While Nigeria’s 419 scammers may have written the book on West African internet fraud, their shtick looks like Compuserve compared to what’s going on in Ghana. Ghana’s scammers decided to stack the odds in their favor the old-fashioned way: witchcraft.

Traditional West African Juju priests adapted their services to the needs of the information age and started leading down-on-their-luck internet scammers through strange and costly rituals designed to increase their powers of persuasion and make their emails irresistible to greedy Americans. And so “Sakawa” was born.

Not only is Sakawa the country’s most popular youth activity and one of its biggest underground economies, it’s a full-blown national phenomenon. Sakawa has its own tunes, clothing brands, Sakawasploitation flicks, and even a metastatic backlash from Christian preachers and the press. When we were in Accra over the summer it was impossible to walk more than ten feet without seeing the word Sakawa in blood-red Misfits letters on a poster or tabloid, often accompanied by bone-chilling horrors of the photoshopped variety.

The government is freaked out because Sakawa is threatening Ghana’s business reputation, the Christians are freaked out because they’re losing money to the Juju priests, the press is freaked out because being freaked out is what sells papers, and the public is freaked out because their government, preacher, and media are all telling them they should be. All the while the Sakawa boys are living the high life and racking up debts to the spirit world, just waiting for the axe to fall.

Romania has changed its labor laws to officially recognize witchcraft as a profession, prompting one self-described witch to threaten retaliation.

The move, which went into effect Saturday, is part of the government’s drive to crack down on widespread tax evasion in a country that is in recession.

In addition to witches, astrologists, embalmers, valets and driving instructors are now considered by labor law to be working real jobs, making it harder for them to avoid income tax.

For months the measure had been debated, protested by witches and mocked by the media.

On Saturday, a witch called Bratara told Realitate.net, the website of a top TV station, that she plans to cast a spell using black pepper and yeast to create discord in the government.

JOHANNESBURG—As the second-lowest ranked team in the World Cup competition, South Africa is expected to lose its opening match Friday against Mexico. But to ensure victory, Michael Mvakali recommends a simple fix: a concoction of plants and animal limbs.

“You use the horse’s foot and the ostrich leg, you mix it with some herbs and you put it on the players, on their knees and their legs, and when they kick, even the goalkeeper can’t get hold of that ball,” said Mr. Mvakali, a practitioner of traditional magic. While he hasn’t provided services to the national team, he says he has devised potions that helped other soccer players.

Many here think the South African team, nicknamed Bafana Bafana, or “The Boys,” can win—and not only because it enjoys home-field advantage in the first World Cup held in Africa. Some believe the team may also benefit from a little muti—a Zulu word that refers to witchcraft and traditional medicine, as well as the powders and potions used in the practices.

The team insists that it engages in no muti. But that denial isn’t very convincing to many fans, because conventional wisdom has it that publicly acknowledging the use of magic robs it of its power.

Muti is present in many aspects of South African life, used to solve infertility problems, get a spouse back or find work. In a nation that reveres soccer, home teams and opponents are popular recipients of blessings and curses. Many teams employ their own sangoma—a traditional healer with powers of divination. In attempts to influence games, sangomas may smear muti on the walls of dressing rooms, have players urinate on bags of dirt brought from their home field to away games, or bury animal parts in the soccer field.

Witchcraft isn’t exclusive to South African soccer. In 2002, Cameroon’s assistant coach was arrested after police accused him of dropping black magic on the field ahead of an important game against Mali (Cameroon won 3-0.) In neighboring Swaziland last year, a new artificial turf field was damaged when chicken feathers were buried in the center of it before a league match.

In South Africa, muti is used at all levels of the game, from players kicking the ball socially on weekends to managers of top-flight clubs…

Conservationists believe the growth of ‘muti’ magic in South Africa ahead of the World Cup has seen a surge in poaching of Cape vultures, already at risk from lack of food and poisoning.

‘The harvesting of the bird’s heads by followers of muti magic is an additional threat these birds can’t endure,’ said Mark Anderson, of BirdLife South Africa.

Steve McKean, from KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, who has been studying the decline of vultures due to muti magic, said: ‘Our research suggests that killing of vultures for so-called “traditional” use could render the Cape vulture extinct in some parts of South Africa within half a century.

Austrian motorway authority ASFINAG said it was skeptical at first and kept the project a secret. But it went public after the druids’ efforts cut the number of deaths at the notorious crash site from six a year to zero in two years.

Arch druid Ilmar Tessmann was called in as a last resort after a high number of fatal accidents were reported on a straight stretch of motorway near Salzburg.

He said the crashes were caused by radiation from a nearby mobile phone mast disrupting the area’s normal ‘terrestrial’ radiation. As well as using quartz standing stones to restore the area’s ‘natural energy’, the druids…[buried] magnets in the ground.

“Not pagan Samhain celebrations or the like,” to quote Chiropteran, “but bright-orange, screaming-pumpkin, Trick-or-Treating Halloween.” It’s all about doing magic with the wild, pop mystery explosion that Halloween has become. The Universal Monsters (Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein, Mummy) as the spirits of the North, South, East, and West; invocations of Jack Skellington; Jack-o-lanterns as the undead spirit servants we all carve every year to protect our homes from evil.

Halloween and Black (and Orange) Magick

Chiropteran – Well, yesterday was October 1st, the official opening day (by my reckoning) of the Halloween season.

This year, as part of my overarching goal to get my magickal butt in gear, I’ve decided to do a nightly meditation/devotion/working to hammer my Halloween Magick system into shape.

(I don’t know if anyone’s interested in the particulars, but here goes anyway, for any of you who are…)

I started last night by turning the lights down and reading some H. P. Lovecraft (”The Moon-bog”). Cheesy, maybe, but it set the mood nicely. I’ll probably do this with a different horror short story or novel excerpt every night.

Then I got things rolling with the quasi-improvised Four Monsters Banishing. Basically “calling the quarters,” with Dracula to the North (air), The Mummy to the South (earth), The Wolfman to the East (water) and Frankenstein’s Monster to the West (fire). (I’ve spent a while trying out different combinations of associations, and this seems to work out best, for now.) Then I read aloud a short passage from Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (the bit about the Autumn People).

As silly as it might sound, I have never had a more powerful opening to a ritual, whether solo or group. As I finished the final “call,” the air in the room charged up with an almost audible *thunk*, and my hands positively swarmed with gathered energy.

The feeling was so powerful that I almost considered charging a spontaneous working, but I decided to stick with the original plan, which was the “skull mask” meditation, the first step toward a full-blown Pumpkin King invokation.

Sobek – Yes, I think of the trick-or-treating as being the “Rade” of the fey. So I load the candy up with lots of goblin energy.

Original article. . .