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