A number of American magical traditions use spoken charms or a belief in signs and omens to shape their practices. A well-known example is the maritime axiom, “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors’ delight.” Weather lore frequently lives in an oral framework, and a number of healing charms do as well, such as the Latin American “Sana Sana, colita de rana…” rhyme used to soothe children’s wounds. Even with a heavy dose of oracular and oral lore, most North American magical systems also incorporate a wide range of material magica, artifacts of material magical practice. Some are familiar, even to the point of ubiquity in American culture (such as the rabbit’s foot below), and some are not well known outside of their region or group of practice (the raccoon baculum, for example, also below).
I have collected here a small sampling of the material artifacts of American folk magic, and provided some insights and commentary on their origins and systems of use, with the hope that the educated outsider who encounters such objects will not see them with derision or as alien manifestations of misunderstood systems, but as an essential aspect of practical spiritual expression across a range of American magical systems.
Ugly Mugs
Cross-Eyed Ogre Tankard
(“Ugly Mug”)
Provenance: Santa Monica, CA (1971)
Artist: Jim Rumph
Field/Branch(es) of Folk Magic: Southern Conjure, Mountain Magic, New England Witchery, possible connections to African Traditional Religions
Derived from the Old World concept of the bellarmine bottle, which had a gargoyle-like face on the outside to discourage theft or intrusion by harmful spirits, the ‘ugly mug’ was usually a hand-thrown pottery piece with a ferocious or ridiculous image formed on the side. It could be used to keep anything which required a ‘hands-off’ warning, from moonshine to the dirt of ancestral grave sites. This particular piece is a more modern interpretation by renowned artist Jim Rumph, who maintained his Slyme Factory studio in Santa Monica and had more than a few esoteric traditions of his own.
Animal Curios
The use of animal parts in American folk magic is incredibly wide-spread. Everything from bird feathers to dogs’ teeth to turkey wishbones can be found in the broad net of American magical practices. I’ve sampled a few of the animal curios I’ve collected over the year in the photos above and the descriptions below.
Alligator Foot (top left) (“Gator Paw”)
Provenance: Albany, CA (mid-2000s)
Artist: The Bone Room
Field/Branch(es) of Folk Magic: Hoodoo, Southern Conjure
The dried and preserved foot of an alligator is believed to be an incredibly powerful gambling charm. Often the one who carries it will bind its digits around a lucky coin or wrap it in a $2 or $20 bill. The grasping motion of the paw can be used to grip other conjure ingredients, such as a nutmeg or a High John root, and thus focus its power on other purposes. The alligator’s tooth is also used to bring luck to the wearer or carrier.
Rabbit’s Foot (middle)
Provenance: Albany, CA (mid-2000s)
Artist: The Bone Room
Field/Branch(es) of Folk Magic: Hoodoo, Southern Conjure
Ideally collected from a rabbit caught in a graveyard at midnight, the magic of the rabbit’s foot is supposed to provide luck to anyone who carries it. It is often rubbed with Van Van condition oil, and works as a gambling charm as well asn an all-purpose good fortune talisman. Of course, as the old joke goes, it isn’t very lucky for the rabbit.
Baculum (top right) (Raccoon Penis Bone)
Provenance: Unknown
Artist: Unknown
Field/Branch(es) of Folk Magic: Southern Conjure, Hoodoo
The baculum or penile bone of many mammals can be found in a number of magical talismans of the American South. The baculum of the raccoon (sometimes referred to as a “love bone,” “coon dong,” or “Spanish bone”) entered the traditions of Conjure and Hoodoo from contact between Black slaves and Native Americans–notably the Pawnee nation. As the name “love bone” suggests, this talisman is highly regarded as an aphrodisiac, and is also a featured component of a gambling charm.
Doll Babies
The use of effigies or dolls (called “doll babies” in at least one branch of American folk magic) appears to derive from several sources, including the European poppet tradition. Here I have selected two non-European style dolls to demonstrate the iterations of doll magic in American folk practice.
Lwa Doll (top left)
Provenance: New Orleans, LA
Artist: Anna Parmelee
Field/Branch(es) of Folk Magic: New Orleans-style Voodoo/Vodoun
In Haitian tradition, Vodoun prayer flags are frequently made with incredibly intricate sequin designs, and usually picture a single lwa(spirit) and his or her symbolic accoutrements. A New Orleans variation on the prayer flag is a handmade doll, such as this one, which shows multiple lwa symbols. Here you can see a representation of Papa Legba, the crossroads guardian and gatekeeper to the spirit realm.
Kachina Doll (top right)
Provenance: Arizona & Utah
Artist: “Spencer”
Field/Branch(es) of Folk Magic: Native American (Navajo, Hopi influence)
The Kachina Doll derives from Hopi practices in which specific ancestral or local spirits are thought to inhabit dolls created for ceremonial purposes. The practice of creating these fetishes may derive from older Mesoamerican systems, and has been widely borrowed by other tribes beyond the Hopi. This doll, for example, is a rendering of an Eagle Dancer by a Navajo artist, combining one tribe’s rituals and symbols with the Kachina form.
Industrial Curios
Curios are not solely the products of handcrafted organic materials. Frequently folk practitioners used materials available to them, including a number of industrial elements. In some cases these substitutions were simply convenient, and sometimes the properties of a particular industrial element were specifically sought (as in the case of the iron items below).
Horseshoe (top left)
Provenance: Nashville, TN
Artist: N/A
Field/Branch(es) of Folk Magic: Widespread, found in nearly every part of North America
The use of the iron horseshoe as a protective and luck-bearing amulet can be seen in nearly every cultural subset of North America. Some place more emphasis on the material—it must be iron, and have been worn by a horse for some period of time so as to ‘pound the luck’ into the shoe through the horse’s gallop—and some place more emphasis on the placement of the horseshoe. Usually, the two camps of thought are that a horseshoe placed ‘horns up’ will retain good luck for the one who hangs it, while others believe one must hang it ‘horns down’ so as to pour out the luck on anyone walking beneath the shoe.
Copper Dowsing Rods (middle)
Provenance: Austin, TX
Artist: “Ravenna”
Field/Branch(es) of Folk Magic: Mountain magic, Southern Conjure, New England Witchery
Frequently dowsing rods are simply cut from a living tree and used by expert practitioners to locate water or other natural resources. However, in the twentieth century, many dowsers began using copper rods—sometimes simply coat hangers cut into the proper shape and held loosely in the hands—to locate these underground treasures. A secondary industrial connection exists in these objects, because dowsers have been employed by oil companies and other corporate interests to help find deposits of rich resources (although only a few companies admit such practices openly).
Railroad Spikes (top right)
Provenance: Nashville, TN
Artist: N/A
Field/Branch(es) of Folk Magic: Hoodoo, Southern Conjure
The use of iron railroad spikes derives from a mix of African traditional practices involving the securing of territory and the use of iron and pins or nails in European folk magic. In the New World, the railroad became a major force in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the spikes which rattled loose from the tracks were claimed by hoodoo workers for use either in rituals to ‘pin’ down a person or family in their home (thus making it hard for the bank to foreclose on them) or as a protective charm, as iron repels evil spirits.
Novelty Magic
Lest anyone think that magic is all seriousness, animal parts, and industrial commentary, there is also a lighter side to American folk magical practice. The condition formulae above—frequently used in delta-style or Low Country hoodoo and rootwork—are in some ways legitimate outgrowths of the magical formula tradition. However, once those formulae reach a mass-producer, variation and novelty becomes a selling point as much as any adherence to tradition. Most of the bottles above were found in the Southern novelties store, Tater Red’s, in Memphis, TN.
The small sampling I’ve presented here is only a sliver of the overall material culture of American folk magic. Some documentation of these practices and objects exits—notably Cat Yronwode’s Hoodoo Herb & Root Magic, Yvonne P. Chireau’s Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition, Jeffery Anderson’s Conjure in African American Society, and Carolyn Morrow Long’s Spiritual Merchants. The lion’s share of documentation, interpretation, and examination remains to be done by interested scholars.
The materials above are all sampled from my personal collection, which I sometimes exhibit as a traveling ‘mini-museum’ show, and which contains many more artifacts of American folk magic. The images are all my own creation, and may be used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.