Pessimism is a philosophy that encompasses a negative view of life, emphasizing the belief that the world is full of suffering and that human existence is ultimately futile. This pessimistic worldview often leads individuals to feel hopeless and powerless in the face of life's challenges. Witchcraft, on the other hand, refers to the practice of magic and supernatural powers, often associated with sorcery and spellcasting. While pessimism and witchcraft may seem unrelated at first, there are some connections between the two. One common thread is the belief in forces beyond human control. Pessimists may see the world as governed by a chaotic and unpredictable nature, where suffering and misfortune are inevitable.

Timeline: the Kennedy Curse

The Kennedy family has long been said to be under a curse, dooming its member to early deaths.

Many members of John F Kennedy's family have died unnatural deaths. Credit : Photo: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

August 12, 1944 - Joseph Kennedy Jr, the elder brother of JFK, is killed when his bomber aircraft explodes over Suffolk during the Second World War.

May 13 1948 - Kathleen Cavendish, JFK's sister and the wife of Marquess of Hartington, dies in a plane crash in France.

November 22, 1963 - President John F Kennedy is assassinated as he rides in an open convertible through Dallas, Texas. His killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, is gunned down at a police station two days later, sparking widespread conspiracies about the President's death.

June 6, 1968 - Robert Kennedy, JFK's younger brother and his attorney general, is assassinated after winning the California Democratic primary. The gunman, Sirhan Sirhan, remains in a prison in California.

April 25, 1984 - David Kennedy, the fourth of RFK's eleven children, dies in a Florida hotel room after overdosing on cocaine, painkillers and anti-psychotic medicine.

December 31, 1997 - Michael Kennedy, the sixth of RFK's children, is killed in a skiing accident in Colorado. The 39-year-old was playing American football when he crashed into a tree.

July 16, 1999 - John F Kennedy Junior, the JFK's son, dies while flying his light aircraft to the holiday island of Martha's Vineyard. He reportedly became disoriented during the night flight and crashed into the ocean.

May 16, 2012 - Mary Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert Kennedy Jr, is founded after reportedly hanging herself at her New York home.

The Kennedys have endured tragedy and untimely deaths. Now it has happened again.

John F. Kennedy's funeral procession in Washington on Nov. 25, 1963. Widow Jacqueline Kennedy, center, daughter Caroline Kennedy, left, and son John Jr., are accompanied by the late president's brothers Sen. Edward Kennedy, left, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. (AP Photo)

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The Kennedys are among the most famous and powerful families in the world.

The descendants of Joseph Kennedy Sr. and his wife, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, have occupied some of the highest offices in the land — from congressman to senator to president of the United States.

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But the Kennedys have also endured unspeakable pain, with assassinations of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and the untimely deaths of so many other family members. Plane crashes, overdoses, and accidents have claimed Kennedys at young ages.

Tragedy has struck again.

The Kennedy family said Friday night that the search for Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, 40, and her 8-year-old son Gideon had turned into a recovery mission. McKean’s husband, David, said in a grieving Facebook post that “It is clear that Maeve and Gideon have passed away.”

Mother and son went missing Thursday while in a canoe on the Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis. Maeve McKean is the grandniece of JFK and granddaughter of RFK. She is the daughter of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland.

“My heart is crushed, yet we shall try to summon the grace of God and what strength we have to honor the hope, energy and passion that Maeve and Gideon set forth into the world,” Kathleen Kennedy Townsend said in a statement. Townsend was a teenager when her father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated.

Below are other Kennedy family members whose lives were cut short early.

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.

The oldest of the Kennedy siblings, Joseph was a Navy pilot during World War II. He flew numerous combat missions but perished in a mysterious in-flight explosion, during a secret mission gone awry in 1944. He was 29. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross.

“Joe refused his proffered leave and persuaded his crew to remain on for D-Day,” John F. Kennedy later said. “They flew frequently during June and July, and at the end of July they were given another opportunity to go home. He felt it unfair to ask his crew to stay on longer, and they returned to the United States. He remained.”

Kathleen 'Kick’ Kennedy Cavendish

Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy volunteered for the Red Cross during World War II, first in New York and later in London. She married a British nobleman, William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, who died shortly after being called up to service in 1944. She remained in England after the war and died in a plane crash in France in 1948. She was 28.

John F. Kennedy Jr.

At 38, John F. Kennedy Jr., the late president’s son, was killed when the small plane he was piloting crashed into the sea near Martha’s Vineyard. The crash also claimed the lives of his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette.

Edward M. Kennedy delivered his nephew’s eulogy. “He was a boy who grew into a man with a zest for life and a love of adventure,” Kennedy said. “He was a pied piper who brought us all along. . . . He had a legacy, and he learned to treasure it. He was part of a legend, and he learned to live with it.”

David Kennedy

David, the 28-year-old son of Ethel and Robert F. Kennedy, was found dead in a Palm Beach, Fla., hotel room in 1984 after years of struggling with addiction. He was reportedly traumatized by his father’s violent death. His uncle, Edward M. Kennedy, said in a statement that “we all pray that David has finally found the peace that he did not find in life.”

Michael Kennedy

Another of Robert and Ethel’s sons died in a 1997 skiing accident. Michael, an expert skier, was playing a “dangerous” game that combined the alpine sport with football when he crashed into a tree, according to the New York Times. He was 39. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Maryland’s lieutenant governor at the time, read from the Bible at his funeral.

Saoirse Kennedy Hill

The granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy was found dead at the famed Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., in August 2019. Authorities later said the 22-year-old died of an accidental overdose. Kennedy Hill had been a student at Boston College and had written movingly in her high school newspaper about her struggle with depression. “Although I was mostly a happy child,” she wrote, “I suffered bouts of deep sadness that felt like a heavy boulder on my chest.”

President John F. Kennedy

Nov. 22, 1963. The country’s 35th president was assassinated in Dallas while riding in a motorcade. His death at 46 shook the nation. His brother, Robert F. Kennedy, tried to carry on his legacy in politics. Then an assassin’s bullet took his life, too.

Robert F. Kennedy

Just moments after celebrating his win in the California Democratic presidential primary in 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. His brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), delivered his eulogy. “He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side,” Kennedy said. “Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.”

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) was shot and killed in 1968, while running for President, but 50 years later, doubts linger on who pulled the trigger. (Video: Joyce Koh/The Washington Post)

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Kennedy curse timeline

Stan Wayman/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images At President John F. Kennedy’s funeral in November 1963, hundreds of thousands of mourners joined his family in grieving for the murdered leader.

Could there really be a “Kennedy curse” picking off members of America’s most prominent political dynasty one by one?

Throughout the golden years of the Pax Americana, the Kennedy family became synonymous with beauty, glamour, and political success. Cavorting with Hollywood A-listers, charming foreign dignitaries, and facing down the Soviet Union seemed to be all in a day’s work for the family from “Camelot.”

But behind the glitz of this American lineage, you’ll find some of the most devastating events ever to befall a family. From assassinations and mental illnesses to bizarre accidents, these are the tragic stories of the Kennedy curse.

Pessimists may see the world as governed by a chaotic and unpredictable nature, where suffering and misfortune are inevitable. Similarly, practitioners of witchcraft often believe in the power of unseen forces and the ability to manipulate them for personal gain or protection. Moreover, both pessimism and witchcraft can be seen as responses to the uncertainty and unpredictability of life.

The Kennedy Curse Begins With Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.

Wikimedia Commons The last known photograph of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., taken just before his fatal flight.

The Kennedy curse supposedly began with Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr., the handsome eldest son of Joseph P. Kennedy and the grandson of John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald.

Born in 1915 just after his grandfather’s second term as Mayor of Boston ended, Joseph Jr. was groomed for high office from the beginning. His grandfather even announced to the local papers, “This child is the future president of the nation.”

Stinging from the scorn poured down on ambitious Irish Catholics by New England’s old moneyed class, his family did everything they could to ensure they would someday see young Joseph in the Oval Office.

To that end, Joseph Kennedy, Sr. was so dedicated to the image of his family’s respectability that he’d even had Joseph Jr.’s younger sister, Rosemary, secretly lobotomozied rather than allow her violent mood swings to ruin his son’s chances of success.

Wikimedia Commons Ensign Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. in 1942. His father had groomed Joseph for political office from a young age.

Joseph was given a first-rate education, starting at Connecticut’s Choate boarding school and ending at Harvard, where he was involved in over a dozen extracurricular activities — including five sports — and student government.

But before he could finish his studies, Joseph took a commission in 1941 as a pilot in the U.S. Naval Reserve. For two years, he flew patrols over the Caribbean Sea before transferring in 1943 to Bombing Squadron 110, a U.S. unit hunting U-boats under British command.

In England, he was the only Kennedy able (and willing, given their mother Rose’s objection to marrying into the Church of England) to attend the May 1944 wedding of his sister Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy to aristocrat William Cavendish. It seemed that the Kennedys had finally arrived at the social respectability so longed for by their father.

Wikimedia Commons Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy on her wedding day, with brother Joseph behind her.

A seasoned combat pilot after 25 missions, Joseph Jr. was eligible to go home in 1944. But in August of that year, he volunteered to fly a bomb-packed, radio-controlled B-24 bomber over U-boat pens in the North Sea.

He and his co-pilot were to guide their plane to the correct altitude before parachuting out. Instead, the explosives detonated prematurely over the east coast of England, killing the Kennedy heir at age 29.

Joseph Jr. wasn’t the only one of his siblings to be struck by the Kennedy family curse in 1940s Britain. Kathleen’s husband William Cavendish was killed by a German sniper in Belgium just weeks after his brother-in-law, and Kathleen herself was killed in a plane crash in 1948 as she flew to Paris to beg Cavendish’s father for his blessing for a second marriage.

Pessimism arises from a sense of disillusionment with the world and a belief that efforts to improve one's condition are ultimately futile. Similarly, witchcraft can provide a sense of control and agency in an unpredictable world by offering rituals and spells to influence events and outcomes. However, it is important to note that pessimism and witchcraft are distinct concepts and have their own unique characteristics. Pessimism is primarily a philosophical stance, rooted in the belief that life is inherently unsatisfactory. Witchcraft, on the other hand, is a practice that involves rituals, spells, and the belief in supernatural powers. Furthermore, the association between pessimism and witchcraft can be seen as a stereotype or cultural trope. In literature and pop culture, witches are often depicted as isolated, misunderstood figures with a pessimistic outlook on life. This portrayal reinforces the notion that individuals who practice witchcraft are somehow inherently negative or pessimistic. In conclusion, while there may be some connections between pessimism and witchcraft, they are distinct concepts with their own unique characteristics. Pessimism reflects a negative view of life, while witchcraft involves the practice of magic and supernatural powers. Any association between the two should be understood in the context of cultural stereotypes and not as inherent or universal traits..

Reviews for "Pessimism and the art of manifestation in witchcraft"

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3. Emily - 2/5 stars - "Pessimism and witchcraft failed to deliver on its promises. The author's attempt to explore these two topics felt half-hearted and superficial. I was hoping for a deeper analysis and examination of the role of pessimism in modern society, but instead, I found a collection of shallow musings that lacked substance. The same can be said for the author's exploration of witchcraft. It felt like they were merely scratching the surface and not delving into the rich history and cultural significance of witchcraft. The book left me feeling unsatisfied and wanting more. I would not recommend it to those seeking an insightful exploration of these topics."

Witchcraft and the wisdom of embracing pessimism