Unlocking the Secrets of Necromancy: How to Harness the Power of the Dead

Necromancy is a form of black magic that revolves around the manipulation of the dead. It is an ancient practice that dates back to ancient civilizations and is often associated with dark rituals and occult practices. The word "necromancy" itself comes from the Greek words "nekros," meaning "dead," and "manteia," meaning "divination," emphasizing its focus on communicating with the deceased. The main idea of necromancy is to harness the power of the dead for various purposes such as gaining knowledge, predicting the future, or even controlling others. Practitioners of necromancy are often referred to as necromancers or sorcerers and are believed to possess the ability to communicate with spirits or raise the dead. Necromancy has been a prevalent subject in myths, folklore, and literature throughout history, often portraying it as an evil and forbidden practice.

I respect and thank Mr. Baba Prasad Sir, for providing me an opportunity to do the project work and giving us all support and guidance, which made me complete the project duly. I am extremely thankful to him for providing such a nice support and guidance, although he had busy schedule managing the corporate affairs.

Divya Sreedharan Ma am, who took keen interest in my project work and guided me all along, till the completion of my project work by providing all the necessary information for developing a good system. The homeopathic healing practices of ancestral witchcraft are extremely popular, and in a city with inadequate healthcare provision, are sometimes the only option for the sick.

Necromancy has been a prevalent subject in myths, folklore, and literature throughout history, often portraying it as an evil and forbidden practice. In many cultures and religions, the act of necromancy is considered taboo and is strictly prohibited, as it is seen as a means of meddling with the natural order of life and death. The rituals and methods employed in necromancy vary across different cultures and time periods, but they typically involve the use of various tools and symbols, such as candles, incense, pentagrams, and specific invocations or spells.

Narcos and necromancy: Turf wars and black magic in Colombia

L ast August, Jeferson Angulo Orozco set out to go fishing with his two friends. This was their routine, a weekly trip in search of food for their families.

Fishing is not a business or a hobby on the Naya river in the rural suburbs of Buenaventura, it’s just the easiest way to survive. But Mr Angulo and his friends never returned from their trip and locals fear the worst.

The vast waterways of the Naya Delta in southwestern Colombia provide the perfect cover for drug traffickers. This is a place, where seeing and knowing can carry a death sentence.

“We’ve all learned to turn a blind eye,” says one community leader, who asked not to be named. “But who knows what these three might have come across on their fishing trip.”

Recent months have seen an uptick in violence across Colombia as the United Nations warns that armed groups are seeking to take advantage of the Coronavirus pandemic to expand their territorial control in the country.

With its mangrove-covered maze of coastline, Buenaventura and its estuary have become the jewel in Colombia’s criminal crown.

So-called narco saints have become the informal patrons of the drugs trade. For gangsters, paying homage to these figures offers both protection and redemption

Rival drug trafficking groups compete for easy and lucrative access to the Pacific Ocean and homicide levels here have been climbing.

The murder rate has risen from 14.7 per 100,000 people in 2016 to 31.2 in 2020, and with more than 20 murders in the first two months of this year, the number of homicides is already three times what it was for the same period twelve months ago.

Forced disappearances have also increased steadily. Police figures show the number of cases rose from 45 in 2017 to 72 in 2019, but these numbers tell only half the story.

Authorities say the overwhelming number of disappearances go unreported because people are simply too scared.

Along the river Naya, residents fear torture. Murder here has a touch of the macabre.

“They don’t just kill, they chop, they decapitate,” says the community leader. “It’s horrible to have this image in your head. But it’s what they do. It’s part of their religion.”

Forensic scientists confirmed that bodies in the region are often found dismembered. Authorities believe the gruesome violence is fuelled by a disturbing belief in black magic among the city’s drugs gangs.

“Witchcraft is as popular with the narcos as Catholicism in the Vatican,” said Omar Bonilla, a police commander in the city. “It creates beliefs and superstitions, which underpin some of the brutality we witness here.”

In a destitute slum not far from the centre of the city, a gaunt figure sits in the open, but cramped crawl space of a small brick house. The air is filled with cigar smoke, but it does little to eliminate the stink of sewage emanating from a nearby stream. The silence is broken only by the croak of toads.

Julio is a 33-year-old narco commander, whose name has been changed to protect his real identity. He is unusually thin, but his scrawniness should not be mistaken for weakness. Known and feared by the locals, he says he has evaded identification by the security forces for years.

Julio runs a local cell of the Empresa, an organised criminal structure, which has terrorised this city. He is waiting for a witch to bless his rosary. “I’ve been coming here for five years,” he says. “It keeps me safe.”

The witch, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, eventually joins him under the foundations of her house. It’s not a remarkable nor mysterious entrance. She curses as she crouches beside him and trips over her flip flops.

Known as Sandra, the witch takes the rosary and puffs on three large, freshly lit cigars. Through a thick haze, she begins to privately interpret the ashes while chanting a prayer to Saint Michael.

“St Michael protects you from your enemies,” she says in a husky voice, never making eye contact. “He helps repel evil.”

She reads from her book of incantations. “Block their eyes so they don’t see me. Tie their hands so they can’t catch me,” she chants.

Julio closes his eyes and mumbles under his breath.

“The ashes show names, faces and objects. They create a story that shows me the danger,” says Sandra. “I then conjure it away.”

The ritual is intended to keep Julio from death and capture. Lucky charms are an important weapon in the narco’s arsenal.

“Just like this one,” says Julio, as he lifts his shirt. He has a shoelace tied around his torso. It rests on his bony hips. If there’s a threat nearby, the rosary and the shoelace will tighten to warn him, Sandra explains.

Julio, who started his criminal career at the age of 15 began as a hitman.

“It gave me power, I felt like the king of the world,” he says. “I enjoyed it.”

He quickly climbed the criminal ladder and is now an integral part of the local criminal network.

“The more charms you have, the safer you’ll be,” he says decisively. “It’s what’s kept me alive.”

Julio has survived several attempts on his life. In a war that is all about turf, gang rivals regularly try their luck at taking him out. Killing Julio would leave his profitable patch up for grabs.

“Once they fired at me 12 times,” he says. “But only one bullet hit me, and even then it was just a graze. It’s because of the shoelace.”

African traditions and customs define life in this bustling port. Most of those who live here are descended from slaves brought in by the Spanish to work in gold mines.

The homeopathic healing practices of ancestral witchcraft are extremely popular, and in a city with inadequate healthcare provision, are sometimes the only option for the sick. But locals have long blamed the darker side of these traditions for the violence that torments their city.

For Buenaventura’s narcos, their black magic is based on West African traditions, mixed with Catholicism and voodoo.

So-called narco saints have become the informal patrons of the drugs trade. For gangsters, paying homage to these figures offers both protection and redemption.Tony Kail is a cultural anthropologist, who advises US law enforcement on narco rituals.

“It becomes like a buffet, where they pick and choose elements of indigenous traditions and belief systems to compile their own religion. It provides a form of psychological empowerment,” he says.

A few miles away, Buenaventura’s decrepit cemetery is a wilderness of plastic flowers. In August 2019, suspects broke in and under the cover of darkness removed the body of Jeferson Cándelo Caicedo from its crypt.

The coffin and remains were taken from one end of the cemetery to the other and set alight. The flames, interrupting the pitch black of the night sky, reached more than 6ft into the air and burned for hours, according to witnesses.

For the criminal underworld, witchcraft is their religion and its rituals are the habits which keep them on top of their game, alive and outside of prison

Cándelo, who was also known as “Trumpy,” was a narco in the same gang as Julio. He was murdered on the order of his superiors. The 39-year-old had apparently been stealing from the gang’s profits.

“The order to kill came from on high,” says Julio. “Stealing from your own is the one thing you don’t get away with.”

In the aftermath of the desecration of Cándelo’s grave, his mother and younger sister were given police protection. In a city centre café, each grasps their cup of coffee with both hands. Authorities believe Cándelo’s body was removed to perform some kind of ritual. It comes as no surprise to his family.

“Killers can believe they’re cursed and the only way to remove that curse is to burn the body of the victim,” says Cándelo’s sister, Kelly.

“There was nothing left when I got to the cemetery in the morning,” says María Gladys Caicedo Roman, Cándelo’s mother. “But the ground was still smouldering.”When asked why they need protection, the two women look at each other.“We fear for our lives,” says Kelly.

In Buenaventura’s vicious Comuna 12, so-called invisible borders define gang turf. Residents can be killed simply for crossing into rival territory. This is one of the city’s most violent neighbourhoods and the most part is under Julio’s control.

He walks the streets, greeting those he meets in a politician-like style. But there is no opposition or challenge from his constituents. Instead they nod and smile nervously. They know who is in charge here.

It is Julio’s responsibility to move cocaine through the city to shipping points on the coast. He manages extortion rackets, collecting weekly fees from local businesses, and he has an army of hitmen upon whom he depends to enforce gang rule and protect his turf.

The Colombian government militarised the city following a 2014 report on casas de pique – or torture houses

Julio says Cándelo’s body had been “prepared.” In a ceremony intended to seek revenge on the murderers, the fingers and toes of the victim are tied together by a witch.

If the identity of the killer is known, their name is written on a small piece of paper and placed inside the body, usually in the mouth. This curse is supposed to bring a slow death to the assailants.

“With Trumpy, the names were found in his anus,” says Julio. “Our names.”He shows a picture on his phone.

“Those that killed Trumpy started to get ill afterwards,” he says. “They had ‘flu-like symptoms and skin rashes. One even had trouble walking because of an infection in his leg.”

For the assassins, their common symptoms were a clear message.

“It was a curse to kill us,” says Julio. “So we knew the toes and fingers had to be cut off and the body burned. After that, everyone got better. The spell was broken.”

The witchcraft of Buenaventura may appear farfetched and exaggerated to most, but on Colombia’s Pacific coast, it is much more than superstition.

For the criminal underworld, witchcraft is their religion and its rituals are the habits, which keep them on top of their game, alive and outside of prison.

“We have to believe in something,” says Julio. “Otherwise we have to face the reality of our lives, the reality and evil of what we do, and nobody wants to admit that.”

Buenaventura’s gang conflict reached boiling point in 2014 when it became infamous for its torture houses. Residents reported hearing screams and finding body parts in the street.

In June 2019, a severed head washed up under the main bridge in Buenaventura, raising fears that the city’s feared torture houses were back.

“They never actually disappeared,” says Julio. “We just moved them out of the city and have got better at dumping the bodies so they won’t be found.”

For the gangsters of Buenaventura, decapitation and dismemberment are a necessary evil intended to protect them from revenge. A body without limbs cannot be prepared, which means killers cannot be cursed. Committing this abhorrent violence becomes an initiation for all gangsters with criminal ambition.

“When I was 18, I had to kill a 22-year-old. I had to cut off his head. He was knelt in front of me. He was crying,” says Julio, whose voice becomes softer. “When you know you’re gonna die, your face changes. Did you know that? You can’t look at that. It puts you off. You can’t look at your victim’s face.”

Julio becomes lost in his own thoughts. There is a long pause before he continues.“You have to be really strong to take off a head in one go. It took me three strikes,” he says.

In July 2019, Buenaventura’s bishop carried out what he called a mass exorcism of the city. Legal action prevented him from using military aircraft to drop holy water on the most dangerous neighbourhoods, and so it was instead sprayed from street level in a huge convoy of vehicles.

“The armed groups represent the work of the devil and they must be stopped,” Bishop Ruben Dario Jaramillo Montoya told the Telegraph.

The city’s seafront communities of wooden shacks, many on stilts to protect them from flooding, are some of Colombia’s most vulnerable. Few have access to piped drinking water or sewerage, and two-thirds of the city’s 400,000 inhabitants live in poverty, according to government figures. But for those that live in these communities, the mass exorcism was welcome.

“We sometimes feel forgotten,” said resident and teacher Lydia Urrutia. “Events like these bring people together and send a powerful message to the criminals. We need to take back control of our city.”

“This exorcism was as much about trying to create a climate of trust as it was anything else,” said Bishop Jaramillo. “People need to feel more secure. They need to know we have their backs.”

Each gang in Buenaventura has a network of witches they can rely on. Some specialise in providing protection, while others focus their work on absolution or the more sinister aspects of witchcraft involving murder. It means a narco usually works with several witches simultaneously, and they form an intimate bond.

“Witches become friends,” says Julio. “There is a lot of trust involved. They know a lot about us and what we do.”

The darkest of the narco rituals is the death curse in which hitmen seek permission and support from the saints to target their prey.

A few blocks away from where Julio’s rosary was blessed, another witch stands at a makeshift altar in her kitchen, bearing the statue of Santa Muerte or Saint Death. For narcos, Santa Muerte offers permission to kill. She is a strange and unsettling hybrid of the Virgin Mary and the grim reaper.

The witch has covered her head in a shawl. She lights candles on either side of the table. The portending evil is ruined by the pots and pans and leftovers from lunch rotting in the sun.

The witch holds a small doll-like effigy in which she slowly places pins. The hitman kneels before her. The name of his intended victim is written on a piece of paper. It is not spoken, but it is wrapped around the doll.

This witch is new to the gang. She’s a replacement for Cándelo’s mother and sister, who would apparently normally do this work.

“Trumpy’s family used to be our first choice,” says Julio. “But since we found out they cursed us and prepared his body, we had to find someone else.”

Witches cannot work for multiple gangs. They must choose a side and stand by it.“It can be dangerous work,” says the witch, who asked not to be named. “We can become targets by rivals if they suspect we’re casting spells against them.”

“Witches tell us the only way to be sure a spell has been broken is to kill the person, who cast it in the first place,” says Julio. “It’s why Trumpy’s family has protection. They think we might go after them. But killing witches is risky. Nobody wants to do it because of what might happen. They have a lot of power.”

The hitman looks up expectantly at the witch. She nods her head. He has the permission he needs to kill and the target should now be easier to catch. In the city centre café, Mrs Caicedo denies she and her daughter are involved in organised crime and witchcraft.

“These are all lies,” she says, still clutching her coffee cup. Her daughter chuckles and shakes her head.

Buenaventura’s harbour is the main source of income of the city, but the wealth rarely reaches local communities

“I’m running for election to be a local councillor,” says Mrs Caicedo. There is a sense of urgency in her voice for the first time. “I just want all of this behind me.”

On the banks of an isolated river, Julio meets another of his witches. He has come for what he calls his monthly “bath,” a cleansing ceremony that offers atonement for his crimes. “This is like confession,” he says. “A way to make up for our sins.”

With more than 50 murder victims under his belt, Julio has much to repent.He strips to his underwear. A male witch known as “The King” dunks Julio’s head beneath the water, as he recites verses from his book of spells. These incantations are the result of more than 30 years of experience.

“Many of these spells were passed on to me by my father, but a few I have written myself and they work well,” says the King.

A secret concoction of herbs and plants is rubbed over Julio’s back and chest.“I can feel the lotion work. It stings,” says Julio.

The King works with narcos all over Colombia and claims to be in high demand. It is not just in Buenaventura the narco saints are taking hold. A book of spells to protect members of another criminal group in the department of Chocó was discovered by police in 2019.

It contained scrawled incantations to open doors, chains and handcuffs for those behind bars. And in 2014, one of Colombia’s most wanted, Roberto Vargas, alias “Gavilán,” was carrying two dried hawk’s claws when he was shot dead by police.

These lucky charms, prepared by the King, ultimately failed to protect him.“It can happen,” says the King. “You have to believe. If you just wear them, they will fail you. You must pray to the saints all the time.”

The King towers above most others, yet speaks in gentle whispers, the type that comes with age. He tries to hide his frailty, but as he lifts his arms to make the shape of the cross, they tremble.

He seems tired, but there is no time for rest. The King is constantly on the move. “I am always travelling,” he says. “Gangsters do dirty work. They need protection and there is much to repent, much to cleanse from their souls.”

“There is definitely a therapeutic element involved in narco-rituals,” says Mr Kail. “They are intended to relieve the stress about being caught, about being attacked by the enemy. Narcos can fear the wrath of spirits more than mankind.”

Julio says he is not scared by guns and grenades. Instead he is terrified by the supernatural. He confesses to the witch he has been haunted by dreams of a dog that transforms its shape and size each time it chases him. Such visions are evidence someone is after him, says his witch, who plunges Julio back into the water to rid him of the curse.

But beyond the theatrics of these rituals, it is clear that Julio is ridden with guilt. Years of brutal murder are bound to take their toll. The trauma induced by the blood he has spilled is unmasked, if only briefly.

“With each new bath, it seems to take longer,” he says. “I begin to think more about what I have done and the people I have done it too.”

Julio is trapped in a world he says he cannot escape so the opportunities to repent appear to allow him to live with the pain and terror he causes.

“Once a gangster, always a gangster,” he says. “The only way out from this life is death, so if I can’t stop, all I can do is ask for forgiveness, cleanse and get on with it.”

Pictures by Victor Raison

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The witch has covered her head in a shawl. She lights candles on either side of the table. The portending evil is ruined by the pots and pans and leftovers from lunch rotting in the sun.

Necromancers may also rely on divination techniques, such as scrying or tarot readings, to communicate with the spirit world. Despite its negative reputation, necromancy continues to capture the interest and imagination of people, especially in the realm of fantasy and occult fiction. It is often depicted as a powerful and dangerous form of magic, capable of yielding great power but also associated with dire consequences. In conclusion, necromancy is a practice of black magic centered around the manipulation and communication with the dead. It is a taboo subject in many cultures and religions, seen as a forbidden act that defies the natural order of life and death. Despite its negative connotations, necromancy remains a fascinating and intriguing concept that continues to captivate and inspire various forms of media and storytelling..

Reviews for "Necromancy Spells and Incantations: How to Cast a Dark Ritual"

- David - 2 stars - I found "Necromancy black magic" to be incredibly disturbing and sinister. The book delves into dark rituals and spells that I personally found highly unsettling. I understand that some people may find the subject matter intriguing, but for me, it was just too much. I would not recommend this book to anyone who is faint-hearted or easily disturbed.

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- James - 2 stars - As someone who is not drawn to dark subjects, "Necromancy black magic" was a disappointing read for me. The book lacks a balanced approach to necromancy, focusing solely on the negative aspects without exploring any potential positive aspects. I was hoping for a more neutral evaluation of the subject matter, but unfortunately, this book did not deliver. It may appeal to those with a specific interest in dark magic, but for others, it falls short.

- Emma - 1 star - "Necromancy black magic" was a complete waste of my time. The book is poorly written, with convoluted explanations and rambling thoughts. It also fails to provide any real evidence or logical reasoning behind the practice of necromancy. I was hoping to gain a better understanding of this controversial topic, but all I got was a mess of random thoughts and vague references. I would not recommend this book to anyone looking for an informative and engaging read.

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