The 7 Types of Curses — and How to Clear Them

The word “curse” often conjures images from fairy tales or folklore—dark spells cast in secrecy, cloaked in malice and mystery. But in truth, a curse is simply energy sent with weight. Sometimes it’s direct, other times it’s unconscious—but it always has a current.

Curses are not always rituals; they are often reverberations—echoes of emotion, belief, and unspoken desire. They can be cast with words, with silence, with patterns repeated across generations. They are not always visible, but they are felt.

To understand curses is not to live in fear, but to become aware. Because once we name something, we have the power to meet it with intention. And when we bring intention to energy, we can begin to clear what does not belong.

This post is not about superstition nor is it about causing harm unto others—its about knowledge on how to untangle yourself from energetic binding. Let’s explore the seven most common types of curses—and the gentle, grounded ways we begin to dissolve their grip.

1. Intentional Curses

These are the curses we most often recognize. Aimed with purpose, they come with focused intent to harm, hex, or hinder. They are deliberate energy sent with the intention to harm or interfere. They are direct and forceful: spellwork, verbal attacks, psychic targeting.
While rarer than we imagine, they do carry a charged weight. Yet because they are direct, they are often the easiest to name and deflect.

Examples:

• Malicious spellwork or hexes

• Words spoken with rage and deliberate cruelty

• Ritual acts of energetic targeting

Clear it: Through spiritual protection, energetic boundaries, and returned-to-sender rituals. These curses are forceful, but when met with clarity and awareness, they have little room to take root.

2. Unintentional Curses

These are far more common, and often more entangled. They are not cast with deliberate harm, but with lingering emotion: jealousy, bitterness, resentment, or unspoken envy. They may hide behind smiles or social niceties, but the energy behind them speaks more truthfully than the words.

You may feel them when support feels hollow, or when someone secretly hopes you stumble. These curses cling in subtle ways—they tether, they entangle, they drain.

Examples:

• Passive aggression

• Silent comparison and envy

• Energy attachments through unresolved dynamics

Clear it: Through discernment, naming, cord-cutting, and energetic hygiene. Awareness is your first act of liberation.

3. Spoken Curses (“Curse Words”)

Language carries energy—and many of our strongest emotional expressions are bound in words we call “curse words.”

But the curse isn’t always the word itself—it’s the intention behind it. A blessing can live inside profanity if spoken with love. A curse can live inside polished language if used to shame, silence, or diminish.

In other cases, curse words are cathartic, channeling negative, pent up energy and releasing it into the atmosphere. It is important to verbally release, not direct the energy.

Examples:

• Self-deprecating language

• External projections: “You’ll never make it”

• Cathartic release: “F*ck this”

Clear it: Through conscious speech. Speak from truth, not habit. Speak with precision.

4. Environmental Curses

Energy lives in places. Some rooms hold grief like smoke in the walls. Some objects carry memory long after the person has gone. We don’t always see it—but we feel it.

An heirloom passed down from a bitter relative. A house where death occurred. A space we enter that immediately shifts our body into tension. These are environmental imprints that linger until tended to.

Examples:

• Objects with unresolved history

• Homes that hold trauma or conflict

• Rooms that make your energy constrict

Clear it: With smoke, prayer, salt, sound, or sunlight. Invite movement. Set intention. Cleanse not only what is seen, but what is felt.

5. Ancestral & Generational Curses

These are not always spells—most times, they are beliefs. Unspoken rules passed down through bloodlines. Stories etched into nervous systems over generations.

No one may have meant to pass it on, but that does not make the impact less real.

Examples:

• “We never get ahead”

• “In our family, love always ends in pain”

• “Silence is how we survive”

These curses live in repetition, not ritual, and healing begins when someone decides to break the cycle.

Clear it: With awareness, family story work, ancestral rituals, and rewriting narratives that no longer serve.

6. Self-Curses

Perhaps the most insidious of all. These are the curses we place on ourselves. No curse runs deeper than the one you whisper to yourself each day.

Negative self-talk, shame spirals, certainty in your own unworthiness—these are subtle, powerful binds that distort your perception of yourself. They come in the form of certainty wrapped in self-judgment. They become habitual, looping thoughts that convince us we are unworthy of change, love, or belonging.

Examples:

• “I always mess it up”

• “I’m too much / not enough”

• “I’ll never get it right”

• “I always ruin things.”

• “I don’t deserve more.”

• “Nothing ever works for me.”

These words do more than sting. They take root by shaping behavior, belief, and biology.

Clear it: By becoming aware of the script, then choosing a new one. Speak with compassion. Speak with possibility. Speak with grace, not shame.

7. Collective Curses

These are the curses baked into systems. Imbalanced Patriarchy. White supremacy. Religious dogma. They were not created by one person, but they impact all of us. Some more than others.

These curses are lived in bodies, laws, expectations, and roles. They suppress, diminish, divide, and erase.

Examples:

• Systemic trauma

• Internalized oppression

• Cultural stories that silence or erase lived truth

Clear it: In community. Through truth-telling, repair, resistance, and joy. Healing here is both personal and collective.

How to Clear a Curse

You don’t need to know the full origin to begin the healing. What matters is the awareness that something no longer fits, no longer serves, or no longer feels true. From there, the clearing begins.

Start here:

• Name what is present.

• Cleanse your field: bath, smoke, movement, breath.

• Cleanse your space: windows open, music playing, corners cleared.

• Use intentional language: return to sender any energy that doesn’t feel like yours.

• Cut cords, close loops, and call your energy home.

You Are Not Powerless

Curses are real—but so is your ability to clear them as is your capacity to reclaim your space, your story, your sense of self. When we name, acknowledge, and surrender the energy, we begin to release the energetic ties.

And here’s the most important thing:
You are not powerless.
You were never meant to remain bound.