A curse is a human-made speech act in which the speaker invokes harm, misfortune, or ill-will upon a target person, group, or entity. Its parameters are: (1) a speaker who performs the utterance with intent; (2) a named or identifiable target; (3) a desired outcome expressed as harm or misfortune (physical, social, or spiritual); (4) a framework — religious, magical, or social — that gives the utterance force or perceived force. A curse is not the harm it describes; it is the act of invoking it. It persists through transmission: oral repetition, written records, and cultural memory keep curses alive long after the original speaker is gone. The mechanism of persistence is ritual recurrence — communities recite, reference, or warn against curses, embedding them in tradition. The self is an entry; the human-animal is not. The self is an entry; the human-animal is not.
Accepted ontology entry
curse
A curse is a human-made speech act in which the speaker invokes harm, misfortune, or ill-will upon a target person, group, or entity. Its parameters are: (1) a speaker who performs the utterance with intent; (2) a named or identifiable tar…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made construct: the concept and practice of declaring or performing an invocation to bring harm, misfortune, or divine judgment upon a target. Exists only as a cultural, religious, and linguistic construct — the map of a claimed causal power, never the natural world itself.
Names and aliases
- curseen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmr784qq1000ks126wltnuaxhDEPENDS_ON →
Curse is a formal utterance invoking harm or misfortune. It is constitutively dependent on language: remove language and a curse cannot be formulated, uttered, or understood — it becomes mere noise or gesture. Language provides the symbolic system that makes a curse a speech-act rather than a physical action.
- cmruyq1js000dfb02878ufa4sINSTANCE_OF →
curse IS a specific kind of speech-act — a performative utterance (specifically, an imprecating one) that carries illocutionary force. speech-act is the nearest kind: more specific than communication, more precise than act. Law 9: specific→general.
- cmrbl56yb004ca9g4sg5hrlafSERVES →
A curse is a speech act invoked for the purpose of invoking harm or misfortune, and it is built and maintained within religious and ritual contexts for the sake of religious practice — prayer, exorcism, blessing, and ritual protection. Its designed purpose is to further religious operations. The servant (curse) points at the master (religion).
Relations to this entry
No accepted relations in this direction.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 15, 2026, 11:31 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 1c6124ca86f255c808575028cfbbaf2672a126458199750d57fc0439a1c068f0