A lot of trouble for law enforcement from self-taught magicians: either the whole street will be blown up, then the gullible citizens will be swindled, then they will roll in a coffin "for the sake of Pussy Riot"
The residents of Zimbabwe's capital are scared. Everyone now strives to pour salt on the section of the street next to his house: they believe that this scares away evil spirits. On the eve, in one of the suburbs of Harar, a powerful explosion thundered. He destroyed and damaged a dozen houses and killed five people.
It turned out that it was all the fault - the sorcerer, the local "specialist in lightning", to whom the next customer came. What exactly the African needed the lightning for remains a mystery; her magician and his client were taken to the grave. Both men were killed in the explosion.
The police and army explosives technicians only threw up their hands, not finding any traces of a gas cylinder or explosive devices at the scene. Of course, what happened further strengthened the belief of many residents that sorcerers can use the rainy season in order to "tame" lightning and subsequently turn them against enemies.
Counterfeiter, animator and 18x daddy
And in countries where witchcraft is considered common, almost commonplace, like a baker or a merchant, and in "advanced" Europe and America, incidents occur that do not allow law enforcement to forget about the existence of witches, shamans and homegrown magicians. One of the brightest stories of this kind happened a year and a half ago in Russia.
On July 12, 2011, the court of the city of Tula issued a criminal sentence to two natives of the Republic of Cameroon. Tella Andre and Dongmo Tsage Marc Aurel were accused of a particularly large-scale fraud by a group of persons in a preliminary conspiracy.
Both Africans have long lived in Tula. One worked part-time as a bartender, animator, went to the south to be photographed with vacationers for money. Another, to the amazement of judges and journalists, as many as 18 children were expected in their homeland: thirteen of their own, from two wives, and five heirs of a brother who died and, according to tradition, the maintenance of his offspring passed to the shoulders of the closest relative.
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It is not surprising that, in need of funds, the Cameroonians have come up with a very peculiar way to earn money. They began to offer everyone who wanted to "increase" their dollar savings for a certain percentage. In front of the amazed victim's eyes, a banknote was thrown into a pan with a “magic solution” and turned into several identical pieces of paper at once.
Of course, the secret of witchcraft was simply that Aurel and Andre initially glued several pieces of paper into one. Nevertheless, there were those willing to try. From gullible clients, the "sorcerers" received 9.5 thousand euros, with which they tried to hide. However, the police tracked them down and detained them.
When the court announced the sentence - three years in a general regime colony - the father of eighteen children burst into tears of despair. There was one more thing that the journalists noted: during the entire investigation and trial, foreigners were provided with an interpreter. However, after the final word of the judge, one of the Cameroonians turned to the cameras - and in the purest Russian asked: "Guys, stop shooting, eh" …
And there is nothing to send cholera to us
However, a prison sentence is not the worst thing that can happen to a blundering sorcerer, observers note. Last year, Haitians began a real hunt for wizards and witches, panicking over the cholera epidemic.
The disease has in fact caused a lot of trouble in Haiti: more than two thousand people have died from it. And in response, several dozen shamans became victims of lynching: a rumor spread among the residents that the cause of the disease was an infection-causing "magic powder" invented by sorcerers who practice the voodoo cult.
The Haitian government tried to explain to citizens that the disease is caused not by shamans, but by cholera vibrios, and constantly repeated about the basic rules of hygiene. But the observance of these rules for the citizens of the country, which suffered on the eve of both hurricane "Thomas" and the devastating earthquake, deprived of access to clean drinking water, turned out to be practically impossible. As a result, having killed the sorcerers, the Haitians directed their anger to the UN continent: by that time, a new rumor was born that the infection allegedly entered the country from the base of Nepalese peacekeepers.
One of the largest official executions of witches and shamans took place in June 2001 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There were killed at least 240 people, whom the inhabitants suspected of communicating with evil spirits. The "raid" was again based on rumors that the inhabitants of one of the villages were possessed by evil spirits.
How Pussy Riot drove a magician into a coffin
There are sorcerers and witches in Moscow too; in the "distant" 1999, for example, the Association of Moscow Magicians and Psychics appealed to the authorities of the capital with a written request - to disperse the clouds over the metropolis on August 11, the day of the solar eclipse. In their letter, the sorcerers noted: since the practice of "mechanically improving the weather" is successfully used on the City Day, then you can try for the sake of an eclipse. After all, this is a moment of power that can be used to get rid of infertility, insanity, get an additional amount of magical powers, or send damage to enemies.
But in Yekaterinburg last year, the famous sorcerer and voodoo fan Anton Simakov literally lay down in a coffin in order to support the activists of the punk group Pussy Riot in absentia. Arriving on the embankment of the Iset River, Simakov, right behind the residence of the presidential envoy in the Ural Federal District, unloaded the coffin from the car, lay down and covered himself with a lid.
True, - eyewitnesses reported, - from under the cover every now and then a hand was sticking out with an indecent gesture and unpleasant shouts were heard against the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church and the government. Despite this, the police did not detain the sorcerer, and after finishing the action, Simakov simply climbed out of the coffin and, leaving the "props" to the mercy of fate, peacefully left. Before that, however, he managed to explain to reporters that he was forced to resort to the rite, since celebrities - Madonna and others - somehow quieted down recently in relation to the scandalous process. So he, Anton Simakov, had to take care of supporting Tolokonnikova and Alekhina himself.