To break a conjuring, boil milk with nine gold-eye needles. While it boils, sear the milk with a hot iron. Take the needles out and refrigerate them. Take three drinks each day for nine days. Pour whatever is left on the ninth day into the toilet; the person is to relieve themselves on it and send it on its way.

Spit on the bristles of the house broom: once for the witch who sent the curse and once for each member of the household. Take the broom and sweep downward on the back of the fireplace or front door while praying Psalm 23 three times (see page 66). Hang the broom above the door for nine days and then burn it.

Add nine new needles to a pot of water, running each safely between the lips first. Boil the water until it's all gone. Do this every afternoon for nine days. Each day use fresh needles, setting the old ones aside in a white handkerchief. On the tenth day, bury the needles at a crossroads.

Take a cleansing bath as a complement to the above works. An egg cleansing will work as well, but may need to be done three times in a row for a number of days.

Take the black or big joker from a new deck of cards. On all four edges write “Run, Devil, run” and in the center write “All Devils.” Cut the eyes and hands out of the card and burn them. Fold the card away from you, folding into it devil's shoestring root, kudzu root, graveyard dirt from one of your relatives' graves (one who cared deeply for you), borax, and rattlesnake master. Burn the card at a crossroad, lighting it with a match, and while it's burning toss a pinch of borax into the flame and shout, “Run, Devil, run!” Turn back home while grinding your heels into the dirt or ground and leave without turning back, no matter what you hear.

FOR THOSE WITCHED INTO LOVE

A story I was told growing up was called “Cinder Cat.” I don't remember every detail, but it talked about slaves on a plantation, and one of them went to a conjure woman who said another worker on a plantation across the way had put a Devil on her old man so he'd love another woman and not her. The conjure woman advised her to take a grapevine and whip the other woman with it to break the spell. Whipping with branches, in the sense of hitting something or whipping a pot of milk, often come by the same cause: the need to break the power of a root.

If you suspect you have been witched into love, ask the person to hold a rag that has been wetted with blood from your left ring finger pricked from between the middle and last knuckle while you do something, like tie your shoe. When they give it back, bury it under your doorstep with salt, seven hairs from a fox's tail, and sulfur. Feed it by pouring your first urine of the morning over it for a month.

Take your left unwashed sock and place a silver dime, alum, sulfur, black pepper, and salt inside it. Put the sock under your mattress and sleep on it until you begin to smell the black pepper. Burn the sock and scatter the ashes at three different crossroads.

Take an uncrossing bath with salt, Adam's needle root, and devil's shoestring for three days as the sun sets. Toss the remaining bathwater to the west of your property each time.

Wash your feet each night with vinegar, salt, and red pepper in warm water for nine nights. Toss the water to the west of the property each night. After washing, anoint your feet with blessed olive oil, powder them with baby powder, and put on clean socks before retiring.

If you believe your partner has conjured you in some way regarding your relationship with them, discreetly place a knife under their side of the mattress and cover it with salt and baby powder. This will break their power over you.

IF YOUR MONEY HAS BEEN DOCTORED

Sometimes money goes out as quickly as it came in, or it just begins disappearing. Fewer customers come by, hours get cut, folks get demoted or laid off. This can be a sign your money has been crossed. For such cases:

Carry a poke bag made with lodestone wrapped up with your hair, devil's shoestring, salt, a dead cricket, and tobacco. Feed it weekly with good whiskey until your money situation improves. Once it does, bury it at a crossroads.

Take a dollar bill from your wallet and write “INRI” on all four edges. Write your name in the center. On your name place a dab of molasses, a bit of new salt, and devil's shoestring. Fold the bill toward you three times and sew it closed on all sides. Soak it in just boiled water. Wash your hands in this water every day and sprinkle it on your doorstep and wallet.

Carry ginseng root wrapped in blue flannel, soaked in whiskey and powdered with the ashes of black rooster feathers for twenty-one days. On the twenty-second day, bury it at a crossroads.

Take a horseshoe and line devil's shoestring roots, black cohosh root, and cornstarch along the shoe. Seal this with wax while reciting Deuteronomy 30:3–9:

3 Then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee.

4 If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee:

5 And the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.

6 And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.

7 And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee.

8 And thou shalt return and obey the voice of the Lord, and do all his commandments which I command thee this day.

9 And the Lord thy God will make thee plenteous in every work of thine hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy land, for good: for the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good, as he rejoiced over thy fathers.

Hang the horseshoe above the door inside the home with points up. This will not only kill the root but restore your luck in money as well.

IF YOUR HEALTH IS AFFECTED

If one's health is affected, wash with the water used by a blacksmith to cook iron. Wash as the sun goes down while praying the Lord's Prayer (see page 86). Or carry a flannel bag of sawdust and seven hairs from the cross on a donkey's back until the bag is lost.

More recipes:

Soak tanned eel skin in whiskey and wash downward with it upon rising each morning.

Drink water from which a black cat has drunk while resting the feet on a slab of persimmon bark.

Boil persimmon bark and nine tablespoons of salt at midnight while calling out the suspected enemy's name. Sprinkle this around the home from back to front and wash the doorstep with it, then sprinkle it in the yard from the porch to the road. This makes any root set against you impotent.

Boil three cups of mullein at midnight until half of the water has been boiled off. To this add a good amount of Red Eye whiskey until the color changes. Wash the walls of the home with it, in downward strokes; mop the floors with it from back to front; and add it to a cleansing bath. It'll kill just about anything.

Carry a bag of new salt, bloodroot, and Sampson snakeroot. Place it under your mattress. Beneath this, under the bed on the floor, place a bowl of saltwater with two lemon halves in it. When the water has evaporated and the lemon dries, toss it all onto the enemy's property or into running water.

FOR MADNESS

There are a few conjure cures for madness when it has been induced due to witchcraft:

Wear a bag of buttercup flowers around the neck.

Carry the bone of a turtle.

Bathe in warm milk and honey when the moon is in the head (Aries).

Place the person's hair in a box of new salt and give it to them with instructions to never open it.

CONJURE ROOT KILLERS

These particular roots are some of my favorite. They act like conjure weed killers; anything buried or planted on the land they are used on will be killed by these roots.

Make a large bundle out of an old shirt of yours filled with salt, black pepper, mullein, red pepper, and borax. Bury in the center of the property and pour vinegar on the place while reciting Psalm 83 three times:

1 Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God.

2 For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head.

3 They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones.

4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.

5 For they have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee:

6 The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes;

7 Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre;