Today’s Supernatural Friday is about
cursed boxes. It is said that curse boxes are locked, wooden containers with
sigils on the exterior. They are designed to contain magic, evil spirits, or
cursed objects to prevent them from causing harm. Cursed objects are created by
magic, and can kill their owners. The idea for the curse box may have come from
the legend of Pandora's Box, a box that holds all the evil and all the diseases
in the world, until - once opened - it released all this evil upon the world,
leaving only Hope behind.
In the fictional world of
television, one show, Supernatural,
Dean and Sam Winchesters' father, John Winchester, had curse boxes made for him
by Bobby Singer. He kept these at his secret storage space in New York. One of
his curse boxes was stolen by thieves working for Bela, who worked for those
who paid to get their hands on supernatural objects, and when they opened it,
they found a cursed rabbit's foot inside.
One now well-known
cursed box, thanks to an episode of Paranormal
Witness about four years ago, and a movie, The Possession, that came out in September, dybbuk box, or dibbuk box. It is a wine cabinet
which is said to be haunted by a dybbuk. In Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is a
restless, usually malicious, spirit believed to be able to haunt and even
possess the living. The cabinet has the Shema carved into the side of it. Its
dimensions are 12.5" × 7.5" × 16.25”. Shema are the first two words
of a section of the Torah, and are the title of a prayer that serves as a
centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services.
The term "Dibbuk Box" was first used by Kevin Mannis to describe the box in the item information for an eBay auction to describe it as the subject of an original story (not the story for the film) describing supposedly true events which he considered to be related to the box. Mannis, a writer and creative professional by trade, owned a small antiques and furniture refinishing business in Portland, Oregon at the time. According to Mannis' story, he purportedly bought the box at an estate sale in 2003. It had belonged to a German Holocaust survivor named Havela, who had escaped to Spain and purchased it there before her immigration to the United States. Havela's granddaughter told Mannis that the box had been bought in Spain after the Holocaust. Upon hearing that the box was a family heirloom, Mannis offered to give the box back to the family, but the granddaughter insisted that he take it.
The term "Dibbuk Box" was first used by Kevin Mannis to describe the box in the item information for an eBay auction to describe it as the subject of an original story (not the story for the film) describing supposedly true events which he considered to be related to the box. Mannis, a writer and creative professional by trade, owned a small antiques and furniture refinishing business in Portland, Oregon at the time. According to Mannis' story, he purportedly bought the box at an estate sale in 2003. It had belonged to a German Holocaust survivor named Havela, who had escaped to Spain and purchased it there before her immigration to the United States. Havela's granddaughter told Mannis that the box had been bought in Spain after the Holocaust. Upon hearing that the box was a family heirloom, Mannis offered to give the box back to the family, but the granddaughter insisted that he take it.
She said, "We
don't want it."
The box had been
kept in her grandmother's sewing room and never opened because a dybbuk live
inside it. Upon opening the box, Mannis found that it contained two 1920s
pennies, a lock of blonde hair bound with cord, a lock of black/brown hair
bound with cord, a small statue engraved with the Hebrew word
"Shalom", a small, golden wine goblet, one dried rose bud, and a
single candle holder with four octopus-shaped legs; all items supposedly used
in Jewish folklore to exorcise demons.
Numerous owners of
the box have reported that strange phenomena accompany it. In his story, Mannis
claimed he experienced a series of horrific nightmares shared with other people
while they were in possession of the box or when they stayed at his home while
he had it. His mother suffered a stroke on the same day he gave her the box as
a birthday present — October 28. Every owner of the box has reported smells of
cat urine or jasmine flowers, plus nightmares involving an old hag accompany
the box.
Iosif Neitzke, a
Missouri student at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri and the
last person to auction the box on eBay, claimed that the box caused lights to
burn out in his house and his hair to fall out. Jason Haxton, Director of the
Museum of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Missouri, had been following
Neitzke's blogs regarding the box, and when he was ready to be rid of the box,
Neitzke sold it to Haxton.
Skeptic Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths' College, told an interviewer he believed that the box's owners were "already primed to be looking out for bad stuff. In other words, if one is primed to believe they’ve cursed. Bad stuff that happens is what you perceive to be the cause.
Another cursed box is used in the film, Silent Hill. I can’t tell you for sure if it was used in the video game, as only a gamer that has played it, can testify to that.
Of course, the most
famous cursed “box” is Pandora’s. The original Greek word was 'pithos', which
is a large jar, sometimes as large as a small person (Diogenes of Sinope was
said to have once slept in one), mostly used for storage of wine, oil, grain or
other provisions, or, ritually, as a container for a human body for burying. In
the case of Pandora, this jar may have been made of clay for use as storage as
in the usual sense, or of bronze metal as an unbreakable prison. The mistranslation of pithos is
usually attributed to the 16th century humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam who
translated Hesiod's tale of Pandora into Latin. Erasmus renderedpithos as
the Greek pyxis, meaning "box". The phrase
"Pandora's box" has endured ever since.
I will end this article with the Greek myth, “Pandora’s Box.”
I will end this article with the Greek myth, “Pandora’s Box.”
Once up a time, a long time ago,
Zeus ordered Hephaestus (Aphrodite's husband) to make him a daughter. It was
the first woman made out of clay. Hephaestus made a beautiful woman and named
her Pandora.
Zeus sent his new daughter, Pandora,
down to earth so that she could marry Epimetheus, who was a gentle but lonely
man.
Zeus was not being kind. He was
getting even. Epimetheus and Prometheus were brothers. Zeus was mad at one of
the brothers, Prometheus, for giving people fire without asking Zeus
first.
Zeus gave Pandora a little box with
a big heavy lock on it. He made her promise never to open the box. He gave the
key to Pandora’s husband and told him to never open the box. Zeus was sure
that Epimetheus' curiosity would get the better of him, and that either
Epimetheus or his brother would open the box.
Pandora was very curious. She wanted
to see what was inside the box, but Epimetheus said no. Better not. "You
know your father," Epimetheus sighed, referring to Zeus. "He’s a
tricky one."
One day, when Epimetheus lay
sleeping, Pandora stole the key and opened the box.
Out flew every kind of disease and
sickness, hate and envy, and all the bad things that people had never
experienced before. Pandora slammed the lid closed, but it was too late. All
the bad things were already out of the box. They flew away, out into the world.
Epimetheus woke up at the sound of
her sobbing. “I opened the box and all these ugly things flew out,” she cried.
“I tried to catch them, but they all got out.” Pandora opened the box to show
him how empty it was. But the box was not quite empty. One tiny bug flew
quickly out before Pandora could slam the lid shut again.
“Hello, Pandora,” said the bug,
hovering just out of reach. “My name is Hope.” With a nod of thanks for being
set free, Hope flew out into the world, a world that now held Envy, Crime,
Hate, and Disease – and Hope.
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