"It was a curious fact that, although every magician must have known himself to be a fraud and a trickster, he always believed in and greatly feared the supernatural abilities of other medicine men." (E Lucas Bridges, Uttermost Part of the Earth, 286).
Our immediate response to this could be, 'And so it is with writers, musicians, painters and with all experts, all professionals'. But in fairness to the medicine man we should perhaps grant that he might be impressed by his own sleight of hand and that of others in proportion to the admiration this excites. What he fears in other magicians is not the truth of the magic, which he knows is a ludicrous deception, but the fact that it succeeds in deceiving the audience. There is no power in a curse except, and it is a vast exception, that it persuades many that you are indeed cursed.