PSEUDOGNAPHALIUM OBTUSIFOLIUM
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Plant range and properties: This plant in the aster family has many folk names. In Appalachia it is called white balsam, sweet everlasting, life everlasting, or pearly everlasting. This plant holds an important place in Indigenous and Black medical traditions in the South, like in the practice of Hoodoo, among the Yuchi and Cherokee nations, and in Appalachian folk magic. Though there are similar species in Europe, the use of this plant in America is grounded in First Nations traditions from Canada to Florida, and it is a very special plant in Southern Black folk medicine and Hoodoo.
Whenever you harvest or work with this plant, just remember the long legacy of Black and Indigenous peoples whose herbal work made it available to us. Ask yourself, what am I doing to support plant medicine and magic becoming more accessible to marginalized peoples and honoring the traditions that brought these plants to Appalachian folk practice?
Medical and magical uses: This sweet biennial is analgesic, expectorant, antispasmodic, and astringent. Some First Nations people practice medicine with this plant’s aerial parts for pain relief and use it as a muscle relaxant by applying the decocted tea and aerial parts externally. The dried brown leaves at the base of the stems are actually the preferred part for medicine. It is believed that the phytochemicals, such as terpenes, that make rabbit tobacco useful medicinally, don’t fully develop until this point. It is interesting to note that this plant is often touted as having “little use” medicinally in old books from white authors at the turn of the century.
Rabbit tobacco is best known as a lung medicine. Coughs, sore throat, and lung pain were all treated traditionally with the tea of this plant.
Rabbit tobacco is used in Appalachian folk medicine as a cure for coughs when mixed with wild cherry bark, sweet gum resin, maidenhair fern, and mullein. Alabama folk herbalist Tommie Bass used it as a vapor inhalation for coughs as well, which reflects his learning from Black and Indigenous women.
Pillows stuffed with rabbit tobacco are said to aid those who suffer from asthma attacks. This was even recommended for those with consumption or tuberculosis. It was also used as a tea for whooping cough in children.
In magical medicine, people bothered by ghosts were treated with the smoke of this plant among many nations, notably the Lumbee and the Yuchi peoples.
Cherokee folks combine rabbit tobacco with Carolina vetch for rheumatism and muscle spasms and twitching.
One of the most beautiful ways to work with this plant is to burn the dried leaves and flowers as an incense to rid a space of evil, especially if ghosts are suspected.
IV 
THE WORKINGS:
CHARMS & CURSES
IF YOU TAKE A WALK AMONGST THE WEEDY PLACES IN AMERICA, you’ll see folk magic in unlikely places. Sometimes, it will look similar here and there. However, there are some things we only find in Appalachia. The ways that people work magic, the materials they use, the words they utter: these are the flavors of a place. Each iron nail, each herb, they all tell a story about the way that magic was born out of the landscape, translated by the human tongues that tell their tales. These are some of the ways that magic is made in the mountains.
MATERIA MAGICA
Materia magica is the “stuff” of magic. There exists in us all the well that is drawn from to “power” a working or spell, but the bits and bobs from our daily lives are the things that were used to make magic in the mountains. Many of these objects and doodads are traceable back to much older traditions from around the world.
HAIR
Keeping track of your hair is of vital importance in the places where people can lay claim to your destiny with just a lock. Clay, dough, rags, or wax can be made into figures to do harm to a person if you have a piece of their hair. They say death charms were made with the hair and fingernail trimmings of a person’s enemy. In a similar fashion, if you carry someone’s hair, it will give you power over them, and to burn a spell caster’s hair will break their power over you. Hair balls are also the projectile weapon of mischief-causing witches.
Disposing of your hair on hair cutting or trimming days is of vital importance, for if the birds get hold of this direct link to you, they will carry it off and make nests. This can lead to headaches, a sure sign that your hair has been used in a bird’s nest. The head will ache as long as the hair is used or until it grows back again. If you are bitten by a dog, the hair of the dog is good for the bite. Horse tail hair can be used to conjure someone.
Some people’s hair tells you something about them. One of the strangest tidbits of Appalachian lore is that a man who has never stolen anything will have a lock of hair growing out of his hand. If you want hot peppers, they say red-haired people grow the best. If a man is hairy, he’s rich; if a woman is hairy, she’s a witch. If you dream of hair, it is a death omen, and if one cuts their hair in March, they will surely die before year’s end.
IRON
Iron is one of the most magical metals available to the folk magic practitioner. Iron, especially in the form of nails or pins, has long been used in Greco-Roman folk magic traditions, along with those of England, Scotland, Ireland, and many African nations. Appalachia has retained many of the folk beliefs about iron from Europe and Africa.
The way that iron must be smelted and formed in a seemingly magical birth process from iron ore captured the minds of those who witnessed it. From those ignorant of the process came ideas that smiths themselves might even be in league with darker forces, capable of rendering earth itself into weapons that could kill. The blacksmith inspired as much fear and reverence in Appalachian folklore as in Africa and Europe. The water from the bucket where blacksmiths cooled their irons was believed to remove freckles if one washed one’s face with it. Iron pots were also specifically helpful to make certain medicines, lending their power that way.
In Appalachia people kept an iron horseshoe over the door to prevent all manner of bewitchment. Iron was also ingested in the form of a “nail tincture.” In Appalachian folk medicine, people would soak iron nails in whiskey or vinegar and drink it as a tonic to “build the blood.”
Nails are often used in Appalachian folk magic, especially for toothache charms. Right above the sore tooth, the gums would be pricked with an iron nail, and then the nail would be driven into a wooden beam somewhere. As long as the nail stays in the beam, the person won’t be afflicted again. Bottles buried around homes and barns were also frequently found filled with nails and pins. These were witch bottles, a magical protection charm brought over from the British Isles. Iron bars could also be used for magical protection, especially of beer. If thunder were to clap, an iron bar placed across the beer barrel would prevent it from souring.
To make an asthma cure, you could make a decoction from wild plum tree bark cut from the sunrise side of a tree, boil it for hours in an iron pot, and mix it with whiskey.
TO CAUSE AN ENEMY TO WITHER AWAY
If you drop iron nails in your enemy’s shoes, you can perform an act of sympathetic magic, magically driving nails into their coffin to cause them to wither away. If you suspect someone has put this conjure on you, gather all the loose nails from around the place and bury them alongside a hickory tree off the property.
SILVER
Silver is a protective and powerful metal in Appalachia. It makes the bullet that kills both the werewolf in Europe and the witch in Appalachia. If one has been bewitched, draw an image of the witch on a bit of wood and nail it to a tree. Shoot through the image with a silver bullet made from melting down silver coins. Some say this kills the witch, while others say it merely breaks their spell on you. Proceed with caution, my neighbors.
Silver coins are also powerful talismans against misfortune. Fashion a necklace of a silver coin strung on red thread for an infant to protect them from being harmed by anyone. Silver dimes with a hole bored through them were often worn around the ankles by many Black folks in the South as a means of preventing illness and rheumatism. German Appalachians placed silver coins on bruises to help ease the discoloration. You could also drop a silver coin down someone’s collar when they had a bloody nose for a sure blood-stopping cure. You can also rub a stye on the eye with a silver coin or spoon to wish it away.
SALT
This mineral is universally highly magical. A circle of salt protects one from evil spirits and bewitchment. Salt in a brown paper bag with some black pepper and a cayenne pepper is also a potent protection charm.
TO BLESS OR PROTECT A HOME WITH SALT
When you move from one house to another, carry a bag of salt in as the first thing. This will give you good luck as long as you live in the house. Burning salt in the fireplace will also drive away witches who mean you harm.
Folks, especially in Black communities in Appalachia, would use ice cream salt or plain white chalk to protect a dwelling. Take a small container and sprinkle a little bit around the perimeter of your dwelling. If you live in an apartment, a flowerpot with a small jar of chalk buried in its soil outside your front door does just as well. Sand was also sprinkled around the house for this purpose as well.
