Thanks, Earth Muffin and Crystal Dragon for the replies.
@CD
You could say that I agree with you almost completely, save for a few caveats. Of course, my reservations are mostly intellectual/theoretical in nature (for the most part) and aren't based on copious amounts of practical experience. So feel free to point that out any time.
@Earth Muffin
I actually agree with you when you say that there might be a few conditions set into a spell's mechanism to make it a little resilient to general 'symptomatic' counters.
Maybe it's best if I give you guys the specific situation why these questions occurred to me at all. My good friend, colleague and roommate just got out of a ridiculously messed up relationship. I would call it abusive, although the abuse the girl heaped on him was the emotional variety. Daily dramas, tears, accusations- and one memorable instance wherein she ostensibly popped a few tranquillizers because she wanted to end her life (the reason being an unanswered text on his part, and she wanted to teach him a lesson). I won't go into the details of it all, because I'm still emotionally affected by the anger and vitriol; and it would be beyond hilarious to dump all of that onto you guys. So, bottom-line: it was a messed up relationship.
The weirdest thing is, my friend always had this strange
compulsion to always, always fall short of ending things. And when they'd been in the same town, it has been a compulsion to always meet her no matter what. Now, while I'm aware that many, many people in love might or do act the exact same way (heck, I know I would); that kind of behaviour was not in tune with who he was as a person.
The biggest litmus test for me? You could point out all of this girl's problems and negativity, the kind of ways she manipulated him in; and even insult her: but you would not be able to illicit a defensive reaction out of him. However, if you so much as insinuated any insult toward the girl he was seeing before this one, he would honest-to-God fly off the handle.
So it's not like he was incapable of fighting back for the people he loved/or regarded with affection.
However, what made me and his mother (who has had her own personal run-ins with malevolent workings)- independently, because we never really discussed her son's love life- suspect magick was because she would keep talking about a renowned astrologer/tantrik who had a lot of ability, etc, etc. In fact, not just her, her parents would also keep extolling the man's virtues.
I realise, of course, that it's all circumstantial; but either way, nobody is contemplating retribution (imagined or otherwise) aimed at the girl. But the fact remains that in local tantra folk magic in India, a
vashikaran (
Vash: Sanskrit, to make someone your thrall) is one of the more well known malevolent workings that someone can attempt to put on you.
Unfortunately, although I'm an Indian myself, tantra is something I am not well-versed with. However, I do know these things about
vashikaran:
The way it works is, you feed your target food (usually dessert), that's been mixed with powdered ingredients, which has been chanted over/bespelled, if I may use that term. The idea being, the influence becomes a part of
you rather than something that acts on you from the outside.
In India, any kind of magic/folk magic is usually magico-religious; meaning that any sort of working like this
will involve explicitly invoking a deity; so you wouldn't be dealing with
just someone's personal will.
In the end, however; like CD mentioned above, the target's awareness is very important here. Once his mother voiced these concerns, he was able to see the relationship for what it was, and end things.
If it was a
vashikaran, I would say a few echoes still linger because he's still unable to personally hurt this girl. He's still petrified of getting calls from her or seeing her, because he doesn't trust himself around her.
He knows that I occasionally do spell work, so I offered to cleanse and counter any remnants- he declined, because he feels giving it more attention would only grant it more power.
So this is where my question stems from. If I attempted to simply shield him from incoming influences, with runes, talismans, mirror spells or what have you- I would be missing the part of the influence that's inside. I'm inclined to think that the shield would not have been so effective.
Of course, CD mentions that anyone adept with energy work would be able to tell if there are any influences or energies present inside as well, so one would start with a cleansing right there.
I was just thinking of what form the counter would take, had I been requested to cast one. And my mind keeps cycling back to the form of the original spell- ingestion.
Anyway, sorry for going on this long.
