Tools, Supplies, and Techniques
T his chapter begins the practical and hands-on portion of this book. We have explored some of the rich and strange cultures of the southern highlands, and now we’re going to look at materials, tools, and techniques that are used to move energy around for healing, for luck, and for acquiring resources. This chapter is mostly about the tools, supplies, and techniques of my trade and how I use them. For organizational purposes I’m grouping them into the four classical elements—earth, air, fire, and water. We’ll finish up with any oddments that didn’t easily fit into these arbitrary boxes.
Lining the little kitchen garden at the back of the house are the broken-handled heads of once-sharp garden tools. The chicken wire fence is a graveyard of hoes, rakes, shovel heads, and pitchforks lost. None of them could be repaired in this age of planned obsolescence, or else they came to us in their brokenness, for we are odd collectors of odd things. We may have spotted one on the sidewalk or in the recycling bin at the community garden. It used to be possible to replace the handle but most tools today aren’t made for that. The head can’t be affixed onto the handle solidly enough to use it for hard work. Or the heads themselves are missing teeth or chunks of their forged selves.
We talk about the tools of magic, and any metaphysical shop worthy of the name will carry the modern tools of modern magic—the athames and heavy cauldrons, uncountable numbers of tarot decks, crystals, wands. Every color and size candle is available for all sorts of workings.
When we begin studying any sort of energy manipulation or magical system, it’s important to start with the basics in order to create a strong foundation for our future work. There is a regional description of the dominant hand as the “strong” hand and the other hand as the “soft” hand. Years ago, I was eldered into a local Pagan community, and the person who conducted the simple ceremony asked me if I’d brought my magical tools with me. I held up my two strong hands and then touched the tips of my fingers to my forehead, my chest above my heart, and then my stomach. These are the basic tools of human beings, whether they practice magic or not. The head is vision, imagination, deep thought, and intention. The heart is the investment of emotion into the act of creation—doing the job with love and compassion. The belly is the will, the strength, the guts to bring that intention to fruition. These powerful tools work for art and parenting, for partnering and for magic. For everything, really.
Tools and Techniques of Earth
On the mountain where I grew up, there was an outcropping of rock with some trees above it. It formed a bit of shelter for the cows that were pastured there. Our neighbor called it the Knoll, and I learned its name from one of her granddaughters, who was my friend and my writing buddy. I spent a lot of summertime up there because of an unusually cool breeze and some shade. You got to this place via one of the old logging roads that crisscrossed the bald mountain. It wound past another rocky outcropping that may or may not have been an old mica mine. We were warned of it many times as we left our houses to wander the mountain—don’t you dare go near that old mica mine. And we never did because we were never sure of its location, and the adults never went with us to show us because they knew we weren’t to be trusted. If we had been able to locate this legendarily dangerous place, I’m sure we would have squeezed into it and had a good look around, simply because we’d been told not to. My cousin Dena and I dragged a heavy rock from near there, one we thought had cave paintings on it. Down the logging road we dragged it, dragged and rested, dragged and rested—until we got it up the bank and into my front yard. We marveled over it a good long time, but it was lost in the end, somewhere on the mountain or in the yard.
Grounding
We’ll sit there together now in our mind’s eye, settling ourselves under that blessed outcropping of rock as we consider the concept of earth and the tools we associate with it, both physical and metaphorical ones. Since we are sitting in this earthbound place together, let’s spend a few moments looking at the importance of grounding as part of your regular practice. In so many of the classes I teach at festivals and conferences or at home, I stress the importance of this as a regular practice. This is not, strictly speaking, traditionally Appalachian. But what I learned coming up about planting your feet firmly in the dirt of home while reaching for the heavens surely prepared me for this intentional process. Also—years of being barefooted.
Imagine a warm summer morning on a smallholding in the hills. You wake and get outside as soon as you can, wearing summer clothes that consist of shorts and a sleeveless shirt, maybe some sandals or flip-flops, if your mother insisted. But these got kicked off as soon as it was practical. Dirty feet with ragged toenails—we call them toe-knives in my family—pound through all kinds of textures. Grass and gravel, mud and creek water. The horse shed has straw or dry leaves that will later be manure to avoid. We never avoided the water or mud. Each day of barefoot walking on the dirt road took us a little farther on the path from tenderfoot to the leather-footed pride of late summer when nothing could disturb our graceful stroll through the sharp-stoned edges of the gravel road.
The process of toughening our feet taught us patience as well as resilience. As my magical practice continued to develop, moving from what I’d learned in the cove by watching and listening, I needed a firm foundation to hold me up and anchor me to the ground below me—what came to be called grounding. Here is the technique I use:
I imagine tiny roots come out of the soles of my feet and wiggle their way into the sweet bosom of the earth. When they touch the ground, they get stronger and wider, and they go deep, as deep as I can imagine until I feel solid as an oak tree. I coax the energy of the earth into my feet and my legs and up into my belly. Then I breathe such big breaths of good air that my lungs are filled and my spirit settled.
Redding
Brick dust is sometimes called redding and is popular among folk magic practitioners. It is not traditional here, but it works so well as a protective element that I’ve adopted it for my own use. Instead of taking a hammer and busting up an old soft brick (along with my old soft fingers), you may find my technique a little easier. After a period of gentle rain, I harvest damp red clay mud. I leave it to dry until crumbly, and I grind it in a mortar with its fat pestle until the dried clay is reduced to a fine grain.
Tools
I may as well chide you now about this helpful pair of tools—a mortar and pestle. Such a handy and compact thing. If you don’t have one, find yourself one. I have several, most from thrift stores. There’s a small heavy one that I use for redding. A large brass one is used exclusively for poisonous plants and a recently acquired stainless steel one is handsome but too slick to be very useful. They are easily found at flea markets and thrift stores, and I suggest you get one as soon as you can.
While a sturdy grinding tool is important, a few good sharp knives are vital. These may be your everyday kitchen blades, washed thoroughly after each use and kept wickedly sharp. One for chopping, one for peeling, and a serrated one for bread because bread and butter are good for the soul and good for the belly.
These creatures of earth—steel and wood and stone—will serve you well. Take care of them as you would any tool, whether in house or garden.
Rocks and Stones
I wrote about the mythic and highly dangerous mica mine earlier in this chapter, and I want to share some of the minerals we use and used here. No fancy crystals in this folk magic, though there are many places in the region where you can pan for precious metals and stones. I work with soil, of course, and with mica, gravel, and garnets.
Mica
The beautiful big chunk of mica in my workbasket was a gift from a friend, and I have used it ever after as a reflective surface. If you don’t know the virtues of mica, let me tell you about its habits, its nature. It is still used as an insulating material because it easily flakes into slivered layers, thin as glass. In fact, mica is used as windows in furnaces because it can withstand great heat. The piece I have fits nicely into my two open hands and is easily flaked with a thumbnail. That was another dire warning we received as children: don’t handle mica because you might rub your eyes and the flakes would get in and you’d go blind.
In my current practice, I use mica as a reflective surface to shine light onto situations in which I need more clarity. I use it to reflect unpleasant things that may have been sent my way. Finding intact specimens the size of mine may be challenging, but it is useful regardless of size. Please be careful flaking it, though, so you don’t go blind.
Garnet
Another activity of some mountain children was the finding of garnet rocks. There really are so many precious minerals here, lying on the ground, free for the taking. We’d find garnets imbedded in their matrix stone and spit on the rock to admire their color. Then we’d take them to whatever concrete block was hanging around in the yard, and one of us would go home and fetch a hammer. We’d take turns freeing those little garnets, wash them with no more than spit and pour them into a cotton bag left over from a plug of chewing tobacco. Like the cave painting stone, those little sacks of hard-won glory were left somewhere in the past.
You can see how a blood substitute stone like garnet is helpful in many situations. Garnet is also used to celebrate a girl-child’s first menstrual period, something that should be honored in every possible way. It is also appropriate to celebrate the “new blood” when a child or child-in-law comes into the family through adoption or marriage. Adoption within families is a common thing in Appalachia, more so now, when addiction is ripping its way through so many mountain communities. My elder half-sister was adopted within the family, which is how I found her after our mother died.
Garnets for blood, garnets for life. A beautiful symbol as well as a magical tool.
Here in the mountains, we are suitably impressed with humility. An authentic cove doctor will speak of the Spirit flowing through them to do the work and will claim no responsibility or authority over the healing that results.
Gravel
I have written elsewhere and teach often about gravel. Gravel is everywhere, so entirely present that we rarely notice it. It lines paths and provides a nonslip surface for roads and driveways. I grew up on a dirt road that was sometimes covered in gravel by the grace of the State of North Carolina’s Department of Transportation. First, a scraping machine would chug its way up one side of the horseshoe-shaped road, leveling the ruts in the roadbed. Later that day or maybe the day after, a dump truck with gravel would make several trips along the same road, leaving fresh and uneven ridges of new gravel. Cars and trucks would distribute it over the next days and everyone in the cove would complain about how rough it was on their tires. After a few rains and many bumpy trips, the gravel migrated to the edges of the road with a center ridge left mostly untouched. Occasionally, someone got a truckload of gravel for their driveway and the resulting wear-and-tear was much the same.
If you spend any time near strip-mining and mountaintop removal operations, gravel begins to take on more tragic and even sinister connotations. Gravel is the result of gouging the stone heart out of a hill and letting the rest fall away. In coal country, this activity is designed to remove the more valuable coal, and gravel is a by-product. Here in my part of Appalachia, there isn’t so much coal that the mountains are ripped apart for it. Here the hills are graded and blasted and torn asunder for the parking lot, the roadbed, or your driveway. There’s a highway here, down almost into the foothills, that winds its way into the high country from Interstate 40. You can see steel-caged stone there waiting to be bought and sold, moved to build a wall or house. They are waiting for a truck heavy enough to haul them away. The quarry is usually right behind the sales area, stripped of vegetation and soil, its crumbling center strange in the light of day.
Gravel is the bones of the hills, broken for our enrichment. Gravel is the heart of the mountain, the broken heart of home. This makes it all less humble and more ominous. It is certainly a non-
renewable resource and one whose removal spoils and destroys the resources around it. Old hills, once as high as the Alps, laid low for their innards. Laid low forever, never to be rebuilt.
The more I think on gravel, the more I honor both what it is and what it does. It feels more potent than diamonds and just as bloody—though the lifeblood of the ecosystem is always green in my mind’s eye. Gravel is sometimes called crushed stone, but these are two somewhat different things. Gravel is naturally occurring and is dug up and pulled out. But there is a finite amount of it and humans need more and more of it. The result of those market-driven forces is the product called crushed stone, which is exactly what it sounds like. Larger mined stone is crushed with heavy machinery to become gravel. That difference is interesting but I’m not sure if it feels important enough when using gravel for the purposes we’re exploring. You think about it and decide for yourself. Is there a significant energetic feel to the two things? Is it enough different to spend time sourcing broken rock? If so, do so.
If gravel is the bone and heart of the hills that I call home, I feel an obligation to use these materials carefully, intentionally. These ragged bits of stone are heavy in my hand and not exactly picturesque. I lick them, as I did half a century or more ago. The spit changes the color temporarily and I feel the grit on my tongue. I swallow hard and think about the taste of the soil and how precious that stuff is here and everywhere.
Bones and heart. I think of strength and of character. Of integrity. I’d use this dear old stone when I was lacking in those attributes or if someone I cared for needed that support from me.
When friends or clients have big decisions to make, I will sometimes suggest that they gather a small pile of gravel and place it around a lovely bowl, somewhere on their kitchen table or their desk. When they consider the list of possibilities, something that feels right in their gut requires a piece of gravel placed in the bowl. When the bowl is full of gravel bits, they are ready to make a considered decision because they have given their soul time to parse the next step in their personal journey. This simple stone can hold all our dreams, as well as our sorrows when we remember its beginnings as the heart of an ancient mountain.
River Rock
Part of my family spent a good deal of each summer at a local campground, enjoying the peace and quiet, drinking a lot of beer and liquor. What I chiefly remember about those summer days were the rocks that lined the banks of the little river for which the campground was named. They were smooth and mostly round, soft even in their heaviness. We always went home with dozens of the best ones, and used them to line flower gardens. I still love and collect them and use them still for their beauty and for their memory of the water that changed them, slowly, inevitably. They feature in cairn building too when I honor the best autumn tree in the neighborhood or mark the final resting place of a beloved pet.
River rock. Gravel. Garnets. Mica. The stone of the land that owns me, that holds the bones and ashes of my forebears. How could we not use these fragments of our holy land to do our holy work?
Tools and Techniques of Air
I start out so many classes by helping the attendees relax and focus by teaching them a technique called Four-Square Breathing. I talk them through it first. Inhale for a count of four. Hold for a count of four. Exhale for a count of four. And rest for a count of four. Ready? Inhale two three four. And hold two three four. Exhale two three four. And rest two three four. Now breathe deeply and normally.
It is always interesting to watch their faces as we repeat the process, which I usually do three times. Consternation, confusion, exasperation. Then the softening as they realize it isn’t a hard or complicated process. That softening helps them focus and be present for whatever I am teaching.
Breathing
Breath is an integral part of traditional Appalachian healing. According to Appalachian folklore, one of the gifts of someone who is the seventh son of a seventh son or the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter is the ability to use their breath to cure diseases, one of them being thrush, sometimes called thrash. Thrush is a fungal infection, one of the dreaded candidas (like yeast infections), and was a constant threat in rural areas. It is easily cleared up now, and generally the symptoms are more annoying than threatening. But for a suckling infant years ago, the fungus might inhibit breast or bottle feeding because it is sometimes painful. An infant who can’t feed is in a risky situation. The child with the special gift would be brought in to blow in the baby’s mouth and thereby cure the thrash. I’ve talked to several adults who were hauled around as children to cure the thrash. It seems to have worked often enough that people kept up the practice.
It makes sense that breath and breathing are associated with healing in southern Appalachian communities that base so much on the Bible. We recall how humans were created, according to the Genesis story that is itself problematic in so many ways. The Bible reads, “And the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” 13
Blood and breath figure prominently in so many aspects of folk healing globally and ours is no exception. Inspiration is, quite literally, “breathing in.” And expiration is breathing out as well as removing life from your credit card or elderly milk in the refrigerator. It bears with it not only the gift of life but a life ensouled, as Genesis so aptly illustrates.
The woods are said to breathe, as does a good stand of corn, and there is a sense that it isn’t only humans who perceive that precious action but that the trees and corn and everything living around us is breathing in and out, living and sacred. Ensouled, as we humans are. We know trees exhale the gases we need and we exhale the ones for them, which is why we call the Amazon Basin the “lungs of the world.” It’s this exchange of holy breath that keeps us upright, with our ragged souls somehow still attached. As a woman who has lived her life under sweet gum and poplars, holly and old apple trees, I am here to testify that I ken this on the innermost level of myself. In. Out. Holy, holy, holy.
Feathers
My research as a spellcatcher takes me back to the home countries every few years. I talk to folks in pubs and folk museums and at farms and allotments. At Anne Hathaway’s farm outside Stratford-
upon-Avon, we had to be very careful as there was a ferocious outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. The front garden was beautifully arranged, as most English gardens are. Over in the vegetable section—a kitchen garden as lovely as the day—there was a curious contraption. It was a medium-sized potato that had a length of narrow rope pulled through the center, the ends of which were tied off to the fence. It hung suspended there and large-ish feathers had been stuck in it so that it turned in the breeze. Can you picture it? Chicken tail feathers, duck and goose feathers, a few from ravens or swans, spinning in the cool air of the English countryside like a bird from outer space. I had to know what it was and gardeners and farmers are some of my favorite people to talk to, so I went in search of someone on the grounds. Turns out it is a medieval bird-scarer and was cheap, easy to replace, and simple to create.
The following is obviously not a traditional Appalachian folkway, at least as far as I know. No one has ever told me that they or their family did it or that they had heard of it before. I use a similar feathered critter to send a job of work out into the world and to keep the spell energized and activated. It spins in my garden as long as the potato and the feathers last. Sometimes I write an intention directly onto the potato and sometimes I write it on a slip of paper and jam it in the rope hole. That extraordinary bird-scarer was too dynamic not to repurpose it as a magical tool. And it really does keep the birds away, except from the elderberries. They are irresistible.
Tasting Wind
Old-timers set great store by tasting the wind, feeling it brought them knowledge about weather, bird and animal migrations, and even prophetic information about the future of their land or their family. It was a way to commune with God and self and nature. Tasting the wind is an old art that is not much practiced these days. I have set myself the goal of practicing this folkway enough in the next few years so that I can pass it on. It requires a good sense of smell and the patience to connect a particular smell—of snow or rain or soon-lightning—to the subsequent event. You stand in as clear a place as possible, where the breeze can easily find your nose. Breathe deeply through your nostrils. Exhale. Breathe next time through your barely opened mouth. Exhale. Alternate these techniques until you catch a whiff or taste of something on the wind. Then observe and remember.
Tools and Techniques of Fire
I grew up on the side of a mountain, a mountain mostly covered with trees. Outside the kitchen door, there was a slice of undeveloped woodland between our house and the next one over. Our own property was also wooded, as was the property on the other side that held a ramshackle wooden farmhouse built in the earliest days of the cove’s habitation. Our house too was made of wood. Wood and woods. A blessing when we needed sticks or shade or the dried leaves for pony bedding. We walked beyond our own property most years to find and cut down a Christmas tree. In the autumn, when thousands of people still descend on the southern highlands to view the colors of the leaves as they die, the forests around us were also a source of apprehension because of the tinder their summer lives had produced. It is still called fire season hereabouts, and there were no hydrants or fire departments within call of the cove folk. Most wildfires were fought by volunteers and most fires were caused by carelessness—a campfire left smoldering, a landowner burning off a field or pile of trash while enjoying “a cold one” or two or three.
Fire is hard to control because it is unpredictable. Of the four elements I’m using here, it is the one most likely to get out of hand. It is warming in the fireplace, but have a care about creosote buildup in your chimney. Falling asleep to the smell of wood smoke and a faint orange glow in the window was never easy. I can’t remember if we were told to do this by our ne’er-do-well parents, but I would put my most precious things in a box under my bed, easily accessible if we had to clamber down the bank to the old station wagon and leave the cove—and our house—behind. One year the treasures included a sixty-four-count box of real Crayola crayons, new ones I had bought with my own money at the drugstore near my cousin’s house. I wasn’t evacuating without those beauties
We had damaging wildfires here in 2016. More than sixteen thousand acres burned. The worst happened after the bulk of the fires were under control. Sweet old Gatlinburg was set afire by careless kids on the mountain at Chimney Tops. Thousands of buildings were damaged or destroyed outright and fourteen people died. Fire on the mountain is always something to take seriously.
We often talk of fire symbolically, equating it with passion and vivacity. Wildfire is an unknown, less to be dreaded than to prepare for if you live in a fire-prone area. Fire is a powerful tool and, like all tools, must be used with consideration. When we ponder both its power and its symbolic importance, we learn to embrace our own fiery spirits to the aid of healing and magic. We can write our intentions and prayers on slips of paper and burn those bits to remove that which no longer serves us and holds back our progress. We can send our prayers to the spirit world through the cleansing power of fire.
Candles
Dressing candles with special oils enhances the ability of fire and light to effect change and healing. I am especially fond of three herbal oils for candle dressing: vervain, rue, and mugwort. I make those oils by harvesting the fresh herb and stuffing a canning jar three-quarters full with it. I add inexpensive vegetable oil to fill the jar up, leaving a little space, called headroom, at the top. The lid is screwed on securely and it is given some good shakes. The jar is placed somewhere away from direct sunlight. It is shaken every couple of days and will be left on the plant material for a moon cycle. If you lay it down on a new moon, it will be ready and at full potency on the following new moon.
Other people may have a different duration, but a moon cycle is what I was taught and it is easy to remember. It is also wise to label your jars, even if you think you’ll remember. Once you’ve shaken a jar of plant material in oil for a month, it’s often hard to tell what the original plant was. A little strip of masking tape and a black pen will do the trick. After a month, pour the oil off the plant material into a clean jar. Pour it through a strainer to get rid of the last bit of plant material because that goo may mold. That doesn’t really matter since you’re not ingesting the finished product, but it is unsightly and can make your oil smell “off.” You may choose to refrigerate your oils, but I’ve found that storing them in a cool, dark place is usually sufficient. You can read about my favorite herbal oils in Chapter 6.
You can use any size candle for candle magic. Use a birthday candle in an aluminum cupcake holder for something quick and easy. Tealights have a soft glow, are easily dressed with a dab of oil, and burn out in about an hour. Seven-day candles are harder to dress but they burn for far longer. With a bit of luck and some wiggling, you may be able to slide the whole wax cylinder out of the jar by its wick, dress it, and slide it back in. If you make your own candles, you can add any oil to the wax before you pour. This can sometimes result in the glass cracking as the candle burns, so make sure to put a plate underneath and place the whole shebang on a fireproof surface. Fat white emergency candles are readily available, inexpensive, and easy to dress and will burn for several hours.
Never leave a burning candle unattended, not even a seven-day candle in a stout glass jar. If a job of work requires a long burn, I will stay with it and place it in the kitchen sink, in case I somehow forget about it. I am aware that many people light a seven-day candle, put it on a protective dish and let it burn. I do not because I have seen too many of them shatter and because of my childhood experiences.
The Energy Trap
Tealights, whether wax or battery-operated, are handy things, and I use them in one of my favorite workings: the Energy Trap. I’ve assembled these in many places or taught someone to do it for themselves. It was conjured up for a client who felt her house was full of negative energy. In this case, the energy was stale and bunged up and needing a good stirring up and clearing out. (I later discovered that her husband was also embezzling money from his workplace. That couldn’t have been helping the home situation much either.)
I’ve been using it since that first experiment, and it has proved to be very effective. It acts as a filter for stagnant energy in your home, energy that can be misconstrued as spirit activity. Here are directions for constructing and using one. You’ll need a flat, round reflective surface (the bottom of a throw-away pie pan is the best, but you can use a round mirror too), three flat black rocks, a tealight candle (my preference is a battery-operated one because they are safe around children and animals), and two grades of salt (inexpensive table salt and ice cream salt, for instance). Place the reflective surface on a flat surface—put it on a high shelf out of sight, if that’s needed, or put it in a prominent place to add the energy of your thoughts every time you see it. Put the three flat stones in the center of the mirror. Pour the heavy salt in a circle around the stones. Pour the table salt on the outer edge of the mirror. Now, place the tealight on top of the stones in the center and light it or turn it on. The theory behind this trap is that stagnant and unhealthy energy is drawn to the light, filtered first through the stones, then filtered through the rough salt, filtered a final time through the fine salt. It is then reflected back out into the area as clean, useable energy. You can keep one of these going all the time, but it isn’t necessary. You’ll feel the difference in a few days. If you are moving into a new place or if your office environment is harsh, run the trap for at least a moon cycle. If you run it longer than that, change the salt every moon cycle.
Sacred Smoke
A section on fire isn’t complete without a brief paragraph on sacred smoke. As we continue to refrain from using white sage as a smudge or palo santo as an incense (for cultural as well as environmental reasons), it is good to remember that sacred smoke is used by many cultures for ritual purification and each culture uses materials that are native to them for this purpose.
I make my Appalachian version by combining equal parts mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum), mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), and rabbit tobacco (Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium), all dried. I burn it on a charcoal disk or throw it on the fire in a burning bowl or sturdy cauldron. The smell of mountain sanctity, sure enough.
The Tools and Techniques of Water
Let’s go back to the cove for this last section. Our house was situated at the head of the cove and we had a city water line instead of a spring or well. Because we were higher up the hill, our water pressure was only really strong at night. We didn’t have a bathroom, so the water use was concentrated in cooking and washing dishes and clothes. We bathed in a pan of water in the kitchen sink, and I washed my long hair in the sink too. The water lines weren’t buried deeply enough for a cold winter with prolonged freezes, which meant the water line was sometimes solid in the worst weather. When that happened we would take plastic milk jugs and the big spaghetti pot to the most magical place on the mountain: the springhouse near my cousin’s trailer.
I don’t know who built the stone springhouse but it was regularly tended, whitewashed, repaired. I remember it as a small stone house about four feet wide and three feet high. There was a wooden door with a door-screen, and it swung from one side in the middle of the rock face of the spring. The door was secured with a piece of skinny wood that was turned up to open the door and turned sideways to latch the door after you’d dipped your water. A ledge ran along the edge of the springhead, inside the little house. Sometimes there was a cup in there, so you could get a drink of water. Sometimes there was a snake there, staying cool on a hot summer day. The springhouse was set into the side of a low hill and it was shaded by the trees above and around it.
You approached the spring by a footpath through a mostly unused pasture. It seems like I always knew about the spring, but someone must’ve told me about it at some point. Unlike the dangerous mica, we were never warned about the dangers of the spring, only told to be very careful about closing the door. That springhouse was helpful and somehow safe, which kept it magical and full of delicious promise. Years later when I learned about well dressing and the folkloric importance placed on those portals where water rises up through the earth to reveal itself, I thought of the care blandished on that little springhouse by the unknowable adults who tended it. Is it any wonder these liminal places are tended and decorated and believed to contain powerful spirits?
As I ponder the importance of water to Appalachian folkways, I begin to suspect that this held the key to Scots-Irish and Cherokee (and other Native Americans) interactions. The idea of “going to water” to pray for and achieve healing is a strong one in Cherokee culture. Marry that to the British veneration of water sources and we begin to see how the streams flow together to impact folk healing and folk magic in the region. Love, healing, transformation—notions that still affect the southern highlands today.
In 2014, there was a massive chemical spill on the Elk River in West Virginia. The Elk is a tributary of the Kanawha, the river that provides water to the state capitol in Charleston. The spill affected more than three hundred thousand people. The people got one lucky break in that the chemical had a strong licorice smell, even in tiny amounts, so—unlike many of the contaminants in the nation’s waterways—this one was noticeable. The chemical in question was used to separate coal from rock fragments and had been deemed to be harmless. Except it wasn’t and it had never been thoroughly tested. Three hundred thousand people.14 A sterling example that not everyone in Appalachia cares about water.
In addition to the common ways in which humans use water, we have adapted some different water-based materials for a number of uses. We’ll take a look at those now.
Dishwater
This water was the greasy, globby, lukewarm stuff left in your washpan and is less available than it once was, in this time of dish-washing appliances, but it is still easily acquired. Dishwater is like good compost and contains all the building blocks of strong magic and healing. With an accompanying dishrag, much can be accomplished. A rag soaked in dishwater is slapped against a tree trunk or flat rock to call rain. Rubbing warts with a dishrag sopping wet with dishwater and then burying the rag somewhere off your land will take away the wart. I have never known this to work, but it is a popular technique here in the hills. Try it for yourself and see if it works for you because many people swear by it.
Dishwater is the compound (water and soap) that is used to remove food bits from dishes and cookware, to clean them in readiness for the next meal. If we use that as a baseline, we can consider using it to remove what we need removed from our lives and to clean up messes. With or without a handy rag, use dishwater with these intentions and you can use any opportunity to clean the kitchen not as a chore but as a chance to energetically tidy up your life. Before you dump that gray water down the drain, put the fingertips of your strong hand in the water and move them in a counterclockwise circle, all the while thinking of your intention. When you pour the water from the pan, say goodbye to whatever you are dumping from your life, rinse your hands, put on a little lotion, and move on.
Clean water flowing into your sink is a gift not everyone receives. Take a tip from the sweet well-dressing customs in Britain and hang a loop of fresh greens from your garden or even silk flowers around the spigot to remind yourself of the blessing that is fresh water. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t waste water by leaving it running when you’re not actively using it. Water is precious as well as sacred. We’d all be wise to sharply consider our use of water.
Willow Water
The willow tree is one of the brightest things in the spring landscape, sporting eye-catching green cascades of new leaves. It is a plant that grows by the water, trailing its long loose branches into available water. It’s the bark that most interests us. It contains salicin, a chemical compound like the active ingredient in aspirin, salicylic acid. It has been used medicinally for centuries, but we’re concerning ourselves with its uses in Appalachian folklore. Prepare willow water in the spring of the year, when the leaves are that perfect bright green. Snip off the ends of a good handful of those flowing branches and fill a canning jar about three-quarters full. Fill it the rest of the way with fresh spring or well water and leave it in a cool place for seven days. This water can be refrigerated at any time and is used to soothe and calm. Soak a soft cotton cloth in this water and lie down with it on your forehead as you rest. Soak your busy feet in a pan of it, leaving the green leaves in as a tonic for your eyes. Bathe your wrists and the inside bend of your elbows to ease yourself after a day of difficult or stressful work.
Ditchwater, Stump Water, Stormwater
Three other waters are popular in our folklore: ditchwater, stump water, and stormwater (including snow). They are sovereign elixirs that I hope you will try.
Ditchwater is the stuff that is found in the wet, early spring and is full of life. Frog eggs, insects, algae, all the stuff of new and vibrant life. Don’t ingest it—instead use it to inspire your creative self, to keep a new project juicy. Fill a canning jar with some and put it on your desk or work space. Replace it every few days to keep it lively and wholesome.
Stump water is the rainwater that collects in the basin of an old stump. Rainwater that doesn’t touch the soil is thought to be cleaner than some other water. Stumps are not common for many of us, which makes this water more valuable in its rarity. Stump water is primarily used as a folk remedy for various skin disorders. Freckles were not popular with young ladies who wanted unblemished skin. Teenagers prone to breakouts of pimples, blackheads, and the like used stump water for cleaning their faces of these blemishes. It has been used for poison ivy and for insect bites, though there are herbal remedies that work better for both of those conditions. Stump water was also believed to remove warts. With so many wart remedies, it seems there was a near-constant concern about the result of that virus. Stump water from different trees may have different properties: oak stump for wisdom and strength, willow stump for flexibility and connection across realms, and maple stump water for sweetening the bitter parts of life.
Water collected during a rainstorm and melted snow gathered from a snowfall contain the power of these meteorological events. The rainwater is gathered during the storm, adding an extra ingredient—courage—to the movement and energy of the storm. Snow water must be collected in a clean bowl as the snow falls and not simply scooped up from the yard after the snow has stopped falling. Both waters are used for healing various ailments because they arrive from the heavens (or heaven) in glory and authority.
Other Helpful and Traditional Waters
Forge Water
If you know a blacksmith, you are blessed, my friend. Bring that person offerings of what he or she likes and spend some time watching this old and important work. It is powerfully elemental, making hot fire with wood and air, using that fire to purify and form iron, which is cooled with water. You may ask for a small jar of that water and use it in the same way—as a placeholder for the elemental powers of creation and to strengthen your will. Dress candles with it. Dab it on your pulse points and temples. Remind yourself of the forces that both are and move the universe—and that you are part of all that.
Mill Water
Mill water is working water from a mill race. It moves the great wheel that grinds the grain or generates electricity. It can be used in many ways. Try it to aid in completing monotonous tasks or sticking with long-range goals, or let it inspire you as you move your own wheel to generate movement in your life.
Morning Dew
Morning dew holds a fine place in the world’s folklore. From the time I was a child, I was advised to always wash my face in the dew on the first of May. I would pat my hands on the damp grass, palms down, and then rub the dew onto my cheeks. I still do this every year and taught my daughter to do the same. This annual dampening was supposed to guarantee a beautiful face and thereby a beautiful life. I’m sure it works every single time.
The Land beneath the Waters
There is sometimes an uneasy interaction between water and soil, and that should be mentioned here. Many of the lakes in the region are human-made, the larger ones are mostly the product of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s efforts at rural electrification in the 1940s. Roosevelt signed the New Deal plan into law. Smaller lakes were constructed for many reasons, including recreation and livestock watering. All these created lakes and ponds have something in common: the drowning of good land, making it incapable of behaving as land does, and there is sometimes a sense of the land’s resentment there.
Near me there is a popular lake that we frequented in my high school years, though now it is part of a gated community and no longer accessible to the likes of us. Before the Enka corporation bought the land for homes for their white-collar employees and made the lake a focal point for what was then called Enka Village, part of that place was a dairy farm owned by a cousin of mine named Belle Ballard. She sold the property and moved the farm some miles away. As with many of these flooding events, the buildings were left standing, which always feels a little creepy after the fact. We like to imagine an intact ghostly farm waiting there under the calm surface of the lake, not considering what decades of being under water will do to wooden structures. It is there, waiting, lonely. Fanciful but oddly compelling. Whether the sense of resentment is a longing for old times or a genuine feel for and connection to the lost land beneath the waters may be a matter for myth and legend. But many people speak of it and are sincere in their belief. It also makes for some sweet tunes and ghostly tales.
Some Witchery: Attracting and Manifesting
Attraction magic is an important thing to master. There are all sorts of things you’ll want to bring into your life as you live it, whether it’s a new place to live or to work or friends to share your good times and comfort you in the hard ones. Appalachian folk magic has some interesting love spells and getting your partner back spells and what I think of as “Jolene spells”—magic to keep your romantic partner from straying. You can find those in lots of places but I do not recommend their use. When you tie your energy into luring in a particular person that you’ve set your hat for (though that person has no interest in you), you are asking for trouble. And if your partner is swayed by Ms. Jolene’s seductive ways, your magical attention will be better used to focus on the other resources you need to live a full and beautiful life. So the following attracting spell is not about that. It is about attracting the resources I just mentioned: job or better job, new or first house, or other things you are choosing to manifest or attract.
Pie Plates and Candles
I do a lot of work with reflective surfaces—mirrors, aluminum pie pans, and the like. Take one of those and add to it some dressed candles. I’d use green for a job, yellow for a cheery new place to live. I’d do a combination of styles of candles, depending on what was available: anything from a battery tealight to a big pillar candle will do the trick. Dress them with a strong oil. My favorite is rue or woad oil, but I might consider mugwort oil if part of the manifestation involves keeping a dream alive and vital. Sprinkle the working surface with usnea or moss so that the thing you’re calling to you “sticks” with you. I might even add some cockleburs for extra sticking. As always, don’t leave the candles alone. Sit with them and set your intention as they burn, running it through your head as you watch the flames. Review the specifics of what you need—a range of salaries or specific working hours for a new job, location and price range for different housing, and so on.
The Open-Mouthed Purse
You’ll need to gather up a little coin purse (the best are those old-fashioned ones with a little clasp on top) that can open into a wide “mouth,” shiny coins of any denomination (even chocolate ones will work), a small mirror, and shiny bits (Mardi Gras beads, for example).
I keep one of these going all the time—it’s easy. Put it anywhere that you will see it and add your energy to it. Set the little purse upright on the mirror with its mouth open. Drop some shiny coins in its mouth and set all manner of shiny things, like those golden Mardi Gras beads, around it. Keep a lookout for shiny coins coming to you as change and add them to the purse. Any “found” coins also go in and around the purse. Be sure to welcome all your abundance, prosperity, and money energy.