In some societies, supernatural powers can bring not only healing, but also death. When a malicious curse or spell is cast against you, antibiotics, surgery, and other treatments won’t help. But there’s a catch – you have to believe in it.

We all know that society influences the individuals who form it. However, it is not obvious that this influence can be total, and can literally send any person to their death. In a somewhat forgotten 1936 study entitled “Physical effect upon the individual of the collectively suggested idea of death”, the renowned sociologist Marcel Mauss examined cases of such deaths. The collected ethnographic material came mainly from the life of the Indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand. The described details were closely related to phenomena that are no longer present in Europe, in particular magic and taboos. The incidents I describe below were most often ‘magically induced’ or resulted from a breach of a tribal ban. As it turns out, there truly are mortal sins.