Salt is protective, but we also know that to “sow the earth in salt” destroys its ability to grow life-sustaining food. Thus, in the mountains, salt is also the main ingredient in a death curse. To sow salt in someone’s yard was the ultimate insult and was a sure curse to wish harm upon one’s enemies.
SIEVE
Hanging a sieve above the door, or anything that contains small holes, is a great way to prevent evil from entering a home or room. In Black communities in Appalachia, the screen on a window was not just to keep out biting insects, but also acted as a magical barrier. The metal wire must be kept in good order without holes to prevent ghosts or evil spirits from entering the home.
SULFUR
Much like incense, burning sulfur in a house will chase all evil away. Add sulfur to a charm bag around the neck to keep away illness and any curses coming your way.
THE COLORS
The color red is one of the most important colors in Appalachian witchcraft, along with black and white. Red is the color of blood and vitality, which makes it well-suited to healing. This means plants that are red, like red pepper and red corn, are used to cast and break spells. Placing red pepper and salt in the shoes or over the door will keep away evil. Red cloth is also often prescribed as the medium to create charms. Red yarn around the neck will also prevent nosebleeds and cure them. However, if you marry in red, you’ll wish you were dead. In Appalachian folk medicine, red flannel is often used to apply poultices or medicines. The use of red flannel is also common in Hoodoo, and one can see how the colors red, black, and white are important in the many ways in which Hoodoo and Appalachian folk magic intermix and intersect.
Black is also especially important. The blood of black chickens is used to effect certain cures, such as drawing out the poison from snakebites. The blood is also used to cure a disease called wildfire, or St. Anthony’s fire, a streptococcal infection of the skin that causes red patches. In West Virginia, there is a charm to make someone be liked by other people that used a black wolf or raven heart: “Put it in a frame and tie it around you, that is good. It is also good if you carry the heart of a dove or a swallow with you.”
THE NUMBERS
The numbers three, seven, nine, and thirteen are important in breaking spells and in performing acts of magic. The rituals given for how to become a witch often involve shooting nine times or going to a site nine days in a row. In one ritual to become a witch, an older witch leads a young girl to a special spring and “baptizes” her in the water there, each time tying a knot in a red handkerchief and denouncing the Holy Trinity. This is done three times until three knots are formed. Then the convert holds the rag on the unknotted corner in the right hand and turns around three times, calling for the Devil to appear and ask her to sign his book in exchange for witch powers.
The number seven is also significant, as we see with dowsers, Water Witches, Blood and Burn Whisperers, and other folk healers who are often seventh sons of seventh sons or daughters. This likely comes from the biblical significance of the number seven. The seventh daughter born on Christmas day is also said to have witch-like powers. Thirteen is seen as bad luck, but sometimes is used to break curses, as is the case with witchballs (see page XX). It is also bad luck to seat thirteen at your table.
PROTECTION FROM EVIL
It’s hard to say if there are more ways to keep away evil or bring good luck in Appalachian folk magic. Carrying the bone of a dead person is a sure way to allay evil magic against you. A circle of salt around your home will conjure it into safety and form a magical ring of protection. Wood from the ash tree, the hackberry tree, and American holly leaves can all be hung in the house to keep out evil. Make a small cross from the twigs of these trees and hang them above all your doorways for protection.
You can protect yourself against witch cats, witch rabbits, and human witches by turning your pockets inside out, or wearing your shirt inside out. If you think you’ve met a witch cat or witch rabbit on your nightly walks, kiss your sleeve to prevent them from charming you. When going to sleep, sprinkle mustard seeds about the bed to keep yourself from being bewitched in the night. Sleeping with a knife under your pillow is another way to keep witchery away while sleeping.
TO MAKE A HOLLY TWIG PROTECTION CHARM
1. Take two roughly equal pieces of holly twigs, the diameter of a pencil or thinner.
2. Tie them with red thread, the color of life-giving blood, and attach them together in the center by wrapping the thread around nine times in one direction, then forming an X by wrapping it nine times in the other direction.
3. Tie a firm overhand knot to keep the thread in place, and hang it above your main doorway. You can also make these very small and tuck them up on lintels or the casement of your doorway for a more private charm.
BREAKING CURSES
Often when we have a string of bad luck, it seems that surely someone must be working against us. Most of the time, it isn’t the case, but every once in a while, there is a green-eyed monster wishing us ill from right within our own village. If you’ve been cursed, there are many ways to undo it.
If you live near a stream or creek, take a glass of drinking water and walk it across the creek. The act of crossing moving water is a nearly universal way to stop harmful spirits or people from being able to cause magical harm.
Images are also especially powerful in undoing magic. Just like having someone’s hair gives the practitioner power over their victim, drawing or having an image of someone can help you break their curse against you. Traditionally, if someone bewitches you, draw an image of them and shoot it on a tree with a silver bullet. There are even traditional methods to determine if someone is a witch; if a broom is laid over the doorstep, no witch will step over it.
If you know the identity of the one who has cursed you, simply dig under their doorstep to break their spell over you. Many spells and conjure bags are hidden under doorsteps to be stepped over by the intended victim. Wearing a silver coin, especially a die with a hole bored into it and tied to the right leg, will also surely protect you from curses. This practice is especially common in Black communities.
Willow trees are both mournful and protective in Appalachian folk magic. To keep away evil, lie on the ground and draw a circle about yourself with a forked willow branch. If someone is sick and bewitched, take nine willow twigs and each day for nine days remove one from the bundle. The person will be cured by the time you remove the final one.
LAYING ON A CURSE
I was taught as a child that it is rude to point. In many communities it is still believed that if you point your finger at someone it will curse them for two weeks.
WITCHBALLS
A witchball is often described as a hair ball about the size of a chestnut burr, made of various combinations of animal hair, wax, or certain plants. They are also occasionally called a witch bullet, but this is rarer. These hairballs are crafted to be thrown at victims, either at the physical person or at a drawing of them, with the intention to harm or even kill. Witchballs are a physical representation of a curse thrown. Generally speaking, these balls are fashioned from rolled-up black horse or cow hair, and sometimes even human hair, along with beeswax. In the Ozarks, where these magic missiles are also a part of folk practice, they have been found on the bodies of victims, sometimes even in the mouth. This is sure proof of foul play.
WITCHBALLS AND “ELF SHOT”
Witchballs are formidable cursing objects not because of their ingredients, but because they could also be invisible. This simultaneous existence as a physical and invisible object harkens back to the concept of “elf shot” or “elf darts” in Northern European cultures. It was believed that arrowheads from early humans found buried in a farmers’ fields were the fallen ammunition of elves. The wounds caused by these arrows could themselves also be invisible or at the very least, difficult to see. Called Saighead sith, or “fairy arrows,” in Scots Gaelic, there were many plant-based charms to cure the various strange pains and inexplicable illnesses caused by this “deadly ammunition.” The concept of these harmful, sometimes invisible projectiles is therefore clearly not unique to Appalachia, but the fact that this type of magical object exists in these mountains is remarkable. In a place touted constantly in the media for its isolation, the types of folk magic present are not difficult to trace back to their countries of origin.
The concept of elf shot, once brought into these mountains, was most certainly affected by Cherokee beliefs about similar types of magic. Curiously, at the start of colonization, the Cherokee already had an invisible missile concept of their own, known as ga:dhidv. These are the invisible supernatural missiles of conjurers. One of the most iconic native trees of the Southeast, sassafras (Sassafras albidum), was an ingredient in treating the wounds caused by these magical projectiles and would go on to be incorporated in the Appalachian cures for these invisible darts when combined with European plants against witchcraft and evil.
It is important to note that the term “elf shot” did make it into the mountains in Kentucky. This term was used when referring to cursed cattle, but the transition from flint arrowheads to hairballs as the method of magical transmission is curious, and its exact pathway obscured by time. Whether due to the unique climate of Appalachia or a higher prevalence of exhumed hairballs from animals’ stomachs from licking themselves in the hot, wet heat of the South, or some other biological factors, the transition from arrowhead to hairball slowly occurred. It was most likely a complex amalgam of physical and metaphysical factors.
TO MAKE A WITCHBALL TO UNCROSS OR REMOVE BEWITCHMENT
The way to make a witchball is not set in stone, but one ritual gathered from first-person interviews in the book American Witch Stories describes it as follows:
1. Find a crossroads in a lonely, unfrequented place on a Friday the 13th.
2. Draw a circle 9 feet (2.7 m) in diameter with a black-handled knife in the center of the crossroads.
3. Lay a small black cloth in the center of the circle.
4. Take an earthenware vessel and, within it, add 1 teaspoon each of finely ground mugwort leaf, sassafras root, and henbane leaf, powdered and dry. Mix this carefully with the bewitched person’s finely cut hair.
