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Blog Post 11 – A Contest!

Hi everyone!

I loosely alluded to this in a previous post, but we’ve decided that we want your weather lore! We’re putting together a show based on weather magic and folklore, and we need good field reports. So, we’re having a little contest here at New World Witchery. From now until the end of February 2010 (the 28^th), anyone who: 1) posts a comment on Blog Post 10 – Weather Work, or 2) sends us an email describing any kind of weather-related magic or lore, especially family or local lore, will have their name entered into a drawing. Also include what part of the country/continent you’re from (you don’t need to give us specific locations, unless you win, of course…then we’ll need an address to ship to 🙂 ). All entries must be date-stamped before midnight CST on the 28^th to be considered. And if you’ve already posted a comment with weather lore, don’t worry, we’ll count you, too!

On March 1^st (or thereabouts), we’ll be drawing a name from the thousands of entries we receive (we’re optimistic) and one lucky reader/listener will receive a free copy of Catherine Yronwode’s Hoodoo Root & Herb Magic. For those of you unfamiliar with this text, it’s the quintessential text on the botanicals and curios used in the practice of Southern-style hoodoo and conjure magic.

From the Lucky Mojo website (slightly abridged):

Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic, paperback by Catherine Yronwode
Originally published in 2002.
From the proprietor of the Lucky Mojo Curio Company comes the most thorough, complete, and authentic book on how roots and herbs are used in traditional African-American folk magic. 500 herbs, roots, minerals, and zoological curios are listed, along with their scientific names, so you will know exactly what to harvest or buy from an herb dealer. Included are an amazing 750 spells, formulas, mojo hand combinations, and candle rites, all given in workable, practical detail. Medical usages for many of the herbs, supplementary botanical notes, a series of cross-indexes listing herbs by the magical conditions for which they are recommended, plus 50 beautiful black and white illustrations of herbs and vintage herb packaging round out this informative reference volume. There is no other herb encyclopedia like this one. This is the book to get if you are working traditional conjure and herb magic. 224 pages, trade paperback.

500 herbs, roots, minerals, and rare zoological curios, with taxonomic (“Latin”) names for proper identification.
750 traditional spells, tricks, and magical recipes.
50 black and white line illustrations of common magical herbs and roots of North America.
6 handy charts in which dozens of conditions — such as love-drawing or protection — are listed and the herbs for each condition are given in alphabetical order.
Cross-referencing: Every herb is accompanied by at least one spell.
Bibliography: Authentic recipes are drawn from first-hand experience and 100 years of solid folkloric research.

I own this book and let me assure you, it’s one of the best magical herbals out there. No fluff, no repetitive 101 stuff; just good, solid information backed by great research.

So, if you want to contribute to the wealth of knowledge and lore in the witchy world, plus have a chance to get a fantastic magical reference book, please submit! We’ll also be announcing this on the next podcast, too, so if you primarily keep up with us that way, you won’t be left out.

Good luck, and thanks for reading!

-Cory

Blog Post 8 – Seaside Sorcery

Hello! Today I’m going to take a look at some of the coastal magic found in Northeastern America and Canada (Southern coastal magic will be in a later post, I hope). In the early days, American colonies and states depended greatly on foreign trade for supplies. The wealth of natural resources here were valuable to people across the sea as well, and so much of the commercial backbone of North America during those years depended on seaports and sailing vessels and all those men and women who operated them.

I’ve always found that folks involved in seafaring business are a superstitious lot (and I mean that as a compliment, as I find superstition fascinating and useful in many cases). At the very least, the vast ocean inspires people to consider their own smallness and to take precautions against their mortal end at the sea’s merciless whim. With that said, let’s look at some stories, anecdotes, and practices from the Northeastern coasts of North America.

Some stories from Maine:

“The Cursing of Colonel Buck”, as retold by S. E. Schlosser. In this story, an unscrupulous colonel takes advantage of one of his maids, then turns her out when she bears his sadly misshapen child. In order to prevent any claims on his name, he accuses her of witchcraft and has her burned at the stake. She curses him (perhaps his claims of witchcraft were not so unfounded) as she dies, and her leg falls from the pyre, where her son gathers the leg and runs away. After the colonel dies, his tombstone develops a funny leg-shaped mark on it, which embarrasses the townsfolk. They toss it in the ocean, but it comes back ashore. Then they smash it and put up a new stone, but the leg-mark comes back.

So where’s the New World Witchery in this story? Well, this tale is probably extremely exaggerated. The main clue is that the witch is burned at the stake, a holdover from European witch-lore, but not a punishment found in the New World. However, there’s one small fragment of worthwhile witchery in this tale: the first reaction of the townspeople is to throw the stone into the sea. The idea that natural water sources, especially moving ones like oceans and rivers, can cleanse cursed objects is solidly founded in other magical lore (see Albertus Magnus or hoodoo trick deployment practices).

Buying the Wind, by Richard M. Dorson, contains several excellent bits of Maine magical lore. For example, in the title passage, the practice of “buying wind” is discussed. Captains and crewmembers on becalmed ships would often be tempted to throw money overboard in order to purchase a quantity of wind from God/nature/the sea/etc. The problem arises in that the quantity purchased is always vastly more than one expected to buy. As one of Dorson’s informants puts it:

“Never buy wind when you’re on a boat. You’re daring God Almighty, and he won’t stand for that. You’ll get all the wind you want.”

In one tale, a captain tosses a quarter overboard, and immediately such a gale rises that it tears off the sails and mast from the ship and pushes it into shore, where it barely holds together as the crew disembarks. The captain remarks that if he’d known God sold wind so cheaply he’d only have got a nickel’s worth.

Is this witchcraft? Well, no, not exactly. But the practice of buying something to control the weather is fairly common witch-lore. Many tales exist of sailors buying cauls (the membrane which sometimes covers a newborn’s head after emerging from the womb) from dockside witches to prevent drowning at sea. And those same dockside sorceresses sometimes sold knotted cords to help sailors call up wind as needed—each knot, when undone, would release an increasing amount of wind. So buying the wind is certainly a magical maritime practice, if not outright witchery.

Magic and Witchcraft in Nova Scotia:

An interesting tale regarding a hidden treasure is recorded in Folklore of Nova Scotia, by Mary L. Fraser. She writes:

“An old sailor who spent his life as a deep-sea fisherman around the coasts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland told of a great iron chest that was buried just beneath the water, so that its outline could be seen very distinctly. Every time the crew tried to work around it and, raise it up, thousands of crows, one of which was headless, would swarm around them, so that it was impossible for them to get at it. These crows they believed to be helpers of the decapitated guarding spirit.”

This tale is interesting, to me, because of the clear association of spirit allies with a sacred duty (such as guarding a treasure). I can’t think of many witchier images than a murder of crows—including a headless one—swarming all over treasure-grabbers.

The same volume has several good bits of weather-lore, too:

“If Candlemas day be fine and fair, The half of the winter’s to come an’ mair.”
“Mackerel skies and mare’s tails, Make lofty ships carry low sails.”
“A rainbow in the morning the sailor’s warning, A rainbow at night is the sailor’s delight.”
“Heavy winds kick up a rain.”

The first of these is an old tradition which most people now know as a component of Groundhog Day. I plan to do a post specifically on some of the traditions associated with early February sometime soon, so I’ll save further exposition on it here. The second proverb refers to cloud patterns in the skies. If high wispy clouds (“mare’s tails”) were seen along with clumpy scale-like cloud patterns (“mackerel skies”), then it was a good indication a storm would be coming soon and the sails should be lowered. The third bit of wisdom is fairly common, though sometimes in different iterations (I know it as “red skies at morning, sailor take warning; red skies at night, sailor’s delight”). Basically it just means that the weather conditions at dawn or dusk foretell the weather to come. And the fourth quote is a logical enough assertion that where high winds blow at sea, rain is sure to follow.

Again, are these witchy? Only insofar as the astute witch would know such proverbs and make use of them in his or her daily practice. Reading the signs Nature provides has a lot to do with the mentality of witchcraft, which is constantly looking to the natural-and-other-worlds for guidance, instruction, and wisdom.

A Sailor’s Treasury, by Frank Shay, also supposedly provides a good many of early American sailors’ tales and charms (I cannot give a full recommendation as I have only been able to view snippets online, and no nearby library seems to have a copy of this out-of-print text).

Whew! I’ve only presented a fragment of the nautical witchcraft out there, and already it’s a lot. So I’ll save more seaside witchery for another day.

Thanks for reading!

-Cory

Blog Post 6 – More Colonial Witchcraft

I couldn’t resist the urge to share a few more witchy stories and spells from the early American period. Let’s start with a little history. Most folks know about the famous Salem, MA (or rather, Danvers, MA to be more accurate) witch trials. While these were certainly a major phenomenon in our collective history, Massachusetts was only one colony among thirteen. So what about witchcraft in the other colonies?

Generally speaking, witchcraft was not treated with such a hard nose nor such an iron fist in other parts of Colonial America. Witchcraft was generally frowned upon, true, but only in that the term “witchcraft” meant intentional magical malfeasance against one’s neighbors. Any such bad behavior—stealing, slandering, etc.—was met with equal disdain. There were witchcraft trials, but these were mostly settled with civil penalties rather than criminal punishments, and religious insurrection did not seem to enter into the argument. Gerald C. Milne, in his tome, Signs, Cures, & Witchery, describes one a Pennsylvania witch trial as overseen by state founder William Penn himself:

“Penn dismissed the charge of bewitching cattle…and suggested (tongue in cheek)that there was no law against ‘riding a broom’ in Pennsylvania. He found her guilty onlyof having a ‘witch’s reputation’ and ordered her to practice good behavior.”

In Pennsylvania, the growing tradition of Pow-wow meant that most settlers in that area were at least familiar with the idea of magic, and recognized that it could be used to heal as well as harm. Chris Bilardi, in his excellent book The Red Church, discusses braucheri, or German-American folk magic and healing. He makes the point that in many communities, a braucher was an essential part of local life, and would no more have been thought of as a “witch” than a country doctor or veterinarian.

In Virginia, by 1706 it was a crime to accuse someone of being a witch at all, as it was a form of slander to a person’s character. No acts of witchcraft after that time were brought to capital trial in that state. In North Carolina, a similar legal precedent was set when a case was dismissed against a woman in 1712, despite her clear confession to the practice of witchcraft. More is available on these incidents here and here.

Still, despite the leniency of most colonies, the chief impressions of American witchcraft from the early days of the Republic have been drawn from those dark days in Salem. To that end, I thought it would be worth looking at a literary example of witch-lore.

Young Goodman Brown, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (I like this version myself, as it is a PDF, but a quick Google search of the title will yield webpage versions of the tale).

I’ll not reprint the entire story here, but I do recommend reading this chilling—and weirdly funny at times—tale of witchcraft in a Puritan village. Hawthorne had a conflicted relationship with witches (his great-great grandfather was a judge at the Salem trials, a fact young Nathaniel would do his best to overcome). The entire tale portrays the spectral encounter of its title character with a town full of occult and devilish witches, and doesn’t make the witches particularly sympathetic at first glance—in fact, the witches seem to be primarily interested in corrupting Goodman Brown and turning him into a diabolical reveler. However, I tend to take the story’s “wicked witch” bent as being critical of the Puritan society to which Hawthorne was so embarrassed to have been connected. There are MANY elements of traditional witchcraft embedded in this piece of fiction, including:

Meeting a fetch-self/”devil” on a crooked road
Crossing thresholds (forest boundaries or doorways, for example)
A serpentine staff, not entirely unlike a stang
A “flying ointment” recipe, of sorts
“Staff-riding” to travel great distances quickly
A Witches’ Sabbath, and an initiation (sort of)

In the end, Goodman Brown is unsure if his encounter was a dream or reality, but it leaves him changed anyway, which can be said for many witches and their experiences between the worlds, I think.

Finally, I thought another witchy (and somewhat less grave) story set in those early days might be a good way to end this post. This one is from Rhode Island, and is recorded in In Old Narraganset, by Alice Morse Earle-1898 (a word of warning, this tale is recorded from an earlier time, and the author clearly did not have a problem portraying racial stereotypes in the broadest and most demeaning fashion…I present the tale here because its magical significance is real, not because its characters or authorial tone are worthy of emulation). From archive.org:

“The Witch Sheep” by Alice Morse Earle.

There are a few things I like about this story. Firstly, that the magical aspects of the tale are fully integrated with daily life—no one questions Tuggie’s abilities, and her occult power doesn’t lead others to shun her unless she’s actually doing a working against them. That the wife actually likes to have Tuggie around during soap-making because she can charm the project and make it work is particularly noteworthy to me. Secondly, I think it’s interesting that “Voodoo” (which sounds more like hoodoo in this story) was a part of the magical landscape up in Rhode Island at this point, and that there are several types of spells with good hints as to how they might be executed in this tale. The rabbit’s foot that Tuggie boils in the pot to work her “project” on Mum Amey makes me think that she was trying to cause her lots of little accidents and stumbles, but nothing seriously harmful. Well, that or there was some kind of Fatal Attraction thing going on. And the final thing I enjoy about this tale is that it is funny. For all the magic in the story, and the hexing and witchery and other toil-an-trouble, in the end it’s a story about a sheep in drag, and that’s downright amusing. At least to me.

Thanks for reading!

-Cory