Home Protection Magick

Home is where the heart is. 

It is also where energy both positive and negative easily takes up residence. Either our own energy or energy directed at us by others can affect our lives in our homes. There are centuries of magickal charms, incantations, and spells to protect our homes. Everything from the now normal horseshoe being hung above the main door to hiding shoes in the walls and chimneys of new home builds. There are also new ways that I and other witches have crafted for protection.

an example of a modern take on the witches' bottle

One of the most common forms of home protection that many witches do now is actually a form of magick employed by common folk as protection against witches and that is the Witches' Bottle.  A witches' bottle simply put is a container (now most commonly a mason jar, but any seal-able jar can be used.) The bottle is then filled with different herbs, DNA of the inhabitants, and curios and placed either in a wall, chimney, or buried under the front porch steps. It acts as a protective shield from magickal attacks and the evil eye.
Should someone send a magickal attack your way the bottle will act as a beacon for that energy. The spell meant for you will go to the bottle, be trapped, and then shredded and destroyed by the ingredients within the bottle.
Another technique involved in home protection can take the form of House Dolls. It is very similar to any other poppet it is created and intended to protect the home and the people within the house. These are similar to soul dolls, but nor quite as intense of a connection as what is created within the soul of the soul doll. These can be created from many different materials. I have made them from cloth, pieces of wood, and even antique dolls. There ingredients are very similar to that of the witches' bottle. You will fill the doll with specific herbs, a form of your DNA, and other curios. The difference with the dolls and the bottles is that you have to awaken and en-soul the dolls. This is done by breathing life into the doll, and then baptizing the doll either with spring water or whisky, naming it, and giving it its mission to watch over the house and those that live within its walls. You then need to feed it at least once a week, and keep it in a place of honor of the house.

Recipe for Witches' Bottle and House Dolls:

Bottle

Doll Materials

Thorns

Rusted Nails

Bent Needles

Broken Glass or Mirror

Vines

Devil's Shoestring

DNA :

(For bottles-Spit, and Urine) 

(For Dolls- hair, blood, teeth, fingernails)

For the Bottle

Combine the ingredients, urinate into the bottle or add spit or blood

seal the bottle and charge it with its mission

Bury the bottle next to the front door, or under the front steps

If that is not possible, hide it in a dark unused corner of a closet or cabinet

For the Doll

- Create the doll, and fill it with the ingredients. 

Instead of urine for the DNA you will want to add another form Hair, teeth, blood, fingernails, etc

Sew or seal the doll up, and then breath life into the body of the doll

Drop three drops of whisky or spring water on the doll's head

Say "I awaken thee, and baptize thee. Your name is _____."

Then tell the doll what its job is 

"Your job is to protect this house and those within from all 

positive or negative energies that may come to do us harm."

Place the doll in a spot of honor in the house (perhaps on the hearth)

and feed the doll once a week.

A new technique I have found that works wonders is similar to a papyri spell or a petition being written on a tablet. I was introduced to this method by Laurie Cabot during my second degree training with her. It is a spell written on parchment and then activated and charged for its purpose. It doesn't so much stop magick from being sent into your home as much as it places a curse or hex on someone entering your home with ill intent. 

It is written in Theban, and it states "Anyone who enters this space with ill intent places a curse upon their head."

Should you entertain someone in your home, and their life starts to fall apart it is most likely because they entered with some other reason than being your friend. It also makes it so that should someone break into your home, steal from you, etc their life will be marked, and they will pay for crossing the threshold. 

This is just a very small sampling of home protection charms and spells. There are hundreds of different ways to protect your home. Some witches will use wind chimes, or enchant keys and hang them off their door knobs.  Don't allow history to be an obstacle in your magick. As witches we adapt and innovate. Happy creating your charms!

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

Whose Woods These are I Think I Know

Before Appalachian Witchery I wrote a blog called Backwoods Witchcraft,  and that name changed  sometime around 2013 when I started to operate a small business known as Appalachian Witchery. Though it didn't start out as a business. I started it as page on Facebook to share traditional folk knowledge from the specific Appalachian region that I grew up in (which is known as the Southern Uplands, it is the area of West Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Southeast Kentucky, Northeast Tennessee, and Northwest North Carolina). I had been inspired in 2001 by an oral history assignment to start digging deeper into my heritage and culture, and work to preserve it. 

Now, I did grow up with a Mamaw, and great aunts that shared remedies and information sporadically throughout my youth. Not one of them would have called it witchcraft or magic. Even if the remedy was to use a wooden dowel hammered into a tree to stop a nose bleed there would have been no claim of witchery anywhere from anyone. They were just sharing and remembering what they grew up around. When I started sharing some of this information from my page I was faced with a bit of a backlash from the very people I was inspired by. They were upset I was calling these things witchcraft and using the term witchery in the page name. I was younger then, and bullheaded. I didn't take the backlash personally I justified it by claiming they were all small minded bigots. 

They weren't.

They aren't.

At least not when it comes to this topic. 

When working within a culture (even if you are part of that culture) to take something and redefine it to fit your own definition is erasure.

Witches within Appalachian culture are a specific type of person. They are in league with the devil. They don't necessarily go out of their way to harm other people, but will seek justice or revenge (sometimes over petty issues). They are not earth centered hippy women or men who follow a three-fold rule or anything else connected to the religion of Wicca. They are not hoodoo conjure men or women. They have no catholic saints in their practice. (I have sat through many southern Baptist sermons that equate Catholics with Satan worshipers though). 

The old Granny lady down the street that makes salves, blows fire out a burn, or staunches a nose bleed is not a witch. The old man who uses a sassafras branch to dowse for water to dig a well is not a witch, (though the term water witch is used from time to time passed down through European settlers). These women and men would "tan yer hide" if you called them or what they did witchcraft. 

Witchcraft was practiced by people who denounced the Christian faith, and turned to Satan instead. There are plenty of stories from the old timers about people or families who did such things. There were ways to become a witch in Appalachian lore (and none of them call on a pagan deity). 

One way (gathered from someone who lived in the same town that I grew up in; Wise Virginia) is written about in Hubert Davis's book The Silver Bullet:

“She [Granny, the narrator of the tale] began: ‘I’ve been told thet annuder way to git to be a witch is to fust go to the top of a high mountain, throw rocks at the moon and cuss God Almighty.  Then, go find a spring where the water runs due east.  Take a brand new knife and wash hit in the spring just as the sun rises.  Say, “I want my soul to be as free from the savin’ blud of Jesus Christ as this knife is of sin.”  Do this fer twelve days in a row.  Effen on the thirteenth day the sun rises a drippin’ blud, hit’s a shore sign thet you’re becomin’ a witch’” (TSB, p. 11).

Another way was to get a black book (possibly the Keys of Solomon). Gerald Milnes gathered this information and shared it as thus:

 “Now say you’re going to be a witch.  Okay, now I don’t know where you get ‘em, but they call e’m the little Black Bible.  Take that little Bible and you go to a spring where it’s a-running from the sun…not towards the sun, away from the sun…Take that little Black Bible and go to that stream, strip off, and wash in there—take a bath in that water—and tell God you’re as free from him as the water on your body” (Signs, Cures, & Witchery, p. 162).

These cultural ideas and practices are integral to witchcraft in the Appalachian region. To redefine the cultural idea is, again, cultural erasure.

I apologize for my part in that.

I am not saying that witchcraft itself can not be redefined. It clearly has over the last 80+ years since the witchcraft laws on England were repealed, and people like Gerald Gardner started publishing works claiming witchcraft knowledge. We now have a flourishing culture of modern witches and modern practices. Some try to recreate older practices by incorporating them into a modern day practice, but they are still modern no matter how much the practitioners beat their drum of "tradition".
Can there be a modern Appalachian witchcraft tradition? Of course! Its happening now here in Johnson City, TN. A small group is meeting and exploring ancient spirits of the land, and crafting a whole new tradition based in Appalachia and on the very land they live. The spirits have never been written about before, there are new names for the 13 moons a month being revealed, and Appalachian "saints" and their powers are starting to emerge.
But it isn't the witchcraft that was practiced by the settlers in the mountains or even the Native Americans.

With all of that said, the page name and the blog name will be changing soon.
I need to be able to grow and change, and acknowledge a level of cultural insensitivity that is becoming more prevalent among people discovering Appalachian folk lore and calling it witchcraft.Folk lore, practices, herbal/ mystical remedies,  and superstitions do not witchcraft make.

The name will be changing to The Witch of Johnson City.

I will still share traditional Appalachian folk lore and practices, but I will also be widening the focus of what is shared to include a more modern idea of witchcraft and magic. I will still be offering classes and readings as well.
I had thought of just starting a whole new page, but i thought it important to share my thoughts on the increased interest in Appalachian ideas of witchcraft, and my ever evolving understanding of it and the cultural I was born and raised in.

after all:

I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep 

What is Remembered Lives - The Witch Burnings of Appalachia (part 2)

The second witch burning I wanted to cover took place in the woods near Battletown Kentucky in Meade County. The town at the time of the murder (1840), because let's be honest that is exactly what this was,  was known as Staples or Stapleton. The area became known as Battletown, KY in 1885 because there was another town known as Staples in Kentucky, and they would not give a permit for a post office the name of the town was changed.

From 1830-1835 John Smock had bought 350 acres of land in the area of Battletown, and he and his family lived in Kentucky and Indiana. John Smock was a cooper. Coopers make barrels, buckets, troughs, etc from wood that is heated to make it pliable. It took a few years before the Smock family lived permanently on the land in Battletown, and it is thought that it took about three years to remove enough of the wooded area to build a cooperage, house, and barn. The Smock family consisted of John Smock (father), Margaret Smock (mother), Leah Smock (daughter), Elizabeth Smock (daughter), and Joseph Smock (son).

Margaret is said to have had remarkable healing powers, and was known to help her community. Some people in the community claimed she was a witch. But the woman burned to death for being a witch was not Margaret, but her daughter Leah. Leah was murdered at the age of 22 on August 21, 1840. Leah only lived in the Battletown area for approximately two years, but made a huge impact on the people that lived in the community at the time, and who live there now. Since her murder she hasn't left the area. Her spirit is seen frequently in a white gown, surrounded by a purple mist with cords tied at her waist, wrists, and neck.

Artist Unknown

Leah was eighteen or nineteen when the Smock family moved to Meade County. It did not take long before the people of the community became aware that Leah possessed special powers. She was known for being very intelligent, and she was the head of her class in the schools she attended when she was younger. She also began to exhibit other intelligences. She was able to foretell future events with accuracy, predict the weather, and give details about the upcoming seasons. She would accurately predict when someone ill would live or die, and would often contradict doctors on diagnosis. She was infrequently incorrect in her predictions. Due to her extrasensory perceptions people began to treat her differently with ridicule or scorn or fear.

Stories abound about Leah aiding people with their crops. It was known that she could make crops grow like no other, but if you mistreated her she could cause your crops to blight. its alleged that she even bragged about her powers, and would play on the fears of her neighbors bu warning them to treat her kindly or terrible things would befall them.
One such incident is recalled that Leah asked to hold a neighbor's new born child, but the parents refused to allow her to hold their baby because they worried that it was bad luck to let a witch hold their baby. Leah is reported to have said "you'll be sorry by morning." Sadly, the parents were sad the next morning because the child. Leah then attempted to touch the child in its casket and again she was refused. That night the neighbor's home was filled with the sounds of howling dogs, yowling cats, and other strange noises. When the parents looked outside they claimed to have seen Leah standing outside in the dark staring at the home. The father of the deceased infant is said to have led Leah home, and the sounds then ceased.

There are many other stories about Leah. One tells of how a man had purchased a team of horses. Leah went to pet them, and the man told her he did not want her touching them. She did manage to touch one, and the following day that horse had died followed by a second horse the next day. Another story from a cooper scolded Leah for some forgotten reason, and he had completed assembling eighteen barrels. The next day all of his work came undone, and the barrels fell apart.

But Leah's life wasn't completely alone and terrible. She had a friend, nicknamed Indian Joe, a Native American man who lived in a cabin that was built in the woods near Leah's home. It's rumored that Indian Joe carved a serpentine walking stick for Leah that she was often seen carrying thoruhg the fields and the wilderness.  Leah was also seen often surrounded by wild animals. On one occassion she was seen walking in the company of wolves, foxes and wildcats when two boys who had followed her started to harrass Leah for being a witch. The boys were missing for several days. When they were finally found the boys claimed that Leah had called up her animal friends to chase the boys.

Its known that anyone who harmed or mistreated Leah and her family would eventually feel her wrath. People's crops would wither, houses and barns would burn, and every one blamed Leah. Most people ended up ostracizing the family, but Leah still had a few close girlfriends, a boy friend, and her friend Indian Joe. Eventually Leah's luck started to run out. It's said that Leah uninvited entered the home of another community member's who had a new born baby, and the next day the infant had died.

There are a handful of versions about the events that took place on August 21, 1840. The one retold here is the one believed to be the most likely.

The morning of August 21, 1840 Leah's parents left to go to the town of Staples which given the terrain and travel by wagon would have been a full day's travel to town and back. Once her parents were far enough away a group of neighbors crept out of their hiding places around the house, cooperage, and smokehouse. The men and women ganged up on Leah. Tying her up in a hogtie fashion with the rope round her neck, waist, wrists, and feet. They took her tied body to the smokehouse and locked her in. Then the anonymous gang set fire to the smokehouse, and watched until the screams stopped and they were assured of her death.

Her parents returned to find her burned remains. Her parents, her boyfriend, and Indian Joe, prepared a casket and conducted a small private funeral service for Leah. Her casket was buried on the Smock property in what would become known as the Betsy Daily Cemetery. Her boyfriend carved a tombstone for her grave, and it still stands today.

This could be where the story ends. But a woman with a spirit like Leah's its obvious she wouldn't let the people of Staples (Battletown), Meade County have the last word in her story.  Only a few days after her burial her spirit was seen. This caused her grave-site to be covered and filled with stones. People who venture out to her grave are likely to find the grave and cemetery over ran with venomous snakes. If not the snakes it is reported that pounding and clanging sounds come from the cemetery. Occasionally, people have even found cooperage tools and a newly made barrel at Leah's grave. It is also reported that her spirit will show herself from time to time. Beautiful Leah, raven haired, ropes tied around her wrist, waist, and neck will appear in the woods surrounded by a purple tinted fog.

But was Leah a witch? According to the people that lived around her at the time the simple answer is yes. The stories usually paint Leah as playing a instigating part in the stories about the misfortune that would befall people who wronged her. Was she just a woman who had a connection and powers that she and the community did not understand? Was she just a strong willed woman at a time that possessing a personality like hers could and did lead to her death? Sadly, we can not answer those questions. Ultimately, I do not think defining her in any of those ways is appropriate or important. After all Leah seems to get to have the final say in her life. Her neighbors murdered her in an attempt to rid their lives of a woman they feared due to her personal power. What they ended up doing was making sure that she would never be forgot.

What is remembered lives.

and Leah lives on!

(information taken from the book "Battletown Witch" by Gerald W. Fischer)

Thou Shall Not Suffer a Witch to Live- The Witch Burnings of Appalachia (part 1)

"No witches were ever burned alive in North America." That is what we are taught when we listen to historians of American history discuss witchcraft trials in colonial America as well as the few rare trials of witchcraft accusations after the colonies. The historians are correct, in a way. There are no legally documented executions by burning for women and the few men accused of witchcraft. However, they are wrong to say that no one was ever put to death by being burned alive for accusations of witchcraft.

I am not going to go into detail on  the history and translations of the Exodus verse (22:18). There are plenty of other sources on line that will do a much more thorough explanation of it than I. But to sum it up quickly the verse was translated to read "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," by King James to reflect his current beliefs and politics. A great write up of all possible meanings of the verse can be found HERE

What I wanted to focus on here is the forgotten women, the murdered women, the witches of Appalachia. The women that now only exist in the memories of oral history.

"Occasionally a body of factual knowledge exists only in the memories of men and women; and it would be lost, or greatly attenuated, were it not taken down before they died...The main use of oral information is to supplement and fill out the evidence taken from other sources. But there are some aspects...that are recorded chiefly -- and in some instances only -- in the oral tradition," George Ewart Evans (British social historian; in regards to rural east Anglian culture.)

The oral history of Rolph Hollow, in Fleming County Kentucky tell the story of the execution by burning at the stake of Hulda (Collins) Lamar.  Daniel Rolph, in his book "To Shoot, Burn, and Hang," brings the story of Hulda out from the oral history and into written history, Two of Daniel's ancestors tell the story of the execution as they witnessed it. Both Sarah Smithers and her daughter Rose Effey Rolph were returning from a neighbors home whom they had attended to for her pregnancy as they were "granny women" and "midwifes." As they were returning home they came over a hill and heard a racket. As they crept over the hill they began to smell a horrible smell, and saw that the people had tied a woman to stake and were burning her alive. Alice stated, "I will never forget the smell of burning flesh and the screams of the woman." They knew Hulda had been called a witch because of her use of herbs to cure people. Fearing for their safety, worrying that the townspeople would be coming for them if they were seen, Sarah and Rose hurried back to their home unseen.

Hulda and her sisters, Mariah and Sal,  were considered witches based on their use of gathering herbs and muttering as they did so. Many other stories surrounded the Lamar women  making the accusations of witchcraft by the community that much more damning. Washington Lamar lived his aunts and told people that if he annoyed the women they would turn him into a cat, and he'd go up the chimney finding himself on the roof. Another story recalled that the Lamar sisters were not happy about their nephew selling a sow and her litter of pigs to Mr. Colgan. Mariah Lamar was said to have visited the Coligan farm the next day and was found rubbing her hands all over the pigs and mumbling peculiar words. The following day the sow and every nursing piglet was dead. It was also believed that the Lamar witches would place a death spell on people who harmed or wronged them in some way and the only way the spell could be broken was to get a wizard to take the spell off. The idea of the wizards coincides with the other oral history of other men and women visiting the sister in order to become witches and wizards as well.

So why was Hulda the only witch burned that day, and not her sisters Mariah and Sal? Before Hulda was burned her sisters had already passed away. Dr. Alexander Wallingford when he heard that Mariah was dying went to attend to her, and to also see if the legend that a witch will die like a cat, all drawn up, was true. While Dr. Wallingford examined Mariah neither Washington Lamar or Sal Lamar asked the doctor to relieve Mariah's suffering with medication. Mariah is reported to have "died with her legs and arms drawn up like a cat's in its death grip."

Ultimately, we find that Hulda and her sisters in the community's eyes were witches, and they were dangerous. Hulda found herself executed by "traditional" laws as opposed to any contemporary legal process.

Mamaw's Magic Apron

Mamaw's Magic Apron

A Woman's Work

My Mamaw on the right in the white shirt with her sisters

Memories like a creek's water undulate at preternatural times. On cold winter nights when the wind howls and the frost creeps in through the windowpanes the memories are more persistent, and the next morning they may be less pressing after a night snuggled under a handmade quilt. Sometimes a hot summer day will cause the memories to rise in my mind like a rouge rain shower will raise the creek's level. It's hard to judge when the memories will rise or flood you like the deluge running down into the creek causing the banks to give and flood the borders so it's just easier to let the memories flow. 

The memories and thoughts have been persistent for the last few days of my Mamaw's aprons (and her muumuus). She didn't wear an apron every day, but if she was at home tending her garden, cooking, or doing house work she usually had one tied around her muumuu. The muumuu was her daily house wear until she changed into a nightgown. Her muumuu provided her the utility of the apron without being another piece of clothing to wash, hang out to dry, and iron. 

Mamaw in 1958 wearing an apron over her dress with my mom at 3yrs old.

I can see her standing in her kitchen with the plastic laminate white counter tops with gold flecks measuring out ingredients for  cornbread or a cake. She would be standing there in her muumuu with large glasses talking about the weather or the church with my mom. The dress was usually a calico pattern. A basic color such as pale green, blue, or white with a small design on it of flowers or little nonsensical symbols. Utilitarian but comforting. That's what I think of when I think of those muumuus. Comfort. A home away from home. 

My Mamaw lived next door while I was growing up. My sister and I spent as much time over there as we did at our own home. It wasn't the house itself that we loved to visit (though I did lose many hours wandering through the same four rooms looking through drawers and closets) it was Mamaw. 

And when I think of her I think of those muumuus and the aprons she wore from time to time. The aprons though seemed to be a memory for her as well. That she would don one becuase that is what her mother or her mamaw would wear daily.

Looking at pictures of the women in the Appalachian mountains just a decade removed from my Mamaw's generation (she was born in 1916) you will find the women are almost always wearing an apron tied around their waist. Much like the utilitarian usage of the muumuu's pockets its why the women wore the aprons. 

Great Great Aunt Sarah (pronounced Sarie) wearing an apron daily

During the daily tasks of tending the gardens, feeding the chickens and other animals, cooking, keeping the fire going, etc they carried the daily needs with them. The twine to tie up plants, the tobacco to smoke or dip, and any of the other little pieces of daily minutiae that they would need. 

The apron also provided a little extra protection during those daily activities. It protected their dresses from spills, stains, and tears from thorns. The aprons weren't worn just once a week, but daily and would abosrb all the scents and markings of that weeks work. 

The aprons and my mamaw's muumuus weren't just clothing. They were magic. Theses simple pieces of clothing held the machinations for the mundane work, and were able to dry tears, clean hands, wipe up spills, and create memories. At the end of the day the magical clothing would be hung up to rest only to be tied back on the next day to start the biscuits, and the fire. 

They are time keepers.