A Correspondence with a Reader about Occult Stuff

The occult is something where I am mostly out of my depth, particularly when it comes to the Church’s pastoral responses. My passing acquaintance with it has come from press clippings from the (I think) wildly dubious and unreliable Fr. Gabriele Amorth, whom many Catholics mysteriously trust despite massive reasons not to do so, and from conversations with a diocesan exorcist I know (who seems to me to be much more reliable). Beyond that have been a few experiences of my own and friends with very low level spiritual warfare and the general teaching of the Church, which takes the devil seriously, but not so seriously as to live in fear of him.I say all this by way of preface to a little fat-chewing between me and a reader.  Do not, I implore you, take anything I say here as anything other than the blather of a layman noodling things over with a reader.  What do I know?***Mark, I have some questions regarding the occult.Today, my brother, a friend, and I were discussing some things, and the subject came up of a young priest who had had a tattoo on his arm, and anothlier priest who had never even seen the tattoo told him that some evil had been done to it, that it was cursed in some way by the person who created it.The obvious question that comes to mind is “How did he know that?”While I truly believe that physical objects can be blessed, and can have a positive effect, even an unwitting one (much like how praying for someone can), is it actually Catholic to believe that physical objects can be “cursed”, or that placing a curse or a hex on someone is actually efficacious? I know that the person who attempts to do this is opening