spells – Page 5 – New World Witchery – The Search for American Traditional Witchcraft

Podcast Special – Spellcasting Greatest Hits

-SHOWNOTES FOR SPECIAL – SPELLCASTING GREATEST HITS-

Summary
This mid-hiatus special is all about successful spellcasting. We discuss our most effective spells, our favorite techniques, and some of the philosophy and mechanics of potent magical practice.

Play:

Download: New World Witchery – Podcast Special – Spellcasting Greatest Hits

-Sources-
*The Lucky Mojo page on “Honey Jars” contains great information on this lovely little family of spells.
*Here are a few pages on lost item spells, particularly the St. Anthony charm mentioned by Cory.
*John George Hohman’s Long Lost Friend contains the Pow-wow spells mentioned in this show.
*The Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, by Judika Illes, contains many wonderful spells, and is a book we both turn to often.

Music
“Grifos Muertos” by Jeffery Luck Lucas, from his album What We Whisper, on Magnatune.com

Blog Post 68 – Be Our Guest?

So running with an idea (and a title lovingly borrowed) from Juniper over at Walking the Hedge and Standing Stone and Garden Gate, I’m putting out a call for submissions to our wonderful readers. I know we probably have at least a couple of writers out there as well, and we’d love to have you do a guest post for New World Witchery.

We’re going to have about 6-8 weeks of low posting from me, and we’d like to be able to post at least 3 articles per week if possible. So that means we need 18-24 well-written, proofread, researched, reasoned, resonant, and remarkable entries. Something tells me we’ve got a few folks who might just be up to the task, so if you’re interested, here’s the submissions guide:

1)      Each article should be no less than 300 words, and no more than 2000. 500-800 words is usually ideal length, but there is some flexibility.
2)      MS Word (.doc) attachments are ideal, with inline email text being a secondary preference.
3)      Please include all links with your submission. I may have to tweak them slightly to get them on the site, but I definitely can’t chase down links for you. Footnotes or endnotes should be similarly included.
4)      Any artwork must be in the public domain (try Wikimedia Commons to start) or your own original picture/art with authorization to use it on the site.
5)      All work must be your own. Citations are fine, along with short passages of material presented in a scholarly fashion, but please, no plagiarism.
6)      Please proofread your work. Excessive typos and grammar snafus will not be corrected or posted.
7)      You retain all publication rights to your material other than the first-time online publication rights. In other words, you’re free to submit this on a site like Witchvox or to a print publication, as long as you say that it was first published on this site. (I’ll also assume the right to reprint passages or references to your work in future publications, but I will not publish your article in its entirety without your permission).

Of course, I’m always happy to get nice, scholarly articles on the topics of hoodoo, pow-wow, curanderismo, witchcraft, etc. But what I’d really like is to get articles on the following topics, specifically:

Personal or family magical lore (such as magical practices, divinations, weather signs, etc.). Please include your family background (such as region or ethnic heritage), too, so we know where these things come from.
Regional magical lore, including things like witch stories, magical places, spells, famous witches, etc. Of course, please let us know which region you’re writing about (you don’t have to be too specific—“Appalachia” or “New England” would be sufficient).
Spell-work hits and misses. Tell us about spells you’ve done, ingredients you’ve used, charms you’ve said and what your results were.
Botanical or animal curios and your personal experiences with them. Are there ones you favor? Ones you shy away from?
Favorite spells and practices. Do you particularly like working with the dead? Do you have a favorite way to communicate with the Ancestors? Are you a sharp-shooter when it comes to love mojos? Tell us what you do and how you got so dang good at it!
Magical book reviews are also welcome, especially ones dealing with North American folk magic and witchcraft (not Wicca—there are lots of reviews on Wiccan books, so we don’t really want those here). History, folklore, and regionally specific spellbooks (like conjure or brujeria books) are all excellent candidates for review.

Other topics are welcome; just email and ask about them first. Not every article may get published on the site, so if we don’t select yours or if we suggest some revisions first, please don’t take it personally.

“Geez!” you say. “That’s an awful lot of work for not getting paid!” Ah, but there’s the twist in the plot! While we’re still a relatively poor blog and podcast, we’re gearing up for another contest. Anyone who writes a guest article that we post on New World Witchery will be entered for that contest. We’ve still got to work out just what we’re going to give out, but right now we’re looking at having three winners drawn at random. If you submit multiple posts and we publish them, you get an entry for every article we put up! Each winner will get a different, unique prize, so this could shape up to be a very interesting contest.

So, yes, technically you’re still not getting paid exactly, but you may wind up with something cool in the end. And you’ll be adding to the wealth of knowledge found here, so you are benefitting a whole wide world of witchy folk. Isn’t that a nice feeling?

So, if you’re interested in being a part of New World Witchery, email us your articles and maybe win a prize in the process! In case you can’t get the email from that link, it’s compassandkey@gmail.com.

Many thanks, and we look forward to hearing from you!

-Cory

Blog Post 62 – More Ideas for Urban Witchcraft

Greetings everyone!

Following on yesterday’s topic of urban conjure and rootwork, I thought today it might be fun to take a look at some spells that have roots in traditional American folk magic, but which use certain modern adaptations to accommodate contemporary life.

Courtcase Spell
In the past, courthouses were often wooden-floored buildings outfitted with spittoons for the convenience of trial attendees with a chaw of tobacco in their mouths. Hoodoo developed a fairly ingenious way to exert some influence over a case by taking advantage of the spitting habit so prevalent in that day and age. A defendant would keep a gob of Little John to Chew (the root known as galangal now—readily available in Asian markets) in his or her cheek, and then spit the juice onto the courthouse floor while ostensibly aiming for a spittoon nearby. This sort of contagious magic would then bring favor in the case from anyone who walked on or near the spit.

Nowadays, spitting in court is probably a good way to lose your case. Most courthouses are kept fairly secure, and tobacco products are seldom allowed in any government building (not that Little John is a tobacco product, but it’s supposed to look like it is, so either way, it’s out). But there’s still a fairly simple way to work a spell in your favor:

1) Get some dirt or water from the courthouse area – This can be dirt from a flower bed, from near the back of the building, or even from a potted plant somewhere on the premises if you can manage it. Or, if the courthouse has a fountain out front, you can collect water from that, or fill a drinking bottle with water from the drinking fountain in the courthouse (or from the bathroom, etc.). Barring all of these options, you can scrape the side of the building and try to gather even just a little bit of dust from it, then mix it with soil from the closest source you can find.

2) Take some Little John to Chew (galangal root) and work up a good bit of spit. Spit the juice into the dirt or water, while reciting a petition or prayer appropriate to your situation (such as Psalm 35, “Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me…”). If you have only a little bit of dirt, you can add the dirt to some water and make a sort of “tea” out of it and the spit. If you have only a little bit of water, you can dilute it with some more water (add a little whiskey to it to give it a kick).

3) Take the dirt or water and go back to the courthouse. Sprinkle your mixture in a circle around the building, as close as you can get (if you have to walk a block, sprinkling a little as you go, that’s fine—just make sure the entire building is encircled). Whenever the judge who tries your case crosses that line, he will be disposed to favor you.

This trick relies on the same contagious magic as the older trick. Why not just chew and spit at the front steps to the courthouse, you ask? Well, you can’t be sure that your judge will come up those steps, and you need him to come into contact with your trick. Unless he or she lives somewhere in the courthouse, your judge will have to cross the ring you make around the area in order to get inside, and so you should be able to affect him or her that way.

Git-Gone! Spell
Hot Footing someone to get rid of them is an old hoodoo trick. In the past, it was accomplished by either mixing dirt from someone’s footprint with a special mixture of potent spices called “Hot Foot Powder” (see here, here, and here to buy) or by sprinkling that powder where a target would walk over it. While it’s still possible to work the latter trick in a modern setting without much trouble, getting someone’s footprint-dirt isn’t easy anymore. Additionally, the older version of the trick requires deployment in running water or throwing it away on a road heading out of town.

To bring a trick like this into the modern age, however, is not difficult. City dwellers who can’t pick up dirty foot-tracks can work around that requirement by laying hold of a sock or shoe (or any article of clothing from the target, really). Once you have something of theirs, you simply mix the Hot Foot Powder and wrap it in their clothing (or in the case of a shoe, give the sole a good sprinkling).

Deploying the trick can be done a couple of ways. The simplest is to return the clothing to the target and hope they wear it without noticing the powder first (this is best with shoes). Often, in apartment buildings, this kind of work is fairly easy to do because people will leave wet shoes in the hallway to dry out (much to the chagrin of their neighbors on warm days).

If giving the item of clothing back seems like it would cause raised eyebrows, or just doesn’t strike you as the best method, there are a couple of other distinctly modern deployment techniques that might be worth considering. Since deployment in running water is a traditional method, consider chucking the Hot Footed sock into a sewer (which contains running water, after all, along with all manner of nastiness to help convince your target the time to leave is now). Or, instead of finding a road out of town, you could go down to a train yard or a bus station and toss the sock onto a boxcar or bus heading out of the city. In a lot of ways, a bus station is like a modern-age crossroads with the constant traffic coming and going, so sending someone away via outbound bus is actually a pretty smart way to go about your work. I’d also suggest the same is true of airports, but sneaking things onto planes is a BAD idea, especially right now. You’d really be asking for more trouble than a trick like this is worth. Stick with bus stations and trains.

Send Away Your Troubles
There’s a bit of American folk magic that involves a rather sneaky method for healing common ailments. The person with the disease (usually something like boils, warts, or corns) creates a small packet and “passes” the disease to the materials in the packet. Then he or she drops the bundle in a road. Whoever finds and opens it then receives the disease, and the person who passed the disease is cured of it. Vance Randolph describes the procedure in conjunction with warts:

“Another way to ‘pass’ a wart is to spit on it, rub a bit of paper in the spittle, fold the paper, and drop it in the road; the wart is supposed to pass to the first person who picks up the paper and unfolds it. Children are always trying this, and one can find these little folded papers in the road near most any rural schoolhouse” (OM&F, p.127).

In the modern age, very few folks are walking along our roads, and few of those are going to stop to pick up a strange packet. Motorists zooming by at high speeds never see them and people walking through cities for the most part avoid picking up litter from the walkways. So how can one adapt this sort of spell to work today?

The United States Postal Service processes over 500 million pieces of mail per day (according to their website). So why not put that big, churning system to work for you? Here’s what I suggest:

1) Just like in the old version of the spell, take a piece of paper and rub it against the afflicted part of your body. If you want, you can even write a short petition on the paper asking that it remove illness from you and carry it far away.

2) When you feel like you’ve imbued the paper with the disease, put it in an envelope. Address the envelope, either by selecting a real person to send it to (which I actually don’t recommend—it just seems like an awfully trite way to get vengeance on an enemy and it certainly doesn’t make you any friends) or by writing a “dead letter.” A dead letter is addressed to someone fictional (like Santa Claus, Professor Moriarty, Xenu, etc.) or someone dead (this could be an ancestor or just a spirit you think might be willing to help you by taking your disease off of you and into the grave).

3) Don’t use a return address, and post the letter from a public mailbox. You might, for example, send your disease to:

Mephistopheles
First Circle
Hell, the Universe

This letter will then carry your disease away from you and into a sort of “limbo” space.

The only downside to this method is the same one that comes with the old method: if someone ever does open up your letter, they may catch your illness. But all magic comes with risk, so if it sounds like a useful spell to you, please feel free to use it.

That’s it for today. I’d love to hear from other city witches and urban rootworkers if you have suggestions for tricks that might be traditional-yet-modern. Feel free to comment or email us.

Thanks for reading!

-Cory

Blog Post 46 – Magic and Mother Goose

I received a comment from reader Chet the other day which inspired this particular blog post. So, many thanks, Chet! He mentioned that he’s been listening to his daughter’s music, which includes many nursery rhymes, and hearing not-so-subtle references to fairly adult topics (such as the sexual undercurrents in a song like “There’s a Hole in My Bucket”). This idea may be old hat to some, but I thought it might be worth taking a few nursery rhymes and dropping them into the cauldron to see what bubbled up. Please note that my witchy exegesis here may be entirely wrong, but it may also provide some new perspectives on old songs and rhymes. I welcome all comments on these interpretations (well, all civil comments, that is).

You can find a great list of Mother Goose rhymes here, along with some brief explanations of each one.

Now, onto the rhymes!

Jack-be-Nimble
Jack be nimble
Jack be quick
Jack jump over
The candlestick.

This little rhyme was first published in the 18^th century, according to one source. It may have referred to a clever and quick pirate called “Black Jack,” but it also likely has something to do with the practice of jumping over fires, as is sometimes done at May Day (or Beltane) celebrations. In these instances, the leaper jumps over a bonfire in order to gain blessings—like fertility and an easy birth for women—or protection, or to purify one ritually. Afterwards, the ashes would be scattered over the fields to ensure a fertile crop. In its diminished form with a candle-stick, a person could leap the candle forwards and backwards three times (or nine times in some cases) while asking for such blessings, and if the candle remained lit, the wish would be granted. This might make for an interesting spell, though I cannot recommend it for safety reasons—if you choose to do it, you do so at your own risk and would be well advised not to wear loose-fitting or flowing clothes.

Peter Pumpkin Eater
Peter Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her!
He put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her very well!

This rhyme fits in very well at New World Witchery, because it originates in North America. While many nursery rhymes came from the UK, the mention of the pumpkin in this one tells of its roots (pumpkins are a New World fruit unknown in Europe prior to the colonial era). But what is it all about? Well, if a man has a wife he can’t “keep,” it means that she is being generally unfaithful to him, and turning him into a cuckold. My take on this particular rhyme is that our good fellow Peter knows of his wife’s infidelity and decides to put a stop to it. He does this by putting something of hers—likely something very intimate like used underclothes—into a pumpkin shell, which as it rots, prevents her from being able to dally with other men. This sort of spell is common enough in hoodoo, and is generally referred to as binding someone’s “nature” so they cannot sexually perform with another partner. This is my take only, of course, and your mileage may vary.

For Want of a Nail
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

This rhyme is used, according to some, as a way of chastising children who do not see the consequences of their actions. I certainly agree that in that light, this rhyme is a wonderful didactic tool. However, I also like to think there’s something a little more magical that can be gleaned from this little bit of lore. For example, there is a great deal of sympathetic magic which focuses on using something small, like a poppet, to affect something bigger, like a person. Examined thusly, this chant might be a great way to amplify magical activity. For example, if you were trying to banish something—like a disease—you could take something from the ill party (hair, fingernails, or clothing worn while sick) and bind it into a charm which might be buried, burned, or otherwise permanently disposed of while chanting this rhyme. In this way, you’d be telling the disease that it no longer has the power to ravage the entire body, because you’ve taken away a part of the “body” from it. The disease would then give up, having lost its “kingdom.” The healing example may be a bit of a stretch, though, as the primary way I can see this little spell being used is to banish unwanted persons from your life.

Pat-a-Cake
Pat a cake, Pat a cake, baker’s man
Bake me a cake as fast as you can;
Pat it and prick it and mark it with a ‘B’,
And put it in the oven for Baby and me.

I see two ways that this lovely little rhyme might be given a magical connotation: 1) By baking food and marking it with someone’s initial, you’re essentially creating a poppet of that person, which can be used in many kinds of spells, or 2) This could be a lovely way to help someone with fertility or family blessings, as having a “bun in the oven” is a common euphemism for pregnancy. In this latter case, when the mother-to-be devours the cake marked with an initial (perhaps the future baby’s, or her own if she hasn’t picked a name yet), she would be putting the “baby” in her belly. A newly pregnant mother might also do a spell based on this to ensure a healthy baby, and a new mother might then play this game with her child as a way of continuing the blessing for her child (as well as endlessly amusing the little one, which is really what I think this rhyme is all about in the end).

Crooked Man
There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house

Finally, we come to one of my personal favorites. I know that some interpretations put a meaning on this rhyme referring to the unification of Scotland and English under a single ruler, but I tend to think of the rhyme in more esoteric terms. The repetition of the word “crooked” seems to be almost a mantra, or a chant for moving into another state of mind. And I think that the “crooked mile” could well be the “crooked path” of witchcraft. The “crooked stile” is likely the gateway between worlds, too. So my best use of this charm is to act as a “road opener” between the mundane world and the world of spirits. There are also plenty of stories about paying a “tithe to hell” before crossing over (see Tam Lin or Thomas the Rhymer), and it’s usually something nominal (or at least, something that seems nominal at the time), so a sixpence would fit the bill. I also wonder if the crooked house is the proverbial witch’s cottage, or something a little more significant. Perhaps the “house” is the line down which a tradition is passed? And because that line sometimes veers out of strict blood ties and into adoptive relationships, it could be seen as a “crooked house.” Of course, these are all just my speculations, but I like them.

I could go on and on with these rhymes, looking at them through the lens of witchcraft, and probably find something of value in most any nursery rhyme I read. However, it’s probably best to say here that just because I interpret something with a witchy twist doesn’t mean that historically it has any such meaning. In many cases, these rhymes are just entertainments for the very young, and a bit of whimsy for the slightly less young. I like to think that magic and childhood go together, though, so I will happily continue scouring these rhymes for a bit of hidden wonder. If you do the same, I’d love to hear what you come up with!

Thanks for reading!

-Cory

Blog Post 45 – Witches

Stories about witches in the New World are plentiful. Early historical accounts of witch trials in America show that the belief in witchcraft was widespread throughout the colonies, though the degree to which each colony acted on those beliefs varied quite a bit (see Blog Post 3 and Blog Post 6 for some good background on these).

Often, it seems that the stories about witches that appeared in the New World were linked to Old World roots. Tales of witch-flights in the Appalachians parallel similar stories from the British Isles. German stories about witches casting spells on hunters’ guns show up in the Ozarks. In general, many of these stories can be broken up into a few key categories: how to become a witch, what witches do, and how to deal with witches.

How to Become a Witch

There are several different ways a person (usually a woman in folklore) becomes a witch. The act of initiation usually involves a pledge of some kind to a dark figure—usually the Devil, though I would argue that this “Devil” is something other than Satanic. But I digress, and will address this topic further in another post. In Vance Randolph’s excellent book, Ozark Magic & Folklore, he outlines how the mountain folk thought a witch was initiated:

“Some parts of the witches’ routine are well known, even to people who deny all acquaintance with such matters. The trick of reversing the Lord’s Prayer is a case in point… When a woman decides to become a witch, according to the fireside legends, she repairs to the family buryin’ ground at midnight, in the dark of the moon. Beginning with a verbal renunciation of the Christian religion, she swears to give herself body and soul to the Devil. She removes every stitch of clothing, which she hangs on an infidel’s tombstone, and delivers her body immediately to the Devil’s representative, that is, to the man who is inducting her into the ‘mystery.’ The sexual act completed, both parties repeat certain old sayin’s, terrible words which assemble devils, and the spirits of the evil dead and end by reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards. This ceremony is supposed to be witnessed by at least two initiates, also nude, and must be repeated on three consecutive nights. After the first and second vows the candidate is still free to change her mind, but the third pledge is final. Henceforth the woman is a witch and must serve her new master through all eternity” (Randolph pp. 266-67)

In Appalachia, another witch-making process is described in Foxfire 2:

“JIM EDMONDS: I heard about a man—a witch said he’d make a witch out a’him if he followed him. They come to this door and th’witch said ‘Hi-ho, hi-ho! In th’keyhole I go.’ He went on in and got all he wanted.

Th’old witch came and said, ‘Hi-ho, hi-ho! Out th’keyhole I go,’ and went on out.

Th’old man came and thought he’d do what th’other did and said, ‘Hi-ho, hi-ho! Up th’high hole I go,’ and fell t’th’floor!

You just had t’pay no ‘tention t’witches. They can put a spell on you, but they can’t turn you into a witch if you pay them no mind.” (p. 355)

Hubert J. Davis, in his astoundingly good compilation of American witch-lore entitled The Silver Bullet, outlines another method of becoming a witch:

“’Fust, he’d [the potential witch] have to climb to the top of the highest knob on Witch Mountain and tote either a black cat or a black hen. Then, he’d have to find the Indian graveyard at the place nigh where two Indian trails cross. There, he’d have to draw a big ring in the dust ‘bout fifteen feet acrost, and dance in this circle each morning at break of day for eight mornings in a row. Then, on the ninth morning, he’d have to put one hand on the top of his head and ‘tother on the sole of his foot and say ‘ I give all betwixt my two hands to the Devil…Then the Devil comes…and nips him on the shoulder so hit bleeds. Then, the Devil tells him to wet his finger in the blood and sign an X to this pact…the Devil will same some magic words over the cat or the hen and change hit into an imp [another name for a familiar]” (Davis pp.14-15)

Various other methods of becoming a witch are recounted in these texts, too, including firing a gun nine times at a full moon, shooting at the rising sun and watching to see if it “bleeds,” or simply being taught the ways of the witch by a family member of the opposite sex. On this last point, I will note that the writers generally say cross-gender transfer of information is de rigeur, and just because one learns the spells and ways of a witch doesn’t make one an initiate of witchcraft.

I think I should point out that Sarah at Forest Grove did an amazing blog post on initiation recently which I recommend reading. Particularly because I think there are some pretty strong parallels between the folklore I’m presenting here and the steps towards initiation she mentions in her post. Let me know what you think, though.

What Witches Do

Having a witch in the neighborhood was a mix of good and bad for early settlers. On the one hand, witches tended to be able to make potions and counter-charms to help with curses and bad luck, among many other talents. But on the other hand, a local witch meant that there was a good chance your livestock would end up cursed or dead or both.

A common curse witches could use involved bewitching cattle so that they would not produce milk. Or rather, the only person who could milk the cow was the witch—she would usually use an axe-handle or an old rag tied to a fence post held over a bucket. She’d squeeze the object, and milk would pour out, while the cow’s udders slowly drained in a distant pasture. In one of the stories from The Silver Bullet called “No Milk on Saturday,” Hubert Davis recalls a story about a witch who put a spell on a cow so it would only give bloody milk. The cow’s owner consulted a witch doctor (see “Dealing with Wicked Witches” below) and figured out how to reverse the curse, eventually.

Witches also had the power to curse people. One of the main methods of performing such a curse involved the creation of a “witch ball.” This was a little ball made of black hair from a dog, cat, horse, etc. and wax, which was then thrown or “shot” at the target. If the victim didn’t get magical remediation immediately, the witch ball could lead to his or her death in fairly short order. From Ozark Magic & Folklore:

“I have been told of another Ozark witch who killed several of her enemies by means of a “hair ball” just a little bunch of black hair mixed with beeswax and rolled into a hard pellet. The old woman tossed this thing at the persons whom she wished to eliminate, and they fell dead a few hours later. It is said that the fatal hair ball is always found somewhere in the body of a person killed in this manner. In one case, according to my informant, the little ball of combings was taken from the dead girl’s mouth” (Randolph pp.271-272).

Some of the many other sinister tasks a witch might do included bewitching butter churns or soap tubs, causing them to fail to produce any butter or soap. They could also summon storms and blight crops, as well. In Randolph’s work, he mentions that one witch ruined a tomato crop by simply drawing a circle inscribed with a cross in the dirt, then spitting in the center.

Of course, the witch could also shapeshift, turning into her animal self easily and slipping off to Sabbaths, into the homes of innocent farmers and their families, or into the bed of a lover while her husband dozed dumbly in bed. Common shapes for witches included the ubiquitous black cat, the hare, mountain lions, and dogs. There are plenty of stories about a hunter being unable to shoot a particular animal until he manages to get a silver bullet in his gun. Then, he mortally wounds the beast, which gets away, and later hears that some local woman is lying in bed missing a hand or a foot—the very part shot off by the hunter!

I’ll refrain from offering too much commentary here on these ideas (though I will be revisiting them at a later date), but I would like to say that many of these common elements have a place in modern witchcraft, albeit not a literal one. Understanding these stories metaphorically, or understanding the basic kernels of practical witchcraft embedded in these tales, is an exercise worth the undertaking for an aspiring New World witch.

Dealing with Wicked Witches

Randolph makes a key point in his text on Ozark magic that many clairvoyants, mediums, card readers, conjure men, etc. get called “witches” by outsiders, but the Ozark resident made a distinction between them. Witches were almost always nefarious in purpose, according to Randolph, though he himself revealed that out of nearly two dozen witches he’d interviewed, almost twenty of them reported working against evil rather than for it.

In the Old World, these counter-cursing magical folk were often known as fairy doctors, cunning folk, or pellars. In the New World, these names sometimes surface, but just as often, they are called witch doctors or conjure folk (which is confusing when you realize that hoodoo and witchcraft cross cultural boundaries in many places, and thus this term may have had different meanings to different people). In a Works Project Administration report about Tennessee, the folklorist makes the following observation: “Cunjur [sic] doctors will sell you ‘hands’ or ‘tobies’ enabling you to detect witches and ward off their spells” (Ch. 14, par. 19). Here, the line between hoodoo (or “cunjur”) and what is typically thought of as European witchcraft is heavily blurred, and the magic of one is used to affect the magic of the other.

Undoing the harm caused by a witch could involve a number of different techniques. In Hubert Davis’s work, he talks about how the unfortunate farmer with the bloody milk dealt with his problem:

“Steve milked his cow, brought the milk into the cabin and put it in a big flat pan. Then, he went out on a ridge and cut three birch withes and tied them together. He built a big fire under the pan of milk and, as it boiled, he flailed as much milk as he could out of the pan into the fire with the birch withes. As the milk burned with a blue-green flame, Steve saw Granny Lotz’s face in the flames and he knew that it was indeed she who had witched the cow” (Davis p.35)

In the case of a bewitched butter churn, placing a piece of silver under the cursed object would stop the magic sometimes, or burning some of the butter with hot coals would do the trick too. Other curse-breaking methods included using witch bottles to reverse a curse and shooting an image of the witch with a silver bullet. This last method could theoretically kill the witch, and often was performed in the nick of time (at least as far as the folklore goes), just before a witch could complete a particularly nasty curse. Other methods of removing a witch’s curse involved “scoring her” above her eyes, or making her bleed on her forehead. If that happened, or if you could make her see her own blood in some cases, her powers would be broken.

Another common enchantment involved the bewitching of a hunter’s gun. A hunter who normally did well would suddenly find he couldn’t hit a thing he aimed at. In many cases, an elaborate ritual had to be performed to remove such an bewitchment. As Foxfire informant Jim Edmonds relates:

“Old Billy Jesse claimed he was a witch. Ol’Gran’daddy couldn’t shoot a thing. Somebody put a spell on his gun. He went over to Billy Jesse t’take th’spell off. He lived in what they call Bitter Mountain Cove. Told him he wanted him t’take th’spell off him. Somebody had witched his gun.

So Billy loaded that gun and went t’every corner of th’house and shot sayin’, ‘Hurrah fer th’Devil!’ Run t’every corner and shot—never did load it but once—hollerin’, ‘Hurrah fer th’Devil!’

Billy then said, ‘Now th’next thing you will see will be a great covey of quail. Now don’t you shoot at nothin’. Then th’next thing you see will be a big buck. You can kill him. Just shoot nothin’ else.

Gran’daddy done just like he told him, and here come a big drove a’birds. He just held still. He went on and there was this big ol’ buck. Shot and killed him. Th’spell was off his gun.” (Foxfire 2, p.333)

All of this folklore may just be storytelling. Or it may be a way of hiding secrets in plain sight. Or it may be to-the-letter true, for all I know. But at the very least, I know that I enjoy these stories. And personally, I get a lot out of them that isn’t just related to campfire entertainment. Though I don’t mind mixing s’mores and witchcraft, should the occasion call for it.

Okay, a long post today, but hopefully a useful one! Thanks for sticking with it, and as always, thanks for reading!

-Cory

Podcast 7 – Weather Magic and Lore

-SHOWNOTES FOR EPISODE 7-

Summary
Today we’ll look at some weather folklore and magic. Then, we’ll be introducing two new sections: WitchCraft with Laine, and Magic Spelled Out with Cory.

Play:

Download: New World Witchery – Episode 7

-Sources-
Main Topic
The Foxfire Book – Specifically the chapter on weather lore
Smoky Mountain Weather Lore – With some interesting weather folklore from the Appalachians
Buying the Wind by Richard Dorson
Grimoire for the Green Witch, by Ann Moura
Dog Predicting Earthquake – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MFzcl-kZHo&feature=related
And of course, weather lore provided by our wonderful listeners!

WitchCraft
“Knitting Witchcraft” by Olivia O’Meir, in Llewellyn’s 2007 Magical Almanac
The Knitter’s Book of Yarn, by Clara Parkes
–knittingdaily.com
–theanticraft.com
–ravelry.com

Magic Spelled Out
Earth Power, by Scott Cunningham
Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, by Judika Iles

Promos & Music
Title music: “Homebound,” by Jag, from Cypress Grove Blues. From Magnatune.
WitchCraft Intro: “Down on the Farm” by Chubby Parker
Magic Spelled Out Intro: “Evil Devil Woman Blues” by Joe McCoy
Promo 1 – Witchery of One (Hooray! Jay’s back!)
Promo 2- Pennies in the Well

Blog Post 41 – Zombie Dust

Good morning everyone! Today I’m going to be talking about one of the most interesting magical ingredients available on the market today: Zombie Dust.

This particular magical supply is the stuff of legends, and has long been used in Voodoo and hoodoo ceremonies involving resurrection of the dead. The powder is sprinkled over a recently deceased corpse, which then rises in the thrall of the one who did the sprinkling, becoming a sort of slave to the magician. The use of Zombie Powder was chronicled in the 1986 documentary film, Zombie Nightmare. In the movie, we are allowed to witness an actual resurrection ceremony performed by a Voodoo priestess. The powder is never shown in great detail, but it is clearly used to perform the rite.

The ingredients are usually a closely guarded secret, however I can share at least a few of the most “active” components with you here today. Some traditional ingredients include:

Bone of the father unwillingly given
Flesh of the servant willingly sacrificed
Blood of the enemy forcibly taken

These ingredients, however, may merely be for show, as the key ingredient seems to be moon dust. Moon dust is lunar detritus which falls to the earth after the dozens of meteors which strike the moon’s surface daily send up plumes of the stuff which then make their way to earth. Moon dust can only be collected during a full moon, however, when you can see the little particles making their way down along the silvery beams. The easiest way to collect moon dust (though there really is no “easy” way) is to stand in the light of the full moon with a glass jar held up to catch the falling particles. It takes a good bit of moon dust to make Zombie Powder, so it’s possible you’ll be standing in the dark for quite a while. Just remember that moon dust is very light, so don’t shift the jar at all or it may cause the particles you’ve already captured to float out of the container.

There are many who speculate (and I am among them) that it is the moon dust which actually leads to resurrection of the dead. This is why so many cultures want their dead buried before the light of the full moon can touch the corpse. Further evidence of this idea comes from Cambodia, where certain swamps receive more nights of full moonlight than anywhere else on earth. The swamps are also home to a particular type of mosquito, which breeds in the moon dust-filled waters. In 2005, these mosquitoes began biting people and causing outbreaks of zombism in the area. A BBC article on the subject explains the phenomenon in more detail.

I have only rarely used Zombie Dust myself, and I always put my zombie servants back in their graves when I’m done with them—it’s the responsible thing to do, really. If you’re interested in seeing an actual zombie raising performed on video, you can see the dead being raised here. A somewhat more bizarre version of the rite is available here as well.

That’s it for today! Thanks for reading everyone!

-Cory

P.S. Oh! And Happy April Fools’ Day!

Blog Post 40 – Dirt Dauber Nest

With warmer days just around the bend, lots of our little insect friends are getting out and about. One of the insects I least liked before studying hoodoo was the wasp (having wandered into a nest of them once while trying to get newborn kittens out of a barn, I feel I had some justification for my squeamishness about them). However, hoodoo has given me a new appreciation of at least one kind of wasp: the dirt (or mud) dauber.

This relatively harmless little black wasp (colors vary a bit, but most of the ones I’ve seen have been dark brown to black) likes to build its nests in long “pipes” from mud it gathers near puddles. This has earned the wasp the occasional nickname of “pipe organ wasp,” and its nest is usually described as a pipe organ nest. While the dirt dauber is a keen predator, often hunting spiders which it paralyzes and brings back to its nest for food, it seldom stings people unless provoked. Though I don’t recommend provoking them.

However, if you can find an abandoned mud dauber nest, it’s well worth collecting it and keeping it in a sealed jar (just in case it’s not as abandoned as you thought) or plastic container. Often, individual tubes may be abandoned and can be harvested for use as long as you’re careful not to bother any of the more active tubes.

In folk magic, these nests have all sorts of uses. Once you’ve powdered the nest—an easy task since it crumbles readily—you can add it to hot foot workings, break-up spells, good luck hands, business drawing blends, and lots more. Harry Middleton Hyatt lists several uses of dauber nest in his work, including:

Carrying around a bit of nest in your wallet or purse to draw money and luck (Vol. 2, p.1552)
Adding it to a vinegar jar with a couple’s name paper (names written crossing each other, of course) and red pepper and beef gall in order to break them up (Vol. 2, p. 1513)
Adding it to a Hot Foot working and placing it someone’s shoe to drive them off (Vol.2 , p. 1505)
Mixing it with Graveyard Dirt and Sugar in order to help heal a marriage (the wasps are one of the few where the male wasp stays at the nest to guard it, thus ensuring that the “family” is safe and united, which is probably why the dauber is associated with a faithful marriage) (Vol. 2, p. 1325)
Adding Dauber Nest to Graveyard Dirt and throwing it on train tracks to kill someone (there’s more to it than this, of course, but I’d rather not get too into that here) (Vol. 2, p. 1089)

Catherine Yronwode mentions many spells involving Dauber Nest in her book, including spells to destroy an enemy, control an errant husband, and draw new customers to a business. This last spells involves mixing the nest with Grains of Paradise and sprinkling the powder around the business, as high as you can. According to Yronwode, because daubers build their nests up high, it symbolizes success.

As a final bit of folklore, if you happen to have daubers building nests on your front porch, leave them there. They will bring peace and protection to the home, and it can be fun to watch them build their nests on a summer day over a glass of iced tea.

Thanks for reading!

-Cory

Blog Post 10 – Weather Work

We recently received a nice blanketing of snow here (which is somewhat rare for our area), and it got me to thinking about weather magic. When I was little, before we moved to the farm, I used to go out to the dirt hill near our house with a big staff in my hands and shout at the wind, seeing if I could get it to gust up or gentle down. I remember feeling like I always had a strong connection to weather, particularly those winds. When we moved out to the farm, my understanding of weather changed dramatically. Our house was on a hill at the top of our acreage, and we were exposed to a number of tempests, some of which were quite severe. When we had snow, 4-foot drifts piled up off of our back porch, deep enough that when I jumped into them I was buried up to my chest. And I still remember waking up one morning and looking out the window only to see a tornado receding back into the clouds after having passed but a quarter-of-a-mile or so from the house and uprooting a number of trees. Being a teenager, I had slept through it, of course.

What I learned on that farm was that weather was wild, and would always be wild. It’s something we can react to, prepare for, run from, or attempt to block out, but we can never really control it the way we like to think we control so many other things—the cleanliness of our water or where our next meal comes from, for example. Magic seems to have the advantage over empirical science here, as many magicians swear by inherited techniques that allow them to control or predict the weather to one degree or another.

Today I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at a few techniques, charms, and proverbs regarding the weather from various North American sources.

From Nova Scotia (in Folklore of Nova Scotia, by Mary L. Fraser):

“An Acadian boy would not dare to kill a toad or a spider, for his outdoor pleasure would then be spoiled by the downpour of rain that was sure to follow. A boy of Scotch or Irish descent would be deterred from doing so because it would bring him bad luck.

‘If you wish to live, not die,

Let the spider go alive.’”

I’ve heard this before as an admonition not to harm toads (and for some reason, I always assumed lizards) when out of doors, for fear of bringing on bad weather. The spider is a new twist for me, but I generally try not to disturb any of the bite-ier creatures out in the wild world.

Mary Fraser also reports a weather-predicting system I’ve seen in a couple of places. She mentions that the twelve nights between Christmas and Epiphany represent the coming twelve months of the year. In other words, if you have cold, wet weather on the third day after Christmas, you can expect a rather clammy and dismal March.

From the Pennsylvania Dutch (in The Long-Lost Friend, by J. G. Hohman):

For protection of one’s home against storms, say “Beneath thy guardianship I am safe against all tempests and all enemies, J. J. J.” (These three Js signify Jesus three times.)

Chris Bilardi, in his excellent book on PA-Dutch braucherei, The Red Church, suggests the following Psalms for weather-work:

Psalm 2 – For danger at sea (storms); also for headache
Psalm 21 – For dangerous storms at sea
Psalms 24 and 25 – For dangers of nature—especially the danger of floods
Psalm 76 – For averting danger from water

From the Appalachians (in the Foxfire series of books):

It will be a bad winter if –

Squirrels’ tails grow bushier
Crows gather together
The wooly worm has a heavy coat
Onions grow more layers
Blackberry blooms are especially heavy

It will rain –

Within three days if the horns of the moon point down
If leaves show their backs
If cows are lying down in the pasture
If there is a ring around the moon (count the stars in the ring and it will rain within that many days)

The weather will be fair if –

You hear a screech owl
Smoke rises
Crickets holler (the temperature will rise)

Additionally, here are some bits of lore from the Appalachians:

If it’s cloudy and smoke rises, there’s a chance of snow
The number of days old the moon is at the first snow tells how many snows there will be that winter
For every frost or fog in August, there will be a snowy day in winter
A late frost means a bad winter
The darker green the grass is during the summer, the harder the winter
If it rains on Easter Sunday, it will rain every Sunday for seven weeks
If it rains on ‘Blasting Days’ (the three longest days of the year, there won’t be any ‘mast’ (acorns, chestnuts, etc.) for animals like hogs to feed on

From the Ozarks (in Ozark Superstitions and Ozark Magic and Folklore, by Vance Randolph):

Rain will come –

If the tall grass is bone dry in the morning, or if there is heavy dew
If rabbits play in a dusty road
If dogs start eating grass
If sheep turn their backs to the wind
If cats sneeze, wash behind their ears, or lick their fur against the grain

Signs of dry weather –

A red sunset promises at least twenty-four hours of dry weather
A rainbow in the evening means clear weather (but a rainbow at morning tells of a storm in the next twenty-four hours)
A ‘sundog,’ or a circle around the sun, indicates prolonged dry weather, or at least a radical change in weather soon
When the crescent moon travels ‘horns up,’ there will be no rain for some time

And finally, one of the most interesting weather-predictors around, also from the Ozarks:

“The blood of a murdered man—bloodstains on a floor or garments—will liquefy on even dry sunshiny days, as a sign that a big rain is coming”

This is only a small sampling of everything out there. I’ve used many of these predictors (leaves turning their backs or cattle lying in a pasture) to prepare for bad weather, and there are many I’ve never even thought to pay mind to (rabbits in a dusty road, for example). So what about you, dear readers? Do you have any family or local lore regarding the weather you’d like to share? If so, please post a comment or send us an email, and indicate roughly what part of the world you’re in and what your weather charm or proverb is. We may do a show on these if we get enough interest!

I’d also like to issue a friendly challenge to you: make mental note of a few of these and start paying attention to them. See if they actually do predict or cause weather patterns for you in your area. Report your findings back here and share your observations with the rest of us. Who knows, we may read your results on the podcast, or something better (he said slyly).

I hope wherever you are, the weather’s treating you fair. If it’s not, you can always contact your neighborhood witch.

Thanks for reading!

-Cory