, that he has a muakkil. But in fact it is only an illusion, a skill with which he fools ordinary people. Some people think that because magic is mentioned in the Quran, it must be a real event. But the speaker says he has explained many times before that the language of the Quran is metaphorical and symbolic, and that the Quran tries to convey meaning through symbols and comparisons. The trouble starts when people pull something out of its context without using their own reasoning. Scholars differ on this point, and many hold a different understanding.

In Pakistan today, belief in magic and jinn is too strong to be ended easily, because the business of black magic is as old as the business of pirs and disciples, centuries, even thousands of years old. Looking at Hinduism, it is the oldest religion, and it holds that the universe and everything in it carries a power. The sun, water, air, everything has a divine power. And if a power can be awakened through mantra, dhyana and kriya, it can influence reality. Mantra means vibration, dhyana means meditation, and kriya means ritual. So Hindus believe that the power of anything can be drawn in through rituals and meditation, and used for benefit.

Old Hindu scriptures, such as the Vedas, often mention magic, and they also give some mantras for protection from it, like mantras against evil forces, rituals for driving away hostile or evil spirits, and remedies to weaken an enemy. People often performed these rituals or kept chanting these mantras to protect themselves. Slowly people began to realise that repeating these mantras brought not only power but control. So they began telling others that they could now control evil forces and get any work done through them. That is why the idea of black magic also has a deep connection with the ancient civilisation of the Hindus.

Today, wherever Hindus live, there are also large numbers of people who practise black magic, especially in West Bengal and Kerala. Hindu scholars believe that black magic did not begin in Bengal but survived there. So today many great sorcerers sit in West Bengal. In Sanskrit they are called tantriks. Both Bengal and Kerala have an ancient spiritual history. People there worshipped the goddess, and believed that their goddess, whom they also called the Shakti goddess, was very powerful. She could, if she wished, both create and destroy. In both Bengal and Kerala, Shakta belief, goddess worship, and the Tantric tradition are dominant. In these two traditions, both darkness and light were accepted in order to keep power in balance. To them, magic is not simply bad. It is a dark form of power that can be misused, but can also be used for good. Because of this history of Bengal, when you go out you often see signboards saying “Amil Bengali Baba”. Since Bengal had so many tantriks and sorcerers, that brand name is still widely used today.

What Is the Science Behind Black Magic?

Because of this firm and, as the speaker puts it, illogical belief, people still think that behind every mental illness or psychological disorder there is some black magic or jinn at work. Mental illness comes in many kinds. It can relate to your mind, your eating, your personality or your mood. And some are so serious that people show signs of psychosis, which people then connect to supernatural causes. Psychosis brings abnormal thoughts. A person loses his sense of reality and is unaware of what is happening around him. People see and hear things that are not there. They feel that someone is controlling their body.

If, in these mental health problems, the person is taken not to a doctor but to a sorcerer, an amil, or a pir baba, he says, “This person is caught by a jinn,” or “Black magic has been done on him.” And as the speaker reminds us, behind all these institutions, whether pir-muridi, jinn or black magic, there is an economy, which means money. Simple, uneducated people are fooled by these sorcerers and amils, who say, “This man is possessed by a jinn, and the jinn will leave him only if you pay this many thousands.” Perhaps it is schizophrenia, but the amil says a jinn has fallen in love with him. Perhaps it is anxiety or bipolar disorder, but the sorcerer says he is possessed. Perhaps it is a hallucination, where a person feels something is in front of him that is not really there, which is also a psychological condition. But the amil says this person can see a muakkil. Remember, friends, the speaker says, this black magic is one big performance.

You may have heard of sleep paralysis, in which a person’s brain wakes up when he wakes from sleep, but he cannot move his body. Breathing often quickens, the chest feels very heavy, and some people feel that someone is sitting on them or that someone is in the room. This state lasts for a few seconds, sometimes a few minutes, and then ends on its own. According to science, this occurs in the stage called REM, rapid eye movement sleep. It is the stage when we dream at night, and our muscles temporarily go rigid so that we cannot move while dreaming. In this stage the brain is also in a sleeping state. But often this coordination breaks down. The brain comes out of sleep before the muscles do, so even when we want to, we cannot move.

But in a society like Pakistan, the speaker says, people believe more in jinn and foolishness than in science and technology. They take this sleep paralysis to mean the person is caught by a jinn, or that a shadow of an evil spirit, called an aseeb, is over him. Then the person is taken around to babas, amils and sorcerers, and his life is ruined.

Then there is another personality disorder that people in Pakistan also tend to think is the result of magic and jinn. It is called dissociative identity disorder, commonly known as split personality. As it happens, it has even been the subject of Pakistani dramas, such as Ishq Zahe Naseeb, Bahroopiya and Yeh Dil Mera. Dissociative identity disorder is a mental state in which one person has two or more separate personalities. Each identity has its own style, its own voice, its own thoughts and memories. One identity is often completely unaware of the others. When one personality is active, the others lie dormant, hibernating. All the memories and experiences linked to them stay suppressed. The names, ages and preferences of these identities are completely different from one another, but they all live inside one person. Some people have two, some four, some six, and some even a hundred.

The speaker gives himself as an example. He has a name and a way of speaking, and there could be another identity inside him, say one called Bob, who speaks English, with a completely different accent, a different way of walking, and different likes and dislikes. The only difference is that he lives inside the same body. In reality the person has dissociative identity disorder, but people usually take it as the result of black magic or jinn.

In Pakistan, nobody reads books, the speaker says. But do you know that the books on black magic and jinn are the ones that sell the most? Look at them. Black magic of Bengal, Greece and Egypt. Magic from China and Bengal, black magic that makes lovers fall at your feet. Conversations with dead spirits, oh, I am scared. Black magic, also called the amal of love. Black knowledge, black art, books on how to become an amil, rules, amals and taweez. You will find dozens of books like this in any market.

But his message to you is that all of this is drama and fraud. There is nothing like it. These are tales from old times, when uneducated and simple people were fooled with stories of magic and jinn. If you use the reasoning of your own mind even a little, you will understand there is nothing in it. It is the product of human fear. We often fall into this world of unseen knowledge, spells and black magic because we are uncertain about our future. We are afraid of our future, and that fear gives rise to and feeds the feeling that through magic we can change our future or take revenge on someone.

His message to Pakistanis and Indians is that it is time to change their fate through science and technology, not by going to an amil baba. As always, he says, if you want to change the direction of your life, it will happen only through your hard work, your commitment and your sincerity. Do not fall into the trap of pir babas, magic and jinn. They only fool you and collect money from you. If you do not do this and stay caught in the web of magic, piling up goat heads and the like, he warns, don’t let your age pass without your lover ever falling at your feet. Do think about what he has said.

If you or someone you know has symptoms like those described above, the first step is to speak to a doctor.