We understand that self-fulfilling cycles exist. Positive feedback or negative feedback which loops onto itself and reinforces the trajectory of a process to some fulfilled or extreme end.

In human psychology we often use the term "self-fulfilling prophecy" or closely associated terms like "catastrophising" and it's inherent influence on our motivation to prevent it or resilience to a downward spiral. For simple example, I believe I am a failure, I cannot possibly pass this exam, therefore why bother study therefore I do not study, finally I fail the exam. Reinforcing that I was a failure to begin with.

But what is there to be said for entwining fates, entangling others in a cycle of your making: that is to say imposing catrophisising on others. Dragging them into your own self-fulfilling prophecy so to speak.

Enter: the witch and her curse - a thought experiment regarding psychological manipulation of others at it's finest degree.

Beth is a clever girl. Living in the 1500s. Jeremiah, another one of the towns people crossed her family. She is enraged. Her husband has been sentenced to death falsely, for a crime he did not commit, due to Jeremiahs vengeful sadism.

Beth bangs on his door one day. This is what she says: "Jeremiah, you cretin, you caustic man, you've crossed the wrong woman. You will regret the day you ever encountered me. For I have placed a curse on you.

First, you will laugh at me. Dismissing me in anger and spite. Thinking there's no such thing as a hex you foolish girl. You will tell your wife and family, your friends and revel together in mocking me. They will ease your exasperation for a short time. But this will not be the end. Bad things will happen to you. They will continue to happen.And when they do, in that moment, you will remember my curse. (ie. "don't think about pink elephants. She is constructing an association). You will start to wonder if they are related. Deep down this will unsettle you.

You will bring it up with you wife again. (By now the first part of the curse has already become true.) She will say its nonsense, and scorn you for entertaining such ideas. But you will slowly start to preoccupy yourself with it. You will lose sleep. Your nights will become restless. You will feel weak, tired, irritable and ill.

You will continue to pretend everything is fine. But inside you will slowly be driven mad as you realise all these things I've said will come to pass. And as they do, your belief in my curse will invariably grow, as it takes hold on you.

Eventually, you will not be able to stand it any longer. You will be left with 2 options. The first will be to come to be, begging to spare you. You will plead for forgivenessnand absolution. You will realise the errors of your ways and if you do, I will release you from the curse. You will be a free man.

The other option is you will, in contempt, go to the town court and declare me a witch. You will demand I be punished, burned at the stake for cursing you. If this is the path you take, I am sure to die one way or another. But in that moment, when I am killed, the curse will become permanent. You will not only pass it to all of your offspring, and theirs, forever more, but you will also let the curse consume the town.

The town will suffer. Bad things will happen and paranoia will run riot. Everyone will be suspicious of everyone else. They will believe there are more witches amongst us. Violence will ensue. But most importantly they will blame you. Your arrogance. For not simply coming to me and pleading for forgiveness to remove the curse. They will demand you dead. And this will be your undoing.

So heed my warning Jeremiah. You can save yourself and the town. When you admit you murdered my husband in cold blood. If you don't only horror will befall all of us.

What Beth has done here is outline very natural and logical behaviours following a threat. And injected them with a plausible superstition to back it. Superstition that feeds off of its own natural course (a self fulfilling cycle).

Because she outlined all possible reactions to her threat, having profiled jeremiah and applying basic psychology, every possible action jeremiah can take is plausibly related to him being cursed. The more that transpires from that point on, the more sure he is in the existence of a curse. Afterall it describes what is happening, what he and his family observe.

The only thing required to set the ball rolling is jeremiah and his family to have something bad happen to him/them. Which is guarenteed to occur. As everyone has bad days.

Beth has to take it to the extreme however (at her own risk of death) to ensure that all loose ends are tied up into one unavoidable narrative and that the manipulation can continue as long as is possible until jeremiah might consider apologising. She is manipulating him and relying on him to spread the threat to the rest of the town. Which he will as he is convinced it is taking hold.

So it seems a very methodical and carefully constructed narrative can ensare others in a self fulfilling prophecy of your own making. One that people will say is "seeing the future", when in fact it is just "seeing the human condition".

Such collective self-fulfilling cycles can be positive/constructive in nature or devastating/negative in nature. And are used even today in politics: everything from facist propaganda and rhetoric to climate change existentualism/extinctionism.

Of course the curse is not real. But the dynamic it relies on very much is. So in the end, the same outcome arises. The curse merely outlines the outcome better than anyone else has simply by being spoken.

This paradigm, I believe, is why superstitions, premonitions, prophecies, omens, mysticism and belief in magic persist today.