Note: MIPC stands for Magic in Popular Culture and this is a series of posts in which I take a spell, ritual, belief, etc... from a work of fiction such as a book, movie, comic book, or tv show and analyze it against real world magical beliefs and practices.
The Spell or Belief
Place 36 pins in a glass jar of water with holes poked into the metal lid. Place the jar upon a fire. As the water heats and boils chant:
"Pastoo veedoo agrimenteStrike Avezuba and lift the hex!Lama Samana QuanaGive me the sign!Lama Samana QuanaGive me the sign!"
If the jar breaks, the curse is broken
Gidget Season 1, Episode 18'Like Voodoo' 1/13/1966
Commentary
First of all, we need to put this spell into context. At the beginning of the episode, Gidget finds that her new surfboard is missing. She walks along the beach looking for it only to find it leaning against a Gypsy's trailer with a for sale sign on it. Gidget tries to explain to the Gypsy woman that the surfboard is hers (her name is painted on the board) and that it was stolen. When the Gypsy refuses to return the surfboard, Gidget grabs it and runs away with her surfboard.
The Gypsy woman then reaches down and grabs a handful of sand which she allows to slowly fall through her fingers as she invokes Avezuba saying...
At first Gidget dismisses the curse but then she has a run of bad luck. She then looks through her father's anthropology books and find the above ritual to break the curse, which she dutifully performs.
Who is Avezuba?
When I first began looking deeper into this ritual, I initially thought that Avezuba would turn out to be some made-up Devil like name for the show. However, during the curse of my research, I discovered that Avezuba is actually the Romanian name for Lillith, who according to legend was Adam's first wife and mother of demons. Therefore, the gypsy woman was invoking the name of Lillith to curse Gidget with bad luck, failure, and unrest.
I attempted to learn more about Pastoo veedoo agrimente, however, I wasn't able to find any more information about the meaning of these words. Since I wrote the words as they sounded to me when I watched the episode, I may not have spelled them correctly. Since Avezuba is Lillith, I would suspect that Pastoo veedoo agrimente is one of the many, many names of God (Agla, Adonai, Yahweh, Tetragrammaton, etc...) used to counter her black magic.
That being said, I also think that the above curse removal spell may be a (cleaner) adaptation of an old ritual that called for boiling the cursed person's urine in a pot into which has been places several bent pins. Supposedly when the urine evaporates the curse will be gone. In this case, the fire heats up the water, it begins to boil and breaks the glass thus breaking the spell.
- Carolina Dean
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