We look at the various traditions, festivities, and delights of Mardi Gras and Carnival, and then explore Lent with a special guest. We’ve got articles, cocktail recipes, conversation, and music! Laissez les bon temps rouler, y’all!
Summary:
Tonight we’re responding to a pair of conversations from other shows on witchy aesthetics and the mechanics of magic. First, we’ll look at some ideas about fashion and self-image brought up by Scarlet’s Lakefront Pagan Voice show, then touch on the functional structures of folk magic with reference to a recent Inciting a Brewhaha episode.
Cory mentions the recent Star Magic course he took with the lovely Bri Saussy as part of his “What’s in Your Cauldron?” He also mentions the New Orleans Wish Dog he’s using as part of a sweetening work.
We are highly encouraging listeners to go check out Heather Dale’s Celtic Avalon campaign and help her to bring her music to the world!
We also announced the winner of our Three Questions contest.
If you have feedback you’d like to share, email us or leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you!
Borrowed from Pinterest user shuttlecock (click for link)
Or, “Myrtle Snow is my Power Animal.”
[NOTE: The original version of this article contained a phrase that, used in this context, is insensitive and appropriative towards several Native cultural traditions. I leave the original above with a strikethrough to indicate that such use was a mistake. My mistake. I regret the choice of phrase and I apologize for any discomfort or harm it causes to anyone. I don’t want to completely erase the original because I worry that doing so will look like I’m trying to hide the mistake, which I’m not trying to do. I want others to see and know this was not a good choice on my part, and that I am sorry for it.]
(A few AHS: Coven spoilers below, but no major plot points)
For those who, like me, spent the past four months or so riveted to the meandering and bizarre plots of the American Horror Story: Coven television series, the ride is now over and we’re all left sorting out wheat from chaff from eyeballs from axe-murdering ghosts living in knotty pine hell. One of the most interesting and unusual characters in this season was Myrtle Snow (portrayed by the luminous Frances Conroy), a complicated, artistic, eccentric witch that is just about everything you could dream of having in a crazy aunt who can cast spells and is willing to melon-ball out the eyes of her enemies to restore your own sight. Myrtle plays the theremin, knows fashion inside and out (one of the best moments in the series was her screaming “Balenciaga!” at a crucial moment in the final episode), and has a palate for classic French and continental cuisine. She is, in short, a child of the seventies. More importantly, she is a child of the seventies witch.
Today I wanted to briefly look at that decade (which I’m treating as a “long” decade, starting in around 1965 and going through the very early 80s), which spawned a very particular witchy aesthetic. It was the decade of Stevie Nicks (another AHS trope) and saw a marked growth in the popularity of occult themes across all sectors of American—and international—society. This is not going to be comprehensive, of course, and I know this is not exactly folk magic drawn from a weather-beaten nineteenth-century almanac, but I think that we should be cognizant of the role of recent (well, as recent as almost half-a-century ago, anyway) history in the development of modern magic and witchcraft. If the Victorian era was the early bloom of occultism, the seventies was the springtime explosion of color, dripping nectar, and bloody thorns which allowed a lot of the witchcraft we have today to re-surge, and it even helped fuel some of the studies of folk magic which have been so crucial to us in contemporary times.
In 1958, the film Bell, Book, & Candle featuring Kim Novak, James Stewart, and Jack Lemmon appeared in movie houses following a popular run of the play on Broadway. The sympathetic witch, played by Novak, and her hep-cat brother Nicky (Lemmon) mark some of the earliest American pop-culture portrayals of sorcerers who are not scary and evil, but hip, cool, and attractive. The success of the film eventually fed into the production of the classic television show Bewitched, which ran from 1964 to 1972, which starred Elizabeth Montgomery as the beautiful and charming Samantha. These portrayals are occasionally problematic—the film requires Novak’s character to give up witchcraft in the name of love, and the show was centered around Samantha’s struggles to sublimate her magic so that her husband could lead a comfortable suburban life (although that magic frequently saves his proverbial bacon)—but these glowing women brought glamor to the popular American experience of witchcraft, and the occult looked a lot less intimidating.
Knock, knock!
Then, in 1967, Ira Levin published his book Rosemary’s Baby. The following year, Roman Polanski adapted the book into a film the following year, and the eerie occult was back, with full-on Satanic conspiracies lurking behind Manhattan closet doors. Even in Rosemary’s Baby, however, the glamor persisted—the eccentric but resplendent witches-next-door, Roman and Minnie Castavet (played by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), were magnetic, and served frosty cocktails in their spacious New York flat. There Satanic witch-cult even seems more like an anarchy art clique than a sinister magical lodge for the most part. The film put the fear of witches back into the American mind, however, with a new twist—witches were spooky, but spooky was cool. Incidentally, another classic occult film, The Devil Rides Out, appeared in theaters the same year as Rosemary, and lit its own subtle fires under the cauldron.
With this new-found social capital, witchcraft and the occult took the world by storm in the seventies. Some of the occult films which appeared during the decade were hallmarks of art and cult cinema: Simon, King of the Witches(1971); The Devil’s Daughter (1973); The Exorcist (1973—not a true ‘witch’ film, but one with strong occult ties and influence); The Wicker Man(1973); Season of the Witch (1973, directed by zombie-genre great George A. Romero); Lisa & the Devil(1974); and the highly glamorous Suspira (1977), a veritable precursor to 2010’s creepy art-dance film Black Swan. In essentially all of these films, the presence of the occult is a trope, and does not have any of the benign or jovial qualities of Bell, Book, & Candle or Bewitched. Yet each film features a mixture of eroticism, fashion, and allure layered over the tale of black magic driving the story. Liberation, sexual empowerment, and countercultural energy augment the horror of the films, and the gray space between forbidden occultism and fashionable society becomes a gulf.
Art and music also experienced an occult florescence during the seventies. The aforementioned Stevie Nicks—the “White Witch” of music—joined the group Fleetwood Mac along with boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham in 1974, and in 1975 the group experienced mainstream success with an album featuring witchy hits like “Rhiannon.” Her flowing shawls, black gowns, and stage twirls bewitched audiences, and her fashion became a standard of young, hip women seeking to look a little out of the mainstream—a little “witchy.” The occult music craze started well before Nicks, of course, and bands like Coven and Black Widow had experienced some chart success with their Satanic/witchy black rock during the late 60s. In 1970, Santana recorded and released Fleetwood Mac’s song “Black Magic Woman,” on their (fairly occult-named album) Abraxas, taking it to no. 1 on the pop music charts. In 1972, the Eagles released “Witchy Woman,” another big hit glamorizing witches, and in 1974 Cher released “Dark Lady,” about a love triangle involving a witchy fortune teller. Cher herself cultivated a glam-witch look throughout the decade, further expanding the cultural capital of witchcraft fashion. Other rockers who adopted elements of the occult into their songs, performances, and fashions include David Bowie, Jimmy Page, and, of course, Jim Morrison. Patti Smith notes the heavy influence of the occult on the Greenwich Village music scene in her memoir Just Kids, and especially the huge artistic influence that it had on artists like Robert Mapplethorpe. Penthouse magazine did erotic spreads centered on occult themes as well, such as this one featuring Babetta Lanzilli from 1974.
In the ‘real-world’ of witchcraft, a number of stars were aligning to add fuel to the magical fire. Chas Clifton outlines a number of the groups which were exploding onto the scene in his book Her Hidden Children, including the Psychedelic Venus Church and Anton LaVey’s Satanic Church, which also released a film called Satanis in 1970 (there are some great pictures of a 1969 LaVey here). Alex Sanders, the progenitor of Alexandrian Wicca, released an album revealing some of the workings of Wicca called A Witch is Born in 1970. Wicca had arrived stateside with Raymond Buckland in 1968 (although it may have had some early seeds from other sources, too). Buckland expanded on witchcraft religion through books like Witchcraft Ancient & Modern and Witchcraft from the Inside. The hugely influential publication of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land in 1967 led to the foundation of The Church of All Worlds (CAW) and shaped practices in other groups as well (such as the aforementioned Psychedelic Venus Church). The mass-marketing of witchcraft became a staple of the 70s, with sales of “black magic ritual kits” hitting store shelves and a variety of occult-inspired board games. The Ouija game was purchased by Parker Bros. in 1966, and they began to push it as a party game rather than a spiritual tool. There was also a push towards legitimacy. Journalist Hans Holzer published his mainstream apologetic (and sensationalist at times) text The Truth About Witchcraftand opened the door to public discussions of its practices as legitimate, if fringe, activities done by regular people. Wicca and neo-Paganism in general underwent a rapid expansion and transformation, and the end of the decade saw the journalistic survey of new witchcraft (and other alternative) faiths in Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon (1979). That same year, Starhawk published The Spiral Dance, which crystallized the evolving feminist Wicca movement. A busy, busy decade for witchcraft.
I should point out that these different aspects of witchcraft may have occasionally interacted with one another, but they were not in strict conversation through the decade. Instead, the popular conception of the occult and witchcraft grew in one direction—often sensational and glamorous—and the nature-based religions that were gaining momentum in fringe spiritual culture. Yet there does seem to be a shared zeitgeist from that era that drove ever more people into the black-robed arms and beshawled shoulders of witches. For a number of people, the ecological spiritualism which was fueling part of the neo-Pagan segment was a complete non-starter. Instead, the sex, drugs, & rock-and-roll aspects of witchery worked as an artistic medium of self-expression. Both segments were connected to counterculture, but with different aims and methods. Following this decade, with its chaos and beauty, the occult got heavily mired in a number of problems, most notably the “Satanic panic” of the 80s. With the recent popularity of witchcraft in media, I’d be hardly surprised to find a resurgence of people claiming to have been harmed or attacked by evil cults over the next two decades or so. Let’s hope there’s been some growth on that front and that the information age will keep it in check, but I somehow doubt the ripples aren’t already in motion for the next “panic.”
So what does all this have to do with Myrtle Snow and the Diane von Furstenburg wrap dress (“the greatest invention of the century,” according to dear Auntie Myrtle)? I think that it can be very easy to lose sight of just how diverse witches are, for one thing. Dressing in black (despite AHS:Coven’s edict that “On Wednesdays we wear black”) may be a statement, but so is sporting a pair of black-and-red Pleasers for ritual sex, and there’s nothing wrong with a Pier 1 altar and a little P90X before ritual. I don’t want this to devolve into a post on there being no one type of witch, or on what witches should or shouldn’t look or act like, but I do think that the recent witchcraft revival in pop culture means that there’s room for some real glamor in witchery again. Folk magic performed with embedded style and power—a flair for the dramatic—could be a very refreshing thing. I’d like to see witches embracing their own high-fashion spins on tried and true witchcrafts—not so much glitter in conjure oils, but a really knowledgeable mixologist of a witch brewing enchanted herb rinses for bewitching cocktail hours, for example. I certainly don’t want to see the folk magic I study and practice cheapened by commercial interests, of course, but I would love to see a few more Myrtles playing the theremin around bonfires, while our cultural capital is so ascendant.
What about you? Is there a place for glamor and high fashion in your witchcraft? Are the seventies still alive in your spells?
In our latest show, we talk about what our plans are for the coming year; about getting out of our heads and into our incantations; and about the exploding presence of witches in media lately. We also have our NOLA swag bag contest winners announced!
Other recent media featuring witches includes: Beautiful Creatures, Rob Zombie’s Lords of Salem, Witches of East End, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, The Magicians (by Lev Grossman), Frozen (okay, she’s not a witch, but a sorceress/queen, and a good one at that!), Maleficent, Once Upon a Time, and Grimm. I mentioned and linked many of these in a recent cartulary post, too, if you’re interested.
We announced a NOLA swag contest winners in this episode! Listen if you want to know who the lucky three were.
If you have feedback you’d like to share, email us or leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you!
Today I thought I might share a few of the things from my holiday stocking, as well as other treats and delights I’ve been enjoying lately. I got a very lovely and eclectic selection of books & music, some of which might be of interest to folks here, so if you find something among the pile that you like, I’d love to know!
The first thing I want to mention is a beautiful copy of Crossway’s Four Holy Gospels. It’s the English Standard Version (ESV) of the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John illuminated using contemporary art by Makoto Fujimura. It’s a big, gorgeous clothbound edition and conveys a great deal of the mystical nature of these texts. I know it’s a bit odd to recommend a Bible of sorts on a site with so much magic and all, but if you’ve been around us for a while you know that we’re equal opportunity when it comes to mysticism and magic. So if you’re looking for a good heirloom version of the gospels with a little artistic magic, this is a good one to have.
In addition to the gospels, I got a copy of an excellent book called Kanaval: Vodou, Politics, & Revolution on the Streets of Haiti. It’s a photojournalistic look at the Haitian carnival costumes, parades, and traditions, and it will be of extreme interest to anyone captivated by the rituals of Vodou(n) or other African Traditional Religions. A number of lesser-known loa show up in the text, and there are oral histories from participants in the celebrations that are simply unmatched in recent history. In addition to the book and its magnificent photos, there are two accompanying CDs (one of which I received along with the gospels from my in-laws—I have an amazing family). One is called Spirits of Life, which has a number of ritual songs, and the other is Rara in Haiti and plays some of the more celebratory carnival jazz-style music. I also bought myself a simply wonderful new magical psalter from Troy Books: The Charmer’s Psalter, by Cornish witch Gemma Gary. It has fast become one of my favorite magical books and travels with me everywhere now.
Shifting from the authentic to the entertaining, I’ve been very much enjoying this year’s run of American Horror Story, subtitled Coven and set in a world of New Orleans Voodoo and witchcraft. I actually introduced Laine to the show, and she’s taken off running with it, consuming the first two seasons as well (subtitled Murder House and Asylum). I’m sure we’ll wind up discussing it more elsewhere, and it’s generating some controversy around the Pagan blogosphere, but if you’ve not checked it out and enjoy good, immersive horror, it’s fun to watch, in my opinion.
In that same vein, I’ve also been enjoying the kitschy-but-witchy antics of Witches of East End on Lifetime. I can’t say it’s a must-see, but the episodes I’ve seen have been enjoyable and if you’re a fan of things like Charmed, this might be fun, too. Might.
A lot has been going on in the podcasting universe lately, too. I’ve been tuning in to a couple of new shows, including The Kindle Witchwith Faelyn, Pagan Life Radiowith Brent/Raven, and one called Disney Story Origins. The first two offer some nice new elements to the Pagan podcasting world. Faelyn uses her show to explore books in a sort of book-club format, while also sharing a lot of neat moments from her own practice. Brent/Raven uses his show to create a really neat community space for talking to Pagans working on specific goals, or just get into good discussions about the role of Paganism in contemporary society. The Disney origins podcast is a gem, where the host compares and contrasts the stories that inspired Disney movies to the films and explores how that translation happens. The most recent episode gets into the excellent recent film Frozen and its inspiration, “The Snow Queen,” by Hans Christian Andersen (a section of which was included in our Yule show this year).
I’m also sad to say we’re losing at least one of our podkin for a while. Gillian at Iron Powaqa recently announced she’s taking an open-ended break from recording to focus on other projects. I completely understand her reasons, but she will definitely be missed. I fear this will be a trend, as several podcasters have disappeared this year. On a happier podkin note, Fire Lyte has published his first book of poetry, The Playground, which is available in several formats now. If you’re a fan of his poetry, this is definitely a book to get (plus it supports Pagan podcasting, which is always a noble cause). Finally, if you’ve not been listening to Peter Paddon’s revitalized podcast, do so! It’s the reason New World Witchery even exists, and he’s an absolutely charming fellow (all puns intended).
That’s all the news that’s fit to print for me this week! What was under your tree this year?
Don’t forget to enter our contests! We’ve got a NOLA Swag Bag contest finishing this Friday, and a Three Questions contest which will finish up next week. Give ‘em a go, and maybe win something fun!
There’s a bit of folk superstition about New Year’s Day that says whatever you want to be doing for the next twelve months, make sure you’re doing it on January 1st. You’re also not supposed to start anything you can’t finish, which brings me to this quick-n-dirty little blog post. I intend (dare I say hope?) that I will be doing a tremendous amount of writing over the coming year, including finishing several writing projects I’ve been working on for a while, so I wanted to make sure I wrote something for New World Witchery before midnight tonight. But I also have been using the day to accomplish a dozen other New Year’s magical traditions (cleaning, black-eyed peas, collard greens, etc.) so I thought a short and simple giveaway post might just kill the proverbial twin birds.
For this giveaway, we’ll be handing out a doozy of a divination prize pack. It includes:
A mini-altar kit and pair of mini-dowsing rods from Franchesca at The Texan Heretics
A bottle of Psychic Boost Oil from the lovely Magnusons of Candlesmoke Chapel
A stunning javamancy board from Chas Bogan of Carnivalia
A five-card email card reading from me, complete with card report
Pretty stellar, huh?
So what do you have to do to get an entry into this contest? It’s incredibly simple! Just answer one or more of the following questions:
What are your magical/witchy/Pagan New Year’s resolutions? What magical projects do you hope to get off the ground? Are there areas you want to learn more about? Are you going to get more involved in the community? Just give us a brief snapshot of what you hope to accomplish from a magical standpoint in the coming year.
What is your favorite magical/witchy/Pagan holiday and why? What do you do for it? Has it always been your favorite? What will you be doing to make it special this year?
What (if any) practices, spells, etc. has New World Witchery been able to add to your cauldron? Are there specific regions of folk magic you’ve begun to explore more (like Conjure or Powwow)? Do you find the info here useful on a practical level or is it more of a general information site for you?
That’s it! All you have to do is write to us at compassandkey@gmail.com and answer a question or two or three. You get one entry per question answered, so you have a chance to get up to three entries just by writing to us (you can combine all answers into a single email, as long as you make it clear you’re answering multiple questions somehow). Make sure to use the subject line “Three Questions Contest” so I know what you’re writing us about.
The deadline for this contest will be Friday, January 31st, so get your answers to us by then!
Also, please check out and/or enter our other current contest for one of three NOLA swag bags, which will be ending January 17th!
Thanks everyone for a great 2013, and here’s looking forward to a very enchanted new year!
If you’ve listened to the latest episode, you know we’re having another big contest right now. We had such generous sponsors this year we were able to put together a few extra swag bags for fan giveaways, so you have the opportunity to win one of these stuffed full of magical goodies!
What’s in the bag, you ask? Well, specific contents will vary a bit (due to the personalized nature of the sponsor items in some cases), but I can tell you about our fantastic sponsors and what they sent along to give you a good idea what would be in there:
Javamancy Kit – Carnavalia/The Mystic Dream – Chas Bogan and Storm Faerywolf created a fun and clever play on geomantic divination with a Victorian flair.
Three Venezuelan Powers Holy Card Sets – Camino de Yara– The lovely Carolina Gonzalez shares a beautiful bit of South American folk magic with us.
Stay with ME Bath – The Curio & Candle Shop – Ms. Melanie made these simply beautiful (and wonderfully scented) magical herbal baths.
Lucky Green Rice Sachets – Draconis Arcanum – Rebecca sends you luck and good fortune, and invites you to share the promo code attached to her samples with your listeners (and use it yourself if you like!)
Handcrafted Conjure Condition Oils – Candlesmoke Chapel– The Magnusons (Sara & Joseph) are sharing some of their incredible and all-natural hoodoo oils.
2014 Witches’ Companion – Llewellyn Publications – This almanac/annual magical compendium has oodles of lunar dates, spells, and articles.
Horsetamer CD – Julia Ecklar & Prometheus Music – This lovely CD crosses Pagan, folk, and pop genres. Music can be used in podcasts, and especially recommended are tracks “With the Trees” & “The Troll King’s Dream.”
Traditions Download Card – Kellianna – A beautiful new record with an old soul! Feel free to listen and use the songs from this excellent album in your shows. Features many fabulous duets, including Wendy Rule, and a number of great old songs with Kellianna’s gorgeous vocal updates.
Enchantment – Pendraig Publishing– Peter Paddon (in attendance with us this year) sent his latest excellent book, all about the use of physical movement and beguiling in witchcraft. I bet he’d even sign it for you if you ask him.
Banshees, Werewolves, Vampires, & Other Creatures of the Night – Red Wheel/Weiser Books– Weiser supplied this Varla Ventura title all about the beasties of darkness which is sure to keep you up late at night!
The Candle & the Crossroads – Red Wheel/Weiser Books– Weiser also supplied this energetic look at Southern folk magic written by Orion Foxwood (who is one of the teachers at the Folk Magic Festival this year).
Fifty-four DevilsCartomancy Kit – New World Witchery – Cory & Laine give you his book on cartomancy, a fun deck of playing cards to try it out, and Laine’s hand-made card pouches to keep your fortune-telling deck safe!
Witches & Pagans Magazine – BBI Media – Anne Newkirk Niven & her team at BBI are providing us with the premier magazine in Paganism today.
Herbal Healing Salve – Rue & Hyssop/Three Brooms & a Cat – Jen sadly couldn’t make it this year due to last-minute problems, but sent along these gorgeous hand-made herbal salves in her place.
Magical Miscellany Oil & Incense – Magical Miscellany– The lovely Velma Nightshade (also in attendance this year) has provided us with a sampling of her magical wares from her newly launched business venture, Magical Miscellany.
Coconut Oil & Obsidian – Kathleen Borealis/Borealis Meditations – Raw coconut oil and hand-selected obsidian chips from our brilliant globe-trotter, Kathleen!
Mini-Altar Kits/Dowsing Rods – Franchesca/VampRaven’s Nest– These super-cute little boxes contain a complete miniature altar set with candles, matches, incense, etc., plus a second box with little custom-made dowsing rods!
Scarlet’s Deck – Scarlet’s Treasures/Lakefront Pagan Voice– Scarlet surprised us with copies of her own very special and highly limited-edition tarot deck! These aren’t available for purchase anywhere, so only a few people, including us lucky podkin, have a copy!
And let’s also do our best to say thanks to Anna, owner of Erzulie’s Voodoo in New Orleans, who hosted us for our event (even if we were our own meet-and-greet, it was still nice of her to let us have the space for a couple hours).
A pretty fabulous haul, eh? There’s definitely at least $100 worth of stuff inside, but really the money side of it doesn’t begin to cover the quality, thought, and love in these items.
So now that you’re eagerly clawing at your scroll button, eyes big as saucers as you see all these amazing things that *you* can win, how do you go about getting your name in the hat?
Official Rules
Purchase something, anything really, from one of the sponsors (preferably from one other than us, and preferably your purchase would have come after November 1st, but we’re not going to be incredibly rigid on those points). You could buy a wanga doll from Erzulie’s, or a copy of one of Peter Paddon’s books from Amazon, or pick up a copy of Witches & Pagans at your local bookstore…pretty much anything you want to buy. It can be for you, it can be a holiday gift, it doesn’t matter. Really we just want you to support our sponsors! [Edit: Dutiful listener Jasmine noted that requiring a purchase could land us in hot legal water. While the spirit of the contest is to encourage business with our sponsors, we will, of course, allow entries from folks who cannot purchase a product. No purchase necessary, simply email us and state you’d like to enter the contest and we’ll put your name in the hat.)
Once you’ve purchased your item, take a photo of you with your purchase (or a copy of the receipt, or a screengrab of your digital receipt, etc.). Send that picture and a brief message asking to enter the contest and saying what you bought to compassandkey@gmail.com (or tweet it to us @NWWitchery).
EVERY item you purchase gets you a new entry (as long as you send us a picture & message), so enter as much as you like!
Contest ends at midnight, Central Time, on Friday, January 17th, 2014! Get us your picture(s) before then!
We will draw three names at random from all the entries, and each of those three names will win a swag bag!
Due to some of the items in this bag and potential international restrictions (as well as international shipping costs), this contest will only be open to listeners in North America. Sorry! 😦
Winners will be announced in the late January show (our 4th pod-iversary!).
Not too complicated, I hope! If you happen to let the sponsors know you found them through New World Witchery, we’d love that, too!
So that’s the basics of this contest. We’ll keep some reminders going throughout the next month and a half, but entering early and often can’t hurt! We’ll also have a few other small contests running between now and then for books and extra swag items, and most of that will happen via Twitter and Facebook, so make sure you’re watching us at those places, too.
In this extended episode, we revisit our recent trip to the magical city of New Orleans. We’ll discuss the most recent Pagan Podkin Super Moot, places to see in the Crescent City, and hear some music, travelogues, and even a tea leaf reading or two!
CONTEST!
We announced a new contest in this episode! Details are coming in a separate post, but the basic rules are: 1) Buy something, anything, from one of the sponsors in the list below; 2) Take a picture with that item (or a a picture/screengrab of the receipt); 3) Send your picture to compassandkey@gmail.com and let us know to enter you in the contest. You could win one of three fully-stuffed PPSM Swag Bags, full of items from these great sponsors!
PPSM Sponsors! (We love them!!!)
(We’ll be posting more on these items in other places, but here’s a short list of the swag items and sponsors)
Last time, I looked at a few of the standard products found in a typical supermarket which could be easily used within a folk magical context. I’m continuing that theme today, and while I’ll still be doing my best to stay out of the ubiquitous enchanted spice aisle, I will be touching on a few ingestibles. Please note, however, that as I frequently say: THIS IS NOT A MEDICAL BLOG, AND NO INFORMATION PRESENTED HERE SHOULD BE TAKEN AS MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. Before you start popping things into your mouth or rubbing them on your skin, you should make sure with your doctor that doing so will not lead to genetic mutation, pestilence, plague, or ennui of any kind.
I’m going to start in what my part of the country likes to think of as the “ethnic foods” section, which generally speaking involves a portion of the produce area and an aisle with Asian, Hispanic, and perhaps Italian meal ingredients. It’s where I found the candles I showed in the previous post, but in most of the grocery stores around here, despite the obviously oblivious marginalization that comes with a label like “ethnic” or “international” cuisine, the diversity of the consumer population has made a lot of once-rare items much easier to find. The section of these stores directed at Hispanic consumers provides a number of tools for folk magic that fall under the practices of curanderismo and/or brujeria. I’ve covered supermarket staples like eggs already, so today I thought I’d look at three somewhat more distinctive items: corn husks, hot peppers, and coconuts.
Corn Husks
The papery, stiff-but-pliant corn husk is absolutely essential for making really good tamales. Usually these come in huge packs (because if you’re going to go to the trouble of making tamales, you may as well make a lot of them), and they’re often dirt cheap. In fact, in the late summer, I frequently fine freshly stripped corn husks in buckets next to the corn displays, and few grocery store managers care if you grab a sackful to take home with you for free. So what sorts of magical mischief can you get up to with all those husks?
Corn dolly folk art (via Wikimedia Commons)
If you’re not making ensorcelled tamales, you might consider saving a few husks and turning them into doll babies for working various kinds of poppet magic. In some cases, the husks would be bound to the cob, along with various herbs and things like hair or clothing from the intended target to work a spell on them. Texan rootworker Starr Casas describes one such baby in The Conjure Workbook, vol. 1:
“When I was caring my daughter [sic] I was very ill. I was put on bed rest for five months. My Grandma knew this lady and asked her to come to my house and help me during the week. She treated people who were ill. I think that due to her efforts my daughter is alive today. I trusted her because my Grandma trusted her…She prayed over me every day; one day she asked if she could have some of my hair. She could have just taken the hair from my brush, at this time my hair was very long. She told me the hair needed to come from the crown of my head.
A few days later she came with this Dollie. This was the first time I had ever seen a doll like this. The body of the doll was a corn cob and the doll was covered in corn husk. When I asked her what it was for all she told me was to keep me and my baby safe. After I had my daughter the Dollie disappeared. When I asked her about the missing doll she told me the doll wasn’t needed anymore. I have never seen another Conjure doll like that one again” (Casas 246-7).
Starr’s encounter with this type of doll is not typical of conjure practice, something even she notes, but the use of doll baby magic is fairly common and corn husks make a simple, cheap, easy-to-make-and-destroy sort of doll. One reason that Starr may not have seen them since is that they are less directly associated with hoodoo and more directly associated with mountain crafts, particularly the crafts of the Appalachians. In fact, you can find wonderfully detailed instructions and step-by-step photos on constructing corn dollies in Foxfire 3, which records the folk practices of the southern Appalachians (a later compendium called The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Toys & Games also discusses the corn dolls, but doesn’t give the detail the actual anthology book does). That’s not to say that such dolls are not found in any version of conjure—Dr. E mentions them in his article on doll making, found in The Black Folder, for example—but that they very likely drifted in from non-African sources. Their provenance matters not, though, because they are incredibly useful magical tools in any case.
Hot Peppers
Have you ever seen the sheer plethora of peppers available in a bodega? Even at the chain supermarkets, you can now find dozens of choices, ranging from fresh jalapenos and big, fat Anaheims to the huge sacks of tiny dried japones peppers and the small-but-potent habaneros. So what to do with all those peppers?
Of course, the obvious answer would be hot-foot work in hoodoo, but you can also get a little more creative than that. Using the peppers as a vessel, it takes very little effort (but a good bit of practice and caution) to slit open a habanero, stuff someone’s name inside and bind it back up. Doing that works sort of like a vinegar jar cranked up to eleven, in that it puts a lot of unpleasantness into someone’s life. Peppers don’t have to be all bad, either, as cooking them with something like chocolate creates a very different effect—a good hot cocoa with a hint of chili pepper makes an enlivening winter beverage, and a heck of an aphrodisiac! A little rum in that latter option helps, too, of course.
Speaking of rum, one of the more interesting uses for all those hot peppers in magic—and here I’m stretching the term to incorporate a certain degree of magical religion—is to soak the peppers into an alcohol like rum until it is nigh undrinkable. Why would you do that, you ask? Maya Deren explains the use of the drink during a Vodoun rite in her book, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti:
“As Lord of Eroticism, he [Ghede] embarrasses men with his lascivious sensual gestures; but as God of the Grave he terrifies them with the evidence of the absolutely insensate: he will not blink even when the most fiery liquid is sprayed into his eyes, and only Ghede can swallow his own drink—a crude rum steeped in twenty-one of the hottest spices known. Thus he may alternately remind men that he is their past, their present and their future, that he is master of their compulsive drive to life and the inevitability of their death” (Deren 104).
Deren also notes that anyone claiming possession by Ghede is subject to both of the tests she mentions: having the hot rum sprayed in their eyes and being told to drink it. A truly possessed devotee will have no problem doing so (and likely be able to down the entire bottle of rum and show no effects after the possession ends).
Coconuts
If you ever need to pretend to ride a horse, you will probably automatically feel the need to buy a coconut and bang the two empty halves together to simulate the sound. At least if you grew up watching a lot of Monty Python that’s probably what you’d do. The coconut is good for more than equine simulations, however, and you can use the whole fruit/nut and its liquid for several magical functions.
“Retrato de una señora principal con su negra esclava,” by Vicete Alban (via Wikimedia Commons)
Drilling holes in the coconut will allow you to do two things: firstly you can get at the precious liquid, coconut milk, inside. It’s delicious and a wonderfully refreshing drink, but if you can resist the urge to down it all in one go, save some for later. Now that you have a semi-empty coconut with holes in it, why not stuff it full of name papers, sweet things like raw turbinado sugar (also available in the Hispanic section usually) and create a natural honey-jar spell? This sort of spell will, of course, not last as long as an actual honey-jar, but it has the advantage of being very quick and due to the sympathetic magic connected to the coconut’s skull-like density and shape, it works right on the minds of the folks targeted with the spell.
Speaking of heads, if you saved that liquid, you can turn that into a powerful magical formula as well. An African-derived magical practice known alternately as “feeding the head,” or in Vodoun as a lave tet ceremony (literally “head washing”) involves using a coconut wash on the head and hair during a ritual setting in order to fill it up with good spiritual forces. The feeding usually follows a simple head washing, either with natural water (sea water, spring water, etc.) or a number of aqueous formulae found in various traditions. Then comes the feeding:
“The process of feeding the head is simplicity itself. The coconut milk or cream is scrubbed into the head, just like the head-washing compound or a shampoo. Once the compound has been worked into the head, the hair may be combed out again. However, unlike a head-washing compound, the coconut compound should be left to dry on the head—preferably, overnight. A scarf or towel may be wrapped around the person’s head to insure this…In the morning, the coconut compound may be rinsed out and the person’s hair washed with a shampoo and dried, as it would normally be” (Mickaharic, Spiritual Cleansing, 101).
The richness of the coconut milk causes the spirits which guard a person (frequently though to be connected to a person’s head in African tradition) to be refreshed and take a renewed interest in the person’s well-being. It’s sort of like bribing a guardian angel with a good pina colada, which would be another fun way to use that coconut milk if you’re so inclined.
Of course, you don’t even have to open the coconut up to use it magically. I’ve seen a house cleansing method which involves simply kicking a coconut around a new home, through every room from top to bottom and back to front. You might say a psalm as you go, or repeat the Lord’s Prayer or the Apostles’ Creed. Other traditions use other incantations, songs, or words, but the point is the same: get the coconut all over the house, kicking it as you go, letting it soak up bad vibes like a sponge. When you finish you can either pick it up in your left hand and take it to a far away tree, where you crack it open and leave it at the roots, or you can drop it into running water heading away from your home. It essentially functions as an egg cleansing for a domicile, but coconuts tend to be less messy than eggs when kicked (Mickaharic has a variant on this practice using a head of lettuce in his Spiritual Worker’s Spellbook).
There’s an entire pharmacopeia in a well-stocked bodega, with everything from aloe vera gel (and the live plants) to nopales (prickly pear cactus, sometimes used in curanderismo for treating diabetes) to chicken feet and cattle tongues (both edible, but also both used in various hoodoo spells as well) available to an informed shopper. I mention these three ingredients solely as a way to begin to see the shelves as stocked with more than marketing gimmicks and high-fructose-corn-syrup-laden beverages. While having a good local witch shop is invaluable for many reasons, the grocery store may be your best friend when it comes to simple, practical magic.
I know this article barely scratches the surface of the subject, and I highly encourage you to look at some other sources on making the most of a grocery store’s shelves for your spell work. As I said before, much of my own inspiration came from Sarah Lawless’ post on the topic and Cat Yronwode’s compilation The Black Folder, which features not only an article on grocery store magic (covering things like onions and lemons) by Cat herself, but other useful tidbits such as Norwegian bread charms (from Dr. Johannes Gardback) and an article on “kitchen witchery” by Sister Robin Petersen. Of course there are probably dozens of books on this subject, many of which I’ve sadly neglected here. Do you know of any good grocery-store spells? If so, please feel free to post them to the comments below!
I may eventually come back to this topic another time, but for now I hope this has been a useful glimpse beneath the barcodes into the magic of the market.
New World Witchery - The Search for American Traditional Witchcraft 
