The Curse

myth:the_curse

The curse is one of magic's oldest and most enduring motifs: the witch's curse that sleeps a princess a hundred years, the cursed gold that dooms every hand that holds it, and the doom laid upon a whole house — Atreus, Oedipus — that runs down the generations like a debt. The word of power, turned to harm and made to outlive its speaker. — genre history