When we think of magical practice, European and Middle Eastern traditions are often what come to mind. The many branches of Wicca, as well as Druidism, Ásatrú, and other Neopagan practices have great publicists and now constitute the status quo in conversations about nature-based spirituality.
It is equally tempting to imagine that all magical practices are either Pagan- or Heathen-based, or that they are all reconstructed versions of lost medieval religions. What we may fail to consider is that some of the strongest and most vibrant folk magic cultures, including Hoodoo, Granny Magic, Curanderismo, and Brujería, all covered in this book, are not Pagan at all, and despite having roots in other parts of the world, primarily developed in the United States.
Brujería and Curanderismo across the American Southwest, Hoodoo in the Gulf area and Southeast, and Appalachian Granny Magic throughout the Eastern United States all form a strong, interwoven network of folk magic practices rooted in a syncretized Christian foundation. These practices flourished during a time when they were needed most, enduring to our modern age due to the layering of historic conjuring and healing techniques onto the foundation of the more socially acceptable Christian precepts.
Although Hoodoo is the system one usually refers to when speaking of “Conjure” as a practice, the New Orleans branch of Hoodoo and Voodoo practice, the Cajun traiteur healers, Appalachian and Ozark folk magic, Native American practices, and the Gullah Geechee of South Carolina are all also technically forms of Conjure. Conjure is a broad term much like “Paganism” or “Christianity” in its application, encompassing a large scope of traditions and modalities with unifying commonalities.
Each of these folk magic systems has its own unique presentation; and yet, the Conjure cultures explored in this book share many interconnecting aspects, the most dominant being that they developed in adversity and were created by disadvantaged people. These magical pioneers did not establish these practices with an aim of creating a vital magical system that would endure through the ages. Their ambitions were quite immediate and basic: to stay alive, preserve their remaining dignity, and foster what quality of life they could build within those challenging circumstances. The magical perspectives presented here were nothing less than survival tools built on the premise of healing and effective management of the day-to-day issues of life. They address marriage, child-rearing, employment, safety, protection, health, and crisis intervention.
Few, if any, of the practitioners of these traditions were affluent or privileged people. Most lived in poverty and used their Conjure skills to create a tolerable life within largely untenable circumstances. To understand and embrace the nature and development of these paths, we must confront and identify with the life experiences of those who laid the foundations that allowed the paths not only to unfold but to endure. To varying degrees, these paths are still practiced today, which is a testimony not only to the solid foundations on which they were built, but also to their adaptability in the face of sometimes extreme societal and cultural changes.
In our modern magical society, we use phrases such as “spiritual path” or “magical practice” to identify the religious or practical application of our spellwork and celebratory events. The people who created the processes and modalities discussed in this book would not and did not use terms such as these. What we consider “spellwork” or “magical practice” was simply “life” for them. They saw no delineation between the secular and the spiritual life and did not create separate terminology to isolate their use of charms or other workings. It was simply “what was.” The identification of any practices described in this book as “magical” or “spellwork” is my usage of the words that we now use, rather than how the developing or even current cultures represented here would label their experiences, beliefs, or techniques.
As we explore Granny Magic, Hoodoo, Curanderismo, and Brujería—the primary presentations of folk magic in the American South—we see common threads that bind them together:
Folk magic was rarely a mere celebration of the turning of the seasons or a hopeful wish for a better life. These people did not cast circles, call quarters, or recreate the cosmos in their sacred space. American folk magic in the 1700s–1800s and even into the early 1900s addressed matters of life and death, of survival and protection, and of healing and warding. As we explore these practices, we can scarcely imagine how different our own lives are from those who developed these folk magic techniques amid extreme poverty and oppression.
Not quite as far back as the 1700–1800s are my own memories of growing up in rural Kentucky in the 1960s, surrounded by homegrown wisdom, storytelling, cyclical harvest celebrations, and abject poverty.
My childhood was devoid of any thoughts or mention of magic, Paganism, or other forms of mysticism. Our neighbors and my family spoke of ghosts and haints, of ways to heal without using “store-bought” pharmaceuticals, and of the power of prayer and charms. Most of their cures for injury or ailments started with something like, “First, go find some horse dung …” or “You will need some horehound candy for that cough or it is going to stay for weeks.” Their colloquial wisdom sounded something like, “You can take the town doctor’s medicine for that summer cold and it will be gone in a week or you can use home medicine and it will be gone in seven days.”
Until I was an adult and living on the other side of the world, the only hint I ever saw that witches might exist, beyond a scare tactic for unruly children or as fairy tale villains, was when I found a book about “real” Witches between my mother’s mattress and box spring. I was fascinated by the narrow set of glossy pages in the middle of the book that depicted their rituals in black and white photos. I was sure that magic like the book described was fictional and the images in the book must be posed. Besides, magic was not real … and yet, “magic,” as I would later come to know it, was all around me. I just did not yet have a label for it.
I treasure the memories I have of growing up in rural Kentucky, locked into poverty with only the tools of scripture, charms, hard work, and faith to help make life better. The people I knew never aspired to be or have more than they did and looked down on those who did so. Their position in society came not from what they had, but from who they were and how they behaved in the world. Anyone who tried to achieve wealth or outdistance their own social class received the odious distinction of “gettin’ above their raisin’.”
The lineage leading to my birth in Augusta, Kentucky, in 1961 was of Scotch-Irish and Native American extraction, as well as some high-born, snooty English thrown in the mix, although they were long bred out by the time I came along. No one in our line had been well-to-do for generations. We were about as dirt poor as you could get, but my own family was sufficiently affluent for me to be able to get a new pair of shoes when I started school each year and a large navel orange in the toe of my Christmas stocking without fail. My mother made all of our clothes, and I did not own a pair of blue jeans until the ninth grade when my father found a pair that fit me in the dumpster where the Salvation Army discarded the clothes they could not sell in their thrift shop due to disrepair. Mom covered the holes in the jeans with cloth images she cut from tea towels and I could not possibly have been prouder.
We heated our homes with the bituminous coal that my grandfather mined out of the earth himself and sold by the bucketful to neighbors. I did not then consider the energy in the flowers, the weeds, and the roots of the land we used to heal. Our “magic” came from prayer, the power of words, and the “laying on of hands,” and we depended on it every single day. And yet, to us, it was not magic. It was the healing power God gave to us through his mercy, embedded into nature.
Reciting scripture and prayer truly could heal pretty much any injury or illness, and superstition was not a joke at all, nor did it even elicit as much as a nervous laugh. It was a promise. If you sang at the table or whistled in the bed, the Devil would most assuredly take you before you were dead. We feared nothing as much as we feared Satan and the loss of our everlasting souls. We never let anyone except the Tooth Fairy take our baby teeth because something very bad would happen. What exact form that overwhelming “bad” would take was unclear, but very bad it would certainly be.
Peeling an apple fully in one careful spiral without once having the peeling break meant we would marry well. We stored brooms with bristles up or horizontally across the fireplace to keep the bad things from flying into the house through the chimney. The only thing I ever saw come through the chimney was an unfortunately misdirected sparrow, but that meant the broom worked, so we called it a win.
Onion poultices healed infections, and horse manure inside of an ace bandage would fix a sprained ankle right up. We always kept the cats out of a baby’s crib so they could not steal the child’s breath as it slept, and we would never dream of whistling as we walked past a graveyard or entering one after dusk, lest we offend the spirits. Not to mention that if a woman whistled, she might just call up a powerful wind.
We had “singings” and barn dances, and in the fall we risked life and limb riding on hay bales stacked onto flatbed trailers and pulled by tractors around the town in a tradition called a hayride. New couples formed each hayride season as sweethearts found their way to one another in the fragrant, stiff straw.
In my teenage years, my interest was in the paranormal, in haints and ghosts and specters and shades. My paternal grandmother, Grandma Chapman, who went to seminary school and was a terrifying ordained Pilgrim Holiness minister, cultivated this interest by filling my library with every book she could locate on the subject. She gave me a doll she pulled from the Ohio River after a flood, which she claimed was haunted, although I never detected any supernatural activity around her. I named the doll Esther, after my grandmother’s middle name, and I think she might haunt me now because I have seen versions of her easily seven or eight times in various thrift stores across the country (the doll, not my grandmother).
While living in England, I was fortunate to have the singularly unique experience of learning from traditional British Witches (as opposed to British Traditional Witches) and then, upon my return to the United States, I immersed myself into Wicca for many years. I hosted my own circles for close to thirty years, the past twenty while practicing CUSP (Climbing Up the Spiral Pathway), a spiritual path based primarily on what I learned in England and elsewhere along the way, merged with what my husband gleaned as an avid student of how humans interact with the Divine.
Years ago, in tandem with my work in CUSP, I began the study of Rootwork/Hoodoo, first on my own and then under the tutelage of two experienced Hoodoo mentors. Later, through a series of serendipitous and sacred events, I received my calling as a bruja and began my practice as a bruja in my shop in Roseville, California, and then later away from storefront practice and into an online teaching and working interface. I am honored to have received the title of “curandera,” a title in the Latino culture identifying a spiritual healer, from those people I helped over the years.
Blending my Granny Magic origins (the first exposure I ever had to magic without even realizing it was magic) with my Hoodoo and Brujería vocation fulfills me in a way I never imagined. Several years ago, the idea struck me that if an old Witch like myself could feel such joy from these practices born right here in the United States, perhaps others could as well. What started as a workshop presentation on folk magic in the American South eventually became this book, which I present to you with fierce love and devotion.
Although throughout this text I share with the reader some of my own experiences of living a magical life as a practitioner of these traditions, the focus of this work is not on how to become a bruja, a curandero, a rootworker, or a granny doctor. Those who feel called to any of these vibrant and effective applications of natural energy should seek out a competent and experienced practitioner of that specific art to act as a mentor.
An apprentice of Brujería, Curanderismo, Appalachian Granny Magic, or Hoodoo learns far more than what can be found in a simple spellbook. The practice is as much about the focused and spiritual application of energy and will as it is about which herbs and oils go into the formula of a floor wash. Under a skilled hand, the apprentice learns to fully immerse him or herself into the practices and to embody the path with honor, especially if it is not connected to his or her own ancestry. These gifts come from someone who has mastered the individual crafts and has themselves walked the path with dignity and integrity.
This book is an exploration of how these American folk magic entities formed and the ways the people who created them used the techniques for protection, healing, and survival. It is a celebration of the sustainability of these systems of Conjure and the dispelling of myths and misunderstandings that surround them. As our understanding grows of how these practices not only developed, but survived, we can also see why there is currently a resurgence of interest in their use in today’s uncertain times. Created in conditions of disadvantage, it makes sense that our focus would return to those time-proven Conjure techniques as economic disadvantage affects even more people in our changing world.
The narrative involving the historical development of these traditions is complicated, to say the least. I do not presume to present my findings as the only truths, and others may have conflicting information. The information you read here comes from years of concerted research, and what I offer are some of the truths that find mostly unified consensus among those who honor and carry forward the individual paths into their current presentations.
Ethics in Folk Magic Practice
As the current worldwide economic turndown creates personal hardship for a greater number of people, many of whom are accustomed to affluence, it is no accident that we see a return to the more “grassroots” forms of magical practice that originated out of adversity. Conditioned as we are toward conventional magical ethics, the lack of imposed ethical restrictions in these magical practices may seem harsh and even primitive. When considered at the most basic level, however, one can see that the lack of indoctrinated ethical boundaries results in an outcome of greater, rather than less, personal discipline.
Stage magician and performer Penn Jillette is a vocal and dedicated atheist who speaks openly and eloquently about his lack of religious attachment to morality. He says people often ask him, if he has no god or no higher power governing him, what keeps him from raping and killing all he wants to? His response is that he does rape and kill as much as he wants to, which is to say not at all, because he is neither a rapist nor a killer.
The misperception is that if people do not have an overlying religious dictate to keep them from doing horrible things, they will run willy-nilly into the debauchery of evil, simply because they can do so without fear of divine retribution. On the contrary, the very knowledge of their magical power and what they can do with it gives the people I have known who walk these unregulated paths an even greater sense of caution and a deeper consideration of their magical actions.
This ideology was a significant step for me to process when I transitioned from Wiccan practice into Rootwork and Brujería. Just as moving from Christianity to Wicca was challenging in some ways, so was the ethical shift from Wicca into folk magic practice. It was jarring, but once I processed the implications and considerations, it felt organic and right to me. It will not feel so to everyone, and that is the beauty of working in and with a community of varied practices. There is room for everyone.
When exploring magical ethics, one must consider the concept of reasonable defense. If someone came into my home to hurt me or the people I care about and I had the power to stop it, but chose not to do so, then I would also be culpable in the attack. Likewise, if someone was harming me or another person and I could do something about it magically, I would take that step without consideration of a “harm none” or three-fold law policy.
The gray area is that what constitutes malicious harm versus reasonable defense is quite subjective, and the difference between culpability and innocent bystanding is often a matter of opinion. It is up to the practitioner to decide if a work is appropriate to the circumstances and whether it fits into their own ethical construct. As a forewarning, however, none of the folk magic systems we discuss in this book are fond of turning the other cheek or blessing their antagonists with love and light and sending them on their way.
As we delve into the history and practice of Appalachian Granny Magic, Hoodoo, Curanderismo, and Brujería, some of the modalities and mindsets may feel uncomfortable to those who are used to a more ethically dogmatic theology. Take a breath, open your mind, and imagine the perspective of the practitioner. Sometimes in considering the philosophies of other paths we galvanize our own beliefs or, perhaps, expand them as we integrate new ideas.
I often quote author and professional blogger John Beckett, who says, “Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty, but don’t forget to wash your hands.” Folk magic involves the essentials of taking care of business. To the minds of those who work in Conjure fields, sometimes taking care of business involves wielding energy in a punitive fashion.
Just as the energy that runs through the electrical circuits in your home is neutral, magical energy is also benign until it filters through the intentions of the practitioner who wields it. Electricity can warm your home or it can electrocute a person. In either instance, it is not the energy itself that is baneful or benevolent. It is merely energy. A gun or a knife is not evil, but people can do evil things with those tools. Likewise, they can defend their loved ones with the same knife or gun. A knife or gun used carelessly can inadvertently harm in ways unintended. Magic is the same, and with the use of divine power comes personal responsibility.
Each person has their own code of ethics and beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. “Left-handed magic,” “dark magic,” or other words used to describe any magic act that others find objectionable are equally subjective concepts. This degree of interpretive analysis is why, even within magical paths that do follow documented edicts regarding ethics, it can still be difficult to establish a clear consensus.
Isaac Bonewits, Pagan pioneer and father of Ár nDraíocht Féin, identifies the term “black magic” as: “A racist, sexist, creedist and classist term used to refer to magic being done for ‘evil’ purposes or by people of whom the user of the term disapproves” (Bonewits, 249).
His inclusion of the term racist in his definition stems from the ongoing identification of Hoodoo as “black magic,” which some claim is an orchestrated disparagement of the magical practices of enslaved African Americans to differentiate their works from the “white magic” of Caucasian practitioners. While there remains some debate as to the authenticity of this claim, there is certainly sufficient evidence to support the validity of the assertion.
Gerald Gardner, the father of Wicca, once said, “Magic is in itself neither black nor white, bad nor good; it is how it is used, the intent or the knowledge behind it, that matters” (Gardner 2004, 15).
Documentary filmmaker Alex Mar quotes Victor Anderson, the creator of the Feri Tradition, as saying, “Poetry is white magic. Black magic is anything that works.” In the same text, Mar cites the consummate bard, Gwydion Pendderwen’s statement that “He who cannot blast cannot bless” (Mar 2016, 217).
Like those quoted above, many of the pioneers of modern Paganism advocate for a full-spectrum practice and ascribe to the notion that one must know how to walk in the shadows to appreciate the light.
Is there baneful magic? Absolutely. Are there those within these folk magic practices whose morality is in question by rational people or even the most generous-minded of magical practitioners? Most certainly. In all cultures and all religions, there are people who abuse power, spiritual and otherwise, to meddle in the lives of others. Folk magic communities are no different.
During my early years as a Christian, I listened with horror to some of the passionate and sincere prayers offered up by those in our congregation attempting to control the lives of others. The answers to whether magic is “good” or “bad” are as varied as whether people are “good” or “bad,” and to my own observation, there seems to be little relevance to the spiritual or magical path a person follows when evaluating their “goodness” or their “badness.”
In Hoodoo practice, we consider a work to be “justified” or “not justified.” This seems a safe path to follow, since it identifies a reaction subjective to a specific set of circumstances. Is it justified to bind a person who threatens to go after your job? Is it justified to reflect and return baneful energy sent to you? Is it justified to break up the affair between your wife and another man?
Different people will give you different answers, and while one magical practitioner would say there is never a reason to interfere with the free will of others, another will tell you that magical defense is the responsibility of every practitioner. These two opinions, which seem in opposition to one another, could easily come from members of the same magical path or even the same magical working group.
This sort of incongruent thought is why the distinction of “black magic” and “white magic” does not hold up under careful analytical scrutiny. Casting aside the potentially distasteful and racist implications of the terms, there is no direct dogma or pseudo-catechism defining the gray areas within the moral concepts of magic. Each practitioner must determine this within their own spirit.
In keeping with that idea, this book rejects the concepts of “white magic” versus “black magic” or any ethical condemnation and instead focuses on the specific circumstances that cause a person to take extreme magical action either in defense or aggression.