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A common thread with Granny Magic, Hoodoo, and the folk magic of Mexican origins is that magic is done in the moment to address a specific need and typically uses easily obtained materials. Often, the practitioner chooses from any number of spell components, based on what they have available at the time. The role of the rootworker is to know the magical properties of a multitude of herbs, stones, roots, and human or animal biological products and combine them in a particular way to achieve the desired outcome. There are countless Hoodoo spells, chants, tricks, and incantations for almost any spiritual, physical, emotional, or social ailment. These are just a few.
The Nature Sack
One of the most famous authentic Hoodoo tricks is the nature sack. Many people mispronounce this as a “nation sack.” The reason for the confusion is clear. At their services, Protestant ministers passed around a “donation sack” for monetary offerings. To mock the ministers, prostitutes of the time tied a drawstring purse to their thigh to hold their earnings and called it their ’nation sack.
When Henry Middleton Hyatt phonetically transcribed his interviews, rootworkers spoke of the nature sack and pronounced it “naitcha” sack, which many white people took to mean “nation,” knowing of the ’nation sacks carried by the prostitutes and confusing the terms.
The true focus of the nature sack is to control a man’s “nature,” which is his ability to achieve an erection. Women did so to keep their partner from wandering, thereby binding him to have intimacies only with her. The cord of the nature sack was tied by the female during the peak of the sex act and she had to be very careful to do so without the man’s knowledge, because men were understandably hostile to the idea of any woman holding such power over them.
Brick Dust
One of the best-known Hoodoo practices is the use of brick dust to create protective boundaries, made popular in the 2005 film The Skeleton Key, starring Kate Hudson. Brick dust is a highly effective boundary, although other less-expensive products such as sea salt and cascarilla (finely ground eggshells) work very well.
My shop was in a highly trafficked area and few people come to that location looking for magical items. It sat alongside a farmer’s market with great deals on produce and many swap meet-type booths. To screen my customers and make sure no one got into the shop who was not supposed to be there, I would lay a line of brick dust across each threshold. If someone scoffed at its efficacy, I invited them to have a seat in my client chair and watch how many people in an hour’s time walked up to the door, then turned around and walked away. It did not mean they were bad people or brought ill-will. Only that they were not intended to be there. No one who sat and watched walked away still a non-believer.
When anyone acts shocked at the price of brick dust, I invite them to my house to help make the brick dust. We pull our red clay bricks from a barn here in our town that is over a hundred years old. Once they go through the physical demands of using a masonry drill, sledgehammer, rock hammer, three sets of classifiers, weighing, and packaging the new brick dust, they no longer question why it costs more than ground eggshells.
In the Kate Hudson movie, she has a large trough full of red brick dust and flings it around like it is an endless supply. I will guarantee you that almost no rootworker, Witch, or conjurer has that much brick dust in one place at one time.
To use brick dust, cascarilla, salt, or any other boundary agent, sweep down the threshold well and then sprinkle a line of dust from one doorjamb to the other. If your threshold has a metal plate over it, I recommend unscrewing it, pulling it up, laying the brick dust under the plate, then reattaching the plate over the brick dust. It will work exactly the same and will not get easily swept or washed away.
Foot Track Work
One of the most versatile ways to “lay tricks” in Hoodoo is by using a person’s footprint or “foot track.” If the person makes the footprint while barefoot, all the better. A person’s foot track holds tremendous power. It not only contains DNA through direct contact if they are shoeless, but also informs where they are, everywhere they have walked, and everywhere they will go.
A person can work either with the footprint as it lays in the dirt or can collect the footprint dirt to use at a different location.
To keep someone tied to you, find a footprint made when they are walking away from you and drive a rusty square nail into the heel of the print.
To curse a person, carefully collect the dirt containing the imprint of their foot and load it into a jar. Add Goofer Dust (a traditional Hoodoo powder), chili powder, broken glass, rusty nails, wasp or dirt dauber nests, and Crossing Powder or Hot Foot Powder to the jar, urinate in it, then shake it fiercely. Take the jar to a forest as far away from you as you can get it and bury it deep in the earth so it will not be disturbed. Traditionally, the jar is thrown into fast moving water that is flowing away from you, but that is now called littering and can get you fined.
Another way to curse a person using a footprint is to find their footprint and whip it soundly with a belt, horsewhip, rope, or strop, screaming threats and damnation as you do so. Just make sure you have the right person’s footprint.
Hoodoo employs a variety of powders, dusts, and dirts that work on a target through their footsteps. To get rid of a person, sprinkle Goofer Dust where you know they will walk, such as across their front step. This works well for neighbors who create discord. Goofer Dust is no joke, and you must release any restrictions you have on exactly how the Goofer Dust gets rid of them. They might get a great promotion in another state or they might just disappear in the middle of the night. You just never do know with Goofer Dust, so it should only be used by qualified practitioners.
Hot Foot Powder gets people to move into action. Sprinkle it where they will walk or put a tiny bit in their shoes to get someone motivated.
Silver Dimes
When collecting graveyard dirt—which is used for ancestor veneration, to establish peaceful and protective boundaries, and as an additive to many other recipes—the payment rendered to the person in the grave is nine silver dimes. These must be given to every grave from which dirt is harvested.
Silver dimes tied around the ankle warn the wearer if someone is attempting to lay tricks on them using Goofer Dust. When in the presence of Goofer Dust, the dime will turn black. From a scientific standpoint, a key component of Goofer Dust is sulfur, which reacts with the silver in the dime.
A silver dime is a powerful addition to a gambling talisman. Put a silver dime into a small red flannel bag along with a lucky hand root and some five-finger grass (cinquefoil).
Sweet Jars/Sweet Pots
Called “sugar jars/pots” or “honey jars/pots,” depending on the ingredients you used, a sweet jar is used to “sweeten up” the relationship between two people. This can work to reunite a couple struggling in their relationship, to bring together two people who have never had a relationship, or even to sweeten non-romantic relationships, such as those between a parent and child or an employer and employee.
Representations of each person go into the jar. This can be their written names, photographs, nail or hair clippings, body fluids, or other personal items. The trick is that it must balance and match perfectly. If you use the nail clippings of one person, you must use the nail clippings of the second person. If you use a photo of one person, you must use a photo of the second person.
Once the items are in the jar, douse them with honey or sugar water. The quality of honey is irrelevant. You can also use molasses or maple syrup. Once the lid is sealed, shake the jar like mad to make sure everything inside is covered with thick, sticky, sweet stuff. Set the jar on your altar or working area and cut the end off a taper candle so that you can find the wick at the bottom. Light the end of the candle and let the melting wax pool on the lid so that you can stick the candle to the lid using the hardening wax. Let the candle burn down, then bury the jar by the front door of one of the people in the jar to draw them together. I should note here that the addition of the candle to the sweet jar came after the golden age of Hoodoo and is not an authentic Black Belt practice.
You can use the exact spell, done in the same fashion, with vinegar and/or human urine instead of honey, sugar, or syrup to “sour” a relationship between two people. The difference is that you would dispose of the jar by burying it in a remote location rather than by a front doorstep.
Graveyard Dirt
“Do you actually …?”
“I mean, is it really …?”
Yes, it is. Some claim “graveyard dirt” is a colloquial term or some arcane secret code for the herb mullein, but no, mullein is mullein (and a fine herb it is) and graveyard dirt is exactly what the name implies. In this case, there is truth in advertising.
I collect my graveyard dirt for the entire year at midnight on Samhain (October 31) because the veil between the worlds is thinnest at that time and I must be certain I hear the wishes of the dead clearly to honor their dictates for the year. As any conscientious rootworker will tell you, there is a rapport that builds over time with the spirits of a cemetery. When you enter their world, you do so on their terms to achieve the best results and to preserve the integrity of your interaction.
If you open to the stillness of the cemetery and listen, the spirits will tell you what is and is not welcome behavior. It is less about could you take dirt from this grave or that one, but should you. When you enter a graveyard for communion and harvesting grave dirt, you must remember that you are a guest in the permanent physical home of these spirits. Whether their essence has passed on to another body or not, the grave marks a resting place for their physical representation on earth for the time marked by the gravestone. As such, we treat it with respect, and if their spirit speaks to us, we honor their wishes. We never collect graveyard dirt without permission from the one who rests there. If they are silent, we move along to another grave.
My local cemetery has graves from the 1800s to the 2000s, and I have gone there for the past fourteen years at the time of this writing. Although I visit it many times a year, Samhain is the only night I ever go to that cemetery after dusk and is the only time I collect dirt. The people buried there are familiar to me in death if not in life, and they make it clear that their hospitality ends at dusk. When I take groups of people there to commune with the dead and explore the historical graves, invariably as soon as the sun starts to dip behind the mountain, a gentle breeze picks up and the guests automatically congregate back at the gate as if in a hive mind. Time to go.
On Samhain night, however, I approach the gate with my trowel and my heavy plastic bags and ask for entry. Once inside, the question becomes, “Who wants to play this year?” Orbs come up over the graves of those willing to donate some of their graveyard dirt. These are orbs I see with my physical eyes, like the ones viewed in photography. If I bring someone with me, sometimes they see the orbs and sometimes they do not.
I approach each grave with an orb and ask them the location from where they would like for me to take their dirt. They tell me if I should take from the hands, the feet, or the head. My trowel goes in easily regardless of how much rain we have or have not had that year. I take the dirt until they tell me to stop, then I smooth over the grave so it looks as if I was never there and move on to the next one.
Sometimes, they want to visit, so I linger, listening to their stories and sharing time with them. More often, they are all business. I leave each one silver dimes as payment, shoving them into the area where I took the dirt. I have never once found one of the silver dimes while digging in a later year. Perhaps neighborhood children know to come look for buried change in the graveyard on November 1. Perhaps not. Ravens looking for shiny things? Maybe.
The most valued dirt comes from the grave of a law enforcement official known to be without corruption. Those can be difficult to find, but when you do, the protection factor in the dirt is of the highest you can get. Colonel William Knox was sheriff in our town for a short enough time that he allegedly was not (yet) corrupt. He made me wait six years before giving permission to harvest any of his dirt. Since then, some years he gives his dirt and some years he does not.
I often read Hoodoo primers that encourage the use of dirt from a baby’s grave. It is my experience that graveyard dirt gets its energy from the spirit of the person buried there. You would not, for instance, want to take the graveyard dirt of a psychopathic killer if you wanted to use it to create a peaceful environment. I love babies as much as the next person, but they are boring from an energetic perspective. They lived very little life, had few experiences, and no matter how beloved they were by all who beheld them, their energy pattern contributes little to the surrounding grave material. Because they did not communicate in life beyond crying for basic needs and cooing when they were happy, I find their communication after death is also minimal. In most cases, I only feel a faint imprint on the baby graves and tend to leave them alone. If I feel anything connected to a baby grave, it is often the grief of the parents. When I feel that, a minor degree of investigating invariably shows that the grave of the parents is adjacent and what I felt was their bleed-over energy.
Graveyard dirt, in addition to serving as a primary ingredient for many Hoodoo recipes, creates the conditions of the grave. When you are dead and buried, there is little anyone can do to harm you, so it acts as a protective ward, especially law enforcement graveyard dirt. It promotes peace, facilitates endings, and encourages releasing what no longer serves us. When in conflict, the user can sprinkle a line of it around the perimeter of a room or a work cubicle, around property boundaries, across a threshold, or even around a bed to minimize negative interaction and bring about a peaceful resolution.
Mojo Bags/Gris Gris
Called a “medicine bag” by the Native Americans and a Gris Gris by New Orleans Hoodoo folks, the mojo bag is more than just a small bag of significant items. It is engaged as a living being that is there to serve the user, sort of like a pet that gets things done. I like to tell people to imagine how a beam of sunlight can start a fire if it shines just right through a drop of water. Your own power is the sunlight, but the mojo is your drop of water. Traditionally a small bag of red or brown flannel or cotton, the mojo should always have an odd number of items in it to keep the energy off balance. If the energy in it balances, the mojo will go dormant.
When I make one, it starts with a stone that lends the energy I want to create. I think of the stone as the beating heart of the mojo. I then add herbs sympathetic to the cause. Each herb counts as its own item. Next, I add a piece of natural cotton liberally doused with an empowered oil that supports the goal. I then tie up the bag with a ribbon of the correct color and either clip a charm onto the ribbon or put it inside the bag.
I put all the mojos to sleep until someone needs one, then I wake it up through breath and massage and bind it to them using the same oils as are on the cotton inside, and an anointing process. The user may add to the mojo as they feel inclined to do so, but must add items two at a time to keep the odd number going. The mojo bag stays with them always, worn in a bra, carried in a pocket or purse, put inside their pillowcase at night, or resting on a nightstand or altar. They feed their mojo tiny bits of supportive oil two or three times a week.
Crossroads Magic
Like many other spiritual paths, the crossroads is sacred in Hoodoo practice. In Voodoo, Papa Legba often appears at the crossroads, representative of the spiritual crossroads he guards.
A crossroads is anyplace where two roads intersect. It is a powerful place because when you are at a crossroads, you are everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
There are two different types of crossroads, each of which you can easily visualize. The first is the most common crossroads, which is when two roads cross over one another. This is called a female crossroads. The second is a fork in the road where one road divides into two roads, each leading off into a separate direction. This is a male crossroads. Certain traditional spells call for the dirt of a “three-way” or a “male” crossroads and others may call for a “four-way” or “four corners” or “female” crossroads. Most spells do not specify, and in that case, the dirt from either may be used.
Leaving an offering of twenty-one pennies and lighting three red candles at a crossroads and waiting as they burn down is said to remove all blockages and obstacles from your path.
Because the veil between the worlds is naturally thin at the crossroads, go there if you need to speak to your ancestors for advice.
The crossroads will receive and dispose of used magical items once a spell is completed. (If your spellwork is particularly aggressive, tradition dictates you must bury the leavings in a cemetery).
If you wish to master any talent, bring the tools of your intended trade to the crossroads and practice after dark for nine nights straight. Bring a candle with you and remain at the crossroads each night until the candle burns down. You must not show fear to any animal or person who meets you there during the time of your practice. Anyone or anything that comes is part of your learning process.
If you have no crossroads nearby where you can safely work, many practitioners sell crossroads dirt, carefully collected from the four corners and center of a crossroads. The crossroads dirt I sell comes from the intersection of a road used by the Pony Express in the 1800s. Using crossroads dirt, you can trace out a plus sign on the ground or even on your floor and effectively create your own crossroads anywhere. If you collect and use crossroads dirt, be sure to identify the gender aspect of the crossroads when you store it.
Crossroads dirt is also great for decision-making. If you cannot see the best choice to make, lay out your crossroads dirt in an equalateral cross and sit where the lines intersect with one of the arms of the crossroads to your back.
Say “The past is behind me. To my left, my right, and before me, all possibilities lie. Show me what I am to do.” Sit in the crossroads until your spirit tells you it is time to get up. While you are there, clear your mind and go into a meditative state. If insight comes to you, file it away for future consideration. If not, pay close attention to signs and omens over the next few days. The answer will come to you.