TO MAKE THE ABRACADABRA CHARM
1. Make the charm shown below by writing it upon a bit of paper and wrapping it in green silk.
A B R A C A D A B R A
A B R A C A D A B R
A B R A C A D A B
A B R A C A D A
A B R A C A
A B R A C
A B R A
A B R
A B
A
2. Secret it away, somewhere no one will find it, and while no one witnesses you.
WITCH BOTTLES
A witch bottle is a glass or ceramic vessel filled with odds and ends, from pins to human hair and fingernails. Placing items in glass bottles or ceramic containers and burying them is an ancient practice that is almost ubiquitous, yet these magical protection charms found buried around hearths in Appalachia most likely came with English colonists. One of the earliest descriptions of a witch bottle in Suffolk, England, appears in 1681 in Joseph Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus, or “Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions,” where a wizard’s curse against a woman is ended using a glass bottle containing her urine and iron nails and pins, cooked by the fireside.
Witch bottles have been used in folk magic in Europe for a long time. Their contents are often different, but the theory is that by using protective metals like iron, a metal long associated with keeping away demons, devils, and evil spirits nearly worldwide, and some parts of the person in need of protection, such as hair, urine, or fingernail clippings, you could create a magical decoy and spirit trap.
In Appalachia, there are many reasons to make a bottle and many ways to make one. Though most of the people who made them in the old days would never call themselves witches, they were using magic to stop magic.
TO MAKE A WITCH BOTTLE
Here is one method to make a witch bottle to protect a household in the fashion of many Appalachians.
Materials
A bottle
Hair, fingernails, and urine from the whole family
3 black straight pins
Candles
1. Fill the bottle with the hair, fingernails, urine, and pins.
2. Make a fire, rake the ashes, then bury the bottle in it.
3. Light as many candles as there are people in the family.
4. Say the Lord’s Prayer and the bottle is ready.
5. Bury the bottle outside the front door, upside down, or hidden in the eaves or chimney of the house. If you live in an apartment or home you’ll soon be leaving, just bury the bottle in a flowerpot and take it along with you to your next home.
To protect children, try this recipe: Put the left foot of a toad, a bat wing, a snail, and a spider in a red cloth. Put the bundle in a bottle and hang it by a bewitched child’s bed.
HEALING CHARMS
Some charms are to hurt, but most are to heal. Magic can seem an art hell-bent on harming, but truly, the reason folks reach for candles and pins is usually to aid someone they love or help heal a hurt they have. Appalachian folk healing often involves prayers, words, and some good plants and bits of things one can find around the house.
MEASURING
Using pieces of string, sourwood sticks, or other objects to measure a child or a length of a person was a way to affect that person in healing magics. Many childhood diseases were cured with this magical healing practice.
To protect a child against croup, or upper respiratory infection, measure a child with a stick, put the stick in the closet, and keep it hidden away and don’t look at it. When the child grows past the height of the stick, they will be cured.
Similar methods were even used for the dreaded tuberculosis infection, or phthisis, as it was called. You could use a broomstick if you didn’t have any sourwood handy. Simply measure yourself with a broomstick and put the broomstick upstairs where you will never see it again, and you will be cured.
Warts were also curable with this measuring technique. This spell required a twig cut near a running stream, after which you cut as many notches in the stick as you have warts. Throw the twig into the stream and never look back, and the warts will go away as the stick rots away in the water.
Flax, or linen thread, was also used to provide cures by measuring. If a child suffered from undergrowth, or failure to thrive, the thread would be used to measure a certain part of the body, such as the head, and then the whole thread would be fashioned into a loop. The child would then be passed back and forth through the loop nine times. The thread would then be secreted away somewhere, most likely in the eaves of the home, to decay. When the thread decayed, the affliction would be overcome.
PLUGGING
Plugging is another magical practice used in the mountains with mysterious origins. It is the act of making a hole in either a living tree or some timbers in a home, then stuffing objects into the hole and either closing it up or driving nails into it. It was not as popular in America as in Europe, yet it persisted in Appalachia. Many types of trees were used in this strange method of healing common ailments.
