Curses, Hexes and Spells

by Daniel Cohen

Recounts curses on families, creatures, places, wanderers, and ghosts. Also describes amulets and talismans which provide protection.

Genres: Banned Books, Nonfiction, Occult

125 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Daniel Edward Cohen was born on March 12, 1936, in Chicago, Illinois. His parents divorced when he was very young and his mother, Sue Greenberg, married Milton Cohen, a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Daniel Cohen attended Chicago public schools and was a "hanger-on" in the bohemian community around the University of Chicago while in high school in the early 1950s. He attended the University of Illinois at Chicago where he abandoned an interest in biology for journalism. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in journalism in 1958. Cohen married Susan Handler, a writer, on February 2, 1958. He briefly worked as a proofreader for Time, Inc. in Chicago; but, demoralized by the paternalistic organizational culture, he took a job as assistant editor of Science Digest magazine in 1959. He was transferred to New York City shortly after being hired.

In addition to his editorial work, Cohen wrote articles for Science Digest and for other publications. Encouraged by praise of his articles on paranormal subjects, Cohen published his first book, Myths of the Space Age, a collection of skeptical essays on paranormal creatures and phenomena, in 1967. The Cohens moved to a farmhouse in Forestburgh, New York, in 1969 so Daniel could write full time. He originally planned to write popular science books, but the demands of the market led him to concentrate on books about ghosts, monsters, UFOs, and psychic phenomena. Since then, Daniel Cohen has written on an astonishing variety of subjects beyond just the paranormal: historical and current biographies; advice for teenagers; world history; science and technology; animals and nature; urban legends; and popular television, music, film, and sports personalities. He has noted that he writes mass-market paperbacks for children who are reluctant to read and not especially gifted. Thus, he chooses subjects of interest to such readers.

Susan Cohen was born on March 27, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois, to Martin and Ida (Goldman) Handler. She earned a B.A. degree from the New School for Social Research in 1960 and an M.S.W. degree from Adelphi University in Garden City, New York, in 1962. She worked as a social worker in the mid-1960s before writing The Liberated Couple, a feminist tract, in 1971. She wrote eleven gothic romances and mysteries under the penname Elizabeth St. Clair between 1974 and 1981. Susan and Daniel Cohen began collaborating on books in 1982 to help alleviate Daniel's workload. They have written books primarily on popular entertainment, advice for teenagers, and animals. The Cohens currently live in Cape May Court House, New Jersey.

Reviews

[Miriam Smith (A Mother’s Musings) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting reading!

[Ami Nosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a child in the 80s, I was an avid reader of Daniel Cohen, famous for anthologies of true spooky and paranormal stories. These stories were often interjected with his own opinions, and an occasional admission that he, the author, has never seen a ghost.

Thus, as an adult avid reader, when I saw that one of his works is among the most challenged/banned books in American history, of course I had to read it. As other readers have noted, it is not easy to find. It is no longer published, and many copies in existence are in poor shape. I was thrilled when a local bookshop was able to get me a 2nd edition in excellent shape.

When I first put eyes on it and flipped through gingerly, my thought was that this would be, hands down, Cohen's most macabre work in terms of content. After all, most banned book lists state that this book is continuously challenged for occult content. The cover was positively chilling; a spooky doll with a vacant stare is stabbed with a needle where ominous numbers and symbols float in the background. And flipping through pages, illustrations of all things terrifying and dark were beautifully published on thick, luxurious pages.

That said, when it comes to content, this would be a standard fare that one would expect from Daniel Cohen: an anthology written for a teenage audience of the 70s and 80s discussing the historical curses. By todays standards, it would be culturocentric; the history extends basically from the ancient Mediterranean through the Bible, then into Western Europe then the Americas. Other cultures are mentioned as only a sentence at best. And while, based on the title, the reader may look forward to a "how-to" in terms of hexing and spellcasting, this book is neither.

Following each chapter, the author gives statistics and a dose of realism. Overwhelmingly, Cohen argues, curses are most likely a matter of unfortunate coincidences, labeled as paranormal purely as mankind's psychological defense mechanism to process tragedy. There is one chapter where magic (more modern practitioners may spell it magick) is discussed, along with rituals to hex, but I find it incredibly unlikely that many youth would gain insight into, or even motivation to pursue, dark arts based on this book alone. Cohen states that the incredibly long and complex rituals are not printed in full, making the spells as published incomplete and therefore ineffective. Moreover, the few spells that are listed have exhaustingly inconvenient requirements, such as unearthing a coffin and disassembling it to obtain the nails. In order to attempt the few spells listed in a step-by-step fashion, a person would have be be incredibly, incredibly dedicated and have the strength of a bulldozer! The spells are so long and ridiculous, it should be noted, that the author pragmatically adds that he feels the rituals are purposefully written as such so that practitioners can happily assume they made a minor mistake somewhere in the 90 steps that require perfection, rather than admit that magic is not real, when said spell does not work.

The truth is that if I read this as a youth, I'd probably walk away feeling more ambivalent about the occult than believing in it; the author's science-based reasoning makes the challenging of this work more entertaining than reasonable.

I hovered for a long time between 3 and 4 stars. I desperately wanted to give this book 4 stars because at the end of the day, despite all of its shortcomings, it took me back to my youth, sitting up late at grandma's house with a flashlight, reading about the weird and wonderful. This book was no different.

Ultimately, however, the information was simply too dated and geographically restricted to give it a higher rating than 3. It's a pity Cohen passed away in 2018. Given another few decades and a broader base of knowledge, I'd love to see how much more content he could find for a work like this.

But it's not to be. For those looking for in depth reading, I would pass. But as an avid reader of Cohen, I could not be happier that I now own a copy!

[Jeff Mayo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Published in 1974, this was, humorously, marketed as children’s literature. I read it in the 80’s when it was a banned book. I found nothing in it to be offensive. Just useless nonsense.

[Jaeyde]

This is one of the few on ALA's Top 100 Most Challenged from the 1990's that seems near impossible to find a copy of. May end up sitting unread on this list for a very long time.