Why Ancestral Curses Are So Hard To Break And How To Do It

Ancestral curses are a tricky subject. They’re often misdiagnosed and misunderstood by modern witches and this makes breaking these curses even more difficult than breaking your average curse. As with most things in the craft, knowledge is power, so today we’re going to dig into the reality of these curses and talk about what they are and why they’re so difficult to deal with.

What Is An Ancestral Curse?

Ancestral curses are essentially curses that, after being cast upon one member of the family, proceeds to pass down the family line to their children and to their children’s children, and so forth, affecting the lives of generations of people. Entire families will experience ruin at the hands of a single curse, often losing their financial well-being, their health, their social standing, and much more. Often the same form of misfortune will affect multiple members of the family and sudden accidents and misfortunes are common.

Typically, people who suffer from ancestral curses will know that this is what afflicts them. It’s usually common knowledge in the family. Perhaps a great-grandfather pissed off a fortune teller and she cursed him and now the story is passed down through each generation as an explanation for all of the ills that they experience. 

If you simply have bad luck but no curse story in your family, it’s unlikely that you’re suffering from an ancestral curse for one simple reason. It’s not the curse that’s causing the bad luck. It’s the story.

Why Ancestral Curses Are So Hard To Break

Ancestral curses are difficult to break precisely because they’re mythologized in the family. When the original caster of a spell dies, the vast majority of the power behind that spell also dies in most circumstances. This would mean that perhaps the first generation experiences the curse and possibly also the second generation but after that, the magician that cast the curse is likely dead and the spell should stop. But it doesn’t. The curse keeps going and keeps impacting the members of the family generation after generation because the belief that the family has in the curse at this point is fueling the spell!

At a certain point, the story the family tells about their curse becomes the curse. The magic may have disappeared ages ago but the family keeps itself in turmoil by continuing to believe in this external power that’s ruining their lives. As anybody who deals with magic knows, belief is a powerful force. The things you believe about yourself, your world, and your circumstances dictate your experience. Your beliefs direct your energy and if your energy is wrapped around the idea that your life is going to go to hell because of a curse and there’s nothing you can do about it, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

Now, it is worth mentioning here that sometimes traditional curse breaking methods can work on ancestral curses. I know, this seems entirely contradictory to what I just said. How can you break a curse if the actual curse has been gone for generations? This comes back to belief again. In these instances, curse-breaking methods are actually serving to alter the beliefs of the people affected rather than the spell itself. By casting a spell to break the curse, the family now believes that the curse is broken. When their beliefs change, they stop creating bad luck and misfortune in their lives. This only works if the belief in the curse breaking method is stronger than the belief in the curse though! If you doubt the validity or effectiveness of the spell you will likely still experience the effects of the curse. Think of it as a kind of placebo effect cure for ancestral curses. 

This can be useful in situations where rooting out the belief is unlikely, for older members of the family or members of the family who have been particularly strongly affected by the curse, changing the underlying belief might be nigh impossible. Convincing the logical mind that something it has a mountain of evidence for is a lie is not an easy task. When this happens, that placebo cure can be a lifesaver. The more theatrical and gritty the curse breaking spell is the better, anything to make them feel like something real has been done to lift the curse.

How To Break An Ancestral Curse

Ok, so if you’re not worried about trying to placebo someone into breaking their belief in the curse, how do you actually go about breaking it? Changing deeply held beliefs is no easy task! Well, believe it or not, if you’re suffering from an ancestral curse, you’ve already started breaking it by simply reading this post. The knowledge that your belief is the source of your misfortunes is a powerful blow to the stability of that belief. From here, breaking the belief down entirely is straightforward.

1. Begin by writing down all of the beliefs you have relating to the curse

Write out every single one, from the details of how the curse works to what effects it’s had in your life. Find every scrap of evidence you can find for this curse and write up a list so that you can approach this methodically. If you’re working with other members of your family to also break the curse, have them make their own lists as well. You could also try doing this as a group activity where you make a single list together and work through the following exercises as a group. It just depends on your personal preferences and how your family works together.

2. Now, it’s time to poke holes in those beliefs

This next part of the process is very formulaic but it does take time. Feel free to do this in batches because you’re going to need to do this for EVERY belief you wrote down. You’re going to begin by writing down the belief you’re working on and then asking a series of questions that lead you to conclude that the belief is false or at least potentially not true. It looks something like this.

Belief: The curse caused me to miss out on that amazing job opportunity last summer.

Question: Is it possible that something other than the curse could have caused me to not get that job?

Answer: This is where you really need to put effort in, come up with every possible thing that ISN’T the curse that could have possibly affected that job opportunity. Maybe you didn’t put enough effort into your resume, maybe you were nervous during the interview, maybe another candidate was just more qualified, or the job just wasn’t a good fit for you. Really work to poke holes in this belief.

Question: Can I say for certain that the curse is what caused me to lose that opportunity?

Answer: No, there are too many factors to know for sure.

Continue in this fashion, asking questions that allow you to poke holes in your belief until you reach a point where you can clearly say that the belief is either not true, or cannot be proven true. You don’t actually have to prove it entirely wrong, you just have to cast doubt on it. This may take one question or it might take eight, just keep going until the belief is destabilized. 

After you’ve done this to one belief, move on and do it to the next. Continue until you’ve gone through this process for every single belief. This can take a long time! Don’t feel like you have to do this whole thing in one giant marathon. Take breaks when you need to, split it up into multiple sessions, tackle 3 beliefs a day until that list is finished, just get through the whole list in a way that works for you.

3. After you’ve refuted every single one of those beliefs, cleanse yourself and your home

If you’re taking multiple days to work through these beliefs you may also want to cleanse in between sessions of working on your beliefs. This process stirs up a lot of strange energy and while at times it may make you feel liberated and powerful it can also lead to negative emotions or energies coming up. While it’s ok to sit with these feelings and acknowledge them, you don’t want them hanging out indefinitely. Pay attention to the uncomfortable emotions you feel during your question sessions, write them down, analyze them and see what they have to tell you about your beliefs and then when you’re through, cleanse yourself and your home so that you’re not stuck carrying those feelings around. 

This also helps to reset you to a neutral place so that you can recognize any new sensations that might come up in between sessions. The mind continues to work on problems even when you’re not consciously thinking about them so it’s possible that your beliefs will degrade further or you’ll have realizations and feelings related to this process when you’re not working on it. Being in a neutral space allows you to recognize when this is happening so that you can address it immediately. If you find this happens, journaling is an excellent tool. Allow yourself to feel the things your subconscious mind is offering you (even if it’s uncomfortable) and see what conclusions and revelations it might lead you to in this process.

4. Build new beliefs to replace the old ones

Now, for every belief that you’ve cast doubt upon or proven wrong, it’s time to create a replacement. If your old belief was “I can’t get a good job because of the curse”, your new belief is “I can get a great job because I’m a worthwhile job candidate”. If your old belief was, “Everybody in my family gets cancer because of the curse”, your new belief is “My family gets cancer because of poor health decisions, I can greatly reduce my chances of getting cancer by leading a healthy lifestyle”. 

You can do this as you finish each batch of beliefs, or as you finish each individual belief.

5. Use these new beliefs in your everyday life

Now that you have new beliefs, it’s time to make sure they’re rock solid. Pick 3-5 of the biggest ones that you really think you would benefit from changing and plaster those new beliefs all over your life. Set alarms on your phone to go off and remind you of your new belief. Put post-it notes over your desk and on your mirror with new beliefs. Make a point of writing your new beliefs in your journal every day. Use these beliefs as a meditation. Just find ways to repeat it throughout your life. 

If it ever starts to sound fake, revisit the original question and answer process that you did for the original belief, remember how you came to that conclusion and if you need to, poke even more holes in the original belief. Defend your new beliefs from other members of the family who may not be going through this process with you, refute it when they tell you it’s the curse. Do this until you actually believe your new beliefs! Repetition is a powerful thing and over time these new beliefs will take root, replacing the old ones and degrading the power that has been holding your life hostage for so many years.

This process can be used for many other damaging beliefs, not just for ancestral curses. If you ever find yourself feeling powerless to a belief whether it be a belief in a curse, a belief in an addiction or habit, a belief in your own abilities, you can make huge strides in changing those beliefs by going through this process. It may not seem magical as you’re working through it but the changes it can make in your life will absolutely astound you!


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Why Generational Curses Are So Hard To Break And How To Do It // Witchcraft // Magic // The Traveling Witch

Updated on August 20, 2023 by Avery Hart

8 Comments

  1. If your family is the victim of a generational curse should I not tell my first born daughter about the curse to keep the curse from happening to her first born son? And if the curse goes so far back how can you know all the details or even destroy it?

  2. I have already done this. Our curse is extreme degenerative bones n teeth. We can not see the effects off that, so she gave us wrinkly hands, so we can see it every day. It’s only the women in the family and the wrinkly hand are there at birth. Please help us…I am flamboyant and a healer. I have tried everything in my power to stop this. I want it stopped not for myself, but for my grand children.

    • There’s a rare disease that causes those symptoms that is genetic so it would be passed down through every generation. It might be a good idea to go to a geneticist to find out what it could be and what treatments are available and you can combine the treatments with healing rituals to reinforce the treatments and make them more effective than they would be otherwise. Just remember that you are a human being and your body holds you inside of it. If that body is causing issues, it may not be your spirit that was affected by a curse causing it. It could just be that your family has a different type of body and there may be medical solutions. We don’t rely on getting to work on a broomstick; we drive a vehicle. Not everything is going to have a magical reason and not everything has a magical solution. Incorporate both the physical and magical aspects that are available now.

  3. It’s possible that the curse was actually a genetic condition that was misinterpreted by someone in the past when the doctors didn’t know what it was. I have a rare genetic disease and you could literally have assumed that my family was cursed with the strange symptoms and the lack of knowledge in the medical community. Seriously, the disease I have, some doctors have NEVER EVEN HEARD ABOUT IT yet they have probably had patients with the disease that were undiagnosed. The disease I have has no cure. It’s a matter of treating the effects of it on my body as they come up. And not everyone in my family has it at the same level. I’m actually the FIRST AND ONLY person who has been tested and diagnosed with it. The rest of my family doesn’t believe it’s a real medical condition and they won’t even tell their doctors that they have a relative with it. So they deal with dislocated joints, teeth disintegrating at a very fast rate at a certain age, dealing with severe pain for years and they refuse to believe that it exists because it’s so rare. Ehlers Danlos Syndrome type 3. Have you ever heard of it? Check out the rare disease database to find out. There’s no cure but there’s also no curse. But what I have done is become a CYCLE BREAKER. It’s estranged my family from me because they don’t want me talking about the truth. Their entire identity has been wrapped up by their beliefs. But I can’t stop it from being passed down; but I can get my kids the medical treatment that they need.

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Welcome to The Occult Witch

My name is Avery Hart. I'm a witch, chaos magician, and occultist and have devoted 15 years to the study of all things witchcraft and occultism. My goal is to give you the tools and knowledge to make real, tangible changes to your life with magic. No fluff, no flowery cryptic language, just magic that you can start using today.

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