TO TIE DOWN A LOVER'S NATURE

Tying down a man or woman's nature (sexual potency) was the next best thing in getting them to only stay with you and quit with the other lovers they've been seeing. Back in that day, they were bound by their wedding vows. Nowadays, most folks aren't waiting until they're married before having sex—but these works still have power. A piece of advice: If your lover isn't willing to work on your relationship without a root being put on them, then they aren't worth your time! However, love is complex, and every situation and couple is different, so I encourage you to use your own judgment. A friend's husband got tricked by a woman down in Louisiana this way when he was cheating. He said he couldn't leave the house without crying out of shame anytime he went to meet someone. It was so bad, he indeed stopped.

TO TIE UP A MAN'S NATURE:

Take his semen without him knowing and put it on a red string. Tie five knots in it while reciting his vows to you. If you aren't married, give a command like, “I won't stand for you running around with others, and neither will your member.” Say this for every knot. This makes it so that no matter how turned on he may get, he doesn't show any signs of it physically, except with you. It's better if this is done while the moon is in the loins (Scorpio), when they're most vulnerable. Wear this string tied around your dominant ankle.

Get his semen on a new white bandanna. Take a piece of paper and write his name five times in parallel lines, then turn it to the right and write your name five times over his in parallel lines. It should look like a pound sign of sorts when you're done. Scorch the corners of the paper, put a dab of molasses in the middle, and roll or fold it toward you. Fold the bandanna into a large triangle pointed at you. Then fold the base of this triangle toward you until it makes a strip about an inch or so wide. Place the paper in the middle and tie it up. Keep tying knots into the bandanna, either five or seven in total. It should look like a ball with two little flaps on each side. Powder it with High John the Conqueror powder or powdered ginseng root and hide it in the mattress on his side. If you don't stay or live together, bury it under your doorstep where he'll walk over it, or hang a swag over the door and hide the conjure ball inside so he'll pass under it and be charmed. If you can't sneak a bit of his fluids for this work, take some beard shavings.

To tie up a woman's nature:

Put a lock of her hair into a dirty sock from your right foot. Then fill the sock with sugar, cinnamon, and powdered peppermint candies. Feed the sock with snail water while calling her name and telling her to stay put.² Tell her this snail water will stick her to you like a briar until you pull her off or let her go. Roll the rest of the sock toward you and sew it shut, sewing toward yourself. Place this in a brown paper bag and hide it in the mattress. Make sure the toe of the sock points inward, not outward from the root. Feed it with your urine monthly and on every important anniversary.

Take some of her unwashed underwear and tie five knots in it. Powder it with baby powder and place it in a tin can filled with water and molasses. Place a lid on it and bury it beneath the front doorstep or someplace she'll walk over it.

Take a lock of her hair, some thread from an Adam's needle, and your photo. Roll the photo around the hair and thread and tie it with a red string. Make three knots in the string while calling her name and telling her to stay with you. Hang this above the door or up somewhere she will walk under it.

RELEASE ONE'S NATURE

There comes a time when you might no longer be happy with that certain someone you have tied up. The best and rightful thing to do is to return their nature to them. If this doesn't happen, it can create dangerous situations for both of you. They won't be able to find release unless it's through you, so you will become their target for happiness, for everything they can find with someone else after you've broken it off. I've seen this work take turns into stalking situations and even domestic violence or suicide. You won't want that. So if it comes to that or if they have stopped running around and you feel it's time, you need to release their nature.

If their nature has been tied up by placing something in the mattress, in the yard, or over the door, take it down and dissemble it. Bury the herb ingredients in separate places in the backyard. For other things that were included, burn them and scatter the ashes at a crossroads.

If anything had been done with knots in clothing, undo them and burn the garment.

If the item placed is gone, it will have to be reversed by other means. If it is a man, he needs to take a silver dime (minted prior to 1964) anointed with blessed olive oil. This should then be rubbed outward on his member nine times every day for nine days. Afterward, hand him some snuff soaked in vinegar. Have him smell it and cast it away with the dime at a crossroads. For a woman, she needs to collect her menses on a separate cloth each day for seven days, burning each cloth each day as the sun sets. On the eighth day, the ashes of all these are scattered into a creek or river.

If this type of work has been done on you and you don't know where the root is, on a Monday take a red string and coat it with your fluids. Powder the string with baby powder and sulfur, then string a silver dime on it in the name of the Trinity. State: “One has come against me and tied me up. I'm all in knots from that one. But there are three who will untie me and I will be free on the Lord's day.” Wear it for one week, and on Sunday the bind will be broken.

If the previous method doesn't work, then you need to take back your nature from the source! Meet with the person whom you suspect has tied you up. Ask them to hold a white hankie or other cloth for a second, one that has previously been moistened with your fluids. As you do that, quietly say, “Tip top, I'll be strong; saddle the rag and we'll be gone!” (The “we” here is you and your nature.) When they hand the cloth back to you, they are unknowingly giving you your nature back.

LOVER RETURN

There are many tales of hearts scorned by a lover leaving, or planning to leave. Oftentimes, the family is hurting and left to fight for themselves. While times have changed, love hasn't. It is still the same ol' sticky mess it was from the get-go with Adam and Eve. Our people courted in the hills at midsummer, swimming in deep blue pools in the mountains, watching fireflies and counting stars before city light blotted them out. Who wouldn't fall in love in a setting like that? Some folks, though, just get so caught up in love they feel they can't live without their spouse or partner when they leave. Below are a few methods to bring a lover back home.

Take an old pair of their shoes and go to the front porch. Lay one shoe down toe pointing away from the house and the other pointing toward the house. Stand and face the direction they left in and say, “By God, you went away, but by the help of God this will bring you home. I want you to come back to me.” Call out their name. Leave the shoes there for nine days, each day going out and saying the same, calling out for them.

Take their left shoe or an old unwashed left sock and bury it under the porch. Stand in the yard with your back to the house, facing whichever way they went, and call out their name. Do this for nine mornings.

Whisper their name upon rising and going to bed every day for nine days. On the tenth day, sprinkle salt into the fireplace or on the stove eye while saying, “It is not salt I aim to burn, but my lover's heart to turn. Wishing him neither joy nor sleep, till he come home to me and speak.”

Take three twigs from a mockingbird's nest, and tie a paper with their name or a photo of them to the sticks, facing inward. You can also use hair, if needed. Hang this over the door or in a swag.

Take a piece of paper with their name written on it three times, crossed with the words “Come back to me” and signed with your signature. Cut the top off a sweet red onion and carve a deep cross in it. Stuff the paper into this cut. Place the onion in a tin can and fill it with molasses and whiskey. Place it under the bed, and talk to it as if it were him every morning until he comes back. “Johnny, come back to me. Turn away from everything and come home.”

Family was and is of great importance in the mountains, and although it didn't always consist of blood relation, that blood was a special connection—a continuation and extension of one's own blood, reared and formed to one's own understanding and stories, furthering the patchwork quilt of our ancestors that compose us. One's beloved ones always had priority over all else, spiritually and physically. But the greatest thing beyond finding and keeping love was the fruit it bore and the certainty of the future. The next generation was prayed for, conjured up, blessed, and bathed in the dreams of the family in a day where infant mortality was big and family time was little. Only by God and those with the Gift could call up a soul to be born during the narrowest of windows offered in their old-time mountain lives.

2 Snail water is the juice naturally made by snails and slugs as they move. Snail water is sticky and very hard to remove, which is why it's used to keep something with you. To make a batch, collect twenty cotton swabs of the juice and place them in a jar with 3 tablespoons water and 1 tablespoon salt. Do this during the full moon after a good rain, ideally in April. Steep for a month before using. You can leave the swabs in or take them out after that.

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LITTLE RABBIT SKIN

Appalachian folk magic recipes are largely tempered by the micro-cultures they arise from. Just two generations ago in my area in east Tennessee, sex or kids before marriage was unheard of. So was divorce. This mimics the old children's rhyme, “First comes love, then comes marriage, here comes ____________ with a baby carriage.” While it is preferred for most that a child be born from love, that isn't always the case. However, after the old rhyme, fertility and children are next on our list after love and lust in the life of the old mountaineers. Many families back in the day had huge families with as many as twenty children, either by one woman or many. The average minimum was usually four to six children. Because of this, there are many old wives' tales regarding fertility, childbirth, and child rearing, whether it's how to get pregnant, stop having stillborn babies, ease teething, or weaning a child.

FERTILITY WORKINGS

Everyone is different, of course, and, just like herbal remedies, not everything works for everyone. So some women would resort to different remedies until they found success. Just because something doesn't work for you, though, doesn't mean it won't work for the next person. These works may be used to help you conceive.

An old work to make a woman fertile involved having a preacher hand the husband or father a can of chickpeas. These were cast onto a busy road and, as they were ground into the mud by traffic, would bring fertility. If you can't find a preacher to help, bury a can of chickpeas at a church for a month, ideally when a blessed day such as Easter or Christmas comes and goes. Then cast the chickpeas into the busy road.

Boil chickpeas (you can do this after getting them from the church yard as well) as the sun rises while praying Psalm 113:9:

He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the Lord.

Boil chickpeas in spring water until a third of the water has boiled off. Strain the chickpeas out and bathe in this water for three days. Then sew the dried chickpeas into the mattress you wish to conceive on.

Rub powdered milk on the skin side of a rabbit hide. Dust this with baby powder and place seven apple seeds in the center with a ginger root. Eat the apple first. Tie the hide into a bundle and baptize it by dunking it in fresh running water in the three highest names. Let it dry in a secluded place, then hide it under the bed. Back in the day, folks would sew something like this up in the head of the bed. This reminded me of a lullaby my grandmother used to sing to us called “Be-oh-bye-oh Baby,' which talked about the daddy going hunting to “catch a little rabbit skin to put the be-oh-bye-oh baby in.”

If you wish to have a child, have a friend sit their newborn on your bed or leave a dirty diaper at your house when they leave.

Eat juicy fruits, such as watermelons, apples, or pumpkins—but nothing acidic, like oranges. For twins, eat twinned fruits.

Carry a rabbit's foot dressed in rose water and baby powder. Pray Genesis 25:21 over the foot twenty-one times, substituting “Isaac” with the man's name and “Rebekah” with your own name:

And [Isaac] intreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren: and the Lord was intreated of him, and [Rebekah] his wife conceived.

Make a hex bag of jack-in-the-pulpit root, pumpkin seeds, and a bit of bear's-bed. Wrap these up as the moon grows and lay the bag under the bed when attempting at the most fertile time of the month. As the moon grows, so will your chances of conceiving.

Another old-timer trick was to acquire butter from a woman named Mary whose husband's name was Joseph, or from a woman whose last name didn't change in marriage (meaning she married an unrelated man of the same surname). Eat a little bit of the butter each day, starting as the moon begins to grow, until you become pregnant. Alternatively, acquire a piece of fabric from such a woman and sew it into a piece of your clothing. Wear this piece until you are pregnant. After the baby is born, cut out the cloth and use it as the baby's first swaddle.

Sleep with an oblong, phallic-looking stone under your pillow on the night of the full moon and you'll allegedly be pregnant within nine months.

JUMPING DOWN THE BABE

The following tricks, almost entirely based on sympathetic magic, are done to ease labor pains, stop hemorrhage, protect the mother from spirits while giving birth, and ensure safety of both mother and child.

A knife or axe is placed beneath the bed the woman lies on and a pocketknife or arrowhead is placed under the pillows to cut the pain down. I've seen this work firsthand. Some folks say she should wear the father's hat as well to help with the pains.

A Bible is placed, open to the Book of Matthew, on the mother's chest if she is in danger and on the mother's belly if the child is at risk in the birthing process.

It was said that in order to bring on labor, the mother had to walk in circles until she was exhausted.

Roots and charms were likewise employed next to physical activities such as sex, induced sneezing, or driving over railroad tracks to bring the child. One such recipe calls for tying asafoetida around the neck and placing a rabbit's foot under the bed.

To induce labor, the father's shoes are placed on the mother's feet while he says, “I gave you this burden and here I relieve you of it.” In other areas, the verbal charm isn't mentioned and the father's shoes are worn for strength.

If the birth is proving difficult, burning corncobs on the porch is recommended.