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.
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:
