Subject:Candle
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Entry 416
You have to use them too, for treasures.
(Hunting treasures?)
Hunting treasure. Take a piece - not take the whole [tomb]stone, but take a piece of it. Supposing we were going to dig money here. We come down and locate the treasure right here. All right. Now, you are the party got a headstone. We knew he died - when he died and passed out. He did good things all of his days. Well, we take that along with us and we dig a hole in the ground so the people passing wouldn't see that light, and we'd light that light there - a pure white candle at that headstone. We'd light that light there, then we'd go ahead and we'd make a circle round there after we locate the treasure - to keep the spirit from entering the ring, and we'd go to work and we'd sprinkle all around there mustard seeds, mustard seeds all around there. Then we'd go ahead down in and we found - we done found the treasure - we got the sounding rod right on top of the treasure. Now, after we'd go through that process, why, then we'd go ahead right on down and dig. That have a tendency to keep the spirit away and the treasure won't move.
Entry 777
The Nassau people - we have quite a few of them heah from the colored race and they are very bad that way. When they are in love with yo' an' yo' quit them, they slip undah yo' bed an' light six candles - right in under yo', an' pretty soon yo' go away. They tell yo' quickly, "Ah burn candles fo' yo'. An' yo' don't know whut they mean and they don' tell you whut they mean, but someone else kin tell yo', if yo' ask them, say, "Look heah, Sech-a-one tole me they Was goin' burn candles fo' me." An' they say, "Well, yo' better look out." Well, they will light them candles under yo' bed while yo' sleep, an' dey burn dem six candles under dere and when dey go down, why yo' go down.
(What color are they - any particular color?)
Dey don't have to be no partic'lar color - any color, jest so they candles.
Entry 1823
Yo' take an' go to de graveyard, if yo' wanta go anywhere or wanta do anything. Yo'll go to de graveyard an' cut a piece out of de person - a sinnah back.
(Out of their body - their back?)
Dat's right. An' make a candle. Take an' fry it - yo' know, jes' cook it down. Take de grease out it an' make a candle an' take that candle an' do any- thing in de world yo' want.
(What would they do with the candle? Do you know how they would handle that?)
Well, dey jes' take aftah dey make de candle an' whenevah they's makin' this candle, dey'll call de Lord's Name. See. An' whenevah de candle is cold, yo' see, den dey kin take it an' go anywhere an' do anything dey want wit dat candle.
Entry 2539
Burn candles - they's fer luck too. See, then you kin burn incense too. See, some burns these little incense they calls Black Men and some burns red and some burns de orange blossom - diff'rent kinds. But if they have perfume in 'em those incense is very good.
Entry 2749
Dey way 'twas, him and her was frens' an' he got holt of her pocketbook and he stole 'em out dere - took 'em, yo' know. He stole 'em out of her pocket- book. (Took what out?) Papers whut b'long to a car or automobile and some keys and she had two dollars an' he'd taken that. Well, she was doin' that - wanted to make him come back but he wouldn't send 'em. She sent after 'em and he wouldn't send 'em.
(Why didn't she go after them?)
She was 'fraid tuh go, an' she went an' got a man [hoodoo doctor]. He tole her he'd make him bring them back.
(Was this man her husband or?)
No, dis man whut took de things was her friend. An' dis man, after she tole dis man about it, he said, "Well, ah'll make him bring dem back." He went to de drug store and got two candles - red ones. He say, "what is his name?" She told him. He wrote his name on dere, on both de candles, and after he wrote his name - he wrote 'em jest like he wrote 'cross - dey would come right back crossways again on dem candles. He burns out one and start on de other - he give 'em back.
(What happened then?)
Didn't anything. He brought her paper, her keys and her money. And den he went on about his business. Got rid of him. She ain't been bothered with him since.
Entry 2776
If yo' were livin' heah in dis house an' someone wanted tuh make yo' leave without a cause, then they [a hoodoo] would git yo' tuh stay in dis house. Dis a true fact because - yo' want some Bible facts on it erzactly how it's done? De way yo' do, yo' git chew three of these gold candles, gold-colored candles, an' yo' burn dem gold-colored candles, burn three until yo' have burn nine. An' when yo' have burnt de nine, yo'll have perfect peace, because de Bible says dat dey'd burn candles upon candlesticks. [See my comment on Bible and candles, p.361.] But chew have de instrument whut chew burn dese candles in of gold, an' have de gold- colored candles. An' ah guarantee it'll bring peace an' satisfaction heah, an' de proof is by de Bible. No one kin move yo' out. [These are gilded candles. I found no golden candlestick or container of any kind in the following rites.]
Entry 2777
And jest like if you goin't to a job - If you want dis job, you kin jest burn dis white candle fo' success and make yore wish and it will favor yo Yo' know dey burned candles when Christ died. [The Rev. Mr. Young has already said something similiar, "We understand dat de candles represent something in the life of Christ possibly," see 2735, p.745, line 1.]
Entry 2779
Now, you can take a white candle, if you want luck. You can take a white candle and three loafs of sugar, and you light it. Set [it] with a name. And you put a piece of paper under it [candle] with the name [this is setting it] and you light it and make your wish. That's for luck.
(What name do you write on that?)
Write whoever you burning it for - write your name or my name, anybody name you burning it for. That's for luck. Now, a red candle.
(A red candle?)
That's a white candle. Now a red candle is for blood.
(Well, how do you handle that - a red candle for blood?)
You take the person name, whoever you wanta get in trouble, and you write the name on the candle all around - up and down on the candle - and you burns it and makes a wish, bad wish. That's for blood, you see. Now a black candle, that's to kill you.
(A black candle is to kill you. Well how would they handle that?)
Well, they take the black candle and they write your name on there, see. And they takes and they cuts that top piece off - like this the top piece, well, they cut that off, and they take and turn it upside down and shape it [make a wick at the bottom end] and they light it upside down. Well, you liable to walk out your door and get killed most any minute.
(Do they use green candles, and blue and yellow, anything of that sort?)
Well, they burn them to different saints for luck.
(Now, are candles burned at any special time or just any time?)
Any time you can burn a candle if you got your saints and you believe in your saints. Well, different days you burn different candles.
(What do you mean by different days you burn different candles?)
Like Mondays, you burns a white candle. Tuesday you burn a green candle. Wednesday you burns a yellow candle or blue candle. But red and black ain't for no luck - that's for undermining work.
(When do you burn those candles? On any day?)
You burn the red candle any day.
(And you burn the black candle any day, too?)
Any day too.
Entry 2780
You get a black candle, that's a danger candle. You burn a red candle, that's good luck. And you burn a white candle, that's happiness - peace and happiness in your home, you see. And there ain't nobody can harm you then, if you believe in them.
Entry 2781
Said a pink candle fer good luck. Jest burn it, all ah know. Say a black candle means death to a person. A red candle is fusses, quarrels and fights. Dat's all ah've heard about dat.
(What about a white candle? Would a white candle do anything?)
Ah've nevah heard. Ah 'pose dat brings peace.
Entry 2794
Well, dey got some women that hustles, they got candles they burn an' dey got de white candles - dey is fo' white men. De red candle is fo' a dark man [= Negro - see next title]. An' dey got a black can- dle, dey burns dat tuh keep de enemv mens away - dat's like a man whut would come aroun' an' ain't got much money tuh spend; dey much ruther fo' dese othah mens tuh come, whut dey burnin' de white an' de red candle on. Well, dem is good people. But chew burn de black candle tuh keep de police- man away. See, de policeman is her enemy in her racket of hustlin'. Well, dat's fo' her tuh burn three candles a day. She burns one tuh St. Raymond an' she burns one to de Mothah of Perpetual help. She burns dat to those saints. Well, wit all dose mens comin - white men an' othah wealthy men with money - dese mens goin' come, but de policeman nevah come tuh her do'.
Entry 2799
Yo' take a white candle an' yo' take a red candle. Yo' burn the white candle in the back an' de red candle in de front of yore place of business. Then yo'll take about - that oriental incense is the best - git about five piles of it an' yo' burn it, say fo' instance, in fo' corners of de house as near as yo' kin git. Say fo instance if the house got mo' den one room, say if it's three rooms, yo' put one in this corner an' one in dis corner [of the front room] an' one in the othah corner of the last room an' one in the othah corner [of the back room] an' put this fifth one in de middle [of the middle room]. [The two far corners of the front and back rooms, and the center of the middle room - these five points create a quincunx. The center of a crossroad is also a quincunx and a magic spot. See Quincunx, p.710.] Yo' understan' an' yo' burn that. That's supposed to bring the customers.
Entry 2800
For luck, you get some incense.
(To dress your house for luck?)
Yes, sir, some incense. Now, I've tried that. And get three candles - red, white and blue and burn them one hour apiece at night and pour some Lucky Heart Perfume on there, and that will make people come to your house.
(Lucky Heart Perfume?)
Yes.
(Where do you buy that? At the store - drug store?)
Yeah, in Memphis. There's a firm in Memphis has that. (Oh, I see. Well, how do you burn these three candles? Do you burn them all at once, or one and then the other?) You burn one - like you burn the red one tonight, the white one de next night and the blue the next. But you don't burn 'em but a hour at a time. Do that for nine nights.
(And what time do you light that candle?)
Light it when everybody is out of your room, gone, and don't let nobody in your room while it's burning.
(Do you light this at any particular time? Like nine o'clock or ten?)
Seven-thirty, if you kin get people out of de room, or else you gotta go to a higher number - nine-thirty or eleven-thirty.
(At night?)
Yes, sir.
Entry 2801
A white one - yo' kin burn it on a man, write his name. Git this ridgy candles - yo' know this white ridge, yo' know they got a ridge on 'em. Yeah, dey got candles wit ridges on 'em. De white one, we call it decorated candles. Yo' take an' write his name wit a needle in those ridges all de way round de candles - see on dat ridge all de way around every one of those ridge, an' yo' burn that candle, lak yo' burned it one hour in de daytime. All right, den yo' blow it out. Den yo' burn it at night one hour. Dat will make him come back home.
(You just burn it for one day?)
No, yo' burn it fo' three days straight.
(You mean these candles that have ridges like a barber pole?)
Dat's right - write his name in those ridges. [Some of these candles must have ridges twisted spirally; other have untwisted ridges horizontally about candle.]
Entry 2802
Dey take hit [photograph] an' bury it upside down. Either take hit an put a light to dat, de photograph, an' burn it upside down - lak heah's de photo- graph an' yo' put chure light dere an' dose cup Zights. Yo' know, dey got dose little cup candles an' den de little glasses whut dey fit, an' put his name dere - write hit backwards.
(On the photograph.)
Yeah. An' put his undah dere an' de glass on top. Dat runs him crazy. (You turn the photograph down. You put the name on it backwards and put this candle in the glass on top of it and burn it.) Dat's right.
Entry 2804
(Dr. Lemson used to use?)
Yes. It was a tall candle - it was a black candle. They call that a death candle. And when that one finished burning, after burning on the individual name - sign the individual name nine ways, see, backwards though, and burn that candle. And as the candle burn, as [so] they begin to droop away; when the candle is done - well, they done.
Entry 2805
I have seed de candle - it was made de shape of a man. And he [friend of informant] was running with de same woman he [second man] had, and he [friend] burnt de candle to run him away. Well, ah believe that was true because he left and he ain't come back there yet. That was in Cary, Miss. Well, he [victim] was a young man. And this other [friend] man, he come down here somewhere in Vicksburg and got it, and he lit it and they say he would burn it every - think it was every twenty minutes or thirty minutes he would burn it. Every now and then he would put it out - it would burn gradually. And at last when it burned down to the feets of it - it was made the shape of a man - well, this boy left town. Well, he left - he never been back there no more. And ah seed de candle cause his wife - his old lady showed it to me.
(What sort of color was it?)
Hit was a kind of different colors - it was pink and red colors. The head of it was pink and it had a black hat on it with - you know, painted with black. And the part down here was red like and it was.
(You mean the lower part?)
The lower part - down at the feets part was red. And they said when it would burn down to that, he would leave then.
(Where did he get that candle?)
Well, he supposed to have got it from a hoodoo, so she [friend's wife] told me.
Entry 2806
Well, dey have something that you asked me about, de candles - you know, burning candles. Dey have the dragon's-blood candles which is called Ole Banum's Tears. You know what dat is. Ole Banum's tears - tears like from your eyes. They come in teardrops. You can go to a peculiar drugstore an' places and buy these things, and it looks like a candle, and you burn them almost always in a place like that, you see, and it seems to have a tendency to change, to influence people towards yuh. Say for n'instance, you are mad at me this morning. Well, now when you leave, if you would leave, I'd burn two or three of these little pieces - they come off jest like teardrops. I'd burn that chip off 'em and that supposed to change the influence towards - of you towards me. But as: long as I burn that, everything will go along smoothly.
(Well, now what do those tears have to do with that bag [toby] you made?)
That all goes together.
(What do you do with that?)
It's working for the same purpose - you keep this [toby] you see.
(You wear that.)
That will cause people to have a mind at times to give you more.
(Then you burn the tears in addition?)
That's when someone gets angry. You don't do that unless you see they have a untowards feeling towards you.
Entry 2807
Yo' takes 'em, yellah ones - yo' takes 'em an' burns 'em. An' in dose candles be's a number an' in dat number, might say 25 or 12 or 11, whatsomever it may be, why den they. takes dat an'. plays it on bolito game. All right, den de scent from dat, dat's luck in yore home. Dat keeps de officer - dere's something else yo' burn wlt it - whenever dey come in dey can't stand dat scent.
(Keeps officers away.)
Entry 2810
Take a candle and you pay a quarter for it. (Take a candle.) Pay 25c and it burns eight days. You set that candle for eight days and let it burn, and in the eighth day he'll get you a job, whether he done turn you off or not. He maybe done turn you off, but by you burning that candle on the bossman, that will make him reflect in his mind and take you back. I've seen it happen.
(I see. What color candle would that be?)
Be white.
(White candle.)
Yes, slr.
Entry 2811
Take a candle and burn it - a certain candle there you burn nine days, see. That's a long candle. Put in the party's name, writing it nine times on the candle. Burn the candle very slowly nine days. As the candle burns they get weaker and weaker. They have another [candle] just about this long, sign the party's name backwards, cutting the end of the candle off. Sign the party's name and burn it upside down. That's to draw back. Like if you have a woman or anything and it goes away, well that will draw her back. Well in eight days her mind will come back home. She will admit herself that she done wrong. Don't light it from the end. You generally light - turn it upside down, light it from the bottom.
Entry 2822
And de red can'le, if it's somebody off dat chew would want dem to come, wal yo' burn dat red can'le. Yo' take de red can'le and you write dem folks name, whosomever de name be's, and you write dere names on dere five times, yo' see - you write it round, see. (Just straight around, just like a ring?) Dat's right, five times, and den you take a teaspoonful of sweet oil and a tea- Spoonful of honey and a teaspoonful of brown sugar [three ingredients] and put it together in a bowl - jes' a little neat bowl, and put de can'le down in dere and Jes' burn dat can'le. In five days time de folks you wanta see will be dere.
(Do you burn that at any special time?)
Yassuh, yo' burn it six 'clock each morning. Dat's all.
Entry 2823
With your water - they can take your water and put it in a bottle and they would boil it, and they could put [in] that steel dust and that lodestone. That lodestone and steel dust is a powerful thing. They can put that in there and they can take that can [bottle] with that water and keeps it in a corner and put your name on it - write your name seven times. (On what?) Seven times and wrap it around the bottle, you see, and keep it in the corner, and burn a black candle on it. See.
(And what will that do?)
Well, that's to keep yore mind - run you, you know, crazy-like. You see, your mind be all upset, you understand.
(What did you say they do with that water? Just bottle it up, you say?)
You take that water and you put it in a bottle and you boil it.
Entry 2824
Write a person's name on a piece of paper nine times for them to come to stay, and put it in a saucer and light a red candle, or a blue for true love for them to come. That's their way. If you ditch him and you ever see him with some - they happen to be with somebody else, you get you a black candle and write his name on a piece of paper and put that candle in that saucer and lay that - lay him right under it. And if [as] this candle molt down, that person'll molt - that's a[say] dry up and molt away.
Entry 2841
Then ah have seen a candle burning. Ah went to a girl's house and she was showing me. She took pins - she took nine pins and stuck 'em in dis candle slant down and rolled it in sugar. (How do you mean slant down?) Jes' - and dey stuck dose pins all around de candles - slant. (Oh, stuck them down into the candle but the head part was up and the pin went down into the candle.) Then she rolled it in sugar, the whole candle in sugar, and every night at a certain time she say she burnt this candle.
(What color was that candle?)
It was a white candle. It was for peace in de home and to bring her husband with her and make them get along.
(How long would she burn that candle?)
Until he came home. An' it wasn't long..
Entry 2850
(Take this foot track?)
Take that foot track and bury it and burn candles over that, and keep you under almost hypnotic power. (How do they burn candles over it? How do you mean?) Burn the candles? A continous burning. Long as they burn candles over that, it will keep you with an upsetted mind - a roving mind by doing that.
Entry 2861
"The black candle, that's tuh bring back. But chew must put de party name on de candle an' turn it upside down. See [demonstrates], writin' de name on de candle dataway, an' cuttin' de end off an' settin' it upside down, an' burnin' dat candle in - if de party like coffee, yo' burn it in coffee; if dey like whiskey, burn it in whiskey; if dey like gin, burn it in gin. Yo' burn dat fo' nine days. If de party don't come back in nine days, yo' git a round candle. Light it once all day - all de time. Dey guaranteed tuh come back. Dat will bring 'em back.
(You burn this candle all the time.)
Jes' be sure dey upside down, because if yo' burn dem straight dat'll keep den on away.
Entry 2863
Take five of 'em. Dey put 'em in a room, in a north room of a build- ing, and dey burn all five of 'em together on dis side of de room, and while dese candles are being burned, dey oughta read the 18th chapter of Luke. Dey will do dat fo' nine mornings befo' de sun rise, an' dose folks will make their wishes to dose candles, an' dose folks is coming back. (If someone has left and they want them back. What color would those candles be? Any particular color?) No sir.
Entry 2867
Burn that stuff - take it an' burn that candle - take three an' burn 'em in three corners of de house, de east, north and west - jest three corners, special. Set it on somepin dat it don't ketch fire, an' burn it till it burn out an' make yore wish whatsomever yo' wish, "Ah wish ah won't be worried wit anyone or "Ah wish dat ah would git so-an'-so" - whatsomever yo' wish.
(That will keep the officers away. What do you burn now?)
Those candles.
(What color are they?)
Red - some red, some blue.
(You send away to buy those?)
Yo' sends away an' git them. Cost $l for a half dozen. [Here candles are uninfluenced by normal candle rites of New Orleans.]
Entry 2875
If de' burning on you for bad luck or to kill you, dey burns black can- dles. And if dey burning for good luck, you burns white candles or blue candles or yellow. But dark blue is bad luck and black ones kill you. [Dark blue is sometimes called dark purple - it is almost black and somewhat rare.] (Well now, suppose I was trying to kill someone. What would - what have you heard I would do? Just how would I burn that black candle? How would I go about it?) Well, if in a certain length of time you wanted to kill a person, you set it for nine days, and you fix dat candle and put dese folks' name under it, and course you put nine new straight pins in it, and you burn dat candle for about five minutes for nine days.
(What time of day would I burn it for five minutes?)
Well, just the time you'd have to set it for. Whatever hour you have it set for.
Entry 2876
Well, den yo' go an' git chew nine candles, nine candles, an' yo' cut dere name on dem candles nine times. Well, an' yo' light dose candles, bum 'em fifteen minutes. In 24 hours dey come back dere and put dose [stolen] things back on de gallery where he got 'em from, or come back dere an' put 'em in de yard.
(What kind of candles do you burn?)
Black candles. See, black candles is fo' death an' make yo' return - anything yo' want it tuh do it will do it, except luck. It ain't goin' give you no luck, but it'll run and make you bring things back.
Entry 2877
If yo' have confusion in yore home and want peace, yo' burn a red candle. Yo' set it at six in de morning and burn one hour, and yo' set it at twelve and burn one hour, and at six at night and burn one hour, and make a wish.
Entry 2878
Ah burns white candles on Monday, ah burns pink candles on Wednesday, an' ah burns red candles on Friday. Ah burm 'em fo' luck an' success in mah hou e an' keep mah roomers an' all.
Entry 2879
Yo' gits a pink candle an' write de boss name on it all crossways an' all down - jis' write all ovah dat. An' burn it in sugah fo' eight days or eithah eight weeks, an' yo'll find luck on yo'. Yo' burn it at six in de mawnin' an' twelve at noon an den yo' burn it at nine a'clock at night.
Entry 2880
(Did you ever hear of them using black candles for anything?)
De black candles?. Yeah, ah've heard dey use black candles. First of all, yo' use these black candles fo' yo' - now, yo' wouldn't use 'em fo' yo'self. Well, if ah was envy against yo', wal ah would git a black candle an' put your name on it five times and burn it till it go out. Well, wherever yo' are in de world, yo always be worried an' no matter how much money yo' get yo' cannot keep it. Dat's wit dat black candle.
[After turning off machine, I evidently ask, "Burn them any time?"]
Oh, no - yo' only burn dat on Friday: But mostly dey burns 'em on Thursday
[night].
Entry 2881
Well, yo' take an' burn nine candles - lak yo' know somebody dat yo wanta move [to live] with yo'. Yo' take an' write dere names on each one of those nine candles an' burn 'em with a nickel's wuth of sugah. (What kind of candles do you burn?) Well, ah burn diff'rent kind fo' diff'rent things.
(What do you burn for this particular case?)
Well, ah burn white candles.
(What do you write the names on the candles with?)
Wit a pen - pin.
(When do you burn those candles?)
Well, ah would burn 'em on a Monday, Wednesday an' Friday. Ah burn 'em from six tuh twelve an' six in de evening. Ah would burn de white candles fo' good six days.
Entry 2885
You get you those wax candles to sweeten the man's mind. You take a white wax candle, you take a ten-cent bottle of honey, you take nine loaves of loaf sugar, and you burn that in a white bowl. When one go out, you set another one - white wax candle. That sweetens the mind of the man for his position you know.
(Here's your bowl and you have those lumps of sugar around in there.)
Nine of them and pour the honey all around it and set the candle up in the center. No [informant left out something], it round you know [in a circle]. You put de loaf sugar [in a circle]. You know those loaf sugar you use for tea or coffee. Put nine around [in a circle] into the bowl. You stick the candle first and make it stick good to spurmge [sponge = melted wax from candle]. And then you take the bottle of honey and pour it all around there [the candle] - a ten- cent bottle around that. And you burn the candle three times a day - a white wax candle. Well, you see you can start it at six - the best hour for anything like that - six in the morning, either twelve in the day and when that go out, you Wait till six in the evening and light another one.
(How long do you burn it at a time?)
Well, you see if it goes out before six in the evening, well you light another one. If you light one at six in the morning, well it will last to about twelve in the day or after twelve.
(How many candles do you burn all together? As many as you want to?)
As many as you want to, if you are able, you see. Probably four. [Two candles only are burned. Formula 6-12-6 is the most used of all time formulas for burning candles.]
Entry 2886
An' for - jest for a big time - have a big crowd an' a good time, you burn a pink candle. Burn it every Wednesday from nine until twelve, and every Monday from nine until twelve - make a good time, big-house good time.
Entry 2887
When you go before the judge - just before you go before the judge, burn you a white candle. You try to find out the judge's name. Write his name down on the candle nine times, and burn that candle clean down until it's all gone. Then you say your prayers over that candle, "Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Mother of Jesus." Say it nine times. Then you turn your underwear and your undershirt and your socks - turn them wrongside out - and then you go before him. He'll decide - his mind will be changed.
Entry 2888
(Now, how would they burn a black candle?)
A black candle? You take a person's name on a piece of paper, you write it nine times thisaway [demonstrates]. Nine, like you make a cross - nine times thataway, nine times thataway. And you - every time you light that candle, you go there, you curse, you say, "You son-of-a-bitch, you ought to be dead." You see? Well, the candle'll start to popping - you see, the candle'll start to popping. When the candle start to popping, well, you go over there and you - you sell yourself to the devil, you don't say anything about the Lord at all, you saying that to the devil. Say, "You son-of-a-bitch, you ought to be dead, the way you treat me." Well, the candle'll pop - pop like that. Now, when that black candle go out, and you have your house dark, nobody pass through, nobody go you see. You have that. You don't - nobody goes there but yourself. You don't want nobody to see what you doing, because its a lot of people know what those black - know the black candle is no good. It's bad, you see. Well, so you takes it and go ahead on and lights it, and when it gets most out, he can't go nowhere. He'll have to stay there to watch it. And when it get down low, low - well you burn it three days, you see. Now in the morning you burn that. You light it at six o'clock in the morning, twelve o'clock you light one, and three o'clock you light the other one, you see. That's what you do. And then that's for - that make's he be going - starting to getting sick and droopy - and after that he'll pine jis' away. And he'll stop and say, "Ooh, my head hurt."
Entry 2893
On de job where ah am now, some of de girls burn candles in de service where dey change dere clothes and they say they do that to hold their jobs - to keep luck with the bossman dat dey working with. (What kind of candles do they burn? Have you seen them burn them? They burn them where they change their clothes on the job. In a factory or something of that sort where they work?) A hotel. (And they burn these in the room where they change their clothing. What kind of candles do they burn?) Ordinary candles. (Do they burn them at any special time? Or say anything while they are doing it like that?) They burn de candle and jes' befo' they begin to burn - jes' befo' they light the candle [demonstrates] they carry they han' ovah their head like this and say, "Lord, help me tuh keep luck," an' then they light the candle.
(They make a circle over their head just like a halo.)
That's right. [For a halo rite three times clockwise and three times anti-clockwise with three waters, see p.16, line 1.]
(How long do they burn that candle? Have you any idea?)
Jest about an hour.
(Do they burn these right in the hotel?)
Right in the hotel.
Entry 2905
A pink can'le is lucky - a pink can'le will bring yo' prosperity. A blue candle is fo' health an' prosperity in de home. Black candle is death. Dat's bad - a black candle is bad. An' a white can'le brings a beautiful life - all de way down yo' past life, happy times. (Do you know how people burn these? Any special way?) Yassuh. Now yo' kin burn de can'les and after - when yo' start tuh burn 'em, say, "Name of de Father, Son and Holy Ghost." [Informant makes sign of cross.]
(Cross yourself?)
Yassuh, and after you say that you git down [on your knees] and ask fo' jest whatever yo' want - makes yore wishes, yo' know fo' whatever yo' want and that will sho' bring it tuh yo'. Burning de candle will sho' bring it to yo'. An' then yo' burn on Thursday. Always yo' burns a green candle fo' money, understand. But you always have to make the sign of the cross.
Entry 2907
Ah would buy me a green candle an' burn de green candle an' put mah face to de east an' mah face in de west an' use de holy name Vah seven times - look to de east and look to de west an' use de holy name Vah seven times. [See how she changes 'put mah face to ''look."]
(How do you spell that?)
V-a-h. (vah.) Uh-huh. (When do you burn these green candles - how long?) Now, de ways of burnin' de green candles - ah lights 'em twelve a'clock in de day. See, if ah'm goin' tomorrah tuh git hired, ah'll burn it twelve a'clock - light it twelve a'clock today an' burn it smack up an' go up an' ask fo' me a job. Jis' burn one candle. Jis' lak ah'm goin' tuh work today an' ah want me a job an' ah know where ah'm goin' to, ah jis' burn dat one candle an' go on up an' ast me a job. Use de holy name Vah.
Entry 2916
You could take holy water and sprinkle it around - just like there any- thing that you had that you thought somebody was going to steal it. You take holy water and make nine steps round your article - whatever it was - like it was this here [my record- ing machine on the table between usl and you had an idea that somebody was going to steal it. Just make a circle round that nine times and set a black candle.
(I see. And what do you do? You take nine steps around that?)
Nine circles around that.
(Oh, you make nine circles around it? I see. And then what will that do?)
After you takes your ninth circle, then you light it.
(Light the candle. What will that do?)
That will - they'll be afraid, they won't even come around your house. [For circle or ring as protective device, see Magic Circle, p.123f., Nos. 2197-2198, p.626.]
Entry 2922
Say, when you giving a party and you wanta have luck and success in your party, say, just 'fore your party starts, you get you seven candles. (What kind? What color candles did you say?) Red, and set 'em on your table in a round row [circle] and you light those seven candles. Well, you let 'em stay lit, say about twenty or thirty minutes. Well, you blows 'em out. Well, all right, after the crowd is gone - well, say the party break up at eleven o'clock; just about nine-thirty, well you start 'em burning again and burn 'em about thirty minutes. Say that brings luck and success to you.
Entry 2924
If the pitchure is on a tintype - from my experience, not no paper, on tintype - they can kill you with that. Take and bury it bottom up and [or] then they can take and set it in ink, put nine black candles around it in the shape of a coffin and burn it for nine days. The best time to burn it is at night, whilst you sleep so it gets the spirits on them.
(That's your photograph?)
Yes, on tintype.
(Now, what else do they - for what other purpose do they burn candles?)
To evil?
(Yes.)
To kill a person and put 'em on a drift, you know, have 'em sleepyfied?
(Yes, how would they do that?)
Well, you just takes a red candle.
(A red candle.)
And [or] a black candle. And they burns that candle in ink for nine days, you'll just drift, just drift away, and you don't know what - you don't feel sick or nothing, only just drowsy and sleepy all the time. See. [New Orleans, La., (822), 1187:1+5.].
Entry 2940
If a person is burning a candle against you, you don't know exactly who it is. All right, you get you a deck of new cards. This candle, well you name 'um - you name the candle, just say, like if you take hearts or diamonds or what- ever you want to call it. You run them cards three times - you cut and run 'em three times. Understand? All right. And if it shows up what you running on in them three cuts, you lay 'em down - don't play 'em. It's regular old playing deck of cards like you go to the drug store and buy. You run them three times, the deck, and you lay 'em down and go out about your business. Well, tomorrow, you run 'em three times again, see. And if they running the same thing [you run them the third day], you run 'em nine times - that'll be three days. And if they run the same thing [on the third day], all right you lay 'em there. If they don't run the same thing, it's certain. You understand. If they run the same thing, it's just like if you put your hand on something and knows when something is going on. If you put your hand on and feel it, why you know it's moved; well if it ain't - if it don't move and you got your hand on it and you don't feel it, why you know it ain't moved. So, that's the way that goes.
Entry 2954
If a person is burning a candle against you, the thing to do, if you find it out, is to burn the same kind of candle against him that you think he is burning against you, and that will stall his evil purpose against you, and that will stall your evil purpose against him; and burning the two candles on each other at the same time, it makes neither one of the candles do any harm. [For similar magic see Like Cures Like, p.394, and Similia Similibus in Index.]
Entry 2958
You take and cross two new needles in your head - two new needles in your head and get some holy water, see, and just take that holy water for nine mornings and throw it backwards over your head - over them new needles.
(Over? You just throw it back over the needles?)
Over the needles - over your head.
(I see, and what will that do then?)
That would cause the candle - if the candle been burning, the candle would do no harm. It make it burn out and it wouldn't do you no harm.
Entry 2960
(Tell me about burning that candle now.)
If somebody burning a candle, how to put it out? You could take you some holy water. After you take the holy water - and you goes to work, your head will be hurting you all the time if they be burning that candle. They'll be burning the candle and you take that holy water and you put the holy water - but you gotta go to a two-headed person to find out who is that that burning that candle on you. After they burning that candle on you, you carries that holy water there and after you let that holy water there three nights, that candle'll go out.
(What do you mean that holy water will be let there?)
Put it with the holy water.
[The preceding it means another candle, we learn later.]
(Oh, you put it with the holy water?)
Yes, sir. (And you take this to the two-headed person and you leave it with them three nights?) Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
(Then what do you do with it?)
Then, what he going to - he going to put a candle, another candle, in the cup and burn that candle and have the white of the egg in the bottom of de cup. Just like you'd stick a candle [to the bottom of the cup with egg white instead of melted candle wax] and have de holy water [in the cup], you know. [Candle is often burned in a cup of water.] And when that holy water drain [evaporate] - you put about this much - then, why, the candle'll go out. That why the other candle will go out on you.
Entry 2962
Well, yo' kin take - if yo' see a person's tryin' tuh do yo' anything or somethin' like dat, yo' go an' git chew some holy water and have it blest. See. If you have this holy water blest and bring to yore home, and yo' sprinkle it in each fo' corners of yore house - jes' sprinkle dis holy water in each fo' corners, underneath yore steps an' on yore porch. An' while yo' be's saying dat - well it's a piece in de catechism yo' has to say wit dis holy water, some- thin' about Holy Mary. Yo' sprinkle at each fo' corners of yore house an' dey can't - a person can't burn any candles or can't do anything long as yo' keep dis holy water and keep it sittin' behin' yore bed. (Well, what do they say? How does that piece from the catechism go - Holy Mary?) Well, it's "Hail Mary, conceived without sin, pray fo' me."
(It isn't, "Hail, Mary, full of grace?")
Yeah, it's, "Hail, Mary, full of grace, conceived without sin, pray fo' me."
Entry 2967
Dey say if a person is burning candles on you an' yo' feel - you see it gives you awful headaches and you go fo' days in and days out with headaches, don't chew know, and you turns real dark under yore eyes. Andthenyo'takeand git some matches and stick them in your hair.
(How many did you say you get?)
Three. Stick one like that, one like that, and one like that [demonstrates]. (You make a cross - one match one way and then two crossing it. Put it in your hair and what will that do?) Wear it in your hair - that will outen the candles.
Entry 2968
Well, yo' git it out of a box dat's nevah been used out of. Well, you take three matches and make six halfs, see, an' cross it right at de mole of yore head. It will put 'em out, if dey burning candles on yo'.
Entry 2996
Yo' take yo' St. Espidy, he uses green candles. Yo' take it an' yo' pray ovah it an' yo' askin' St. Espidy, an' yo' rap on it an' he'll give yo' a rap back. Yo' ask St. Espidy fo' a wish an' jes' whut yore heart desires yo'll git.
(How would I go about it? To burn this green candle? From the beginning.)
From de beginnin'. Yo'll take yore green candle an' burn it from six in de mawnin' an' put it out - nine in de evenin' an' put it out. Nine in de mawnin an' yo' put it six in de evenin' again. Yo' burn it from three tuh nine days an yo'll git whut chure heart desires.
(Well, how do you mean you rap for St. Espidy?)
[She raps once - twice - again.]
(Just once? You rap three times. And you burn this green candle from six to nine in the morning and from six to nine at night?) Yes.
(You burn it nine days?)
Yes.
(Do you know anything about St. Espidy?)
Well, St. Espidy, he's very good." He have helped me. He helps me an' when ah wants bread ah call on him an' he brings me a rap [answers by rapping]. Ah heard dat he wus a man dat didn't believe in no evil work, an' he didn't fool roun' wit no kinda evil doin' when he wus on dis scene an' he wus a true man, an' when he died he went tuh heaven.
(Now when he raps back, would he rap three times?)
He jes' raps [she demonstrates three times in diminishing volume].
(Where will he rap - somewhere around the room?)
Yes.
(Then you know you'll have your wish?)
Yes.
Entry 2998
Git St. Expedees up over your door - nail him up over there. Behind that same door you use that pink candle, burn it there.
(Up over the door and behind the same door you burn a pink candle?)
Yes sir, and make your wishes. That's to keep the police away. It will keep 'em away.
(What door do you use for that?)
Let that be the front door.
Entry 3000
St. Espidee is fo' luck an' St. Espidee is fo' unfortunates. Lak if a man is unfortunate, well fo' luck he kin burn a candle. Dey got cup candles dey call 'em. Dey sell dem in cups. Yo' burn a light tuh him eight days. Yo' burn a light tuh St. Espidee eight days an' yo' have some kinda luck in eight days, but dat's providin' if yo' make a promise to him. If yo' make a promise to him fo' luck an' success, he goin' give it to yo'; but if yo' lie to him, he'll take yore success away from yo'. Well, dat's de candle burnt to him dey call de cup candle, an' dat's whut he's fo', luck an' success.
Entry 3001
She's the onliest one what's in that favor. I tell you the saints - they have mighty good saints for the wishes that you wish. They have St. Espedees.
(What is he for?)
For a gambler.
(Well, what would a gambler do for him?)
Well, you see, if you gambling out for money and you're in bad luck, you goes there and you make a novena for nine days; and if you get your wishes, you gotta give it. If it's a dollar you promise, you have gotta give the dollar to it; if's a candle, a dollar candle light you have to give it to him.
(I see.)
Then you get your wishes.
Entry 3002
St. Espidee is fo' gamblers. Yo' take St. Espidee an' yo' gives him anything green, candle or flowers - green flowers or green vegetable. Anything dat is green, yo' give it to St. Espidee fo' [green] money. He's fo' gamblers.
(How, how do you approach him?)
Well, if yo'd go tuh him, yo' prays when yo' go tuh him an' yo'd ask him, say, "St. Espidee ah want chew tuh help me tuh git some money. Ah'm goin' out an' gamble an' if ah be successful an' git dis money, ah will give yo' a bunch of flowers. Or give yo' so much an' so much of somepin green. Ah take de money an' buy it an' give it to yo'." When yo' gits dis money yo' go tuh some church, or if yo' got him in yore house, yo' buys de stuff an' yo' puts it in front of him fo' a sacrifice.
Entry 3003
(St. Espidee is what?)
Is a lawyer. Dat's a case of co't too. Well dey use de candles fo: him an' pray tuh him an' give him a glass of milk if yo' kin give it, or git white rum, an' give him yore case an' he'll plead it fo' yo'. Light a candle an' a glass of milk, or eithah yore rum if yo' kin git it, but yo' cain't git no mo' rum now.
(What kind of color would you light to him?)
A white one to St. Espidee.
(What do you do, put him on the floor, too?)
No, no - yo' leave him right up. He's gotta git up on de stand an' he's gotta talk fo'yo'.
Entry 3006
Saint Expadee - see, he's the conker in law suits.
(How do you handle that?)
Well you go to a Catholic church and you make your novena there, you see. You give a light. You take his picture and have it blest at the church and bring it to your house and you burn a pink candle to it all the time. Whatever you wish for, you prays to that saint and make your wishes and burn [a candle to] that saint - like if you got a case in court and you wanta conker that case. Well, you go to St. Expadee - go to the church and go to St. Expadee and make your novena to him and tell him what you want him to do. Then you come back home after you do that and you burn your candle at your home up until that case is over.
[While machine.is stopped, I ask question about his picture.]
No, you don't bring his picture to the church, you always keep it in your house. You have this picture blest at the church and bring it to your house and have your little altar made and burn a pink candle to him.
Entry 3007
(What do they say about St. Expedite?)
Well, they say St. Expedite is lucky, but you gotta pray to him - certain things you gotta give to him for luck. You gotta have him up in your house and have a little altar-like and burn them little tapers to him for luck. Well, if you make him a promise or anything and don't give it to him, well you falls in bad luck.
Entry 3010
Now, all right, St. Joseph. St. Joseph is a man, yo' uses a light tuh him. Yo' kin take St. Joseph an' use yore man. Write his name three times, yores once to de top, all straight, an' put it in dere [container] wit Toulouse Syrup an' steel dust as ah tole yo', an' use dat cup-light. Yo' kin use de cup- Light on dat, an' put it fo' St. Joseph an' say to St. Joseph, "Father, give St. Joseph power to make me successful in whut ah'm undertakin' tuh do." Now, dat's St. Joseph, an' he will draw dat man to yo' wit dat money. Ah uses dat now.
Entry 3012
Well, you see St. Michael - that's if a person don't like you and is trying to undermine you all the time, and you don't know they are working on you. Well you pray to St. Michael and you sets him a candle. You see, he got the devil down under his feet. Now, he holding the devil down just like this - he got his feet on the devil and he got a long sword and he got that in the devil's head. Well, if you pray to that saint, he showing you how he got the devil down there; if you pray to him, that is the way he'll have your enemies down under your feet. They will have to knuckle under you, instead of you knuckling under them. (I see. What do you usually use for St. Michael? Do you have a statue or a picture of him?) It's a statue - a real statue.
(Do you burn any colored candle to St. Michael?)
You burn a red candle.
(You burn a red candle.)
On Friday.
(Just on Friday?)
Just on Friday. [For black candle on Friday, see p.829.]
(Any special time on Friday?)
Any time on Friday before six-thirty.
(I see. In the morning or at night?)
In the morning. You can set 'em all day if you Wants to, you know, but I mean six-thirty - that's the last hour you can set it in the evening.
(I see. Do you do anything else besides burning that candle?)
No, that's all - just burn that candle and make that prayer.
Entry 3013
(What do they say about St. Michael?)
Well, St. Michael wus de archangel. He wus one of de angels dat cast Lucifer out of heaven. He wus one of de great archangels, an' anywhere yo' got a devil aroun' yo' or think yo' got a evil spirit or anything aroun' yore house, yo' pray tuh St. Michael an' he'll help yo'. Yo' says de Lord's Prayer nine times an'yo call St. Michael's name, an'every time yo' say de Lord's Prayer yo' call his name. an' axe him tuh help yo'.
(Do you use anything or burn anything special to him?)
Yes, yo' burn a pink candle tuh St. Michael. No, he ain't got no special day
[I probably asked about time] - jes' any day.
Entry 3020
Most every home you go in, you be looking up to see saints over the door. Now, some people use a little glass like this, but it's about that high. They burns a candle in there, you understand. The candle is about that big: (A large candle?) A large candle about that [high]. (Like they have in the Roman Catholic Church - those little fat candles in little colored blue and red glasses?) Yes, red glasses. Now, them is for if you out of a job. You use one of them at a picture they call Mother Catherine.
(Mother what? Mother Catherine?)
Yeah, Catherine. Now, you put that - put that saint there and put that candle there. You got the saint up over the candle, you see, when that burns.
(You have the saint right over the candle?)
You see, this light is supposed to give life to the saint. (Wait a minute! When that is lighted it is supposed to give life to the saint?) To make him awake, you understand. You see, the saint ain't no good if you don't burn this light.
(The saint is no good unless you burn that light?)
Unless you burn that light. See, that gives life to the saint. Now, on this side you ought to have a green piece of grass - you know, like you use on All Saints Day. You use what you call palmetto - not palmetto but it's a green leaf. They use that right on the side.
(Palm leaf?)
The palm leaf. You see, you use that on the side so the saints - you know, most of the saints got a piece of green in his hand and this here green that you use would give affection [reflection or sympathy] to the green that he has in his hand. [Your piece of green is opposite green in statue or picture.] And this candle keeps life in him, and make it work, you understand.
(Well, in particular what is the candle burned for?)
If you are out of a job or you want a job or if you are in need. And you using this here through the power of God and this saint, it let you increase something every day to live off of. That what you burn this candle for.
Entry 3023
And the Mother of Perpetual Help, she opens the way, she gives you bread when you got children like I have - she opens the way for you to have suc- cess. Well, you give her a blue candle - that's for children. And you pray twice a day to her - at twelve o'clock sure and in the morning. And whatever you promise her when you get your wish, why you give her that.
Entry 3027
You burns a pink candle to her on Wednesdays and Thursdays and Mondays.
(You mean to the Virgin Mary?) [See comment later.]
Yes, sir.
(What do you do that for?)
For help.
(For help. Do you do anything else? I mean besides burning the candle?)
No more than that and repeat the Lord's Prayer. That's all you do to her.
(Each time you burn the candle?)
Yes, sir. Every time you light the candle, you say the Lord's Prayer.
(I see. Just once?)
Just once. [It is evident I wanted to be certain that informant was talking about the Virgin Mary. Here is a woman listed '35' and "good' in Nzonbers Book 647-822, and advanced to the mark "excellent on the transcription. A final reading of the complete interview caused me to label every page "woman spiritualist" - the latter word also meaning a spiritual. I have discussed this perpetual problem of religious syncretism in the Introduction.]
Entry 3031
St. Peter, he'll open the door for you.
(Well, how would you do that? What would you do for St. Peter?)
St. Peter, you carry him a key.
(Where? To the church or?)
Yeah, to the church. But if you got a key to your house - and you tell St. Peter to open the door for you, you give him that key. Well, you've got to give him that key. And if you tell St. Raymond to do good for you, you give him a flower or piece of money - dime like that, you give him that. Whatever promise you make him, you got to give it to him though; and if you don't, he take it away from you.
(Where do you buy these keys to give St. Peter?)
You have to buy it from the store. But don't let nobody use that key, but get that key and buy that key yourself.
(You can't buy those keys at the church then?)
No, you can't buy them at the church. (Now, if they have these saints at home, how would they do - what would they do wi th them at home?) They takes 'em and puts them on the mantelpiece - sometimes they puts 'em on the mantelpiece, sometimes they have a little altar. You know what an altar is. Well they have a little altar and they have a candle at each one of those saints, burning in there.
Entry 3041
(For St. Peter. Tell me how you do that.)
Well, ah gives him a light. Ah gives him a light an' pray to him an' makes an offer tuh him an' takes him down [from the mantelpiece or wall] an' turn him upside down an' give him a red candle. Put it up 'side de wall anywhere or down on de flo'. Turn him upside down, an' give him a red candle an' throw a glass of watah in his face, an' go 'head on to co't. Dat's de co't case now, if it ain't serious. But if it's serious, yo' gotta work harder yo' know - yo' gotta start in time. But ah kin take St. Peter down dis mawnin' an' yo' goin' tuh co't an' ah kin make it easy.
Entry 3046
Ah know somepin 'bout St. Raymond. St. Raymond is de saint he's lucky fo' money: Some people makes a novena to him fo' nine Tuesdays, Thursdays an Saturdays. Dey gives him a green candle, if dey use a candle. If yo' want flowers, yo' gives him any kind of flowers. He's fo' money.
(You make that on nine Tuesdays?)
Nine Tuesdays fo' St. Raymond, or nine Thursdays, or nine Saturdays. Them his days. Yo' burn it [candle] straight, lak yo' would go into a church [and burn it] or anything - jes' lak yo' buy it in a sto', where yo' see de wick at, yo' jes' put a match to it an' light it. But chew don't blow de match out. See, take yore han' an' dampen it wit some spit, eithah one, an' mash it out. Yo' don't blow no light out when yo' light it lak dat, see.
(Where do you burn this candle?)
Right in front of St. Raymond [in your home].
Entry 3047
You burn a green candle to St. Raymond. You take your green candle and you got St. Raymond on your altar and you sit the green candle before the saint and then you make your wishes to him. If you want a job - and you want the boss to give you a job, if you know his name, you take his name and you write it down nine times. You get some cinnamon and you get some parsley and you get some of this garlic and you pound that all up together and you put that in. Put it before your candle, right in front of the'candle where your saint's at and burn that, and he'll give you a job and like you. You burn it before St. Raymond. You can use a green candle. Use the same green candle for him, that the onliest kind of candle to use. You burn a white candle for peace.
Entry 3056
(Well now, tell me about St. Rita.)
Well, you know, St. Rita, she don't like no man.
(Yes.)
Cause her husband was a man, you know.
(I see.)
Cause he deceived her when she had a son for him. She don't like no man. She do anything for a woman, won't do anything for a man.
(I see.)
All you have to do, get you St. Rita's pitchure in your house, and get you a white candle and put the candle there and put flowers there, and go there every morning and ask her to do it for you for nine mornings, and she'll do it. Give her money though, flowers too, and she'll do anything you ask her to do - don't care what it is.
Entry 3065
(The Sacred Heart you say?)
De Sacred Heart of Jesus, yo' prays tuh him if yo' wants. Lak yo' got con- fusion in yore house an' yo' wants peace. Yo' gives de Sacred Heart of Jesus a red candle on Monday, Wednesdays an' Fridays, or yo' give him a red light. Yo kin buy these cups whut chew burns these lights in an' yo' gives him a red light, but it must be Monday, Wednesdays an' Fridays. Dat's de Sacred Heart days.
Entry 7377
If you know his name. [A pause.]
(Yes?)
[This tells informant to continue.]
You get a candle. De man dat he killed, know 'is name. Get yo' a bo'd[sounds like boat but is board] about so long an' a bran'-new needle an' stick dat needle undah dere an' take dat candle an' an indelible pencil. Write his name dis way an' yourn dat way. (Wait! You write one from the bottom and one from the top?) Dat's right. Den light de candle each en'. (Light it from each end.) [This may be my only example.] An' den dey [2 ends of candle] meet togethah. An' let 'em burn togethah. Dat'll draw 'im, jes' draw 'im back.
(I see. Now, wait a minute. Here's your board.)
[I demonstrate.]
Lak dere [the way you have placed the board]. (You get a needle, a new needle, and stick it into this board. Then you put this candle horizontally on that needle.) Dat's right.
(And you write his name once, and the murderer's name at one end of the candle.)
Ovah de othah, yeah.
(Then you light both ends at once and burn them up together.)
Dat's right.
(And that man that did the killing will come back.)
He's comin' back.
(I see.)
Dat's drawin 'im back.
Entry 10187
You git choo a white candle. You put it in a half a glass of water [to serve as a candlestick and precaution against fire]. You light it every night at 9 a'clock. You say, I see no evil, I hear no evil, no evil overtake me, an' think what I told, you pin on you. That's for the law away too: I see no evil, I hear no evil, no evil over- take me. An' yo' let that candle burn a half a hour. You burn that every night. That's to keep the law away. An' then you git 9 safety pins, you understand. Sou you put 'em in each shoe, nine in each shoe, an' if there's one [anyone] happens to come to try to worry you, you cut you a Irish potato half in two an you make 4 parts [by cutting each half into 2 parts]. You take that, you go outdoors an' you throw a piece to the east - that potato be in 4 parts - an' yo throw a piece to the west, an' you throw a piece behind you, an' keep the other [fourth or last piece] on you.
Entry 10197
Yo' kin take candles if yo' want luck in yore house. Yo' kin take it an' burn it, burn it at de length of time, wit chure saltpetah an' some cinnamon an' sugar. Dat will bring yuh luck.
(Where do you put these ingredients?)
In a saucer an' den put chure candle on top of it. [Or fix candle in center and ingredients around it.]
Entry 2790
You see, you take a - that's right, if you couldn't get the name - if you could get the name, you could make 'em bring it back. (Well, how would you do it then, if you got the name?) If you could get the name, you see, you take their name and you write it down nine times and you set it - you fold the paper to you just like this [demonstrates]. Take the corners of the paper and fold it to you, fold the name to you and then you put it up under that candle and burn it; and before nine days go, he be back with it.
(What color candle do you burn for that?)
You burn a green candle for that too.
(Well, why do you burn a green candle?)
Well, they do's the work more quicker than the white - than those other can- dles. The black candles, they for death."
Entry 2988
Take some matches and put in your head across, a little salt, a little ammonia and rub it in the middle of your head. And if you want them candles to go out, you wear your clothes on the wrong side. Every piece you got underneath, excusin' the top, you wear em on the wrong side and the candle'll go out. Well, you can tell when someone knows the candle's burning on 'em, when they take and change their clothes. Just like the candle was burning on you, you come and you say, "Oh, my head hurts me so bad." I say, "Someone is burning a black candle on you. I say, "Put your clothes on the wrong side." You'll change your clothes and when you start to change your clothes, the candle goes - start to popping. The candle don't go out. You keep your clothes on there and put that salt in your head, them two matches like a "x" in your head, and in that way the candle will go out. And if you don't wear your clothes on the wrong side, them candles is not going - they going to burn 'em until you die.
Entry 14
Ah take de name of de party who havin' spells so terrible it seems tuh be. Ah write dat name seven times, either seven or nine, but then this is a prayin' job now. When ah write that name seven times ah prays de seven prayers - de same prayer seven times an' in less than nine hours he'll 'bout come tuh life.
(What prayer - any particular prayer?)
Yessuh. Dis pa'tic'lar prayer, dat's in a secret prayerbook.
(You take any prayer you Want to choose?)
Yessuh, yo' kin look through an' see which is de best one fo' sech case, accordin' tuh whatevah yo' likely tuh pray on. [Thinking he had finished I stopped my machine - he repeats a line or two of prayer.] Dat's page 51 though mostly.
(It's a prayer of the Episcopal Church, isn't it?)
Yessuh. [The secret prayerbook was The Book of Common Prayer - certainly not from page 51, which begins with The Thanksgiving of Women after Child-birth; probably one of Collects from page 49.] Dat's a gurontee tuh put a person in a house if they wanta git in there. Well, we take dis pink luck success an' de white luck success an' have them tuh pass an' break a bottle in front of de do' an' in de next six or seven days de house is his, if it's no one in it.
(Where do you get this luck success?)
At de Crackerjack Drug Sto' down heah at - dat's where ah deals at mostly. An' though ah nevah did desire to handle so much of de mean stuff, but some- times yo' have tuh do those mean things tuh git at the good ones. An' ah uses de hair of a white person into a colored person's ear fo' dizzy haids, an' ah use a colored person's hair into de white person's haid fo' dizzy haids. Sometime dey think yo're bumin' candle on 'em. [In the New Orleans area dizzy head is usually caused by someone burning a candle on you - see Headache in Index.] So ah take a little of de white person's hair, about say an' inch, an' stick in his [colored person's] ear, or ah'll take de colored person's hair an' put it in de white person's ear - [claps hands once] jes' dat quick [the dizziness leaves]. [For Negro hair in white person's ear as earache cure, see FACI,2ed., p.201; 1st ed., p.241.] Well, about burning de candle on jah - tuh put de candle out, ah take rivah watah, rain watah an' ditch watah or well watah, anything lak dat, jes' so it's three watahs mixed together, an' ah pass dat ovah dere haid three times dis way an' den three times de othah way an' make him wash his haid good wit it, an' it seems tuh been workin' out very well so fur. [Many doctors and spirituals in the New Orleans area make their holy water - usually they bless it - this three-waters rite being one way of making it.] (You bring that water over his head three times forward and three times back- ward?) Dat's right.
(What will that do about that candle then?)
Well, it supposed tuh put it out. Yo' git relief to de haid. [For other methods to put out candle, see Candle in Index.] Use a green candle, at least ah does, on Mondays an' Wednesday an' Fridays fo' success. Dat green candle dat's mo' fo' success. An' den with the green candle - yo' doesn't light the candle with a match, yo' git van-van [a hoodoo perfune]. Dat's whut ah use, van-van, an' put a little in de saucer an' light de van-van an' hold de candle to dat, an' den make yore prayer, whatevah wish yo' wanta make, an' den set dat dere an' yo' supposed tuh have a success from Monday up to Saturday. Burn dat Monday, not de same candle dough - burn dat whole one out Monday, an' de whole one out agin Wednesday, an' de whole one out Friday. An' den Saturday yo'll have a success in receiving a payment, if it's nuthin' but a little job in order to make a dollah or so.
(Do you light that candle at any particular hours?)
On Monday yo' light it at six a'clock, an' on Wednesdays yo' light it at nine a'clock, an' on Fridays at twelve a'clock noon [light them with the growing Of the day].
(That is just for general success?)
Yessuh. If someone is fixed an' dey husban' an' wife doesn't agree at home very well ah have them tuh burn a white candle - if dey kin burn it in dere home. Some of 'em, dey cain't burn it in de home - ah'll burn dat fo' dem. Ah'll have dem tuh hold de candle an' ah ask God tuh bless it, an' den let dem burn dat. Dat's tuh make de husban' an' wife agree an' stop squabblin' an' goin' on. Dat's de white candle.
(Do you burn that at any special time?)
Yessuh - ah burns that at three a'clock.
(Any special day, I mean.)
Yessuh - fo' peace, ah burns dat on Tuesday.
(If he has left, this is to bring him back?)
Yessuh - if he's gone an' yo' have de picture of him, well, dey take it an' turn it against de wall. Turn de face of de picture against de wall an' write his name nine times an' put it in de bottle, an' put essence of van-van on dere with the same amount of Floridy [Florida] watah, an' shake dat an' set it down on de flo' undah de picture, jes' lak de pictures up dere an' yo' set dat bottle undah dere. An' ever' time yo' shake it, it'll upset his mind till he returns. Dat's been proven. Ah don' wanta talk nuthin' dat ain't been proven. (In writing that man s name down nine times, how do you mean you write it - just one name right after the other?) No, suh - write this this way three times. Swing yore papah roun' an' write it de whole six times. De first three times yo' write it right straight that Way, an' den whirl it ovah again an' den write it six times. Dat'll return him back. Then yo' fold dat good an' keerful an' put it in de bottle an' put de Floridy watah an' de same amount of Floridy, yo' put that amount of van-van. Dat's de essence of van-van. An' when yo' shake that, well, no doubt it may be three or fo' days befo' de party returns - depend on de distance dey are. But when they shake that until the papah come aloose, it's okay. An' if he's a long [distance] we gen'ral'y write that with red ink an' that returns him.
(Can you give me a little account of your work - about that healing?)
Mostly a healer, dat's mostly whut ah am, a healer. When it come tuh lawsuits or any othah little home upset, well, ah jes' makes dat ovah. But mah main work is a healer. Ah gen'ral'y do de most of mah work wit mah necked [naked] han'. If a person come tuh me wit a pain in dey laig or dey arm, anywhere, ah lay dat han' on 'em an' pray, an' rub up in it an' he git up an' go 'way, say in about three minutes. Dat's mah main work. [Rub up instead of down is unusual.]
(You use an altar you say. Do you do anything with the altar?)
No suh, ah jes' stan's in front of de altar. (Do you wear any costume or anything of that sort when you are doing that work?) Nuthin' but de beads - prayer beads [he shows a rosary].
(With the little cross on them.)
Yessuh, dat's right.
(Do you wear anything on your head?)
Nuthin' but a little cap - a little black cap.
(Like a littie skull cap?)
Yessuh. (How did you get your power to do these things? Did someone teach it to you or were you initiated into it or were you just born that way?) [This is not a leading question; I had asked it too often - the answer always being the same.] Jes' nachally bo'n dat way - nevah went tuh school nary a minute in mah life. (This man who was just in here is a healer. He only knew a few things to tell me, but he might be a good contact man. End of 1578.)
Entry 417
Go to the graveyard at midnight. But chew have to go by yourself and you take a penny. You got'a give 'em, take something with you 'cause then - when you go walk round the grave two or three times see, around the head and you walk round the foot two or three times. And then you go back - well, about nine times all together, and then you kneel down. But yo' have to put yore hand - dig down, put chure hand in and git the dirt from this, right off the coffin. See. But then, when you do that, you have to leave a penny or some vinegar or something.
(Why vinegar?)
Well, that's to keep the spirit from hurting you. You kin even have whiskey on you, see, to keep the spirits from harming you; you see, so they don't be disturbed [see Spirits and alcohol, in Index]. Course ah never did this but ah -
(I know, you are just telling me what you heard.)
And then when you go out, if you don [leave a gift] when you git to that gate, they will rassle [wrestle] with your soul. Even if you call spirits in here now, you make a circle and call spirits; you'd have to fortify that circle, because if you don't - course you do that around twelve 'clock at night. You fortify that circle. You kin call the spirits and when you - they scare yuh to death, but if you fortify it and sit inside that they can't harm you.
(How would you fortify that circle, then?)
Well, you have to make crosses you see - make a circle for yourself to sit in. And then you make a gate like and you put - make a cross there and then you have to use holy oil and holy water and candles, and then you set inside of it and then you can call de spirits and sit there quiet and pray and they'll come. But you has to have a dozen candles. [Washington, D. C. (627), 804:2.]
Entry 2544
First is incense powder. Dey takes dat and dey burn it and den dey takes - ah don't know where dey git dat, but dey takes a Lucky Star. What dey call a Lucky Star. Dey split dat star in half and dey takes a little birthday candle - little bita birthday candles, den they puts it on each part of this star and let chew burn dat in dey home. Dat's to keep de police away. Now I hear'd several people say it worked very good, but still de police don't [stop]. (But now that burning the incense and the star. There are two different ways of doing that?) Yes, dere's two diff'rent ways of doing it, but de Lucky Star supposed to be de best.
(What is the Lucky Star?)
Det git de Lucky Star at Savannah, Georgia - back in dat time from a woman on Miner Street. Dey called her Lizzie H. Yes, Mrs. H. Ah think she gets de Lucky Stars somewheres around Cincinnati, if I understood it.
(What did they look like?)
Jest looked like a little round something but they had four [five?] corners - which dey called Lucky Stars.
(Well, were they made out of metal or cardboard or what?)
No, it gots a something like a powder but it's hard, see - it was diff'rent from de incense powder. Twas a powder too, but it was diff'rent from the incense and then it smelled diff'rent. It smelled kinda sweet.
Entry 2550
They burns a - they got something - sweeps your house in de morning. Just like you done business in here, you sweeps your place out - sweep all your dirt, all your trash one way. You mop it, you mop it all one way and then you got some little old incense candles. You burn one in that corner and one in that corner, one in that corner and one in that corner, and one on your cash register.
[Here five candles form an approximate quincunx - see p.710.]
(I see. And how do you mean by sweeping this dirt one Way?)
All one way - don't never sweep nothing back thataway, sweep it all one way. Just like you going thisaway with it, sweep it all that Way and mop it the same way.
(I see. And what do you do with that stuff after you get it swept up?)
Sweep it right on out de door. (Sweep it outside the door? Do you sweep it to the front of the house or to the back of the house?) Right on out de front. (Out the front, I see. And you burn these incense candles in each of the four corners of the room where you are doing business and put one on cash register?) One right on the register.
(And that is supposed to bring in trade?)
Bring in trade.
Entry 2742
It's a gift - ah been doin' it all mah life. (This woman [an author] says that down there when a doctor of this type has any disciples or anybody he is teaching - when they are initiated - Do they have some sort of initiation ceremony? Or something like that?) Yeah, they have that shore. (Do you know anything about what they do?) Well, ah tell yo'. Now we have - ah have had a school right to here. People say they are gifted - they got a gift. Well, ah'll try 'em to see if dey kin see it - to see if they know anything. Well, if ah see the same thing they say they see, den ah know they have a gift. Well, den ah'll go on a'develop 'em. I'll even show 'em articles in de Bible to read to git dereself in dat position. [See my biblical comment p.361.] Yo' see, then after they study that and they know it fluently - and den ah write down to de Temple an' git a diploma an' give 'em, see. Den dey kin go about an' use de Temple's name.
(Where is this Temple by the way?)
St. John's Temple. That's what we call a great hoodoo place. You will find that when you go down there. You jest ask anybody and they say it's one of the largest places there of its kind.
(They teach there? Is it a church or what?)
Yeah, it's like a church and dey have a lot of understudies and they heal there. They do everything. An' people go dere. They have more white than they do colored. (Did you ever hear that in these initiations they have a altar and burn can- dles and that sort of thing?) Oh yes, I have the same thing. Ah have it now at mah place.
(Sort of an altar?)
Yeah, ah have a altar wit saints and candles and oils and different things.
(If I came around to see you, would you let me see them?)
Sure ah let chew see - sure. You come around and yo' kin see it any time. Ah'm dere every day but Sunday.
(Do you have a special room or something of that sort?)
I have a whole basement downstairs - whole basement wit all mah business in it. Ah have one at de church too. You kin come to mah church sometime and you will see how ah perform.
(Yes, where is your church?)
Things ah knows from mah own experience.
[He conveniently missed my question. I do not repeat it.]
(All right suppose you tell me one of those.)
Dey take your photograph and dey turn it upside down and take a pink light and burn it to it fer nine nights and nine days, and dat will worry your mind. Maybe dis woman or somepin dat love you - it would cause your mind to keep coming on her all de time. Yes, she can. Dis woman she takes his name and she write his name nine times, she write her name nine times across this. And then she takes a pink light and she turns this light on top of this piece of paper. When de drippings of dis candle covers this full name then he will be back. Well, you would take St. Anthony. You would take St. Anthony and you would take three lights which would be a green one, a black one and a yellow one, and you would burn this light every night and every morning until these lights burn down completely. That would relieve you or your mind.
(If someone was trying to harm me. Well, what do you do about St. Anthony?)
St. Anthony, dat's a saint. Why you take him and burn dese three lights to him and ask him to....
(Oh, you have a picture of him?)
Oh, yeah, a picture of dis saint. You take St. Peter. St. Peter is a saint that is used fo' all thieves. Yo' take a brass key and you put dis key in de Bible and then you call names. Any- body that lives in dis house and yo' suspicion that anyone in this house did dis crime. Yo' call dere name and de Bible will tell you. It will turn on de one dat stole these things when you call de name, de Bible will turn an' fall.
(Well, what do you do with that St. Peter?)
St. Peter is on a picture. You only stand him and light a light, jest a white candle, and then use dis big brass key which is de one dat gives yo' de secrets to thieves.
(I see - you put that in the Bible.)
Say they have a thing that they call guinea seeds - supposed to control and give you power. You take one of those seeds and chew it up fine and jest as you about to enter and start to talking to this party, you spit this three times in front of 'em and say to yourself what chew want them to do. And they claim that they have to do these things.
(That is used when you are going to get a job.)
Now dey claim fer frogs - in order to have someone that chew wanta trick - put frogs in 'em - you take a frog and you will boil him. After you boil him you take this water and they claim that nine drops of this water into your drinking Water will create frogs to be crawling inside of you.
(Is there any way to get those frogs out?)
The only way to get 'em out would be jest the same way as they got 'em in. Well, in other words, dey say they'd boil de water for you to drink, and well dey would boil more water for you to drink again and den de frogs would come back [out]. [For Doctor Sims, see No. 34, p.23, and Index.]
Entry 2745
To bring in trade or any kind of congregation, you get what they call the Adam-and-Eve root, place that in the front of your door. Then you go to work and get what they call Louisiana hoodoo dust and put that under yore doorsill. Then you go to work and git what they call the good and evil candle and place that at twelve 'clock in the night in your front door with your door closed and burn it. And with the Eqyptian incense and by reading the 37th division of the Psalms of David, reads as follows, "Fret not yourself because of evildoers, be thou not envious in the works of iniquity and so forth. Why each night if you do that three times a week, you will have trade for thirty days.
(What do you do with this incense?)
Burn it.
(While you are reading the Bible?)
Yes, jest light it - light it iest befo' you start de reading.
(Where do you get this Louisiana dust?)
Wal, yo' kin write to - ah don't know her address - Louisiana - New Orleans, Louisiana.
(And she will send you this dust.)
I know fer mahself from an experience in 1923.
(Where was this experience?)
Heah in Washington, right heah. My first wife, we were living at 217 "E" Street, N. W., Washington, and she said to me on a Saturday - she had been invited out fo' dinnah next do'. She wanted me to go there with her an' I refused. Any- way she went. Sunday - that Sunday - [she] came back home [Saturday] - that Sun- day night she got in bed. On Monday morning between 9:30 and 10 'clock I had to rush her to Garfield's Hospital. And with them taking her to the hospital on that Monday morning, of having several specialists to examine her, to give her a thorough examination from time to time, and each one of them said that her body showed as though it was normal from start to finish. Well, her mother said that it was a spell. Later on, the one that she had taken dinner with begin to talk and tell other people about what she had done. And she said this, that she'd taken the skin of a frog and put it in a pan and cooks it real crisp and powders it up and give it to her in coffee and that was the cause of her sickness and also her death. Dr. Fowler, being at the time the head surgeon of the doctorical staff of the District, he give a thorol examination and said that he couldn't locate or tell what her disease was - even up to her death. I noticed on the night - on Saturday night - like she died Sunday morning, I was there at the hospital all that night. I notice between the skin and her flesh there were the figure of frogs. Her eyes begin to turn yellowish - de white of her eyes and her head. She suffered with very severe pains. After the doctors couldn't find out, even by taken a picture - they said her heart were perfect, her stomach perfect, her liver perfect, kidneys perfect - her whole system. But by the misery being in her head, dey couldn't figure or tell whether it might have been a form of an abscess somewhere on the tissue of the brain. So after her death they asked permission of holding an autopsy on her brain, and when they did that why they said that her brain were normal. Well, it goes on to show me that the fruits of the thing that which she [the other woman] had said that she had done was true. Later on ah begin to seek into such [the truth of hoodoo]. I goes to Alexanderia, Va., to a woman by de name of Cely Coles, and begin to seek information 'long dose lines. An' she says to me, she says, "It's true just what she said she done." That was itl But if you had obtained or had of went to work and taken some sulphur, table salt and alum and made a solution out of it, or made a little drink and give her nine tablespoons- ful, why she would have passed them from her and she would have gotten well.
[To remove 'live things conjured into the body, see pp.227-239 and Index.]
(After you found out these things, what happened after that?)
Well, ah came back. Wasn't anything that I could do then - jest to give it up in de hands of God. But I was glad to know these things. And then later from self experience - for mahself - ah had went to what we call a donkey party.
(What is that?)
That's jest the figure of a donkey made up into a picture of some kind and then you buy a whole lotta tails and then you take chances, see. And de one dat pin dose tails in the proper or nearest the proper place, they get the prize. Ah goes to dis donkey party - it was for the benefit of the St. Paul Baptist Church - an' while being there they were serving refreshments or selling refresh- ments and I bought some of them. An' after I had bought a glass of lemonade and drank it, I goes home and nine days from dat day I had hairy worms in my stomach. Now the cause of that was the oil out of the skin of a frog created those worms. A man ovah heah on tenth street at de time - I were carried to him and he give me medicine fo' that. Later on I found out jest what to do to prohibit those things. It matters not what a person might be hurt with, matters not what chew walk ovah, and if they come to be alive in you, you can take a silver dime or a silver dollar and take a fine file and file off part of it and boil it and take a tea- cupful of it. It will remove it one way or the other [above or below]. [See also, pp.484-493.] Not only that, we have a way to tell, there is a way to tell, even if you have just a weakness, whether you are hurt or not. And the way that is, is by taking a salt mackerel fish and bind it wheresomever that weakness is, with the head up and the tail down, and that misery will then become a terrific terror there. You will know then that it's no need of taking any medical doctor's [Doctor of Medi- cine's] treatment. You will have to seek other sources. Well, ah know at mah home town - Richmond, Virginia - there were an' ole lady by the name of Mary Moody lived on Green Street. That's in the east end.
(I've heard of her.) [Her name is somewhere in the text.]
Mary Moody. In other words there Was a woman lived in my neighborhood by the name of Lucy Williams. I leave Coatesville, Pa., an' I goes home and she becomes jealous or envious of me because I wouldn't go or keep company with none of her daughters. She goes to work, she did, an' taken one of those square halfa pint whiskey bottles used to be [before Prohibition] - Sherwood bottles. Comes to my father's house and my mother used to be fond of her, used to let her do all of her washing at times, and she'd taken a part of my underclothes, the seat of them, and a part of my left sock and carried it off with some different roots. Ah don't know what de roots was, but those different roots she packed in that bottle and she dressed it with still water - poured it in this bottle.
(What do you mean by still water?)
Water that she had let stand fer a certain length of time. And she dressed that nine days before she buried it, and when she buried it, she buried it in the pathway that leads from my mother's house to her well, that I might walk over it. An I become - begin to go over towards my left side and dwindling away to noth- ing without a ache or pain. An' mah father he'd taken me to Mary Moody. Mary Moody wanted her pichure and mah father happened to have one the pichures on a tintype in the home. An' he'd taken that and she said to him, says, "Now, you go back home and plow up your pathway from your house to your well and when you find this bottle," she said, "bring it to me." An' he did so. An' when he did that, why she'd taken it and drew that Lucy Williams pichure from de other one on a sheet and put this bottle behind it and shot it. She said, "Now, when yo' git back home, the same thing that yore son have on him, she will have on her and she cant git rid of it." An' that happened.
(What did she shoot this bottle with?)
With a pistol - a real pistol. (She drew this picture on a piece of paper and put it up before this bottle and shot through the paper and broke the bottle?) Yes.
(How long ago did that happen?)
That's been - that was in 1916. It's a man lives - he lives in Beaver Falls [Pa.] too - 606 Eighth Avenue. He don't keer if you give a policeman his address, he's iest that smart. He takes - he has five spools, spools what thread come off, takes three needles and run through 'em - that little hole in those spools.
(He puts the three needles right through the spools.)
If the street is coming this way in front of his house, he sets one object to that corner, one obiect at this corner, and one where you turn in off the street to go in de front of his door - with the one at each corner is pointing straight up and down the street.
(You mean this spool is pointing straight up and down the street.)
That's right. The one what enters the door pointing in an' out the door, and he has the two at the back the same way that the two at the first two corners are. An' he gits up and calls on de four winds - five waves of de water with the speech that he makes telling these people - it matters not who it is - to keep on passing his door. Dey would come round an' start to his door and their mind change and they walk right on away. Right today he has two stills turning out round about 90 gallons of whiskey each. (Now here's the street going by his house. On the corner of the street here and this corner of the street are the two spools - they are turned this way, the holes are turned this way [parallel to the street passing house]. Then you come to his house and the [third] spool is turned with the holes going this way - toward his house. And then where does he put - he puts these remaining two spools at his back door?) At the back corners of his house, yes. (And the holes in these spools are parallel with that of his house [the third spool]. He just passes these three needles through each of these holes. He doesn't do anything with the needles.) Man in Norfolk, Virginia, he was telling me one day, said that if you want a person to die, dat you take one of those cut nails.
(Those square nails?)
Square nails and take and carry it to a green tree on Sunday morning and you stump it [start the nail into the tree] and each morning for nine mornings go there and hit it, and you tap that together, and then the ninth morning, the ninth day you drive it up to the head. After that nine mornings, he said that person going crazy - drifting.
Entry 2751
In the year of 1928 I was going with a married man. Quite natural I knowed that was wrong and she found it out and she sent a bottle there to my house - and my brother was sitting on the porch. And so when I come home from work that evenin' the bottle was there. And so the bottle had water in it, I imagine. My mother told me not to open it. It had a lot of needles and a stopper and a cord- string tied up as if, you know, to hold the stopper out of the water - just a plain long beer bottle [probably a dark bottle]. So my mother had taken it up to a woman what, you know, knew.
(Where was this bottle?)
It was at my house - it was down by the washstand. They had give it to - the woman had give it to my brother, see. And my brother went and give it to my mother and my mother set it down in my room by the washstand and so she told me when I come home to go there and get the bottle. So, finally, I had a fear run over me and besides, about it, I never believed in this kind of stuff until this come about. And so after she told me to go and get the bottle, I went and opened [I wanted to open] it - I said, "Mama, this bottle is suspicious." She says, "Well, don't open it." I say, "Yes, Ma, I is, I'm not afraid." She said, "Don't you open it." And she taken the bottle and went on up to a woman's house with the bottle and she told the woman. The woman told my mother to take the bottle and empty it in a bayou of water or stream of water. See. So I went to Tallulah to work. I left from away from there after I thought I was going to get hurt, you know. I left home anyway and I went to Tallulah.
(Where is that?)
Tallulah, Louisiana. [About 25 miles west of Vicksburg, Mississippi.]
(All right.)
I worked over there. And after I went over, she sent me a little envelope with sand or something inside of another little envelope about dis long, and she said on there, "Six months from today your grave number will be 65 - six months from today." Well, I got scared and I was a person that never did like to tell my friends nothing about that. In fact I didn't believe in it. So I commenced to pining away and then I was losing my mind. People here in Vicksburg can shore tell you here in Vicksburg that I really lost my mind. So a friend of mine had mentioned it to a friend of mine, and she told me about a fellow. I don't know whether he's black or white. He stays in New Orleans, his name is B. B. McConnick. He stays over in Algiers. And I wrote him concerning about it. And after he wrote in a letter and told me about a dream I had. I believed in what he was telling me to do.
(Did you have a dream?)
I had a dream that I - there was some money in a old empty house for me. [For dreams of buried treasure, see 387, p.116; 426, p.127; etc.] And after I wrote this man like she [the girl] told me to write him, why he was telling that, and I was - and that's what made my belief come that he'd know what he was talking about - why I believed in what he told me to do.
(Now, wait. You had this dream and you told this man in Tallulah?)
No, I ain't told no one about it - this dream - nobody know nothing about this dream but my family folks - about this dream and the money in the house.
(I see.)
And after I told this friend of mines over there [in Vicksburg] about this woman had done sent me this stuff, and I was sick and stayed sick, well she told me about this man.
(I see - the man in Algiers?)
In Algiers - his name was Mr. B. B. McConnick. I don't know whether he is black or white. And so I wrote him and he wrote me a letter back and told me to send him $5.75 and he explained in the letter about the dream I had. Well, I believed in him, see. So I sent the money to him. I sent the money to him and he sent me a self-addressed stamp [envelope for the money]. And he sent me and told me what to do, and he sent me black candles and he told me this here black candle would burn against the parties what was harming me. Well, he told what to do - he told me to take a glass about like that, just an ordinary jelly glass, and fill it half full of sugar and stick it down in the sugar.
(This black candle?)
This black candle.
(Just one?)
He sent me more than one, cause [I sent him] $5.06, but after they give out, he told me I could get 'em from my local drug store. And he told me to use these candles six, twelve and six evening every evening. [This is the well-known 6-12- 6 time formula.] And finally I did that.
(Put this candle down in the sugar?)
Down in the sugar. He told me to not to never blow the candle out - I never seen this man before, and he told me, "Don't blow it out" - to take mv middle finger and my thumb and wet it, and say, "I wish you would leave me alone," put- ting the candle out at the same time, but not blow it. And really I did that and that woman. (Now wait a minute. How long did you let those candles burn at six, twelve and six?) Fifteen minutes - fifteen minutes.
(And when you had burned one whole candle?)
No, sir, you burn that every day. (Well, when that first candle burned out, what did you do? Burn another one then?) Could use another.
(How many did you use altogether?)
Oh, I just guess. I done even forgot how many I used, but I used just some of 'em 'cause I wanted that off of me. And really, that man helped me 'cause I know I was wrong: You see. And it turned right to that home - that woman was getting back just like I was getting, see. And I thought - two or three time I certainly felt sorry for her and I stopped using that stuff. Now, the other experience, 'cause I used to didn't believe in it until this woman was doing me like that, you see. Cause I was wrong, you see, going with her husband. But that other, I don't know nothing about that, but I'm explaining you something I really experienced my own dear self. [The preceding trick could have been performed in several ways. Friend of mine who recommended McConnick was surely his foreign correspondent for the Vicksburg district; she being his only source of information about the dream. What informant wanted could be taken care of for $5.75. Her dream about the buried treasure showed that all problems would soon be solved; she would also find the hidden wealth. The reader will notice immediately that $5.75 contains uneven numbers, which read inside outward 75 and outside inward 57. This is for- ward and backward magic, though not the pendulum magic frequently met in Jacks (p.190f.). Pulsating or heart-beat magic might be a better term. After the money was received, the candles were delivered. The package contained a printed notice something like: "These candles you ordered have been burned in the fol- lowing manner by troubled persons who claim for them the benefits of health and peace. We sell them as curios. The so-and-so drug store in your town sells these candles." There was no second letter as informant implies. All communi- cation was. brief and vague (see He'd Never Write You Much, p.319f.). McConnick is primarily a distributor of candles - a business man and surely a white man.]
Entry 2752
My husband left me and I wanted him to come back. I loved the man, I love him 'till today, and he jis' walked away from me without any cause that I know of. Course I was jealous of 'im and I wouldn't let 'im go when he felt like going all the time to those awful taverns because he was drunkard - ev'ry time he go out he'd get drunk. Well, I tried to keep him at the house all I could and make things as pleasant as I could for him, see - so he would like home, see. I had a beautiful home across the street there, and there was nothing for him to worry for. He was a working man, he was no sweetie - he was a working man, worked every day. But when he'd go out and get amongst mens and womens, he'd get drunk and carry on. And if he had his payday before he came in, he'd let 'em rob him. He'd be home all the week, ev'ry day in the week, but on Saturday night when he got his pay he'd go ev'rywhere but home. I got disgusted with him. He went away from me and then I said, "Well, I'm going to try to see if I can get him home." I had heard so much, you know. I say, "I'm going to try a mess and see if I can get him home." So I goes across the river [to Algiers], knowing a woman through somebody else.
(What was her name?)
Ah forgot her name now. I got her name of course on a paper at home. But anyhow, I went over there to see her and ask her about it. I says, "Listen, '' I says, "Miss Whatchacallum, my husband done left me. ". And I says, "Is there any way that I can get him back, you think?" She says, "Yes, sure," she says, "you can get him back." She says, "How long has he been gone?" I says, "He been gone about five weeks now." She says, "Well, I'll be over there to see you," she says, "and when I come," she says, "I'll tell you what to get." So she says - and I says, "All right." So she says, "The first thing while you's downtown, go by the Ten-Cent Store and get me a 25c box of canary bird seeds." I went there and got 'em [after I left her]. She says, "When I come over, I'll tell you what else to get." When she come over she say, "Get me a pound of sugar, one pound of sugar and she said, "get me two boxes of raisins." You see, one pound of sugar, two boxes of raisins and 25c worth of bird seed. Well, she took a pan I have over there, a blue pan, and she mixed all that together. She made me write his name. She made me write his name, you know, each nine times - made me write his name nine times and after writing his name nine times, she made me write my name right on top of his name. My full name right on top of his name - each nine times on two different lines. Then she took that paper and put it in the bottom of the pan - I noticed her - put that paper in the bottom of the pan and she mixes all this mixture right up together and put that on the canary bird seeds and all. But, of course, he hasn't come back home yet.
(What else did she do? What did she do with that then?)
She made me put the pan back under where it couldn't be seen and then she told me to get the candles. She made me get three candles - ten-cent candles, long candles.
(What color were they?)
White candles - what you call white wax candles. I got the three ten-cent candles and she told me to dig a hole in [for] each in that. That thing [mixture] was about that thick with that ingredients - was that raisins and that in the pan, and put these candles, put three candles.... ["She coughs. Unintelligible. She has a coughing spell." Penciled notation made when transcription checked with cylinder.] (Well, how did she put them? She put one there and where did she put the other one?) [Coughing again.] Three together.
(She put three in a row. All right.)
And let 'em burn nine days.
(And let them burn out?)
And let 'em burn out. She says, "Don't blow 'em, pinch them out." So I burns [coughing again].
[We must allow for brief pauses during these coughing spells.]
(Now, those three candles wouldn't last nine days, would they?)
Now, when those burns low, I just lighted three more and just pinched them out and take them out of that little hole, you see, and put three more there, see.
(I see. All right, go ahead.)
Uh-huh.
(When the nine days were up, what did you do?)
After they burned out - see, they burned as long as they can. Then after they burned there nine days, she told me not to disturb that pan, let it that pan stay there. And so it stayed there and still it haven't made any success with me. But even so, she was charging me for it, so I said, "Well?" She told me to come back over there. Well, I'd taken sick and I haven't been back over there since. I used about a dollar's worth [candles] - ten-cents apiece.
Entry 2753
Because that I was kind of out and down, and that's why I went there to 'em. And so, as I goes there to 'em, they tells me what candles to light. Some- times they tell me to go light - put a light. (What did you see when you went into the room?) What did I see when I went in the room? Well, the room was dark and I just see them little lights - them little lights burning. They have the room dark and them little lights burning at the altar.
(What was the person wearing?)
They was wearing a robe.
(What color was it?)
A lavender robe.
(Anything on their head?)
Yeah, they wear a crown on their head.
(What was the color of the crown?)
The crown was lavender and had a little silver on it - little silver spangles on top of it.
(Then, were you supposed to do anything when you came in or went out?)
Yeah, when I'd come in, I'd get on my knees like this [demonstrates].
(Down on your knees.)
Uh-huh - and do this here [demonstrates].
(Make the sign of the cross.)
Yes sir. And after I'd get on my knees, I'd go to this altar and I'd get on my knees at that place and pray to that saint - for that saint to do things for me. And after I gets through praying to that saint, if I wants the other [saint] to do something, I'd go to the other one [saint] and say something. (Do you mean that this person you went to - they have these various saints in the room?) Yes, in the room. (Well, when you first came in did they ask you what you wanted? Or anything? Or did they speak to you? What did they say when you first came in?) When I first come in, she'd ask me - no, when I first come in there, I'd make that sign of the cross. And then I'd go to one of them saints and then she'd ask me what did I want, and she'd tell - and she'd tell me what candle to go and make my wish to. And then I'd make my wish and if I want to put a silver offering, I'd put that dime there. And if I'd go to St. Peter, I'd put that key there.
(That woman you went to had these various things around her room?)
Around in her room.
(With candles?)
With candles.
(I see. What did she call herself? A fortuneteller, a spiritualist or what?)
She would call herself a spiritualist.
(What did she charge you for your trip?)
She would just - I would donate to her.
Entry 2754
When you first go there, you have to wait until your name is called and then you go in and tell her what you want. And if you wanted to call - she will tell you different things and you'll have her to do things for you. She'll tell you what to do and give you a price on it and then give you the things to use to that effect. And whatever things you prefer, why whatever you want her to do with you - burn your candle, you can leave the money with her to burn your candle for you. And then she will give you so many candles to use at your house to burn so many hours.
(Was that woman dressed in any particular way?)
Well, some of them has on robes and some of them they are just dressed normal. Some of them use white cords; some of them use purple cords and robes - I mean cords they tie around their waist, robe cords, but different ones have different colors.
(Do they have these candles burning in this room - on altars or something?)
Yes, if you want them to do work for you, they have the candles right there; but they have the candles burning all the time - there has been somebody there all the time before you. And whatever you want them to do, they take that candle that you want to put to that saint, or whatever you want done to that person, and put it up under that person, they light that candle when you are there. You give them so much to keep it burning. And then they give you candles you can burn, and you keep them at your home. I think I've tole you all that I know - all the good things and bad things, too, that you could do.
Entry 2755
(Do the people over there have altars?)
Yes, they still got altars over there, yes sir. (How do they handle that? Supposing I'd go over to see one, what would they have me do? I wonder what would be the ceremony they'd go through?) Well now, you see, as you go in, the altar is setting just like this here [points] vanity [bureau] there - yes, sir. The altar is setting there. Well, it's always, the candles are always lit, you see, with saints all around it. It always stays lit night and day. See, you go in there, probably you put a nickel in the box and you light you a candle, if it's a penny even, you can put that in there and you light a candle. You get down on your knees and you prays. And whatsoever prayer you want and whatsomever you pray for or want done, you pray to the saint that you know would help you, understand. You get there and you pray to that saint. Now and then the mother of that church, she would come to you - see, she would talk to you and she would give you information. She would pray for you, and probably she may give you a medal. She'd bless the medal and everything - well, pray over it rather and give it to you. Then, she would tell you just what to do and how to do it. See, she liable to tell you, say, "Well, when you go back over to the New Orleans side," say, "you go to the Crackerjack Drug Store," and she say, "you go and get you some goat- weed." She say, "You get some goatweed and you go out in the woods - if you can get to the woods, if you know how. You go out in the woods and you get some banana leaves." You see. "But get the root of the banana tree, rather - get the root of that," she says, "and you come back and you bring it chere to me, but bring it back in nine days." She say, "Let it be dry when you bring it back." Well, you bring it back to her and she will fix that for you. Well now, when she fix it, she liable to tell you, she say, "I want $100 for it." You pay it to her because you wants something done for yourself. She going to use sugar with it, she is going to use cinnamon with that stuff. She gotta take and sprinkle vine- gar onto it and all that - cook all that together - take a red onion and cook all that together. Make one thing out of it. When she get through with it - it will be just about that much stuff when she finish. She tell you, now, put it in a sack or anything and put that in your pocket and go ahead on. And you have the luck and success in anything you undertake to do. (What do they call these people that do that sort of thing? What would you call her?) Well, we call 'em just by name - some people call 'em the hoodoos - some call 'em spirituals - some call 'em - ah forget the other name they call 'em - but we call 'em all kind of names - fortunetellers and all such things as that, you see.
(Well, does she wear a robe or dress up in any particular way?)
They generally wears a gown, yes sir - you know, a big white gown. Some of 'em be - have a black gown, you know. We call 'em gowns. They look more like gowns than they is robes - and tassel and all around - just in order - just on the order of a priest, you see.
Entry 2756
See, hit's [the altar is] made like a table, and she got all kinds of different candles, you know, on it, and on the table it's shaped like a pulpit. You done seen a pulpit. Well, they got all kind of different candles - got white candles, they got green candles, they got pink ones, they got red ones. So I went to another man and I asked him could he do anything to help me. (Now wait a minute. This woman you said that had this altar. Was she dressed in any particular way?) Yes, she had a robe.
(What kind of a robe?)
A blue.
(A blue robe?)
Yes, sir.
(Anything on her head?)
A crown.
(A crown?)
Yes, sir.
(What kind of a crown?)
It's a white piece of cloth was made like a crown.
(I see - piece of white cloth.)
Just like a piece of cloth - just like you would put something [on your head].
(When you came in there, did she make you do anything?)
No more than sit down.
(Just told you to sit down?)
And wait until she get ready.
(I see. And how was this man dressed that you went to see?)
Well, he wears clothes just like you wear but he had a white robe over his clothes.
(I see - a white robe. Anything on his head?)
Not nothing on his head at all.
(Did he have an altar?)
Yes, sir, he had an altar.
(What did it look like, this altar?)
Well, his altar look just like a pulpit. Well, he got candles and saints' Pictures and flowers - you know, all that. (I see, I see.) [My note on original transcription reads, "This was told in conjunction with 1088:9 & 1089:10.]
Entry 2758
[Good material about the private shrine is difficult to find. Most of my information I have included under subsection Saints or left intact in the Interviews section. Here I will include one more example - a unique offering of food to enemy spirits living and dead.] (Your aunt did this, had the altar?) Yes - she's daid now.
(And you say she burnt these candles?)
Yes, an' she'd put food there.
(What would she put the food there for?)
Fo' certain people - the people she thought, yo' know, would harm her. An' she would put their name on a piece of papah, an' write it there.
(Well, who ate that food?)
Well, she believed in de spirits.
Entry 2762
Well, my wife.
(You what?)
[He's a little hesitant, nervous at first.]
I had went there over the river for my wife - to Miss Helen. [Long pause.]
(Yes?)
Yes, sir. My wife had left me. [Long pause.]
(Yes. All right.)
So, when she left me, I went over in Algiers to a lady by the name of Miss Helen.
(Miss Helen?)
Yes, Miss Helen.
(I see. All right.)
So she charged me $50. So ah paid her $25 down. So she called me in a room like this [my interviewing room at Patterson Hotel]. So she sat me down and so she made me take everything out of my pockets.
(How was the room - was it decorated or furnished with anything?)
It had candles. It had an altar - like an altar. It had candles.
(How many candles were there?)
They had about twenty diff'rent candles.
(Different?)
Some reds - some blue - black - green.
(Anything on the walls?)
Anything on the walls? No, they didn't have anything but some pictures on there. [Pictures of saints?]
(I see. Was she dressed in any special way? This Miss Helen?)
Yes, she was dressed at that time when she called me in. They told me to wait a minute she Was busy, but in a short while she dressed and she called me in. Well, she had a hat like a cap on, a silk cap, and a big robe - a robe on. You know, a robe.
(A robe?)
A robe, yes sir.
(Any special color - different colors?)
It was a purple robe.
(Purple robe?)
Yes, sir, with a big key - a chain with a big key like the oldtime door key hanging in front of her. (I see. Now, tell me when you went to visit her, just exactly what she told you - everything she told you to do, now. All right.) Well, when she told me, she say for me to go ahead and burn a candle.
(Wait a minute. What about your pockets? She told you about your pockets?)
Yes, sir, she told me to take everything out of my pockets and I done taken everything out. And I left some silver money in my pocket and when I left the silver money in my pocket, she say, "You ain't right, ' says, "ah cain't do any- thing for you 'cept you take everything out."
(Why did you keep that silver in your pocket?)
[I was trying to discover whether silver was for protection.]
I didn't want to come up with all my money.
(Oh, I see. I see.)
And so, after I take the silver money out, I lays it on the table. All right, she takes the other money out of the pocketbook and she lay it all down straight. She asked me, did I stay in town or did I stay out of town. I told her I was staying out of town. Then I was in Vicera. I was staying out of town at that time. She say, "Well, how much is your train fare?" I told her my train fare was $3.35 at that time.
(You were staying where?)
In Vicera.
(In Vicera, Louisiana. I see. All right.) [Nearest I can come to name.]
So she asked me what was the price of the train fare. So I told her the train fare. So she put the money aside and so, she said, "Well, I charge you $50." I say, "I haven't got $50." She say, "How near up to $50 you can come to?" I say, ''$25." She say, "Well, all right." And so she writ me out a receipt and when she writ me out a receipt she give me the receipt but it didn't have no price on it. So she tole me, "Don't send no money by the mail, just send it in a plain letter." So I sent her money just like she said. I sent $5.00 on the first pay- ment. She asked me how I got paid. I told her I got paid according to what I was doing - that I was picking, picking cotton. And so she said to me, "Well, all right." She said, "Don't send the money in no letter - registered letter. She say, "Send it just like - put it in there - a bill - you put it in there." She say, "I'll get it all right." So, I says, "All right." So, I written back to her to lets see if she got the money. So I didn't get my wife back at that time. See? But finally I got her back, but now I don't know if I got her back through that way or not. (What did she tell you to do? To do anything special? What did she tell you to do? Did she do anything?) Well, she told me to send a pictchure back.
(Her picture back.)
And she said I was crossed - see, the reason my wife left.
(Did she tell you how?)
She say how I was crossed. She say the woman had taken my thing and measured it and tied nine knots and put it around her waist. And say that there was some- thing buried - my pictchure was buried underneath the steps, beside the steps'. So she told me where I could find that pictchure. But I found that pictchure though.
(I see. Now, who took that measure? Your wife or some other woman?)
The wife takes it - it's supposed to be my wife what taken the measure of it on the cord. See. Nine knots they put in it. (Now, this woman Madam Helen, she didn't do anything - give you any treatment or anything when you were in her room did she?) No, she give me some powder.
(What did she call that?)
It's luck powder.
(Iuck powder.) )
She give me some other stuff they call van-van. (Well, what did she tell you? How to handle those or anything? What you were to do with them?) She say that when I pass by the house I throw it - throw it over my shoulder. And she give me another thing by the name of John the Conker root. She told me to chew that, see. And she give me another oil to keep and rub, see. She say nobody could hurt me after that.
(I see. What kind of oil was that?)
That was a green looking oil.
(It had no name?)
No name.
(I see. And your wife finally came back?)
She finally came back.
Entry 2827
Well, if dey wanta git chew down - if yo' doing all right and ain't bothering nobody and a person begrudge yo's gettin' along, dey'll burn black can'les. Dey'll take dose black can'les and dey'll git chure full name and dey write yore full name nine times around dat can'le - write it straight like dis Idemonstrates], and turn it around and den write it like dis, and turn it around an' write it like dat. Write it nine times around de can'le. (Just a moment now. Here's the candle up and down. I write the name across like that. Then I turn the candle upside down and then write it across like that.) Up and down de candle. It's gen'lly like dis [demonstrates] - write it down like dis and den turn it up and write it like dat all de way around. Nine times. (Like a barber's pole. Only, you write it down and then you turn the candle upside down and write it the other way - [each time] around like a barber pole.) Yes sir. [The names are written up the candle and then down the candle, four names one Way and five the other. The candle is slowly twisted as the names are scratched and turned upside down only once.] And den yo' put dat can'le in some olive oil and kerosene and put dis olive oil and kerosene in some kind of deep can where it be jest about half full. And jest burn dat can le out until hit down to dat oil in dat can, and dat will make de person - whosomever dat chew hate or anything lak dat - make 'em jes' git down in hard luck and no way dey do dey can't git no kind of break atall - on de beg- ging list you might say, jest be down. See, dat's what chew call putting a per- son on [off] dey feet - chew know, dragging 'em, making 'em drag.
(Now, you only burn one candle for that - one black candle?)
One.
(Do you burn that at any special time or just any old time?)
Burn it at nine 'clock at night.
(And how long do you let it burn?)
Lets it burn five minutes at a time. Until it burns clean on out - like you burn it five minutes tonight, de next night chew burn it five minutes, and every night for five minutes, until it gits eaten down wit dat oil.
Entry 2842
If a person is gone and yo' want 'em tuh come back at once and yo' don't care to burn it in de bottle, yo' git chew a blue candle and write de name seven times on dat blue candle and take it an' git chew a dime's worth of whiskey and roll dat candle into de whiskey. An' if dey drunk, dey'll come back dere drunk - dey'll come in twelve hours.
[Two cylinders later informant adds details.]
An' yo' wanta bring 'em back, yo' gits a - yo' go to de drug store. Under- stand me good. Yo' go to de drug store and yo' git chew a package of this - git chew a package of brown sugah [at hoodoo drug store] and den yo' go and git chew a blue candle and a dime worth of whiskey [at same store] an' yo' roll dat candle in dat whiskey together - roll it dere. An' light dat candle - burn it fifteen minutes. Yo' set it at seven 'clock in de morning and burn to quarter past seven yo' see, and at twelve yo' see. An' six 'clock dat evenin' dey be dere. Dis is a blue candle now.
(What do you do with that brown sugar?)
De brown loaf sugar it be's in a package, not dis white sugah. Dat sugah - dey take dat sugah an' jes' tole yo', take dat sugah and git chew some whiskey and roll dat candle.
(The sugar goes into the whiskey?)
Yeah, yo' rolls it dere. See [demonstrates], yo' sets de candle up lak dat after yo' done roll it in dere, sets it up lak dat, see, and let dat whiskey and sugah be's in a little saucer. Set dat candle up jes' lak mah finger an' light it. Burn it fifteen minutes. See, dat'll draw dose party to come - can't stay
[away].
Entry 2909
Take a white candle to make a man love you and stay with you, don't get. away from you. If he go, he can't stay.
(Well, how do you do that?)
You take a white candle and roll it in sugar, sugar and salt - salt that's not never been used out of. Just roll it, roll it good, roll it good about fifteen minutes - see, you roll it on a paper. And then you take a match.
(A match?)
Take a match and you hold that candle right on there and light it, and you know, smoke it enough for it to melt for the paste [melted wax, sometimes called sponge] to come out, you know, and then you place it right in the middle of a saucer.
(Wait! You stick this candle down on the saucer?)
Yes. [The candle is set in the melted wax at the center of the saucer.] And if he is a drinker, you know, and likes to drink, well, you put you about a tea- spoonful of whiskey around that candle, and then you light that candle and you burn that candle fifteen minutes and all the whilst you burn that candle, well [demonstrates], you be doing just like this, you know - like this with the flame, you see, from the candle. (You wet your two fingers in your mouth, and then you go to the candle and pretend that you are sort of pulling this flame towards you - keep pulling it towards you.) Yes, that's it. And make your wishes what you want him to come back and do and what you don't want him to do - just like - you burn it fifteen minutes.
(At what time do you burn that?)
Any time, any time. Burn it any time, but in the three fifteen minutes you burns the candle up - in the three fifteen minutes. And when that candle is burnt up, and all that whiskey's gone, and [then] inside of five or nine days, he'll be back - he'll be back to you. [The two preceding versions of flame pulling and whiskey are from the same informant but separated by 70 cylinders. I had her brought back because some of her material was badly recorded.1
Entry 2928
Go to the railroad track for spikes. (For what?) For spikes.
(What do you mean? Those big iron spikes that hold the rails down?)
Yes.
(What do they do with those?)
They take one of those spikes - like if you go out on the railroad track and say - you ain't got no - you haven't had no prosperity in your crop probably.
(Your what?)
Your crops and all that - like you make corn.
(Oh, your crop - the things you grow.)
The things you grow. You go to the railroad track and get a big spike and bring this spike back and burn you a candle over that spike, and when that, re- gardless of what length of time - you take that candle when that candle goes out, burns out there - you take that spike that was burning under that candle and was laying in your house, and bury that spike under your steps and let it stay under your steps for nine days. Bury it with the head up and the straight [side] down. Take it as near as you can to the center of your field and dig a deep, deep hole and bury it, after you take it up after the nine days under your steps where you walked over it. Take it in the center of your field, as near as you can and bury it in your field, deep, deep so you won't plow it or cultivation won't bring it up. And let it stay in the middle of your field, and you'll have better crops, bigger corn, better cotton - higher cotton and all that. (You say you burn this candle and say a novena?) [Novena shows machine had been stopped.] Yeah.
(I see. What sort of a candle do you burn for that?)
A white candle.
(Why white?)
A white candle is best to use unless you using something against some person. A white candle is the best always. [This is one of my few farming rites. As a matter of fact I never asked about them, considering them general folklore.]
Entry 2930
Well, say for n'instance if you are in trouble - anything of that sort.
(Anything.)
If you in trouble, you take a red candle - for n'instance, you take a red candle and you get the judge's name. You get the judge's name and you write his name like I 'fore told you, but it's a diff'rent candle - you write on the red candle. You burn that candle. (You write the name down?) Yes, sir. Down. Now, say for n'instance that you goin' to go to trial - today's the day which is the 13th. All right, you goin' to go to trial, say the 20th. Well, you might get you a subpoena to go to trial - maybe today and get that sub- poena. You got the judge's name. Well, you start from today. You get you a red candle and you burn that candle daily. See, you write that judge's name down on that candle. Now, as you writing his name down on that candle and you burnin' his name, you take and you write the judge's name down nine times on one piece of paper, and you keep that in your right shoe. You wear your underwears on the wrong side until the day of trial. And on the day of trial you still got your paper in the shoe. If that paper should happen to wear out, which some people sweats in the feet aplenty - that wears out, well, then, you write that name over nine times and put it in the right shoe again and keep your underwears on the wrong side. When you leave on the morning of court to go to trial, you turn your bed upside down. You leave the whole house in fact in - you know, the whole house upset. See. And you go ahead on to trial. When you go to trial, it won't be nothing to that. That'll be over with - without lawyer, no money or nothing.
Entry 2934
When yore ole man is gone away an' yo' wanta bring him back, if he left any ole dirty socks - if yo' kin git any of his ole socks, git de left sock. It Wants tuh be dirty though, not clean. An' yo' take it an' yo' go out in front of yore do'. Well, yo' do it 'bout between three an' fo' a'clock in de mawnin'. Go out in front of yo' do' an' dig a hole an' bury dat sock an' cover it up. Yo' go in de house an' yo' git chew a piece of tablet an' yo' write his name nine times on dat tablet. Den yo' git chew a black candle, put dat piece of papah down an' set de candle on it.
(Just a moment. Do you put the names up or down?)
Put the names right across.
(No. Do you put the names up so that you can see them, or down?)
Put the names [face] down. Then set the candle on it an' burn that candle, an' in three days dey'll return. Dat's whut ah know 'bout dat.
(But you must leave that sock out there?)
Yo' leave that sock out there until dey return. Ah've heard of men takin' a woman's stockin's an' makin' her come back. Ah've heard of men takin' 'em an' do em in de same manner.
Entry 2939
You can easily tell that they are candles being burned over you. You can take a - even with a deck of cards and tell when a candle's being burned over you. (How would you do that?) You take a deck of cards and if you run a deck of cards wit a queen and a jack running in diamonds - you take a deck of cards and shuffle them off, put 'em in nine piles, one time. Shuffle 'em off again and put em in piles. Shuffle 'em off again and put 'em in piles. Search the piles and see if you find any three times you run 'em off in the nine piles, three times [if] you can find that the queen and the jack are in the same pile. Then you come back with the cards in five piles and try it the same way, three times, and see if you find the queen and jack. See which one leads the other and when the deck is facing you, which one you find first more often, the queen or the jack. Then you will know a woman is burning candles. Then you will see if a woman have any candles burning on you. Now, your way to get them out. You'll have to make a novena yourself against that, and burn a candle against that. But keep yours in a continous burning and when your candle is out, be sure that it don't go out until it burns out. And when your candle burn out, then the candle against you will go out, unless. (About those cards you spoke about. If the queen comes first more often, then a woman is burning the candles?) Then a woman is burning the candles.
(If the jack comes first, then a man is burning the candles?)
Then a man is burning the candles.
(I wanted to make certain I understood that.)
That's right.
Entry 3009
St. Joseph is a saint he don't lak no single wimmins. St. Joseph is a saint fo' married wimmins or fo' widows. (Is there a reason why he doesn't like single women? Do you know?) No suh. He's fo' married wimmins or fo' widows. He'll take ca' of a widow an' if a woman is married an' her husband's gone from her an' she want him tuh come back, she pray tuh St. Joseph. He'll bring him back tuh her.
(Does she offer him anything special?)
Well, she offers him a candle, a white candle. Dat's whut chew give St. Joseph, a white candle. Or if not, yo' kin offer him when his day come, de 19th day of March come - dat's supposed tuh be his celebration day - some people gives him a altar. Dey has a place where dey give ~ have nuthin but all kind of bread an' make a big feast ovah it. But dey distribute it, dey don't use none of dat deyself. Dey makes a sacrifice tuh give dat tuh de po.
Entry 3029
Mah brother had done got to be a young man, see, and dis lady whut - dis woman whut he was in trouble wit was after him. She Was kinda ole - see, too ole fo' him, he was 18. All right. Well, she begin to buy candles - see, burn candles on him. She burned 'em a little bit at de time - every 20 minutes. All right. He begin to weaken down, suffer, nowhere he went he was satisfied - nowhere he went. Well she took his socks - see, the left. And his dirty garment, you know de BD's [= B. V. D.'s - unionsuit], took dat.
(What do you mean, took his garment? That had something on it from him?)
Yeah. She took dat and she took penny nails. She had a drier in her yard in de back - you know, in de back yard. She had his hands stretched out like dis [demonstrates] and de toes. See, dey were dem long shirt - well, de BD whut dey were, long ones.
(B. V. D.'s. You mean underclothing?)
That's it. And she had him laid - you know, tacked down wit penny nails. Eight penny nails it was. And she had dat dirty sock - were right in de middle of it.
[I now describe informant's demonstrations.]
(She put this underclothing - stretched it out and she tacked it down on top of the ground, and then she put this left sock in the middle of that, and then she covered it all over with dirt.) Well, mah brother wasn't satisfied nowhere. He had to leave from out of town. He left and he wun't [would not] come back. Don't care who send or write fo' him, he wun't come back.
(What did she do this for? To run him away? She didn't want him any more?)
Naw, she got mad cause he wouldn't marry her. She say she don't want him do nobody else no good. An' she done that. Well, ah prays to St. Ann, to Blessed Mother - that's is, to Blessed Mother. I prays and prays. Well, ah tell you what ah'll do, I say, I kin make him come back. Well, I got dem blessed holy candle, dem pure white candles.
(Where did you get it? From the church?)
I got it from de church, from de Fathers from St. Joseph's here. See, I bought it. I tole him to bless dat candle.
(You didn't tell him what you wanted to use it for?)
No, ah didn't tole him - ain't no use. An' ah got St. Peter. Ah sent away and ah got St. Peter - ah couldn't buy St. Peter nowheres here in Mobile. Got a brand-new key and a piece of blue, you know, ribbon [and made] a bow-like.
(Wait a minute! You got a St. Peter's key. Where did you send to get that?)
No, ah got St. Peter's photo. Ah send to mah niece to New Orleans to get it.
(Where did you send to get that, the photo?)
From New Orleans. That was the only place. Mah little niece sent it back to me in a hurry. All right. Ah went down there to the Catholic church to Father X and told him to bless this photo for me of St. Peter, see. I wanted a holy candle right away. He blessed that all at one time. He blessed that key, too. He say, "You want de key blessed, too."
(What kind of key did you have?)
Key like you unlock de door with.
(Where did you get the key?)
Ah bought dat key.
(A new key?)
Yeah, a brand-new key ain't never been used. All right. Well he blest it and before he blest it ah tacked dis key on to St. Peter, see. Ah put on there any kind of bow mah mind made me. Tied a big bow, a brand new piece - ah got a halfa yard fer ten cents.
(A ribbon - blue ribbon.)
Tie on St. Peter and nailed St. Peter up right over mah door, where you come in. Light dat holy candle and ah burned it only three days, on Wednesday, Friday and Monday - only three days, jest had one candle. Ah sweeten it down wit some sugar. Ah burn dat and ah call mah brother's name three times, see; call mah brother's name three times and den ah put mah name on with it see, one time - only one time.
(You call your name once.)
Call mah name once and call mah brother's name three times; and dis woman's name, ah call her two times. Well, mah brother came home. In three days he came, and he say, "Sister, ah got something bad on mah mind." Ah say, "What is it?"
[Recording is bad but he was going to kill the woman.]
She was burning a black candle on him.... Well, he gave her up. He almost like tuh kill her. He hated her. He drew her blood and he left her. [Drawing blood is an old remedy to kill a witch's power, see 485-487, p.148 and Index.] He came to Mobile.
(How long ago did this happen?)
Well that happen about five years ago right here in Mobile.
Entry 3038
Well, it's according - you can burn a pink one, you can burn a yellow one, you can burn a white one, for luck.
(Well, how do you burn those various candles?)
Now, you take - say for 'n'instance like when I was on my truck. I had a truck. I used to get me those yellow candles, you see. Either yellow or white will do. I get my candle and I'd light my candle in the mornings 'fore seven o'clock. I used to go to church for them. And 'fore seven o'clock I'm got my candle, I'd light my candle on my truck. I wouldn't got out of my truck. I'd burn the candle and whilst burning my candle, I'd use cinnamon and sugar. I'd burn that in my truck. I'd put that in the candle and I'd burn that in mv truck. I had St. Peter and I had St. Joseph. I'd light my candles to them and I'd pray to them.
(In your house?)
No sir, on my truck.
(Oh, you did this in the truck?)
In the street, no house at all - in the street, anywheres in the street, when the time comes. I would burn that. That was for my luck. All right. Twelve O'clock, I'd burn it - burn my candle again at three o'clock and during that day I never had a misfortune at all. During that day I made - if it wasn't but five or six dollars, I made that.
Entry 3049
St. Raymond's can'le is sometime is for money.
(St. Raymond or St. Ramos?)
St. Raymond, yes sir. St. Raymond. You kin go to the Cath'lic Church an' make a novena to St. Raymond to open the way for a job or somepin like that. An' then you kin go to St. Raymond an' put somebody in bad luck dat's a enemy to you. St. Raymond or St. Michael, you kin use. You set lights an' burn on em.
(That's in the church?)
In church - in the church.
(To give them bad luck?)
To give 'em - to put 'em in tough luck.
(Suppose I went there. How would I give a person bad luck?)
You goes an' git a can'le that's got red - you know whut can'le you gon'a burn, jis' like red, sometime blue, sometime white; or, if, like you know whut choo gon'a do. If you go in there for good, you gon'a take a white can'le; but if you burn that for bad, you gon'a take black or red, or some other can'les - if you go in there to give a person bad luck. You understand.
(You light those right in the church?)
Yes sir. [Church to informant is not the Roman Catholic Church but the Public Shrine (p.770), whose custodian is sometimes called Mother.]
Entry 3058
There's only one saint you go to that doing bad and that's St. Rita.
(St. Rita?)
St. Rita, she's a woman. She don't like men and it wouldn't do you [the author] no good to go to her, to ask her to do you favors for you; but if you Want favors done, you go to St. Joseph, St. Peter, or Lady of Lourdes - any of those other saints. That's to do good for you for luck - you know, to be suc- cessful in whatsomever you undertake to do or something of that sort.
(Well, why doesn't St. Rita like men?)
Well, St. Rita, the reason why she don't like men is - according to Scriptures from what I'm got the understanding of - she never did like mens for one simple reason, on account of Christ, see. Christ is supposed to be her father, and he's not, see. She don't like men, she never did. When Christ was born, she looked and see that it was man. She walked away and they made her come back. But when they called him King Of Lords - that's how we have this thing [day] what we call carnival today. Well, they said, "Hail, King of the Jews, ' and all such things as that, she liked that because they Was going to kill him. She hated men. We have today what we call carnival, you know, carnival just passed. We have that on the [sakes?] of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, when he was born. He was born, so they claim, on the 25th of December. Well, I understood different. It was on a carnival that he was coming when they said, "Prepare ye for the kingdom of heaven is nigh at hand." That was Christ - he was coming. He was coming and he was coming on an ass colt. See. And they went around saying, 'Make way, for the kingdom of heaven is nigh," and they was talking about the Lord was coming, you see. And she seen who it was and that's what caused her to hate men today. But still and all, he came. Everybody had to - I think it was the ninth hour. I know I remember reading something about what he said at the ninth hour - about his time had not come yet, but at the ninth hour his time cometh. He hung on the cross from the sixth until the ninth hour. That's how it was. And when that ninth come - when the ninth hour was up - everybody had to pull off their masks and things. See, everybody had changed. Well, that's how we have what you call carnival today. See, after six o'clock you can't wear no more masks. See. Well that's Scriptures - that's the same thing as in the Bible. You see. Well, that is how she come to hate mens today, because he was born man and he supposed to be her father. See. But she don't like men, and that's the reason she don't like men because he supposed to be her father and he's not.
(Do the women go to St. Rita when they want a favor done?)
A woman can go there and have any kind of favor done she wants to, but a man can't.
(Well, what sort of thing would a woman have her do for her?)
Well, the saint - well, a saint could do mostly anything. St. Rita, for a woman, she'd do anything she wants. Generally, if the woman go to her and ask her to do these favors, she can have it done; but she'll have to go and go until she fulfill a promise she make to the saint. It just like you, if I tell you, "Loan me a ten-dollar bill today and I pay you back Saturday." Well, then Sat- urday come, you looking for your ten dollars, see. Well, that's how that is with this saint. You go to these saints and you ask 'em for a favor, just like, say for instance, you are out of work and you want a job, she'll open the Way for you to get the job. Well, you promise to give her flowers or promise to give her a quarter or half a dollar, maybe you promise to give her a candle. Well, she'll open the way for you to get the job, but when you get the job, it's up to you to go and give her that candle or flower or whatsomever you promised her. And if you don't give it to her, why then you going to lose that job again. Now, that's strictly facts.
Entry 3060
(What did you do to get your husband back?)
Well, I went to her [St. Rita] again and prayed. Well, when I went to her and prayed, I burned incense in my house and scrubbed incense in my house. Well, it was a woman that took my husband clean from me. I couldn't do anything in the world with him. He wouldn't stay home. He wouldn't pay no rent at home. I is a mother with children for him and he wouldn't pay no rent, he wouldn't support me, and I didn't have no cause to go to the white folks to make him support me no nothing. But I took and went on there and prayed, and after I went there, I just took holy water and scrubbed my house out and sprinkled holy water in my house, and light that candle and got me a little altar and put her in there, got her saint and put her in there, and I had three lights. And I had his name writ nine times frontwards and nine times backwards, and I lighted her candle on him - you see, where a little base.
(Oh! What kind of a candle?)
A white candle. But I had one white candle what I had his picture and his name - you know, right on it. And I had his name nine times thisaway and nine times thataway.
(Across. In a cross?)
Yes, just like you'd make a cross. You understand?) Well, all right. I laid that down just like this [demonstrates]. See, that's his picture there. I laid his name over that and set the [white] light on top of it. (You laid the names crosswise, across the picture, and now you put the candle on top of that - this white candle.) Yes, sir.
(Was it a picture or a statue of the saint?)
No, it was a statue of my saint, but I had the picture of my husband - that was his'n.
(But the saint was a statue?)
A statue - little white statue. You can get it in any Catholic church; you can get a little white statue. They give you ary one you want - any one of them.
(I see.)
So, I had my light there, but I had her back here. You see.
(Her light.)
Her light - was supposed to put her light here.
(What color was her light?)
Her light was a blue light I give her. See, that's when you wanta get your husband back. And if you have a dark light, it's for the woman what's got your husband. That white light, that's hers [the saint's] but she's working on that for you. See, she's bringing him home. And my husband come home one night at twelve o'clock and I wouldn't get no upstirring about him - you see, one, two, three, my mind was gone off of him. He stayed away from me three weeks, and when he come back home, he come right home and went and called on the landlord and paid him hisself; asked the landlord how much I'd owed him, and the landlord told him, "Well, she owe for three week's rent." And I was paying $3 a week. And he went there and he paid him. He was working right there on the riverfront, and he really did come back home and I ain't never had no trouble wit him since. That's been three year ago and I don't never move that light - I always keep that light. I always go to church every morning at six clock. You'll find me in that church on Halsey Avenue and Cologne. I'll be to that Catholic church there on my knees.
(Do you do that every morning now?)
Every morning.
(Are you a Catholic?)
Yes, sir
(Well, were you Catholic before then?)
No sir, I was no Catholic then. I was a Methodist.
(I see, you become a Catholic.)
After. I came to be a Catholic after.
(Were you confirmed or anything in the Catholic Church or did you just go in?)
Well, I ioined the Catholic Church, you understand.
(Were you baptised in the Catholic Church?)
No, I wasn't baptised yet. I wasn't supposed to get baptised until Easter Sunday. That's when they supposed to baptize me, Easter Sunday Morning.
(You haven't been baptised yet. You are going to be though?)
Yes, sir. Easter Sunday morning.
(I see.)
Easter Sunday morning.
(And you have this altar in your house and you still burn these candles?)
Yes, sir.
(And you burn the blue and the white ones?)
Yes, sir.
(You put three candles?)
I put three candles for the man - like if you wants your husband back, like if a woman want her husband back.
(One was blue?)
One was blue and one was white and the other one was blue [black]. The blue one was for the saint, but the white one was for the husband [see later]. That dark candle - the black candle was for the woman what was, you know, have took your husband from you. That was against her. [Originally she says the white candle sat on her husband's picture and name - it being the candle for him. Later she calls the white candle the saint's, but only because the saint is working through it. The blue candle is for the saint alone.]
(How did you have this arranged on the altar?)
Well, you see, just have.
(Here's the altar.)
[To represent altar, I open my small spiral-bound Numbers Book on table.]
That's the altar. Now you see, just hold this up just like this here. That's the altar here. You understand?
(Yes.)
Well, all right. That's the Virgin Mary - the Virgin right here, see.
(That's St. Rita?) [She means St. Rita.]
Yeah, that's St. Rita, right there. All right, you takes right here, right in front of the altar, you understand, that's her in here.- in that little hole. Well, you take right in front of the altar, right here [also], that's where you put - lay your husband's picture there and the name nine times, one time cross- way like that, nine time crossway like that, and once like dis, and you lay that right up on here. And you take his picture - have his picture like that with it, but you have his picture laying crossways - see, just like his head would rise to the sun, well, you make his feet get to the sun and you put it right here. Lay that on top of that and put that white candle on top of this. Then you turn round and take that dark candle and put it right here.
(On the left hand [north] side of the altar you put the dark candle?)
Yeah, put it the side of the altar but on this side. See, [evil] all the time on the left side. On the right side put the man's candle - put it right here. That saint's candle, put it right here - that blue one, that's for her, see. (I see. The white one is in the center and the blue one is on the right side of the [statue of the] saint?) Yes, sir. Then, see when you light it, you can light.
(When you light those candles, you do what?)
When you light the candles, see, you light her candle first - that's that blue candle.
(I see.)
You see, all them candles are nickel candles apiece - cost a nickel apiece. Well, you see, you light her candle first. Well, you says your wish. You make your wish to her - just like you wish for him to come home, or you wish for him to stay away. See. Any wish that you make her, say, "Well, I wish that you would send my husband home. You understand, I am in need." And you make that wish for her and light her candle first, and you turn around and you come across there and pass him up, and light the dark candle after you light hers first.
(Then you light the black candle?)
Yes. And you come right on back [to the white candle].
(What do you say when you light that black candle?)
That black candle, "Take him away from this woman, if it's your spirit will." See, that's the way you have to have your hands - just thataway. (Up against the side of your face - folded [in prayer]. Yes, just thataway.
(After you repeat the prayer?)
And after you prays the Lord's Prayer. And after the Lord's Prayer is said, you takes and [hold a match like] that to the light. And you take another match, not the same match - take another match and light this husband's candle, the white candle. And you take and set ~ burn - take all them [matches] and burn them [matches] up. And you set right there and you make the Lord's Prayers to the saint.
(You use three different matches?)
Yes, sir.
(What do you do with those matches after you light them?)
You can't use but one on that one candle.
(No, what do you do with those matches after you use them?)
You take them and throw them in the fire and burn them up. See, you can't use the same [matches again] and drag 'em around. And you make your wishes and you prays to her. And I guarantee you in three days time your husband will be back home. [Here is the prepared or dressed altar: Parentheses in diagram = spiral binding that divides Numbers Book into halves
(p.886, line one) = little hole (line 8).]
Entry 8999
Ketch a fellah an' take him down tuh de judge. If it's so an' dat he has some friends an' dey kin git to him an' kin give him somepin tuh he'p 'iml self. If dey do, why dey sends out tuh de drug sto' an' buys 'em 15 cents of incense. Yo' kin git it now in small packages. It use'ly cost yo' 25 an' 30 cents. Git 'im some incense an' git 'im 'some cayenne peppah. Lak yo' got a friend some place dat chew wanta be good to 'em. Git dat cayenne peppah an' dat incense an' 'bout half of a teaspoon fullah salt. Take a silver [dime] an' put it in yore mouth, an' when yo' lay dat undah yore tongue to yore mouth, why yo' goes back an' read de 23rd Psalms. Dat says, De Lord is mah shepherd. Ah shall not want. Well, yo' repeats dat nine times. An' when de judge calls yo', yo' take dat peppah an' holds it in yore han', when he call yore name, an' rubs it. Yo' hol' dat in yore han' rubs it. An' evah time de judge says somepin, yo' mashes [squeezes] yore dime an' still rubs yore peppah. An' when yo' do 'gin [begin] tuh think dat he's gittin' really rough wit chew, yo' takes an' yo' brushes yore han' lak dat. Well, de fellah dat is clost tuh yo' is goin' burn a candle on yo'. When yore trial begin tuh come, yo' burns dat candle, once in de mawnin' befo' de sunrise, an' in de evenin' jes' as de sun go down. An' whatevah it is, yo' see, yo' makes dis wish 'cuz yo' know at de same time dat chew burnin' dis candle, yo' burnin' it fo' 'im. Well, if he don' turn a-loose, he'll make it easy fo' 'im. Prob'ly he won't git no time an' if he do, he may git a light fine.
(What color candle do you burn?)
Yo' bums a perfect white candle.
(What do you do with that incense that you bought. What happens to that?)
De incense is fo' de luck an' yore success. De red peppah an' salt kills all evil spirits. Dat keeps de judge from believin' hard witness ag'inst chew.
(Where is that incense burned? Is it burned or what? Who burns it?)
Yassuh, it's tuh burn. De one dat burns de candle burns de incense, at home with de little taste of sugah in it. An' de peppah is on de stove. Yo' have tuh burn it, yo' know, fo' it's somepin hot. An' dat salt, he has hit himself. But no one cain't use no salt outa dat box fo' nuthin else but jes' fo' his use. An' aftah he git out, he takes de salt an' take it tuh de rivah an' throw it in run- nin' watah. Dat throws away all his trouble.
(He only throws away the salt?)
Yassuh, aftah he git out. Why he comin' out. Well, he goes ovah an' throw dat salt in de rivah an' don' even look back. His bad luck is gone. Jes' pitch it in dere an' walk on off.
Entry 10166
If yo' Wanta bring a person back - lak a man is away from his wife an' yo' wants tuh bring him back - well de way ah use. Ah takes dere name three times an' put 'er name three times, an' git rose water, orange blossom an' Jockey Club Cologne [for 3 perfumes see p.729, v.1] yo' know whut dat is, honey, crushed sugah, white, three lumps, an' put it in dey bottle. White lodestone, a she an' a he one, yo' knows dat. A ball of quicksilver an' a teaspoonful of steel dust. Dat's tuh return 'im. An' yo' put it in de glass bottle an' set it up - put de haid to [cork in]. Dis is de front do [demonstrates]. Well, yo' put de haid dat-away tuh come in. Dat is to come.
(The head is pointing into the house?)
Into de house. Dat's fo' tuh return de man back. (On this piece of paper on which you wrote the names, you wrote his name three times and hers three times on top of each name?) On top of his'n.
(That is to bring him back.)
[This rite can be done another way.]
Well, yo' take de names an' write it de same way. Yo' take de name an' yo' write it three times an' dey [woman's] name on top. An' den yo' cross de woman's name on top an' den yo' put yore candle an' yore honey, an' yore names in a glass. It supposed tuh be used in a glass an' holy watah with prayers.
(What sort of candle do you use?)
Well, yo' kin use a white one or blue one, anything but a black candle or a red one.
(Do you burn that candle any special time or anything?)
Yes, an hour. Yo' light it six a'clock in de mawnin' an hour an' den yo' put it out. Yo' light it at twelve a'clock ag'in an' dat hour, an' at one a'clock yo' put it out. Den three a'clock till fo', den yo' put it out.
(You do that just one day?)
No, no, yo' do dat about seven days.
(In putting these names down on the paper, do you put his name down first?)
Yo' put his name down first if yo' aftah bringin' 'im.
(Her name is over that?)
On top of his'n.
Entry 10206
What kin' [of work] you do to make him [thief] bring it back? Now, you go to them [thief] and if you know sure they got it. And you go to them, you tell them, "If you don't want to get in trouble and wants to be nice, you bring it back." And if they don't bring it back to you by that, well then you get their name. Be sure you have their right name and things. And you go and you get you three loafs [loaves of sugar, 3 changed to 4 later]. You would have to get a dime worth of loaf sugar or get a whole box of loaf sugar, for they sells 'em in boxes now. And you get that and you get you a yellow candle and plain white saucer. And you write their name nine times: three times up and three times down and three times crossways. And you put this name in that saucer and you make a wish. And you put your candle in there and you make a wish. When you pour you a couple of drops of [holy?] water in there, you make a wish. And each loaf of sugar [3 here soon changed to 4] you take and set it around that candle, you make a wish. And you light that candle, and they'll bring your things back.
(How many loafs of sugar do you put around there?)
Four.
[Either previous 3 was a mistake or informant decided to use 4.]
(Four loafs of sugar, I see. Why four?)
Well, just four. [Four loaves of sugar with candle in center as here is our familiar quincunx rite.] (I see, just four. Now, how do you mean, you write those names three up. Show me how you write those names.) You write three thisaway, there. Three thataway...
(Yes, three that way. One over the other, all right.)
[The name, usually a single one, is written one over the other 3 times.]
And then you take and you turn your paper around and you write three this way [demonstrates].
(Across those other three.)
[This makes the letter X.]
Three. You write three like this.
(Yes, I understand.)
On that piece, on that side. (All right. Now, here's the three names. Now, I turn it around. Do I cross that, cross the three?) You see, it's this way. You write them three times, write three thataway and then you turn it around, and you write three thisaway. And then you take and you write three thisaway, cross that way.
(Cross them [each 3] over at an angle. I see.)
Cross 'em over in a angle. And then when you fold it, you fold it in an angle; and every time you fold it, you fold it to yourself.
[Folding in angles means we are making triangles.]
(I write three names like this, one under each other. Like that?)
Uh huh.
[I tear page from note book and write names.]
(Here we are, just like that.)
Just like that. (I turn this around [the sheet of paper upside down] and write the three names like that, right over the other three names?) Like that, right over the other three names.
(I see. Then I turn it around again and then cross it down like that?)
Like that, like that.
(I see, like you are making the letter "N" - that way.)
[I was wrong about the letter 'N'. This was before I became aware of the X and *.1 Thataway and then when you fold it, get you a powder they [hoodoo store] got. They got the pink and they has the yellow [later changed to brown]. You get this povder and you sprinkle it in the whole four corners. [Here, instead of a three- cormered paper we are back at four-cornered one.] You see, you have, if you get tvo rooms or three rooms, whatever room it is, and you get you a loaf of this sugar and you put a loaf in each corner of your room. [Here it is evident we have a quincunx.] Well, if you got a saint - St. Expedite or Mother of Perpetual Help - you put it [picture or small statue] there, and you say, Well, Mother of?erpetual Help, I'm leaving, I'm leaving the house up to you, hoping that you won't let no one come in and steal nothing out of my house. And you put the loaf [loaves] of sugar around in the corners of the rooms, [the picture or statue of Mother of Perpetual in center of room] and you fasten your house and you go away.
(You go away.)
And go away and leave it into [hands of] Mother of Perpetual Help.
(What kind of powder do you put around?)
You get them love powders.
(Love powders?)
Love powders.
(What kind of love powder?)
They got the pink love powders. And you get the loaf sugar and you put a loaf - one loaf - in each corner of the house [or room if you are living in a
(What other colors of love powders have they? They have a pink.)
They got a pink and they got a brownish looking love powder.
Entry 11254
[Part 1:] Dere's a rule dat dey work best - if yo' take de young Doon - dere's a time when we say de [new] moon's in de bed [there is another example of this in HOODOO] a growing moon, dat's is yo' work dese different arts to grow stronger as de moon [grows]. [While machine is stopped I ask how he learned this work.] Well, yo' learn lots of it from master craftsmen - people, older time people who have been following it fo' years, done made experiment on dose things an' know de ones which will work.
(Are you from Georgia or South Carolina?)
Mah home in Georgia. (Well, were you initiated into the work or did you learn it? Is there some sort of an initiation?) Well, dere's some certain rules that yo' should follow an' shouldn't follow, some certain things that, as they say: if you play with fire, yo' git burned. That is, after yo' go so far it's some things that chew wouldn't wanta do fo' da reason dat dere certain things dat worry yo'. Yo' would have to carry a cer- tain burden dat chew wouldn't wanta carry; more so a burden den yo' would like tuh carry.
(I mean there is no initiation ceremony?)
Well it is a ceremony dat chew kin carry on when yo' fixin' tuh perform yore work; certain classes of work, dat is, whatever yo' goin' in tuh do, dat chew kin carry on a ceremony. Dat's right. (Well, now, the reason I ask is that someone said over in New Orleans, over there, that if you wanted to learn to do this kind of work, they Would go through some sort of a ceremony; initiate you and you, you know, learn your work.) Well, ah don't know anything 'bout de 'nitiation. It isn't anything about dat, but it's jest a ceremony. Yo' go through sompin jest lak yo' consecratin' yo'- self, for say, a certain thing whut chew goin' after. Dere's ways an' things as dat. Now yo' kin - yo' say yo' fast, an' yo' take a glass of water, an'yo lie down or sit up in de room wit chure arm folded to yo'self so many hours or sompin lak dat. Well, yo' kin do dat, jes' consecrate. Dat is if yo' have some particular work dat yo' care to go into.
(But you don't have anyone else working that with you?)
No, not necessariZy so. Yo' kin do de work fo' de person yo'self. (No, I mean, when you consecrate yourself, sometimes over in New Orleans when they do it - sometimes they will have a little ceremony and an altar and burn candles and things.) Well, yo' can do dat, if yo' wish tuh, yo' kin burn candles. [Waycross, Ga.,
(1086), 1756:1.]
[Part 2 of 11254: The following rite in the interview preceded the discussion in. Part 1.] A curse on dat house. Well, now, some of dose things - dis has been true. Ah know dis to be true dat yo' kin do it dis way. Put it in fo' de Lord. Well, yo' say, yo' send out dat. You say, "Well, In de Name of Jesus Christ, dat sech an' sech a thing would be. Well, dey [denl say, "In de Name of Jesus Christ, dis house, dat nobody kin stay in, an' it will not prosper." Well, yo' continue. Yo' concentrate on dat, but choo say dat, In de Name of Jesus Christ dat sech an sech a thing shall not be or shall be. All right. Well in using dat word, den about every three verses yo' use, den yo' say, "Rescue! Rescue! Rescue!" Dat's a shore shot fo' dat. Dat's very easy.
Entry 11266
An' they kin burn you - they kin take a dark-green candle, that's if they have your name - they write chore name 9 times an' they write across that [the name] [that] they move in 48 hours [my only example of request written across names making sign of cross]. An' they light it exactly at twelve a'clock at night. An' then they say, I wish you would move, see, call yore name, an' then you repeats that ev'ry 7 days until - if you're a little hard to make 'em pove, you repeat it for 7 days; you know, if someone try to fight against you [by using rites to put out a candle being burned against him or her]. [See v.l, PP.851-862, Nos.2943-2989; several under MORE CANDLE RITES in v.5; and rites scattered through interviews in vols. 2 and 4.] You repeat that for 7 days an' you throw that around. They'll certainly move. [Here I either stopped record- ing to ask questions or informant herself decided to add a few details.] You write these names down 9 times on a piece of paper [usually these are written in a column one under the other]. Then you write across these names move in 48 hours. [In similar rites a woman writes down a man's name 9 times in a column, then turns the paper upside down and writes her name 9 times across his. This is called writing backwards, or upside down. Here I am assuming move in 48 hours is writ- ten 9 times. If it is written only once, then the sheet is turned sideways and the words written at a right angle across victim's name. Also possible here the order move in 48 hours is written on a separate piece of paper under the 9 naes.] You put this [9 names] undah that [slip of paper move in 48 hours] right in the saucer. An' [into the saucer] you puts a little water in there, an' syone salt. You set all of that together, see, at 12 o'clock at night. See, at 12 o'clock at night that'll make you move. [All this sounded easy at the time, but I failed to ask an obvious question. If that candle is to be set in the center of the saucer, so that it rests on the two slips of paper, how can it stand up without falling over? Among possible methods: (l) a very small (birth- day cake) candle can be used: waxed to the upper paper and lowered into the small amount of water in the saucer; (2) a round-shape tin can, opened, can have a hole punched in its bottom, inverted over the candles, and the can holds up the candle. Moreover, the candle can be placed in a holder and set near the saucer.] [(960), 1544:5.]
Entry 2816
(What other illustration could you give me now, if they were burning a black candle on you?) If they burning a black candle on you? Well, you take - go and get you. (What do they do now?) Take a black candle and a piece of yellow paper, wrapping paper, and they writes the name down on it nine times, and then they writes the name of you on that candle, around that candle, and they wraps that paper around that candle and light it. And as this candle burns down, well, it's burning your name. They calls it to drag you - you'll suffer with headaches and all that stuff.
Entry 2828
Well, you get the name of the policeman that 'rrested you. Take his name, the judge's name, and the district attorneys name. You write it nine times on a piece of writing paper with ink that never has been used. Buy you a bottle of ink and a new pen, and you write their names nine times. You write your name nine times over that. You understand? You get you some honey and put it in a saucer and you burn it with those candles. You take those white candles, three of 'em, and cut the tip off and turn 'em bottom up upon there and let those candles burn out.
(When do you do this?)
You do this like if you got arrested today and you get a subpoena to go to court next week. You do that three days before you go. And the morning you've got to go to court, you go to the hydrant, or pump or well, whatever you got, wherever it be, and you catch you a cup of water. And you start out the gate, have that cup of water - and you're facing the street - throw it over your left shoulder and make your wish and never look back, just keeping on going to the court house and you'll get discharged.
Entry 2932
(How do they burn a candle on your photograph?)
Well now, a photograph, if I want - you mean that if I want to harm you or.
(Yes, either harm you or do any good or any way.)
Well now, if it's to harm you - I tell you if it's to harm you. I tell you what they do to your photograph. I use a candle again, but I use a black candle. You see, you get a black candle. You gets a black candle and instead of writing the name down thisa- way, you write it around the candle. See, you write that name [demonstrates], like you start here, you write it here - every, about every inch, you write the name. You take the photograph and you turn it upside down, what I mean, turn it on the head, and you burns it by that black candle. You take one of - if you can get two of 'em, you get two [photographs]. It would be better. You got one there by the black candle and you [get] the other one and you pin it or shove it up under your fire- hearth, you see. It's not going to burn up under there. Just put it in that fire-hearth, you make all the fire you want. You put it up under that fire- hearth, but you put it on the left-hand corner of your fire-hearth and put it as high as you can get it. And you can make fire and everything else, it's not going to burn at all. It's going to do more harm than anything else, it's not going to do no good; if it burns, it ain't going to do no good. See. But it's best not to let it burn. And, if I was going to do that to you - see, if I was going to do that to you, I would put the photograph, the second one, on the left- hand side of my fire-hearth. And I'm got one on the mantelpiece, upside down, burning by the candle. I'm got your name and I get me what you call a melt.
(A what?)
A melt.
(What's that?)
[I wanted to be certain he is not talking about melted wax - see CANDLE SPONGE BURIED, p.848f.] That's something that looks like a - it comes from a cow, looks like a cow's tongue almost, but it's called the melt.
(The melt.)
[Melt of course is milt or spleen. For example: "If hogs are slaughtered in autumn and the small part of the milt lies toward the head...sign of an open winter; if the large part...a severe winter. At times...belief differently ex- pressed...if the milt...ends in a blunt point...a cold winter...tapers to a point, a warm winter. Milt is usually called melt are rarely spleen." (FACI, 2ed.,1965, p.28.) With the original belief, I debated some time whether to use melt or milt. Moreover, I broke it up into two parts; using milt for the first
(No. 307) and spleen for the second (No.308) - FACI, 1st ed.,1935, p.12.]
I'd get me one of those melts, see. I'd get that melt, you see. I'd get that and I'm going to spread it. I spread it. I get your name and if I can get any of your filth at all, I'll cut that [melt] open and I'm going put it into this melt. I'll put this in your [my] melt and I'll keep it hung up there for three days in that fire-hearth where your picture is. Then from there I take and I goes bury that melt. I bury that melt and when I bury that melt, I take this picture from there and I buries it alongside of that melt. And after burying that picture with that melt, I cover it and I lights me another candle, but I move that candle. The first candle I got, I won't light it there [in the fire- hearth], I'll light it in a dark place. See, I'll [put] this candle in a dark place for nine days. I'll limit it to nine days and in nine days I'll have you just where I want you. Yes, sir.
(Do you light that black candle at any particular time?)
Well, I got - I light my black candle. See, if I light a candle, I light it at nine o'clock in the morning, I light it at three, and I light it at six - that's three times a day, that's all.
Entry 2743
Set it eleven 'clock at night and you dress the candles. You get seven candles fer that purpose and you dress them with a certain kind of perfume. But chew have to do these things on the new moon. Anything that's good has to be done on the new moon; the bad thing they do on the waste of the moon. But now, if you wanted a person to come back, you dress the candles and you set 'em at eleven 'clock at night so it work on the new moon. And then you have to set the candles to burn and pray. [Pray while candles are burning.] And burn the High John Conker Incense. An' you do that from about eleven to half-past eleven. And then sometimes you set and concentrate. You know, concentration means a whole lot. Set and concentrate - hold your thoughts on him and you say while you talking to the candles, "John - Mary Louise," what- ever the name is, "In the Name of God the Father, let you be upset and let chew have no rest or peace wherever you are." Then you read a prayer in the book and - but you keep it up and finally they can't stay away. They will have to come back.
(What do you mean by that book? Do you mean the Bible? Or do you mean?)
Or the Bible.
(Do you have to buy these candles specially or just any kind of candle?)
Oh, no, you have to buy them specially. Sometimes you kin git them already dressed. You git them in New York on Lennox Avenue. You gits them there and you kin git them from Lawrence. Dressed candles. (Have you ever heard of people having little altars and burning candles? On little altars like in a Catholic Church?) Yes, ah do that myself. (I am rather interested in that for a special reason. Can you tell me just how you do that?) Well, we have our altar and we have the holy oil because everything must be holy. And because it's a place, people coming and cursing and that, and some- times they'll fergit and so the place is full of evil and dirty. But everything must be clean. We have holy oils - we have holy candles and you light them. You have seven holy candles, large ones, but chew have 'em in the form of a cross.
(Will you tell me again about burning those candles?)
You know you have them in the form of a cross. You see, you have those little candles. If you don't have those candlesticks that have the form of a cross, why you can jest sit your candles in a row there in that cross, you see.
(Two rows crossed.)
No, see. That's one row of candles across, that's 1,2,3,4,5,6, and then you have some here. That's a cross, you see. Then you have seven small candles like they have on birthday cakes. You have those and you burn those too. And you have those little votive lights sitting around.
(Well, now where would you put those little candles?)
You set them right in front of the seven cross like.
(Well now, how do you make a cross out of those seven candles?)
Those seven little ones you don't have to make a cross of them. Jest let them burn there.
(That other cross, how many do you put in that one row?)
Well, you jest - it don't make any difference how many, jest so you have a cross. Make a cross, you see.
(Then you use those little candles.)
Yes, but chew must burn yore incense. We call it holy incense. And then you use holy water. Yo' sprinkle yore place down with holy water and bless your place - must pray and read the 23 Psalms. Course you read the 23rd Psalms when you git up in the morning and you face the east and you say - you read so many verses until you get to, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he makes me to lie down in green pastures, he leads me to the side of still waters." Then when you say that, and after you turn your face to the east, then to the west, and then you say a couple of more verses. And then when you say those other two verses, turn to the north and say the other two, and when you finish with them, make the last verse to the south. And that will keep your place holy and blest in the form of the cross, you see. And use the 9lst Psalms, if you wanta read, you wanta read a person to be able to git the very best results, to keep out the evil, you read the 9lst Psalm - jest a few verses you want of it. And use the holy candles with holy oil - that keeps the evil out and you aIways be able to get a good message and good vibration. You work better. (Now, you go through this ceremony before you go into this special room. That the idea?) Yes, you do that.
(Before you go in to work for someone.)
Before you start to work. Now if you was goin' tuh have a meetin' heah, a spiritual meetin', you'd come in round about six 'clock and then you'd do all that, and have your place all set up. And then you would git on your knees and you would pray and you jest set your candles all there and you pray and burn the incense.] Burn the incense while you on your knees praying, asking God to bless you and send you in a good crowd and success and let no one be evil, and sprinkle around the holy water and then you set and you concentrate, and you set and you hold your thoughts on success and prosperity and draw the people to you. That's all you do.
(Now do you have meetings? How often do you have meetings?)
Ah have been having meetings three nights a week, but I haven't been very well and not doin' so much now. (I thought if you were going to have a meeting while I am here in Washington, my man and I would come around to be at one of the meetings.) Well, you might come down Sunday - think ah'll probably have a meeting Sunday night.
(Sunday night?)
Yes, 'cause ah'm in kind of a small place now. Ah used to have a big place but ah'm jest having it in my house in mah rooms.
(Well, what time does the meeting begin as a rule?)
Round about nine 'clock. People don't git out until that time. (If a person wanted to get into this work, must he be initiated into it or what.) You would have to be born psychic and after you born psychic why then as you grow older it comes to you but then you have to have some one to instruct you, teach you.
(Then there is no form of initiation or anything of that sort?)
Then after a meeting, after you accepted in a class, course there's certain kind of instruction telling you what to do, and if you say you seen anything - sometimes you see things and don't know 'em. But they will tell you, explain to you. Then you get so - you get so then that you kin jest talk - jest open your mouth and the words will come right out. Then sometimes you see things - you see symbols, you see signs and you see jest the words. You get the words mostly in this ear sometimes [demonstrates] and you walk along.
(Your right ear?)
No, the left ear. This is the left ear. You kin hear it in the left ear, but you have to be born psychic. You were born psychic yourself.
(I'm born psychic? I suppose I am. Never have been sceptical about it.)
[We are talking about different things - see comment later.]
(About the people who are called Holy Rollers or the First Dominical Penta- costal Church. Do you think they have a spiritual gift?) Well, ah think they have a spiritual gift, but ah think that they don't quite understand the Bible. Now for instance, this Holy Roller, ah don't know anything about that, but this - what did you say the word there, The Holy Sanctified?
(This is something different from The Holy Sanctified.)
Well, ah think The Holy Sanctified has a gift of tongues - course it's in the Bible [1 Cor.12, and 14]. You see, if you pray enough and live close to God, the spirit will git on you so will talk in tongues. Your mouth will jest thuth, thuth, till the spirit got on yuh. But as far as being sanctified, ah don't think anybody is really all sanctified. Cause when you sanctified, ah think God takes you away from here when you get so holy. (If a person thinks he's hurt or anything of that sort, could you give him help in any way? Tell him anything about it?) Yes, if they was hurt and the spirit would show it tuh me, and I would see it and tell them about it.
(Then you could describe how they were hurt or something of that sort?)
If I see so. Most generally I see jest how it's done.
(Would you prescribe any remedy for them?)
Well, depends upon how they were hurt. Sometimes if people - lots of people comes to me and say that they are hurt and they are not. You know some people, the southern people, are very superstitious. And if they get a pain in their laig they think they are hoodooed or hurt. Not all the time it isn't that. If you don't tell 'em that, they'll go round and pay somebody else and give em the money. But lots of times they're not hurt. Sometimes people do's has things in them, but I have nevah seen anybody yet that had anything in 'em. Cause when I was a child somebody said that a person had something in them, but I don't - any that talk - I never seen any of it.
(Weren't you born in the south?)
Ah was born right in Washington, but ah lived in New York quite a while. (Well now suppose a person has this pain in his leg, what would you advise ordinarily?) Well, ah would give 'em a treatment with mah hands and pray over him. Or if I wanted, if the place was swollen I would get some herbs and mix a solution and bath it down. See. (But you don't believe that there is any spell? I mean, you don't think that he is hoodooed or anything of the sort?) Ah don't know really. They tell me they kin do it, but ah don't know. Ah never heard or seen. [My comment about being psychic merely means being aware and having a sense of direction (see Introduction). What little I have of this came from training; it was not a gift.]
Entry 2747
They goes to a woman across the creek over there right in front of the Catholic cemetery and they got five gray candles. (Is she a young woman or an elderly woman?) This is a woman around forty, jes' a little older woman than me. So they goes to this woman and git five gray candles, as I was told - of my next experi- ence of that kind of work. An' they'd taken those five candles and they wrote my name and they put my name under each one of those five candles. They burn one on Monday for me. De one that was burned on Monday for me that I would be disappointed at de first day of the week. They burned that one all day Monday. That's when ah went out to work that ah'd be confused - nuthin would go right with me, that ah'd lose out, ah'd lose mah job, couldn't keep any jobs. The second one that would be burned on me would be burned on Tuesday. That candle was burned fo' me. That was always mah lucky day when ah wanted to put ovah any business or to go to anyone for any favor. Ah would always make Tuesday mah business day to go fo' money or to transact any business. That Was to defeat me from having any business - to making any progress in any business. The one that they would burn on Wednesday, which would be the third candle - that usually was my general work day, that ah did mah washing and mah ironing. That was to take mah energy away from me that ah couldn't work on Wednesday. Ah would jest pass that day away as a no-good day. Thursday was always a time that ah usually would go to clubs and do different things like that. The candle that they burned on me fo' Thursday would be the candle that ah wouldn't have any vim to do anything in social work, as I have been doing. The one that they burned on me Friday, the whole week that has been wasted, that ah wouldn't have any money coming in to meet my demands for Saturday. And those candles was called hard-time candles, as ah was told. But ah kin tell yo' from self experience ah certainly was hard-timed. Ah've had some of the very best jobs, which at de Country Club, for the Penn Mutual Life Insurance man, at Ryker[son?] School, and would walk away from them without any reason, an' have came to the place that I has nuthin besides three dollars worth of work to support mahself and four children. So ah jes' atchly been hard-timed.
(When did they do this? How long ago did they burn these candles?)
Oh, it's been about - all of this trouble that I have had, that I can atchly relate to you, I have come in contact with it all in the past two years - from one degree on to another.
Entry 2748
Dere was a gurl fren' ah was livin' wit an' dere was another gurl ah Was puttin' in time with. Well, de girl ah was putting in de time with on de outside. (She wasn't living in the same house?) She wasn't living in the same house. Matter of fac' she was living maybe four-five blocks from me. But both liked me. An' de gurl ah was livin' with, me an' her went to church one night, and after we return from church, ah got ready to go to bed and found mah pajamas and pull on. De pressure, yo' understand, and ah turn over an' ah hit somethin' hard. Ah run mah hand in an' found out what it was. It was a candle - a white candle had never been burned. An' so ah takes de candle out and ask dis girl why Was de candle in dere - de girl ah was living with. Well, she didn't know anything about it, you see, and so ah got de candle and goes to Madam Jackson across de creek and consults wit her about dis candle. And so she fest tole me the girl initial, who put it dere. [Initiall Doctors rarely identify persons casting spells (see 907, p.332); but when they do, identification is couched in bague terms. This latter practice occurs in margin-title Zippy Tull, where the fortuneteller Zippy tells her young client that the culprit working against him is "a big dark woman...that don't like your mother and don't like your father, an' she poisoned your dog." I hope to collect all this material in Index under Doctor: identifies spell-caster.] No, fact she didn't put it dere, but she had it put dere. It was a girl, who was a fren' of de girl ah was living [with], put it dere. (You begin with two girls - the second girl didn't put there ~ she had a friend of hers put it there.) A fren' of hers put it there. That was tuh git to dis girl, see - co'se mah girl fren's friend - de one ah was living with. An' dis girl de Madam tole me - say dat dis girl whut had dis candle put dere, she was burning a candle on me fer nine days. An' dis candle had to be burnt at a odd hour, to be burnt from nine or eleven 'clock, which is a odd hour you see - either of two hours, yo' see. But by me finding dis candle and taking it out it was prevented.
(This candle had to be burnt at night.)
Well, de candle had been there three days when it was found - ah slept on it three nights before it was found. [A candle concealed in a bad mattress had beer worked into a feelable position by his tossing.]
(Well, did she say what would have happened to you, if you hadn't found it?)
Well, if ah hadn't found de candle it would mean de girl ah was living with - we couldn't of got along, yo' see. Dat's what dis other girl had it put there fo' - so we couldn't be anything to one another, see, or couldn't git along.
Entry 2750
[Here is another example of the glove-shaped hand, but unlike the former rite (1990, p.584) we now have one in a candle atmosphere - New Orleans is near. More important, the following story shows some of the listening prob- lems of collecting, among them - speedy talker, confusing pro- nouns and references to persons, delayed explanation, all sorts of things.] Well, they say if you were living here and they wanted tuh move you and run you away - well ah know of a lady, she fo' every morning fo' 'bout nine mornings - she bought a bran'-new box of salt and she took dis salt and cayenne pepper and she would sprinkle it, yo' know, from de front to de back and fo' that reason it would cause a confusion, you know, in the house and they all wouldn't live so good, you know. An' so she would take it and she would sprinkle all over when everyone, say, Wouldn't be noticing, you know. She would do that and then when they all would leave, she would take. She went out to the graveyard early one morning and she got some graveyard dust offa someone's grave, and she brought this dirt back, yo' know, and she'd taken it and where this landlady lived, slept, she unraveled [took out a few stitches of] her pillah and she put it [graveyard dust] in dis pillah. And she had a glove - [look] like it was a han' - and it [the graveyard dust] was in this. And she stuffed it with this graveyard dirt. And she says she mixed it [the graveyard dust] with a - wherever she got dis rattlesnake dust from, ah don't know, but she musta got it from a rattlesnake or something, and she mixed it with somethin' and she stuffed, sewed it in dis pillah while de landlady was gone. [She starts to say the graveyard dust was mixed with rattlesnake dust. Was it? For snake dust, see No. 690, p.230; also No. 1433, p.468 - "an original and brilliant piece of therapeutic thinking."] So after, for about a couple of weeks this lady suffered from her head laying on dis pillah. She suffered severely from her head, you know, and she didn't know what it was, you know. She begin to git dizzy and feel bad, and so she said she was going to see what caused dese headaches. And everything she could take Wouldn't do her any good and so she went tuh a couple of fortunetellers. And so finally a ole lady tole her, fortuneteller told her, said, "Well, yo' ought to look about yore bed," say, "it look like you can't get along in de house, there's always a confusion and everything." And so she said, "You go look up in your mattress, your pillahs or something." So she didn't pay any attention to it all [atall = at all]. So finally she made up her mind to do that. Took her pillahs out and she un- raveled de pillah and she found dis glove stiff like a hand, yo' hand, and so she opened it and she found all de stuff in dere, those different things. An' she didn't know what de cause of it, you see. And so she was afraid and she got someone to look after it fo' her. Well, she'd taken it to dis lady and ast her, and de lady tole her it was graveyard dust and rattlesnake dust and she wanted tuh - someone wanted to make her move or either kill her or something like that. [The preceding account is one of our many examples of that important element in hoodoo theory and practice - the doctor's ability to analyze and identify immediately the nature and cause of an ailment. To look at a handful of dirt and say that it is a mixture of graveyard dust and rattlesnake dust is quite a trick. Only our former doctor-druggist-chemist could have done as well (see No. 1593, p.498). To say these two dusts in a glove in a pillow caused the headache is quite a - well, even doctors admit this knowledge is a gift. At least, though on a lower level, we can now answer our former question - "Was it?"] An' so dis lady [roomer] in de house, you see, she would every morning [for 9 mornings] she would sprinkle dis here cayenne pepper and dis salt all ovah de house. And so after a while they [landlady] asked - cause dey [landlady and roomer]didn't 'gree, yo' know, 'count de fuss and everything - after while they asked her to move out and she [roomer] said she was going to return it back to this person [landlady].
(Was that here in Alabama?)
Yes.
(Well now, go right ahead.)
Well, after she did that - yo' know, she [landlady] did that to make 'em [her] move or to keep her [landlady's] husband, you see. So she [landlady] kept her
[own] husband. And so this other hoodoo lady [roomer because she used hoodoo]
tole her [landlady] that she would return it back. So she [evicted roomer] comes and gits dis hen's aig - a black hen laid dis egg, and she wrote the name [see later] on it. They were living in a house kinda lak dis [house in which I was interviewing] wit a glass do' in de front, chew know, in de house. So soon, early one mawnin' she comes an' throws dis aig up side de door and broke de glass, yo' know - throw de black hen's aig up there. So when he [landlady's husband] goes out - get up dat mawnin' soon - he didn't know - so when he looked all de egg spattered in front of de do' and de glass was out, yo' see, and he walked ovah it befo' he knew it, yo' see, so he looked on de shell and saw where de name was wrote chew know - her [his wife's] name and his name was wrote on dere. And so she said, "Well, dey did dat to break us up - broke dat aig up side de do' to break us up." So she said - an' so she got lye and swept - yo' know, swept it all out an' cleaned it up, yo' know. An' so dis lady [roomer] wrote her a letter and tole her that "Seven years wouldn't be too long for a raccoon to weah a ruffle-bosomed shirt. That's the way she spoke. (Wait, will you talk a little bit slowly. "Seven years wouldn't be too long for a raccoon to wear a ruffle-bosom shirt?") That means she would get her, yo' know. An' so dat was de words she wrote to her. [I know nothing about this stylish raccoon. He sounds like early American ruffled shirts, but the saying or proverb may come from the stage or radio.l An' so finally she would - yo' know, she would burn candles on dis man. She went got - an' got a candle and every time on a certain hour, noonday an' like dat, she would burn dese candles wit his name wrote on it. Black candles, yo' know, and she wrote it on dere. Well, he couldn't stay here and he couldn't stay there, yo' know. He was jest kept, yo' know, like he was, yo' know, de mind up- set all de time, yo' see. And so he got so that he didn't [live] peacefully wit dis woman, because every morning fo' nine mornings, she would come there and had something like - ah don't know whut kind of dust it was - but it was - when you look at it, it looked something like black peppah, yo' know, powdered peppah. She'd sprinkle it all roun' dere do'step, yo' know, fo' nine mawnings. An' he came there and so she took one little piece of his hair out de top of his head while he was asleep, and she sewed that up, and had that fixed with something and put it in a little red bag and sewed dis little red bag up, an' taken a cord string like and put nine knots in dis cord string and she wore it around her waist.
(What else did she do with that string first? Anything else?)
When she took dat string she rolled it in something, yo' know, in some kinda dust, yo' know. She rolled dis string in some kind of a dust, dipped it in dis dust and jest as yo' tie those knots, jest like dat dust would be in dose knots, too, yo' see, because it would wear off, you know, say, just straight round her Waist, but it would be in dat knot, yo' see. An' nine knots she tied it around her waist wit dis little red bag wit his hair in it. An' she took one of his socks - yo' know, one his left socks, and she carried it and had dis sock dressed, vo' know, and she buried dis sock at de foot of her steps, underneath her steps, she buried his sock so he couldn't stay 'way from there, yo' see. Said that she had him so that he had tuh come there. See. And so yo' see, well, he would get so he wouldn't give her any money and some- thin' like that, and so dis ole hoodoo lady tole her to get him to give her one silver dime, yo' know, of his money. And so he didn't know what she wanted him to give her dis dime fo', but she got a dime out of him. And she went an' she had dis dime dressed until it turn almost black like a penny, and she put a hole in it and she wore it around her laig, yo' know. And that's where so she could git his money, you see. She was trying to git him away from dis yere woman [his wife], yo'see. An' so, see, she didn't know that this other woman had his sock buried at her do'step. She had his sock buried there and she was still continuously burning dose candles. And every time she'd come roun' she had some kind a powder tied up in her hans'cuff that she would sprinkle. He thought it was jest powder whut chew powder yore face. It smelled sweet but it was some kin' of love powder yo see. An' she had a little somethin' like a tablet. She'd offer him meals. She would [drop] that in his tea or his coffee.
(Like a tablet?)
Like a little tablet, yes. It would dissolve, you know, an' you couldn't see the mixture in there. You couldn't see the mixture, you know, and you couldn't taste it, see. Well, he would drink this, see. Well, he would drink this and therefo' he couldn't stay away for she had that in him, yo' see. Well, see, she wanted to git dis other woman [wife] out de way, and that's [the reason] she went there and broke dis aig up side her do'. An' she give him those little tablets in his coffee or tea to drink, see, and he begin to suffer wit his stomach badly, an' all like that, and he began to look frail, and look bad, yo' know, because she said if she didn't have him, he could not do her [his wife] no good. See. An' he begin to look frail and bad, an' so no doctor's medicine didn't do him any good. Every time he'd go tuh a doctor, it would make him worser. Yo' know, when you've hoodooed anybody, doctor's medicine not good fo' you, you know. An' so he went - and every time he'd take a doctor's medicine, it would make him worser. And so an' ole lady came by one day and tole him dat he was fixed, chew know, that he was hoodooed, see, because he never would git well, yo' know. And on a certain kinda moon he would git like - git in a fit chew know, kinda rave. And so the ole lady told him that if he'd pay her a sum of money, she could cure him - yo' know, she could git him outa dis kinda fix: An' so, he finally jest scuffled up de money some kind of way. And so she'd taken and brought some saltpeter an' tole him fo' 'bout nine or ten mawnin's to take a bath every mawnin', every day, in dat saltpeter - bathe in that. An' she went out and got some roots out of de woods, some kin'a calomel roots and every- thing and he had to chew dose roots, yo' know - calomel roots, like white-look- ing roots, and she tole him to chew a piece of dat, chew know. An' he had to chew dose roots and he had to take a bath in saltpeter fo' nine mawnings. She made him up a mixture of medicine, chew know. She put so much of turpentine - looked like coffee, somethin', where you see it would settle at de bottom. Well, he had to shake it up and yo' know he would take that, chew know. And after he would bathe in dat saltpeter, he had to take dat medicine and then chew dat root, chew see. An' den she told him at certain time - if he would chew it often - that would pass from him. See, when he chews dose roots, dat calomel yo' know worked up in him. Well, yo' see, after he'd taken that and she tole him that ninth or de tenth day something would pass from him, yo' see - but sure enuff it did. When hit pass from him, yo' know, like de calomel worked him yo' know, it passed somethin' looked like little worms - passed from him little bita worms. An' she tole him that if those worms hada stayed [in] him, it would form like little frogs, and things like that was goin' form in his intestines, inside, chew know. And it pass from him like little worms. And when it passed out, she showed it to him, iThis whut pass from yo', this whut they was puttin' in yo'." [There is one strange feature about so many of these passages of worms, snakes, or lizards. The patient does not see them until the doctor has made an examination and then shows them, or sometimes merely tells about them. No doc- tor has ever gone so far as to say, "If you see them you will die." For further accounts, see Live Things In You, Pp.227-239, and Index.] See, that would kill him slowly, yo' know, and so he was pinin' up and every- thing. So he passed little worms from him in de tenth day - little worms and little somethin' she said was gon'a form frogs. Whatever this was dis woman put in his coffee for him, yo' see, that was forming in him - that would form in him, see, because she got these little tablets and she got this rattlesnake dust - some dust from under a rattlesnake, wherever she got it from and say - and put it in dere, put it in him, fix him so he would stay with her. [Choppy place in cylinder. The old hoodoo woman told wife] if she could get holt of him, she say, if she could get a holt of him and git a little piece of his shirt, she could, yo' know, could stop dis fit on him. See, every change of moon he'd have these spells. [Here are four similar beliefs about fits from general folklore: (1) "Epilep- tic fits...more frequent and...severe during the increase of the moon...." (2) "If anyone has fits, take off their shirt...while having it, cut out the piece over their chest and boil...when cool...give to the person to drink...." (3) "He was having one of these fits. She pull his shirt off over his head, put it on a pan and set it on fire...took the ashes...to feed him a spoonful before each meal...." (4) "Remove the person's undershirt...after an attack, let it smolder on live coals, mix a teaspoonful of these ashes in a glass of holy water, and say In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost...must be administered three times a day." From FACI, 2ed., p.248.] Well, this ole lady, finally this ole lady died, see - dis ole lady whut was fixing him, yo' know. Well, she died. Well, yo' see, dey found all kinds of stuff, different hoodoo stuff in her place, where dey went tuh see, yo' know, when she died, an' everything. [For finding spells at hoodoo woman's home when she dies, see No. 239, p.66.] Well, this lady, every change of de moon, she still havin' fits. Yo' know, when de person die and fixed yuh, yo' know, yo' don't nevah git ovah it, yo' see. Yo' see, because dey died befo' dey could take it off dem. See. An' she still had those fits after and nobody couldn't take it off because dis was de woman dat put de spell on, see. [See If Evildoer Dies Spell Incurable, p.396.] And so everytime de moon would change she would go crazy-like and see dis man. See. And then when she seen, she didn't want him. Well, finally, this woman went crazy and nobody couldn't do anything for her because she was de one put de spell on her, yo' see, and after she went crazy, well, dey sent her to asylum and after she went tuh de 'sylum, den she died, you see. But de spell was still on dis man, yo' see, after she died. Yo' see, she never did git her mind back. An' so dis man, yo' see - after he come back - he was already heah, and so after she died, it was still on him. He couldn't git it off him because dis ole lady was de one had buried his socks fo' him and he didn't know where. Differ- ent fortunetellers had tole him that she had somethin' of his'n buried somewhere and if he could find it and dig it up, why that could git him bettah, yo' see, because she had got the worms out of him. See. So she had his left sock buried, took his left dirty sock. She fixed it an' buried it underneath de step. And so he would dig all in de yard to try to find where she had buried it. Well, finally, he jest - seemed like he said he had a dream one night to look under his step: They something tole him to look under his steps. [For spirits warning in dreams, see pp.27,116, and Index.] An' so he got up early hisself one morning and went out there an' was digging around under his steps. And when he dug aroun' he struck something like a little can, and when he opened de little can - de top of dat little can, de dust jest flew out, and when he pulled it out he saw one his dirty sock had been buried under there. And in that sock, he opened it, it had some kind of powder and a little rag, and it had nine needles and nine pins sticking in it - nine wit de heads down and nine needles wit de head up. See - in dat sock and so it was sewed up in dat little rag in his sock. And he'd taken dis sock, de whole thing and he carried it tuh a ole man. Yo' see, he carried it tuh a fortuneteller and tole him, say, "Well, dat's whut she had buried, yo' see - why you couldn't stay away from her." An' so, when he'd taken dat and dose little needles - dose needles been in dere so long dey was rusty. An' sos he'd taken dat herself and she washed it in saltpeter - see, she washed dat in saltpeter and he thought she was curing him, but she was making him worser fo' it - 'cause he wanted tuh go back to his wife, yo' see. De woman died dat broke him from his wife. Dat's de one made him move out de house and break up his home, yo' see. An' so he went back then to his wife and try to live with her, see, an' everything. Well, he couldn't live with her because they both died and de spell was on him, yo' see.
(This happened right here in Mobile?)
Yes.
(All right, go right ahead now.)
Well, he'd gone back to his wife, yo' see, after a certain length of time - so many years, yo' see. An', yo' know, he begged her pardon for the way he did her and de woman. She knew dis woman had broke up her home, yo' know, what she did, because afterwards she found out what she had sprinkled all around in her home, yo' know, fo' de confusion and fo' him tuh mistreat her, yo' see. Well, he'd gone back to try to live with her again, yo' see. And so his wife was afraid and so she thought she would have him fixed her- self. After this woman had him that way, she thought she would go an' git some- one to do him the same way, see. So she goes to a fortuneteller and dey tell her that the only way she could do anything with him was to have him dressed. See, was to have him dressed so that - if she don't, he would leave her again because dis spell was still on him and de woman was dead and every change of de moon, he would leave her. See, he had dis spell on him, and said de woman was dead and she was de one had to git it off him. Well, sure enough, every change of de moon he would leave her but she wanted tuh have him dressed. So this fortuneteller wouldn't tell her whut to do, but she sent her to some- body else. So she went - say she jest tell de fortune but de lady had to go to an ole hoodoo. So she goes out in de woods to an ole hoodoo lady and dis ole lady tole her that yes, she could dress him and fix him so that he couldn't leave her. He would have to stay right there, you know, he couldn't leave her. And so she tole her to git her a sum of money and bring it back and she would dress it. [In the preceding paragraph: (1) Some fortunetellers do all types of hoodoo work, or put another way, some hoodoos and doctors tell fortunes; other fortune- tellers, like this one, refer patients to a hoodoo doctor or a specialist. Even I the, Author Becomes a Specialist, on page 278. Is there another example of hoodoos imitating modern medical practice? Yes and no. Specialization in heal- ing is as old as primitive medicine-man and witch-doctor. Temple incubation Was a speciality of early Greek healers, ancestors of present-day Doctors of Medi- cine. (2) "out in de woods." Here is the old witch of fairy tales and reality. For this isolation as well as personal appearance, see pp.294-301, especially Nos. 849 and 859. (3) For dressing the money, see one man's remarkable version of this rite - Trickery by Doctor. Cast it into Oblivion, p.268. However, not all dressing of money is trickery.] Well, she did that. She went to this ole lady, and dis ole lady tole her that every three hours - she give her some kind of something like incense to burn. Tole her to burn this incense every three hours, and sulphur. Tole her to burn incense and sulphur and write his name on a white candle and roll it in some sugar. See, she said sugar, seemed like that would make everything sweet fo' him, yo' see. Salt is for confusion, chew know and sugar is for sweet. See, that's the way it works. Tole her to roll dis candle in sugar and write his name backwards on dere, yo' see, and stick it in a little saucer and put it in de cor- ner of her room. See. And jest 'bout time de spell come on him, fo' her to burn it. See. An' dat would make it sweet and de spell wouldn't be on him. An' so tole her to take dat candle and burn it and then to burn dis here sulphur every three hours in her home - this here sulphur and this incense. The incense is sweet too. That makes a sweet smell in yore home. Well, she did that. An' she tole her whenever he take a bath - see, next time he'd take a bath - tuh bring a little of his bathwater. Put it in a little cup or something, stop it up and bring it tuh her - what he bathe in. Well, she fixed his water. He didn't know, yo' know, she was goin' tuh pore de water out after he'd taken a bath. She took some water in de cup, some of his dirty water, and she carried it to dis lady. She stopped it up in a little bottle and carried dis dirty water to dis ole woman. Well, dis ole woman, she took his bathwater that he bathed in and she mixed it with something else in a bottle and shook it up and tole her to take dis bottle and bring it back and stand it up in de corner of her room where ain't no one kin see, and everytime he'd go out de do', she goes an' watch his feet and git his left track and bring de dirt back to her. Yo' know, jest take her han' and rake dat track back and wrap it up in some paper and keep it in her purse. Well, every time he would leave dat would make him come back. See, when you git his tracks dat'll make him come back. Well, whenever he would leave out, sure enough she went and got his track. See, she got dat track and she wrapped it up in de paper and had it in her purse and she had dis water in her room, yo' know. An' so, every three hours in de day she would burn dis here stuff, yo' know [this candle and incense and sulphur]. It acted all right for a good long while but see, every once a while, it would die down - it would die down and den she had to go an' do it again. Dis acted all right for a little while, till he begin to git in a rage agin, yo' see. So dis lady tole her that on the way she had to get something in him. See, she had to fix him in that way. Yo' see. [The preceding paragraph reveals one of the great principles of magic, perhaps the greatest after intention - magic power is not permanent. Our best examples of this are those magic objects closest to the believer's heart and mind - the hands. Among their many characteristics, these helpers: (1) have degrees of power (p.576), (2), observe a time limit (p.577), (3) must be fed (p.578f.), and (4) need recharging, which sometimes requires a doctor or a specialist, a hand- maker. A hand lives and helps only because a spirit dwells in it. Even when all amenities and regulations have been kept and the indwelling spirit is contended, it can be killed - chased from its temporary home - by the spirit of a stronger hand. Killing happens often in a gambling game where every man carries a hand. So, here is another rule of magic - a weaker spirit cannot function in the presence of a stronger spirit. But the owner of the weaker hand can kill the spirit or power of the stronger hand - page 641 and Index.] Well, she thought she was fixing hi - instead of fixing him fo' good, she was fixing him fo' bad looked like, don't you see, because whut dis woman give her, de mixture in his food, see. She wouldn't eat what he eat, yo' see, because she Was putting it in his stuff and sprinkling it on his meat. You see she would put it on de meat that he would eat. An' so when he taste it - de different taste in de meal yo' know and wanted her to taste, she proclaimed that she didn't like that kind of meat. Yo' know, she'd make excuse to keep from eatin' it herself. See. And see, every time he'd eat dis meat hit would make him sicker, see. But she put it on his meat. Dis woman give it to her and told her to put it on there and so he found dis here dirt in her purse, yo' see. He opened de pa- per - he went in her purse and he found dis dirt in dere, see, but she didn't know that he found the dirt. He kept the dirt fo' to carry it tuh see what it was. See. An' so he carried dis dirt to see whut it was. And dey told him it was his tracks - one dem hoodoos, another one, tole him it was his tracks, and says, this woman is giving him something in his food. Well, see, he would eat this food, yo' see, and he got so that he would dry up - dried up jest as little as he could be. It was whut she was feeding him off of.
(Put them [his foot tracks] in the grave?)
Yes. An' she tole him - dis hoodoo lady tole him that it wouldn't be long 'fore dey be burying her by she burying dese tracks. And so dis hoodoo woman gave him something. Yo' know, he didn't know that this woman was dressing dis other one fo' him, see, an' so when he goes back to her, something she puts on him, well he got it on her, see, by being close together, got it on her and she come with something like a itch, yo' know, all over her. [For an amazing example of this common trick, see No. 10, p.7.] She had an itch all over her and she'd go to doctors an' everything and de more they would treat her fo' dis itch, de worser it would git. And so it kept itching till all between her fingers got sore - see, all between her fingers become broke out like you would have pellegra yo' know, all that itch. But it would git between her fingers and all her nails and it got between her toenails. See. An' she broke out in sores, sores all be- tween her nails an' everything tull they had to bathe her hands and wrap 'em up in a piece yo' know. And all between her body - all down there between her body, she broke out in sores and everything, yo' see. And so she thought about this letter dis woman wrote an' tole her that seven years wouldn't be too long for a raccoon to wear a ruffled-bosom shirt. See, that whut she meant, she was goin' tuh kill her - see, tuh get dis man, see. An' she had dis man dressed fo' her. See. Well, after she broke out in sores and everything like dat, well, see, he had done buried her tracks to de graveyard, you see. Well, finally dey couldn't cure her and she broke dese sores all out and it come on de inside eatin' her up. Whut she had got inside her, it would just ete her on through, ete her up. An' she died. Finally she did bury her. See. An' so this woman told her dat, see, and dey all remembered whut she said - that she would do that to get her. An' after she do that - after she [roomer] got this man, yo' see, then this man disliked her. After he had done killed his wife and hoodooed her, well, he disliked her, see. He turned against her then, and so after he turned against her, he say, jest like she killed his wife, he would turn that right back on her and do her de same way, and she told him that he couldn't do it. See. An' so he said, "Surely could." Well, after dis man tried to fix her she would go an' git cured, see, bathing in dat saltpeter and salt, see, and that would keep everything off of her. And she wouldn't eat anything from him, see. An' so finally, he brought her some ice cream and she ate the ice cream. She didn't think anything Would hurt her, see. An' she ate de ice cream and after she ate de ice cream, dis man tole her he would get her. See, 'cause he had done went back to dis ole [hoodoo] lady dat killed his wife, to fix her. An' dat ole lady put de stuff in de ice cream - gave it to him and he put it in de ice cream.... [The hoodoo woman told the wife to] "Get a piece of his shirt-tail and his bathwater." Yo' got whut she got, yo' know, from him. She had tole her to take that bathwater and she put dat piece of shirt-tail in dis bottle, see, and she sticks nine needles and pins in it and shook it up and told her to take that and go in one fo' corner of de house and bury that.
(One of the four corners of her house.)
Outside - not under the steps - de fourth corner of her house and bury it and then jest, as she burying it, she had to say some kind of hoodoo and put a evil curse on. Cause she knew that the water had him fixed - his bathwater - and he had to go cross de water. So finally he takes a notion to leave - to leave her, see. And so she said, well, to cross water - well, that would make all that go back [on person fixing his bathwater]. So he left here and so he went an' got on a ship and went away cross de water. He was leaving across de water to git dat off him. Said that this woman know that he was going away, said she'd rather fo' him to leave and not come back. The one he went back to - de woman died.
(The woman killed his wife and then he killed this woman. That the idea?)
No, de woman got killed - dat de one he was running around wit. He couldn't git de spell off him an' so he goes back and makes up with his wife. See. This woman was living in the house and broke his wife and him up, yo' see, and tore up de home and the wife left and that give her a chance. See, she put dis stuff in her pillah, and so then after the woman got out, de wife turned it back on her. See. An' so she [roomer] lost her mind an' everything and de ole woman dat fixed de wife, she died, see, and dey couldn't git de spell off [the wife]. See. And dis woman [roomer] went crazy and dey sent her away and she died. Then he finally makes up his mind to go back to his wife, yo' see, to git a reconcilia- tion with her, yo' know, tuh beg her pardon, after so many years. Well, you see after he went back with his wife - she knew that this woman had done her that and broke up her home - well she didn't care for him much. But he wanted - but he had dis spell on him - dey both [women - roomer and hoodoo woman] died and dey couldn't git de spell off him. And every change of de moon he'd have these spells, see, because dis woman throwed dis egg and put dis spell on him. He had these spells and so the wife said that she would go have him fixed so she could keep him. So she goes tuh have his fixed, yo' see, and dis woman tole his wife to git his bathwater, see; and then git dis candle and roll it in sugar - see, that was to make him sweet.
(Well, now, whose track was buried out in the grave?)
Oh, it was this woman's track that was buried out in de grave.
(Which woman, the first one?)
The first woman - she was de one.
(There are only two women in the story?)
That was all - one man - two womens and one man. De wife and de woman and dis man. (The woman who was trying to take him away died in the asylum. Then the wife died too, didn't she?) Well, later - after - but he went back to the wife. See. And after de wife didn't care fo' him, see, then she fixed him so he wouldn't have these spells - she tried to git these spells off him, so she would git de candle and roll it in sugar an' everything. An' so then she seen she didn't care for him and then [he] goes and has her tracks buried in de graveyard, see. Dis man fixed her.
(What was he fixing her for?)
Cause she didn't want him. (Was she trying to kill him or was he trying to kill her? Or was he trying to make her take him back or what?) Well, he wanted her to take him back. Well, after she took him back, you see he would git dem spells on the change of de moon and he would leave again. He wouldn't act right. See.
(When did he cross water?)
Well, he crossed water when de woman tole him dat de only way he would git dis spell off him, he would have to cross de water. See.
(The spell his wife put on him or the spell the other woman put on him?)
It's de spell the other woman put on him.
(The part that was in the beginning of the story?)
Yes, that goes in the beginning of it. You see, de wife is de one that burned de candles on him and tried to git de spell off him. So he goes and gits his wife track - he's de one - de hoodoo woman told him to bury it in de graveyard, and he went and buried it out dere like she told him.
(That's what killed her?)
That whut killed her and that's whut made her think of de letter that she re- ceived a long time ago. See, dis ole lady was working on 'em both. See, she was pretending to be friends to each one of 'em, but she wasn't. [For doctor "pretending to be friends to each one of 'em," see two excellent examples, No. 780, p.257, and No. 782, p.258.] See, dis same ole lady died, yo' see, who was pretending to be friends to both of them, but she wasn't. Yeah, he had to cross water to git rid of his sins, because she had his water and everything buried in de fourth corner of her house. So, that itch when she broke out like that, that whut killed her. And he couldn't git those spells off at de change of de moon - he would go crazy and everything. They both [women] got out of dere [died] and dat's when dis [hoodoo] woman [told] him he would cross water. See, he took a voyage away cross water - see, he left to get rid of this. And de last that they heard from him, dey said he was gittin' better of those spells.
intended household discord attributed to salt/cayenne sprinkling. No clinical diagnosis, proven causation or definite aggressor/victim identity is inferred. These are attributed source occurrences; outcomes remain unverified.
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Entry 2814
Take dey photograph, lak a photograph pitchure [not a tintype], if yore ole man is away. Tuh bring him back, yo' git a black candle an' write his name on de black candle, an' put a glass of watah down 'side de candle. Light de candle an' den lay his pitchure 'side de candle, an' let de candle burn an' yo' make a wish. Dat's tuh git him back if he's gone, if yo' got his pit- chure.
Entry 2818
Yo' use the black candle. Dey says yo' git a lemon an' yo' use cai- yanne peppah, yo' use black peppah, an' de name wrote backwards. Lak mah name is Viola, see - Dorsey, dat's mah name. All right. Well, yo write Dorsey Viola. Each form dey cross it. De name's back- wards, yo' see, an' yo' put de cai-yanne peppah an' all kinds of peppah an' cut that lemon an' put that down in there, yo' see. An' put it upside down, an' yo' put dat black candle on dere. Dat kin be used fo' breakin' up men an' wimmin - yo see, lak a man is with anothah woman. Mah husban' would be wit anothah woman an' he wus tryin' tuh fo'saken me an' ah'd break dem up. Well, yo' kin use a black candle an' [or] yo' kin use a green candle - dat's fo' sweetenin', yo' see. An yo' use dat upside down - stead of usin' de stem [wick] yo' use it upside down an' light dat candle into a tin cup, yo' see, but down in dat lemon - an' de name down in de lemon. (Whose name would you write? Your husband's name in there and this woman's name? Both?) Yes, but write 'em backwards an' crossways. See, heah ah come [demonstrates]. Lak it's me, yo' see, ah come straight. Heah de husban' right cross dere, but it all must be backwards. Let de las' name be de first, an' de first name be las'.
(How long do you burn that candle on there?)
Well, you burn that candle. Dey supposed tuh burn it nine days - nine days dat's tuh break 'em up.
(Do you light it any particular time? Put it out any particular time?)
Well, no, she goes out herself. Now, yo' see yo' light that light at six a'clock. She supposed tuh burn from six tuh six, yo' see, if it's not too warm, or not too much air dat would git to it. See, burn it from six tuh six an' if yo' wanted to, jes' keep it on till it burn, until it six in de night. She burn it from six dat mawnin' till dat night. She put it agin at six in de evenin' an' keep a'goin' till dose nine days is up.
(You say that you would use a green candle if you wanted to break them up?)
That's fo'saken 'em.
(And you use a black candle if you want to do what?)
Tuh break 'em up, too. Dat's breakin' up, too; green an' black. Dat's right.
Entry 2819
They could take dat handwriting an' git some red ink - git a bottle a red ink and write chure same writing. Take off whut chew got wrote dere - copy dat off, see, wit red ink on de back de letter whut chew done wrote on dis side. Hit kin be turned over an' be wrote ovah agin wit red ink. (On the back side - but you have to trace just what they wrote on the other side?) That's right. Yore words have tuh be traced offa there with that red ink. [If you receive a letter in black ink, turn the sheet over and on the reverse side trace the letter in red ink. You will be writing backwards. The so-called writing. of names backwards is merely a magic exchange of two objects - first and last names - one behind the other version. By turning the back of the letter up- side down you can by tracing also write upside down.] Then a red candle - take yore letter an' yore name is already on de letter - take de lettah and take de red candle and wrap de candle up with de letter all de [way] roun'. An' wrap it [demonstrates] all de roun' lak dat - jes' leave out a point of de candle, but de candle is covered up wit de letter. An' de individual make dere wish whut would happen tuh yo', even ef yo's on a switch engine or some kinda brakeman or engine' or somepin lak dat. Whatsomever dey say, dey jes' wish dat train 'ud wreck - dey wish somepin would happen tuh yo', you'd fall off de engine or somepin like dat. Dat same thing will happen tuh yo'. Light dat can- dle an' burn dat candle ten minutes every day twelve 'clock until de letter and de candle is burnt, an' somepin other will happen to de parties whut wrote dis letter.
(At twelve o'clock noon or at midnight.)
Noon in de daytime.
Entry 2820
To burn a black candle - they takes a black candle - they burns a black candle when they's - like if you going get - like you done got arrested. You understand what I mean? (I got arrested?) You got arrested - the policeman done arrest you, you understand. Now 'fore your trial come up, well they'll carry - some of your people, you know, go to this hoodoo doctor and he'll take this black candle and take the judge's and the policeman name and write that - you understand, write that down three times. After they write that down.
(On what?)
On a piece of paper - tablet, you know, a clean sheet of paper. Write that down three times backward. They'll put it underneath of the candle and put it in a cup. And put it underneath of the candle and set this candle on top of that cup and light it two or two and a half days before the trial come up. You under- stand, just before the trial come up. And then when the trial do come up, the policeman, he more than apt to appear against you. You understand. See, even if he do appear against you, he'll be with you and the judge will dismiss you.
Entry 2821
Yes, it make fuss and trouble. Well, they'd write your name on that candle. Take a black candle and write your name on it - into that candle ~ three times around each side of it. And they'd light that candle, and when that candle is lit - when that candle burn down, you suffer with a miserable headache, and it goes down with the candle.
Entry 2826
(What would they do if they got my photograph?)
Well, your photograph - this here - of course they don't use those tintypes no more. But you could take your photograph like that. You could take a candle. Just like if you want to do evil, well you could take a black candle; if you want peace or love, well you take a blue or green candle. You take that candle and you take a pin, start from the top and you write her name coming down, all the way around, coming down until you get to the bottom. [Demonstrates.] (You write her name right around it with this pin. You scratch her name on that candle right down like a barber's pole, down to the bottom.) Yeah. Then after you get it [written], you get a little small can - get a little small can like that and you put it, the candle down in that.
(What color candle are you using now?)
Using a green one.
(A green one. All right.)
And you take it and you put it down in there - just about a half of that cup- ful of water. [Water is in the can.] You taken her picture - don't put it where it could catch afire, but set it over that and you light that candle. Well, that candle will burn. Just like you set it at nine - that's if you want her to be on a grief about you - you set that candle at nine and you take it off at twelve. Put that candle out. But whilst you got that candle burning, you have her photo- graph turned down right over that.
(Now wait a minute. That photograph is in front of the can? Outside?)
Yes, just set it over there where it wouldn't catch fire from the heat from the candle.
(Wait a minute. The photo isn't over the can?)
No.
(It's leaning against the can?)
Leaning toward the candle [but against can].
(And her picture is upside down?)
That's right.
(All right.)
Then you take it.
(You light it at nine in the morning and nine at night?)
Nine in the morning and at twelve o'clock in the day you take it out. And you light it at nine o'clock [in the morning] and at twelve o'clock, you puts it out.
(All right. Then what?)
That puts her on a grief. Then you change that picture. Every morning you do that for three morning - three nines and three twelves. See.
(How do you mean, you change that picture?)
Just like if you got it turned bottom upwards, then you take that picture anc turn in crossways.
(Sideways?)
Just like that. Yes.
(Each day.)
Yeah, first nine [in the morning] you have it bottom upwards, second nine you got it crossways, and three [third] nine you got it straight up again.
(Head down?)
Yes.
(Every day you turn that picture a different way in front of the can?)
In front of the candle.
(You turn it three times because you are burning it three days?)
Three days.
(All right. Go ahead.)
Then afterwards you take it out. After you take the three days out, well you take this picture every day at twelve o'clock for seven days at twelve o'clock. You read the prayers - just like you take the morning prayers, see, of Moses - the prayer of - any kind of prayer - "The Lord be our Shepherd" - and well then, you read that prayer every day at twelve o'clock.
(Is this before you put the candle out or after you put the candle out?)
No, you hain't got the candle burning a'tall, then. You just reading to that picture - you just praying to.
(At twelve o'clock after you put the candle out?)
Yes. Then, regardless of where that woman at, she is worried - she's worried, she coming back to you.
Entry 2829
If yo' git de names of those persons - if yo' know de names of de ones yo' think stealed it, well yo' write their names nine times and write chure's across it. (What do you write it on?) Yo' write it on a plain piece of paper, white paper - write the name nine times. Write chure's across it an' then yo' take it an' git chew a cup of clar' water and put it down in that water. See. An' yo' put a can le on top of it. If yo' don't put de can'le on it, yo' take it an put it in yore lamp. Yo' have a oil lamp, an' put it down in that lamp an' keep that lamp continuously burning on top of it, and dat'll worry 'em so - with that name on there it'll worry 'em so, they'll have tuh come back and they'll confess to yuh.
(That they have stolen this?)
That they have stole. They'll come to yo'.
Entry 2830
You can take their name and they will move. Cross their name with the name of the landlord; that will make the landlord cross with them and he make them move. (How do you do that?) You take the landlord's name and you write it nine times, you understand. Take the person that lives in that house, write their name across it five times. Burn that underneath a black candle. That will make them move.
Entry 2832
Yo' take an' git chew a candle an' yo' git chure lan'lord's name. Yo' fin' out de enemy whut's 'ginst yo'. Yo' take an' git chew a bran'-new tablet, linen tablet without de little lines. Yo' git chew a bran'-new indelibins [indelible] pencil [occasionally called indelicate], a bran'-new pencil have nevah been used. Yo' pull up yore sleeve an' jes' draw [demonstrates] from heah right roun' disaway - fingers.
(Outlining the fingers of your hand right on this tablet.)
Yas. Right on de tablet clean roun' to de j'ints heah, all right up dis way.
(Right up to the wrist.)
Den, aftah yo' git yore han' drawed off, yo' start markin' from yore thum' to de j'ints of yore fingers, wit little x's wit de lead pencil, an' den follow behin' 'em wit de indelibins pencil. In de pa'm of yo' han' yo' put fo' lines or five lines [for five fingers]. Yo' git all yo' enemies' names dat is 'ginst yo'. Yo' put 'em cross yore lines dat way. Den yo' put yore lan'lord up heah cross dese fo' fingers. Yo' place yore name on top of it to de heel of yore han'. (Your name will cross at right angles - cross all those names, making the form of an "x" like that. In a cross?) Yeah, yo' see [demonstrates] disaway. Dat's de way it work. Dem's de lines. Yore lan'lord heah, yo' enemy's heah. Den you take yore name an' draw it right through de middle of it dataway, right down dis way to de heel of yore han'. Den yo' git chew a candle an' git chew a papah of gold-eye needles.
(What kind of candle do you get? What color?)
Red. Git red. Yo' git chew a papah of gold-eye needles, a papah of large pins: Git chew nickel wuth new ten-penny nails. Yo' jes' set yore candle down an' den yo' take yo' a pair pliers an' grip dose needles an' shove 'em through an' make crosses in em [candles] dataway from de stem to de bottom, mix 'em up with de needles an pins. Den yo' light chure candle ovah dat han' on de dresser or wash-stand [which become an altar], somepin lak dat, or a center table, an' set it down dat way. [All of this is demonstrated.] Den yo' make yore wishes. When yo' git ready tuh put de candle out, don't blow it out, yo' ketch it an' pinch it to yo'. Yo burn it from five tuh ten tuh fifteen minutes. It goes up eve'y mawnin, don't yo' see, until it burns out. In de meantime when de candles is burnin' an' de needles an' pins is fallin out, leave 'em lay dere till de candle burn down. An'den joo got chure lan'lord.
(They can' t move you out of the house?)
Nawsuh, dey cain't move yuh.
(Do you light this candle at any particular time?)
Yassuh, yo' must light it on a time. Yo' see, yo' mus' light it in de mawnin' when de sun risin'. See, when de sun risin' yo' light chure candle an' yo' burn it. Yo' start at five minute up, as high as yo' wanta go, tuh twenty minute or twenty-five minute, yo' see. An' den yo' set dere an' make yore wishes as de candle burn. Hold yore watch on yore candle or yore clock, so yo' won't delay it none - yo' see, yo' won't run ovah yore minutes. Yo' see? Always put it on, on de exact minute. When de five minutes is out, put it out; or de ten minutes is out, put it out. Don't blow it out. Take yore fingah or yore thum' an' 'pit [spit] an' lay it on de stem [wick] an' pinch it ovah to yo' - break it off to yo' dat way, see. Den yo' got him.
(How long do you burn this candle? Until it burns all the way down?)
Till it burns all de way down. Yo' burn two an' dat's all. [For outline of hand or fingers, see 1988, p.583 & Index.]
Entry 2833
Red candle on a person - I write their name down on a piece of paper and I burn that paper to ashes and I put it in a container. And I light that candle and drip that wax down until I can sit the candle in the middle of the ashes, and I light the candle and that candle burns down into the ashes. Well I do that for nine days on that person and that person is supposed to get cut and lose blood. And if you do the same thing with a black candle it should result in the person's death.
Entry 2836
[Examples of foot-rolling an object have and will be given. What follows are a few rites in hand rolling candles. See Rolling, in Index.]
Somebody to stay with yuh, somepin like that - [you] has a friend and yo' don't want to get rid of 'em. Yo' git de lucky powder, yo' git de pink candle. You write the person's name on it and yo' roll it in this lucky powder. Yo' light that candle and yo' burn it fo' nine mornings - an hour.
(When do you light that candle?)
Any time in de morning but jest don't burn it over an hour - jes' any time in de morning.
(Then what do you do?)
Yo' blow it out. (Well, then what? Anything else yo' do? Nothing else yo' know [about] but just use the lucky powder? What is that supposed to do?) That will keep a man from leaving yore home.
Entry 2837
If you wants to run a person 'way from yo', yo' go ahead and git chew a black candle. Write dere name on dat black candle, yo' see. Yo' cut dere name on dat black candle - see, let be seven or nine times on dat black candle. An' roll dat black candle in salt and burn it fifteen minutes, and dat will run em away from yo' - dat runs 'em, dey can't stay it atall.
(Just burn one candle. Any special time did you say?)
Set it at six 'clock in de morning an' burn it fifteen minutes - see, burn dat candle fifteen minutes. Well, den at twelve 'clock yo' burn it fifteen minutes again. Six 'clock fifteen minutes to go on. Well, all right, ah'm goin' tell yo' dis 'gin now. Yo' set it in de mornin' fifteen minutes six 'clock and let it burn and quarter past six fifteen minutes an' twelve 'clock yo' wanta burn it fifteen minutes 'gin - see. Dat's uh half a hour an' den six 'clock in de evenin' yo' burn it fifteen minutes agin, yo' see. Dat's three-quarters of a hour gone, see. Well, an' de third day dey gone in de air - dey can't stay.
Entry 2838
White candles or blue candles for peace; black candles for danger or for to kill you or to run you crazy or something like dat. (Just how would they burn them? How do you mean they burn them?) Well, they say that they kin stick pins in black can- dles and roll them in pepper and salt and burn them at seven o'clock in the morning, you know, or eleven o'clock - some [uneven] hour like that, eleven or seven in the morning and the same at night. That will run you crazy or confuse you or something of the kind. That's a black candle. And the white one, they say you sprinkle them with sugar and burn them - you know, at the hours of seven-eleven, or a blue candle for love. Ah've heard that.
Entry 2839
(Well, how do they burn those black candles on you? How do they do that?) Well, those black candles, you take them and roll them in saltpeter, and cay- enne pepper, and cook[ing] - table salt. You roll them good in there but you dampen this candle 'fore you, 'fore you do that. You dampen it just a little bit - you know, just pass the rag over it, dampen it. (With water?) Yes, with a little damp rag, you know, so it'll stick to it. Just roll it good - roll it good and then you light it, you light it and burn it. Don't put it out - just let it burn all day. Just burn all day and you'll just worry that person so that he'll just - he don't know [what] he do, almost wanta kill hisself.
(Well, how do you know whom that candle is for?)
You call their name and be cursing them, what you want to happen to 'em - want 'em go and jump overboard.
Entry 2840
Ah tole yo' ah said, if you wanted a person tuh come to yuh in peace, ah said yo' take dat candle and yo' roll it in sugar. See.
(What candle?)
Well, yo' take a pink candle and a white candle and yo' kin roll that in sugar, and on dose certain hours yo' burn it - jes' like de woman did fo' to bring de fellah back. Now, if you wanta worry a person or jes' like a per- son wanted to do harm to a person or kill a person, dey take a black candle and yo' burn dat black candle at night. Take a jet black candle and put it in yore room and yo' burn it slowly at night, see. An' when dat black candle burn out that makes a person go down - a black candle. But if you wants peace, yo' take a pink or white candle and yo' roll it in Sugar, and whoever name yo' want it to burn on you write it with de name back- wards - de last name yo' write it first, three times around de candle.
Entry 2844
They takes the candles and they writes the name on them candles, and they lights them, and they burn 'em certain hours - six o'clock or either twelve o'clock. For nine days. They light those candles on people. Some of 'em light black candles. When they light black candles on 'em they puts pins - pins in em - new pins and needles. Just like if this was de top [demonstrates] turn the butt end [up] like that. You know, trim 'em at de butt end - you know, the side that goes down [butt end], well, you trim it at de butt end and light 'em.
(You turn them upside down.)
[The bottom of the candle with the new wick becomes the top.]
Uh huh. And that's - put their name on that. Well, you burns the name upside down on those black candles [because candles are burning upside down]. That's what they do.
(What will that do?)
What will that do? Well, that breaks up people. [For upside-down magic, see pp.405,660,731, and Index.]
Entry 2845
Take de knife an' fo'k lak yo' fixin' de table, an' de parties dat chew - but dat kills people, dey tell me. Yessuh. An' yo' puts dat black candle in dere an' dere name wrote jes' lak ah tole yo', but it's gotta be on a brand-new white plate wit dat name underneat' dat plate where dat knife an' fo'k is set around dat candle, crossed, yo' understand, an' dat name underneat' dat, underneat' dat plate, with de black candle. Dat runs 'em crazy with their haid.
(How do you write that name on that piece of paper?)
Yo' write it backwards, jes' dat one party's name dat chew wanta do dat to.
(Just once?)
Yessuh.
Entry 2846
She kin call that person that's impregnant [pregnant] an' mark in they back nine times. Jis' make a mark cross it - jis' lak yo' standin' talkin' to a person - jis' be standin' up doin' anything. (Like making a cross?) Jis' all in her back an' jis' cross it all kinda ways, yo' see. Then she go on an' she write that person's name down on that black candle. An' then she burn that candle an' red peppah in a green saucer.
(What will that do then?)
Well, that will cause her tuh have pain an' she cain't have her baby, see. She'll lose it.
crossing/marking a pregnant person's back, with geometry left indefinite. The continuation states intended pain and pregnancy loss; retain it as a reported harmful purpose, not a medical fact or recommendation. These are attributed source occurrences; outcomes remain unverified.
Read full source (printed page 819) · Read full source (printed page 820)
Entry 2847
If you got a wife and your wife has done left you - you understand what I mean - and you want her to come back to you, you see. You take three white candles, take that woman name and put there - put on that [name the] candle. And if you can, get her underwears or slip, anything like that, slip or drawers and put 'em. Put that, spread that out there, you understand. Take your undershirt and turn it wrong-side out and put it on there, and light them three candles. And in nine days - just keep them candles burning there nine days and nine nights, and I guarantee that woman'll come back to you. (You put the name on just one of those candles or do you put on all three of them?) Put all three of 'em - put it underneath all three of them. Put 'em all three together - that where it supposed to be, underneath all of 'em. [A name is under each candle; the spread-out clothing is beneath the metal container holding the candles.]
Entry 2848
Well, you go out there to the crossroads, which yo' supposed to go there at midnight, and gets that dirt from right at the crossing. And yo' supposed to take dat wit a black candle and burns it - jest put it in a lid and put dat candle over it and burns it. (You take this dirt from the middle of the crossroad and you put it in a tin lid. Then what do you do with that black candle?) Sets right in the middle of it and burn it. (You put the black candle right on top of that dirt and then you burn that. Do you burn it at any special time? Or for any length of time?) Yes, you burn it a special time. Yo' supposed to burn it an hour - hap' past six in de mawnin' and hap' past six in de afternoon, or either seven at night.
(What is that supposed to do?)
Why it'll run yuh and put chew in tough - cause yo' to drift where you won't get holt of anything. (Don't you have to do anything else? Do you burn this over somebody? That the idea?) Yes, sir, you supposed to put the names on it. Cut de names on it. (Oh, you cut the names before you light the candle. You scratch the name or it.) Yes, sir.
Entry 2849
They take a knife and form [carve] it.
(What do they do with that wooden doll?)
They also put it on mantelpiece [often used as altar], or either lay it out like somebody is dead and burn the candles on that. That's the way I saw it did once - just like somebody laying out dead, you see. And they say [that] makes a persons sick - see, they keep sick all the time and dry up. That's in the shape of a person, you see.
Entry 2852
Ah take a black candle an' ah light it an' write his name, an' ah take me a red candle an' write his name an' ah put it down dere. Yo' understan? Den ah'd take lak ah got his shoes, an' ah'd take it an' turn it towards de west an' make yo' walk out dere. (Now you write his name on a piece of paper and you burn that piece of paper under the candle?) Yes.
(Do you burn this candle a certain length of time or?)
Yes, burn de candle nine days.
(All day long or just certain times of the day?)
All day long.
(You let the candle burn out?)
Shet dem off. Yo' don't burn out de nine-days candle.
Entry 2853
Jis' lak if yo' wanta run a person crazy, see, yo' got de sole of the shoe. Yo' go in de graveyard jis' about da'k, yo' see. Jis' to anybody's grave yo' see. An' yo mash it [shoe]. Yo' see, de leather it be's jis' flat lak this [demonstrates]. An' yo' git chew a black candle. An' yo' write de name on a piece of papah or eithah on dat candle, yo' see, but yo' see yo' can't write it mo' den nine times. An' yo' burn that fo' nine days. See, dat's de way yo always send a person tuh de graveyard. Dat mean graveyard dirt [for you]. Well, at de end of dem nine days dat person goin' die.
(Now what do you do? You get that graveyard dirt and you spread it out?)
Yo' see, sometime it be's lunpy, but yo' gotta take it somewhere where it kin be smacked - where yo' mash it fine, where yo' kin set dat candle on top of it. Jis' put dat candle. Dis be de graveyard dirt an' dis be de candle an' yo' jis' wanta set it [graveyard dirt] roun' dere [candle] an' aftah yo' write de name on dere, well dat candle goin' burn down de name 'fore de end of nine days. Yo know how long it goin' take a candle tuh burn. De candle goin' burn nights till de end of dem nine days, an' den dey goin' tuh de graveyard. (You write that name on the candle longwise, just nine tlmes? Or you can write it on a piece of paper, you say?) Yo' kin write it on de piece of papah, each [either] way yo' see. Write it on a piece of papah, well, it's good; an' if yo' write it on de candle it still bettah, yo' see, cus as dat candle be burnin', yo' see dat [name] be burnin' too.
(How do you write it on the piece of paper?)
See, lak dis de piece of papah [demonstrates]. See, yo'd write it lak this - nine times an' den yo' take an' yo' come dis way an' yo' write it nine times lak dis, nine across.
(Where do you put that paper now when you are burning that candle?)
Took de piece of papah jis' lak dis, yo' see, jis' fold it lak that, an' take de candle an' put it on de papah.
(Now where is your graveyard dirt?)
It's underneat' dat, see underneat' de papah. Or yo' kin put it in a saucer, eithah one yo' see. It be de best.
[Similarly, a foot track is burned under a black candle.]
Well, now, yo' see if a person don't lak yo' an' even so - co'se dey don't have dust lak it be's out in de country cus yo' see out in de country it's all dust roads yo' see. A person goes an' dey take yore feet yo' see or either dey kin take de shovel or anything an' pick it up, but dat track must be warm yo' see. Yo' mus' jis' be pass' dere. An' yo' take dat dirt from de bottom of yore feet an' yo' write chure name on dat an' git chew some.
(What do you write your name on?)
Yo' take dat dirt from de foot track an' yo' put it in a piece of papah, yo' see. Jis' lak ah'm goin' take yore foot track, yo' git de dirt, yo' see. But it gotta be warm. De dirt gotta be warm cus if it cold, it doesn't do any good. It gotta be warm. See, when dey gits de dirt dey gits some papah, a brown piece of papah, see, but chew gotta buy dat piece of papah - it's a brown piece of papah. An' yo' git that an' yo' write their name on that. Yo' kin write it eithah way yo' kin write it crossways or yo' kin write it de longway - eithah way yo' see. Jis' write it once. An' yo' burn dat.
(What do you burn?)
Yo' burn a candle. Dat's candles. Burn a black candle - a black candle is de best.
reported black-candle burning in two distinct variants. The first account moves from running a person crazy to predicted death. Preserve this shift as source speech, not an observed outcome or clinical finding. These are attributed source occurrences; outcomes remain unverified.
Read full source (printed page 821) · Read full source (printed page 822)
Entry 2854
You use graveyard dirt to kill people. You take graveyard dirt and mix it with some salt - Epsom salts [symbolic purgation]. You pound it as fine as you can get it. All right. Then you write that name. All right. You write that name seven times [on a piece of paper], see. You put it in a can, yeast powder can. You seen them black candles. You take one of the black candles, you set it in there. Then you write that name in the candle three times, see. And after the candle is burned out, you jes' will wilt away. That is what it does. That is for the fellah who does you harn.
Entry 2855
To git them confused, you write it on a piece of paper and set a black candle on it and set it burning. [You write], "Ah want confusion," [and] put both of their names [on that paper]. You draw a heart with it. Draw their heart, I want it bad [badly drawn]. Yo' kin write bad in there. An' set that black candle on there burning with both of their names, "I want confusion." (You take a piece of paper and you draw a heart and you write in there bad. Where do you put their names?) You put their names in there - you write their names in, I want it bad. You don't draw the heart good - you even try to draw it, you know, as ugly as yo possibly can make things; and yo' say, "I want bad, I want it confused, I want thus and so, such parties." And set that candle right on their names and let it burn. (Do you burn that candle any special time? Or any length of time? Or any- thing like that?) Well, yo' would need to burn it a length of time but ah gen'rally would think that six 'clock and again in the evening time - let it burn at night.
Entry 2856
You see when a man is fooling around with another woman, a woman she'll take - she double-cross him. She'll get three candles. (Three candles.) Three candles. She'll get a yellow candle, a white candle and she'll get a blue candle. She'll take these three candles and she's got a bowl on her dresser or vanity, whatever she got. Now, she'll light these candles in this bowl. She'll get her five cents of ice, which is 25 pounds of ice. She'll take your name and this woman's name and write it 18 times [each 9 times]. Now, she'll put this name [these names] under this ice upside down and burn these candles on it for nine days. She got you.
(That will separate me and the other woman, and I go back to my wife?)
You gotta go back. If you don't go back to her, you going to go back to some other one; but she's going to break you and this other woman up - you and her can't stay together.
Entry 2857
You take dat black candle an' who's'evah yo' burning it on, yo' write it [person's name] all ovah that papah - right cross de papah. An' den yo' take de black candle an' yo' put it in a white saucer - jis' a deep white saucer. An' yo' put lye an' yo' put peppah an' white onion, an' put it down in dat candle an' burn it - underneath [is] his [name].
(What kind of a page? You write that name on that page you say?)
Jis' a plain tablet. Yo' take that piece of papah [with name] an' put it down undah dat saucer. (When you speak about burning these things, you mean you set the candle down into them?) It's dis - yo' see [demonstrates], yo' set de papah heah [on table holding my machine], an' den yo' set de white saucer heah [on top of the paper], an' den whatevah yo' goin' burn [in this case lye, onion and pepper], yo' set it down in de saucer, an' den yo' set de candle down in it.
Entry 2858
Nine black candles in a can - old rusty can - burn it in the hot stuff what you use on your food, [with] lemons, vinegar and cayenne pepper [in the can] and keep it burning, and have somebody at the house to keep the hydrant running an' you get discharged. Some- one has to be where you live to keep that going [while you are on trial] for you to get discharged. Yes sir.
Entry 2859
They burn a candle on it and turn it down. Do you know why ah knows this? (Now wait a minute. [I demonstrate.] Here's the photograph. The face is up. Now what do you do? How do you put the candle on there? This is the candle. You set the candle on the face like that?) You turn de bottom up. (You turn the face down and the bottom is up, and you put the candle right on top of it - right in the center like that., [This makes a quincunx - p.710 and Index.] What kind of candle do you use?) You use a black candle.
(Just one. And do you say anything or do anything when you do this?)
Yes, you say something, "I want her to sink to the bowels [of the earth]." That means to die. You burn it nine times dere, nine mornings.
(Then what happens?)
Well, if someone don't hurry an' do something, dey be sure gone. Well, you know why ah know that. You see ah had a sister, she was almost dead and she went to - she had to get her photo made, see. I say, "Maybe somebody got chure photo." She say, "Oh, ah suffer wit mah haid." She looked like she was going crazy. Well, ah took a new needle - new needles and pins and crossed 'em.
(Where did you cross them?)
Fo' to make de headache go off, put de pin right dere - brand-new - in her hair, right in de mole [mold of her head]. Den you cross it, you see. An'den after you cross it, you take some Hearts Perfume, dampen it all together and den take some camphor and put it right dere - on chere [demonstrates]. (Put it right on there on that hair at the ears. And then did her headache stop?) It sure did. And then when it stopped I say to her, say, "Now, you go and get your photo." And she went to get her photo. Dey have a - [a privy] in de back yard, a fren' girl of her. She was kind of mad with her about her husband. You see, she had mah sister's husband and mah sister liked tuh die. An' sure 'nuff, when she went in there [the privy], she had her photo behind the door with that candle on it.
[See margin-title IN THE ToILET, p.826 and Scatologic rites in Index.]
(That black candle on it.)
Mah sister took dat candle and took it and throw it in de river. And her and dat woman had a fight about it, but she got her photo and dat candle. She liked tuh been dead. Well, your picture, they can bury your picture. They can bury your picture bottom down. That'll make you drag: Your head'll be hurtin' you all the time, pain, and your head ache.
(How do they burn that on you?)
They say they light a candle, burn a candle to put you down - with the picture down, you see. With the picture down - they can't do nothing with it up, you see. They have the face down, you see. (What kind of a candle do they burn? How do they fix that candle up? What do they do?) Well, that candle, you see. They put the candle in a saucer, you see, and as for the saucer, they lay it right on top of the picture, you see, and they let it burn, you see. And you burn that candle for nine days, see.
(What times? Right on through?)
Right on through.
(Never let it go out?)
Never let it go out atall - nine days, right in that dark corner - right up in the corner, you see. Nine days.
(What color candle do they use? A white candle for that?)
Well, they generally use a black candle when they want to do evil.
(I see.)
A white candle - it's for goodness, see. Evil is a black candle.
Entry 2870
Now the second way for to get your photograph and do something to it. They can take and burn lights against your photograph and have it right in the house and you don't know it. And have it, your back - see, you know your back to the out[side] and your face to the wall, like nailed to the wall. And have everything dark around there. And you'll die from that bed, right in that bed there. (Do you burn candles to that?) Yes, sir, you burn you a black candle to hit.
(Just one candle did you say?)
Just once - that's to the picture, if you want to harm anybody.
(Where do you put that picture? Against the wall?)
You put 'em in the four corners of your house - just like you got the four corners right here, you got four cormers here.
(Yes.)
Well, you see, you can take and set your bed like this here, cater-corner, and make that be the four corners right here and nail it right in that four corners, but right down where no one can't see it, see. And burn you a black light and never let that light go out. As fast as that light - when you see that light getting smaller, have you another candle ready and light it. I'll guarantee you in nine days' time, if you don't be out of that bed [and be] in the hospital, you be in the morgue.
(You'd be where?)
You'd be in the morgue - be dead. [The preceding four corners are sacred in hoodoo because they came from the Bible and are guarded by four angels controlling the four winds (Rev. 7:1). The diagonal is also sacred, the altar often being so placed in a room (p.129, line 45). The reason? The diagonal, as the longest distance in the flat square world of ancient magic, permits the altar to bestride and manage all existence. More- over the diagonal itself is a cross, a fortifed one - its two ends with equal short portions of the adjacent sides forming two tau crosses, joined at the feet at the center of the square, and thrusting outward two "T-crossings" barbed like a double-pointed spear >. Perhaps I should add, one diagonal equals one stroke of the cross; two diagonals complete the cross, Greek or St. Andrews - the structure of the flat square world.] [Our informant, by pushing back the diagonal of the room into one corner of the room, makes the corner the four corners or the complete room (PART EQUALS WHOLE, p.21). Actually the enclosed space is triangular and three-cornered, but magically the bed becomes both a diagonal and an altar. Despite the fact that neither you nor your picture is in that bed, "you'll die from that bed, right in that bed there."]
[For another diagonal, see 2843, p.819; for bed as altar, see 2874, p.829.]
Entry 2871
Dey say if anyone steal anything from you, take dis black candle and write dere name on it nine times and burn it fifteen minutes. Set it in a dark corner in de no'th corner - one in de no'th corner and one in de southeast corner of yere house. An' stick nine pins in it an' nine needles. When you light dis candle call dere name nine times, and burn 'em fifteen minutes six, twelve and six in de evening. An' when you put it out - jest wet it an' put it out like dat [demonstrates].
(Pinch it out.)
Yes.
(And what is that supposed to do then?)
That will make 'em bring those things back if they stole them.
(How many candles do you use?)
Two.
(And you put one in one corner of the house - what corners are those?)
De no'th corner and de southeast jest like heah now [demonstrates].
(Opposite corners. One in the northwest or northeast?)
[Wanting to know whether this was the magic of the diagonal, I purposely avoided the question opposite corners.] Northwest - dat's whut ah would call it.
Entry 2889
If you out of a job and you want a job, you have to take and burn your candle for so many days. If you couldn't get a job and it's real like times are now - you can't get a job [this is during the Great Depression of 1930's] - you really have to burn candles if you want a real good job. Of course, you can get jobs but they ain't paying nothing. But if a man want a job that's going to pay him something, he'll get him a candle. And you burn your candle, you burn your candle three times a day - keep a candle burning if you can. If you can keep it burning all day, it'd be better. Every morning you get to that candle and you say your prayers. You can light it or keep it lit.
(Oh, you keep it lit?)
You can keep it lit all day. It'd be best to keep it lit. But whichever you do at a particular time, you get to the candle and you pray. All right, when you pray at that candle, you pray like you got - you just say - well, you say th 35th [23rd] Psalm of David: The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want. Make me lie down in green pas- tures and stir up my soul. Lead me in the path of rightness for his name's sake. Either I walks in the valley in the shadow of death - I'll fear no evil. Should I weakeneth, thou rod and staff comforth me. Prepare... (etc. etc. etc.) [Comment by transcriber]...and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. See. Well, all right, you says that. Now, when you say that, don't make the sign of the cross, see. Don't make no sign of the cross at all, cause you be crossing your ownself, see. Now, you say it maybe at six in the morning, twelve O'clock you do the same thing again. Three o'clock you do it, and at six in the evening you do it, see. All right. Now, for an instance, you do that at six o'clock in the morning - five or ten minutes after six, when you get up, see. Or if you need, you go on about your daily occupation or wheresomever you going. Or [if] you're looking for a job - you're seeking for a job - well, you go along, and if there's any jobs to be gotten anywhere, you'll get one. If it ain't but for the day, you'll get you one. That's the end of it. See, now you can demand your money. If a man wants to pay you $1.50, you can get $2.00, see. You'll get a job on that [candle and prayer].
(You burn a white candle for that?)
A white candle.
Entry 2917
(Well, did you tell me something about doing something with the sub- poena?) [Among other things while machine turned off.] Yassuh, yo' take de subpoena an' yo' git chew some ice, an' git chew a black candle an' yo' take dat an' yo' put it on dat ice, an' take dat black candle an' set it up ovah there. Dat's fo' if yo' got de subpoena from de co't. Dat's tuh keep dem from talkin' on yo' [testifying against you]. [The problem of the shut-off machine I have discussed in the Introduction. Here I choose an awkward way to ask for a repetition of the subpoena material.]
Entry 2918
See, heah, yo' git his subpoena, when he supposed tuh meet co't, an' yo' git chew a white wax candle. Yo' take dat wax candle an' yo' cut it - not de part whut yo' burn, it's de bottom part, an' yo' cut it till yo' cut to de wick. [Make a new wick at bottom.] Yo' git chew a piece of ice big enough tuh burn [last] as long as co't lasts. Yo' light dat candle an' yo' git chew some sugah an' yo' - a whole nickel wuth of sugah dat's nevah been used, an' take it an' po' all around on dat ice an' on top of dat candle, an' set subpoena on dat ice an' set de candle on top of it an' light it, an' keep it a'burnin' an' when he go tuh co't de judge will feel his sympathy. If he don't git clear, he wouldn't git much time - he would git a light sentence.
[A light for a light sentencel]
Entry 2919
If they stole somepin from you and you want to get it back, if you know the person. If you didn't know 'em, you could get it back. If you wanted to know who the party Was, you could get the Bible and you could find out who the party Was and then you could get to 'em more so. But now, if a person would steal somepin from you and you want to get it back; if you could get a key - see, if you could get a key and get that party's name. See. You get that key and put it on a string. You get this party's name and you get you one of these dark candles - it's not a black one, it's a lavender-looking candle but it looks like its black. You get you one of them and you get these people's name and you write that name on that candle, but you take this candle and you burn the candle upside down in- stead of burning his name upside down. You turn your candle over and you trim the ends - the opposite end of it - you trim it and light that part of the can- dle. You got his name and you write his name on that candle, see. But the deeper it is - you write his name as deep in the candle as you can get it. If you can get his name, write it as deep in there as you can get it. You take that key and you put that key just like this [demonstrates]. Here's your candle here and you lay that key right across by that candle in this manner - just like that.
(Sort of like a cross.)
Yes, sir. Just like [demonstrates] I got my finger - see, on that angle just like that. That's the candle here, and lay that key just like that.
(It isn't a right angle, but it's about a 45 degree angle.)
A 45 degree angle, yes sir. Just a cross. [Candle and key are crossed. The key is laid flat on the surface of the candle-container so that it touches the bottom of the candle. As you look at the candle, the key is not horizontal or at right angles to your vision; it is at a 45 degree angle. If you mentally prolong the bottom of the candle, key and candle would form a flat letter 'X' cross or a flattened St. Andrew cross. As a matter of fact this is an upside-down (reversed) tau cross or "T" cross, also called St. Anthony cross. If we include the circular bottom of the candle or circular hole through the key, we have the crux ansata or Egyptian ankh, symbol of life and prosperity.] And he going to come back and he come back with a piece of yours that he's done taken from you. He might - he ain't going to come back to you but he going to come close around wheresomever you are at, trying to sell it. See, he may not know it's yours. He going to try to be selling it or something of that sort, or maybe have it on, and you going to recognize it and you can catch him thataway. That'll bring him back.
Entry 2921
Dey said tuh take a black candle an' de person's name dat chew want out of de way, write it on dat candle and burn it down; but place a mirror behin' dat candle and when it burns out it wouldn't be long befo' de person dies.
Entry 2926
(Tell me the whole thing all over again about that doll baby. What did they do with that?) You see, you takes a doll - you make it like in the shape of a person. Then you put my name - put the name there. Write your name all along there. Well, I name this person such-and-such a name - that's the person. Well, you'll take that doll and you'll put it in a box. Well, every morning you take that and you'll take a black candle and you'll set that doll, set that down there, put it on top of the box, but with the person's name who you want to do that to. Then you do that for nine mornings, and after that, you'll take that doll and you'll put - make a little coffin and you'll put that doll in a coffin, and you get you nine red beans and you put 'em in there, and then you'll take that person's name and then with that doll, and you'll take and take a lemon and you'll bury that doll. But you see, the doll don't get in the lemon, but you'll put their name and put that doll in the ground, and then put their name and the lemon on top of it and bury it.
(What will that do?)
Well, that make 'em all upset - that will make 'em wander, see.
Entry 2935
Now de black candle - take a black candle and write a person's name on it right straight up and down, jest all up and down and burn it. An' if you don't want them to come to yore place any more, after you burn it you take a sponge and name it after them and bury it in the back. They will never come to that place any more.
(Take a sponge you say?)
Yassuh, take de candle sponge after it's [wax is] melted - de candle sponge after it's burnt.
(Oh, you mean that melted candle - you call that the sponge?)
Yes.
(What do you mean, put it in the back?)
In the back yard. They'll not come back to that place any more.
Entry 2936
Yo' kin burn these light green candles, yo' see, an' yo' burn that candle an' make yore wishes. An' if yore wishes come as yo' make 'em, an' yo promise tuh save somepin, an' yo' go ahead an' donate dat to de church, well yo'd be successful. [New Orleans, La., (1560).2856:11.]
Entry 2937
Burn 'em on people. (Do you know what they burn or how they do it?) Yo' could burn nine of 'em - nine white candles. Yo' light 'em - don't put 'em 'em Jis' lak if yo' wanta git somebody there, yo' light those nine candles an set'em there an' let 'em burn till they burn down - let 'em burn till dey's out. An' whatevah it is dat chew want - if it somebody come back, yo' goin' have success with them candles. Yo' writes they name, see. Set each one those candle on their name - nine candles - under de nine candles an' set it afiah, an' let 'em burn till dey burn down. They will be on their haid comin' back; when that burns down dey will be there.
Entry 2938
To kill dat out, why yo' jest go right on back home an' burn yore can- dles. Take yore lucky piece [that is losing its power] an' set it right between dem candles, two candles, an' set it right between dem candles for maybe two or three times yo' know a week, an' den go an' try yore hand again. Yo' see, dat do's away wit it. It will come back to yo'. (I see, if some other fellow has a stronger hand than mine, I take my hand home and put it between two candles.) Dat's right, an' put chure lucky piece - dat's right, put one dere an' one dere [demonstrates]. Shet chure room up - jest shet up yore room an' go ahead an' Jest burn 'em long as you wanta.
(Any color candles?)
Any color. [I believe this is my only example of a worn-out hand being re- charged between two candles. For time limit on hand, feeding it, and renewing its power, see pp.577-580.]
Entry 2942
De white candle - ah want to tell yo' dat's fo' peace. Well, yo' put five Christian names - five people that chew think are Christians. Den yo' put five dead people name on de candle that are Chris- tians. Well, quite natural, those dead Christians is working wit de live Christians an' make dem de- vote their time an' dere energy an' do everything in their power they possibly can to make yo' happy All right. On a Friday yo burn red candles.
(How many?)
Just one.
(You burn these five white candles?)
No, tiiey aren't five. Those are five names.
(How do you put those names on the candle?)
Yo' would write them this way [demonstrates]. You write them with a pin - a straight pin.
(That's with the white candles. Now what about Friday with the red candles?)
The red candles on Friday, yo' use de same tactics; but dis time yo' use five peoples names you are in debt to, and den three dead sinners. An' yo' git dose three dead sinners, they are on there to whup these people that chew owe to who tantilize yo' 'bout chure bills.
(Now, what time of day do you burn those? Any time of day?)
No, yo' light them befo' sunup an' let them burn there till they go out - they go out theirself. Or if yo' write on them wrong or do the wrong thing with it, well it will go out.
Entry 2977
Somebody is burning a candle on you, and you got fire in the grate or else in the wood stove. You take a tablespoon of sugar and you put that in that fire and you take a tablespoon of salt and you put that in there. In about three minutes them candles will go out, cause I had it happen to me and I did it.
Entry 2980
I know once someone was burnin' a candle on mah brother. A two-headed person told him. So he told us what to do to put de candle out. You git chew a quart bottle. Yo' fill dat bottle with water and put dat stopper in dere jes' as tight as yo' kin git it. Yo' turn dat bottle up on de neck and leave dat way, and de candle can't burn.
(Where do you put that bottle?)
At de head of de bed.
(You turn it upside down.)
On de neck and stop it so dere won't none of de water git out [demonstrates].
(Turn it just like that [upside down].)
An' de candle cannot burn. Ah believe dat. Dat's one thing ah believe because he was sufferin' wit de headache an' 'bout to go crazy and ah declare de minute dey did dat, it stopped. Ah believe dat. Now dat's one thing ah re'lly believe.
Entry 2981
If yo' close to de rivah an' [or] yo' is heah [in New Orleans] go to de Miss'ippi Rivah an' git a quart bottle of watah, an' put a brand-new stopper on it an' turn it upside down in de corner of de house. Dey cain't keep it lighted; same as de watah po'ed on it. (You set it down in the corner of the house. In the inside of the house or on the outside?) Inside.
Entry 2982
Take yore pitchure an' burn candles on yore pitchure. Well, if dey Want it fo' good, dey use it wit sugah or honey. If not, if dey want it fo' bad, dey take dat candle - dey take de bottom part of dat candle an' cut it an' dat's de part dey light, light it bottom upwards. Dey put dat candle in a lemon an' set dat lemon on yore pitchure. Dat's whut dey do when dey wanta burn it tuh give yo' a headache or any kinda misery or anything lak dat - burns de candle bottoms upwards on top of dat pitchure.
(Do they use any particular color or does it make any difference?)
Well, dey - yo' kin use white. It's jes' as good as any othah color. Yo' use black if yo' wants tuh run 'em away.
(Do you light that candle at any particular time?)
Six in de mawnin', twelve at noon an' six at night. Ketch watah. Take an' leave yore haid - hol' yore haid down anywhere where yo' kin have some watah run on it. Ketch it in a pan an' take dat watah an' put it in a bottle. An' git chew nine needles an' nine tacks an' nine pins dat's nevah been used. Write dere name down nine time an' take dat bottle an' put some cayenne peppah an' table salt in it an' turn dat bottle - stop it up an' turn dat bottom upwards an' dat will put any candle out. An' yo' take yore left-foot shoe an' turn it bottom upwards under de side of de bed where yo' sleep at night. An' draw a glass of watah befo' de sunrise, an' put dat glass of watah undah yore bed an' when de sun goin' down, yo' throws it ovah yore left shoulder.
(What will that do?)
Dat puts de candles out. (That's another way of putting it out. Those are two different Ways of putting the candle out?) Both. All those ingredients goes tugethah. Yes, yo' see, when yo' usin' de watah, when yo' got de name in de watah, yo' gotta have dat shoe. Yo' take dat shoe an' turn dat shoe bottom upwards undah yore bed on de side where yo' sleep. Yo' draw a glass of watah befo' sunrise an' yo' leave it stay undah de side of de bed where yo' sleep till aftah de sun goes down. When de sun goin' down, yo' stan's an' yo' throws dat watah ovah yore left shoulder an' don't cross it [walk over it] - no suh, yo' don't look back at it.
(All that will put the candle out.)
Entry 4554
Take de bow inside of a man's hat dey claim an' run 'im crazy. Dey use dat an' burn a black light on it - called a black candle. Set dis black candle on it an' burn it 21 days, an' it will make him absent-minded. [For Sims see 34, p.23; 532, p.157;2091 p.608.]
Entry 5930
Yo' take a man if 'is wife quit 'im. See. He kin take piece of 'er hair, git it out de lef' side. Cut a piece off if she got long hair, cut a piece off her plait if she sleep at night - any time he kin git it. He could plant dat piece of hair, see. She ain't gwine 'way. If she in Chicago, she comin' back. Plant dat hair - plant it in 'er house or out do's. Yo' kin plant it in de house wit 'er wall - lak a mantelpiece roun' where dey put de foundation of concrete. Take yo' some cement an' take a little augah an' put dat piece of hair down an' plastah it undah dere. Dat's yore own busi- ness. An' she gonna come dere. Ah don't [care] wherevah she goes, she comin back dere. An' dey do de men in de same way, but if he leaves de house, den yo' write his name or 'er name down on a papah, an' yo' kin put it in a lamp, or put it amdah de candle. Burn it. Dat brings deyself. An' now ah don' care how much dey fussin' in a house or whut dey doin' or how mch dey cut up, take some table salt, jis' de plain table salt, an' throw it on de fiah an' burn it. Dat breaks dat - do's it right now. Ah kin throw it right at 'em - dat ceased. Dey don' have tuh go on fussin'. Dat brings back love an' hy dat hair's planted. When she goes, she comin' back dere.
Entry 6647
Yo' kin take dis Eve-an'-Adam an' burn it tuh a powdah. Co'se yo' got'a dry it out good an' den let it stay on de stove. Don't let it burn black. Git chew some of de powdah, de ashes of it an' sprinkle it on dis candle. Git chure candle warm dat chew kin kinda work it in dere-like. Git chew a li'le of dis rattlesnake, dust outa rattlesnake rattle an' mix it intuh dat, an' light chew a candle. An' dat will keep yo' sneezin' an' cough an' effect yore eyes, until yo' won't be able tuh do anythin'. Jis' burn yo' a candle right aroun' in de room. If I'd have a li'le animosity ag'inst yo', tuh keep from doin' anythin', insultin' yo' or somepin, I may light a candle. Got it dressed an' evahthin'. Yo' set chere an' inhale dat an' yo' don't know whut's happenin'. Don't know anythin'. [You] is partly out chure haid, worse'n [worse than] like someone doped chah. It's a long run 'fore yo'll git right ag'in, from inhalin' de poison from dem rattlesnake [buttons] an' from de Eve- an'-Adam, yo' know.
Entry 7169
A woman kin have her husban' an' jis' go - it's lak he's workin' at night, an' he be here sleepin' an' she may wanta go off, yo' see, wit some other man or somepin othah. An' she - aftah he goes tuh sleep, she wan's tuh keep 'im asleep. She kin take a plate an' a knife an' fork, an' put it undah de head of dat bed right dere. De knife an' fork cross- ed in de plate undah de head of de bed. She kin put a candle undah de foot of dat bed an' light it, an' take her shimmy or 'er petticoat or somepin lak dat, an' hang it right up ovah 'is face - say prob'ly eight or ten inches from 'is face. An' he'll be sleepin' right dere when she come back home an' wake him up. He won' even wake up while she's gone. She be gone all day an' he'll sleep all day.
(She puts the candle on the foot of the bed?)
Yes, sir, puts de candle right on de foot. Yes, sir, he'll sleep.
(A candle of any particular color or just any kind of candle?)
Oh, jis' git dese big white - two for a nickel candles. [This was back in 1937 during the Great Depression!] Go dere an' buy a candle.
(All right, I see.)
See, she's going tuh make it back dere befo' dat candle goes out.
(I see.)
NOW, DIS IS BY EXPERIENCE. I SAW MAH BROTHAH'S WIFE DO DIS. See. An' she tol' me, say, "Brothah, he don' wan' me tuh go up tuh 'is mothah, " she say, "an' ah'm goin' an' ah know whut tuh do tuh keep 'im asleep." I SAY, "WELL, DO ANY- THIN' YO' WANTA DO ONLY DON'T KILL 'IM." An' ah sits dere an' looked at 'er do dis an' ah walked out an' set on dose row boats right ovah dere across de river in Bellpoint 'till she come back. An' when she come back, I come on ovah dere an' meet 'er an' went in de house, an' de candle done burned down about dat much [demonstrates]. An' he jis' alayin' dere dead to de world. An' she did all dem thin's.
(What did you say? Bell - where is that?)
Bellpoint. It's a li'le small town jis' across de rivah.
(Over in Louisiana?)
Yes, sir - tothah [the other] end of de bridge.
(I see.)
Entry 8048
Yo' know what dat candle's fo'? (No.) Dat candle's fo' gamblin' purposes. (Well, how would you prepare any- thing of that sort?) Bell, if yo' kin git de bone of a dead person - de bes' thing dat yo' kin use from a dead person, if yo' kin git dat bridge of de nose, what's in a person here. If yo' would put it in... [I interrupt.]
(You mean the bridge of the nose?)
Yes, dat bridge in de nose. If yo' kin git dat an' take dat an' put it in, go tuh an' make a novena[!] ovah dat, an' burn two candles. (Well, after you get that bridge of the nose, where do you make that novena? In your home or in the church?) In yuh home.
(In your home. Then what do you do?)
Den yo' set two candles tuh burn.
(You mean two candles before, or near it, or what?)
Two candles ovah it - undah whatevah yo' got de candles in burnin', have it. Have whatevah yo' got de candles in big enough so dat de wax from de candle will rum right down in dat containah what it's settin' in. An' have dis bridge of de Dose undah dat containah. Yo' undahstan'? An' let dose two candles burn out ovah dat.
(What sort of candles do you use in a case of that sort?)
Yo' kin use two white candles.
(I see. All right, go ahead.)
An' yo' wrap dat bridge of de nose of dat person wit one piece of garlic. Divide it an' tie it aroun' de bridge of dat nose, an' sew it in red flannel. An' let dat person keep dat piece of - dat in dat pocket, an' when dey go tuh a gamblin' house, or any place tuh gamble, rub dat ovah dere hands an' den rub dere hands ovah dere face, an' put it back in dere pocket. An' dat's all dey've got mah do wit it.
(That's a gambling hand?)
It's a gamblin' hand.
(I see.)
Entry 8624
Just like ah may have a friend. I could be a woman an' I'd have a friend, an' I wants to part from my friend. I'll take de lemon. I'll get me some beer. After I'd get de beer, I get me a candle. Well, I take de candle an' take de lemon an' bore a hole through de lemon. Put de lemon [candle] down in de candle [lemon]. Put dat beer down in de can. When. I get the beer down in de can, an' start tuh burnin' my black candle, well, de woman couldn't stay dere ten days.
[I now try to understand the preceding confusion.]
(Now wait a minute. Here's your can of beer. Now where's your lemon?)
Yo' see, I put my beer first.
(Yes.)
Put de note second.
(What note?)
De woman name.
(Well, you didn't tell me that before.)
Yes. Mark nine times backwards. After yo' mark it nine times backwards yo' put de note in dere. After yo' put de note in dere, yo' stick de candle down in dere, an'.leave it down in dere fo' ten days, she can't stay wit yo' no more.
(What happened to the lemon?)
De lemon'll be right dere in de beer. Yo' see, like. (I see. Now, wait a minute, let me untwist these things for you: Here's the can of beer. You put this woman's name in there. You take a lemon and you put this black candle in the lemon and put that lemon down in the beer, and then you light the candle. How long do you burn that candle?) Yo' burn dat candle ten days.
(I see. Then what happens?)
De woman can't stay there no mo'.
(You just drive the woman away?)
Dat's to drive 'er away.
(Why do you use beer?)
De beer is down in de can.
(Well, why do you use the beer?)
Yo've gotta use so de lemon could have some kind of different juice to it. Dat de reason yo' use de beer.
Entry 8766
Yo've got to get a plain piece of papah wit no lines drawn on it. Now, ah'm goin' tuh give yo' an idea. Ah'm goin' tuh write yore name. If yo' want tuh get even wit [someone], ah'll write yore name dis way nine times, an' ah'll turn dis papah aroun' an' ah'll write my name nine times until ah get it across yores. Den ah'll fold dat papah two turns, an' den ah'll put dat in a lamp...
(Fold that paper kitty-corner.)
[I try a folk term rather than catercornered.]
Now, dis what yo' call kitty-corner, see [demonstrates] ah'll take it jes' lak dis an' den ah'll take it again jes' lak dis. An' now when it's off, dat gives me a cornah here an' a cornah here. When dis is off, dat'll give me a cornah here.
(It's in the shape of a triangle.)
[Here as often, I am annotating for my future understanding.]
Ah'll put dat in a lamp or undah a candle an' ah'll burn it an' ah can make whatevah ah burn it fo'. Ah can wish fo' what ah want an' ah'll get it in dat papah what yore name wrote on. [For names in oil bowl of burning lamp, see, many rites under margin title LAMP RITES AND NAMES in present section NAMES; for ob- jects beneath burning candles, see section CANDLES, Pp.797-862.]
Entry 8980
Now if yo' go before de iudge, de judge goin' to discharge yo', ac- cording to what kind of case, yo' know, yo'll have. Well, if yo' got people against yo', yo' know, an' yo' don't want to have dem part of de jury. Yo' going before de judge, like if it's a criminal case, yo' know, yo' got to have de jury. Yo' see, dey have [a panel of] 75 jurors [to select jurors from]. Well, yo' don't know what people [will be on the jury]. They don't pick out but twelve. Now, yo' don't know what twelve dey going to pick out. Dat makes yo' gotta use de whole panel. Yo' see, ah [in my work] done use 'em all.[ Well, now, de person - what jurors is against yo'. Yo' go an' get yo' a beef tongue, a fresh beef tongue. Pay odd money fo' it, not even money - 25 or 35 cents or somepin like dat. Let de money be odd money. An' yo' go an' take dat tongue an' yo' get these peoples names what is against yo', what done harm yo', don't yo' see or what yo' done harm. Yo'll take dat tongue, yo'll write de names on a piece of papah, an' yo'll write all dem jurymen's names, de dis- trict attorney.
(The whole 75 of those names?)
Yeah, just put de whole 75. Yo' have to use de 75, because outa dem yo' get twelve.
(I see. All right.)
Now, yo' get de district attorney what is de man to prosecute yo'. Yo'll get his name an' put it on dere, but not de judge in dat part. An' yo'll -git yo' dat tongue. Yo' get yo' nine needles an' nine pins. Yo'll get yo' dese people names an' yo'll put down on dere an' yo'll put dat down in de throat of dat tongue. Yo'll take dat tongue an' yo'll hang it up in de chimney. An' den aftah dat, yo'll take an' git yo' some watah an' yo'll get yo' some peppah. Yo' git yo some coarse snuff an' yo'll burn a - light a candle.
(Coarse snuff?)
Coarse snuff, dat coarse snuff; not dat in a box. An' yo'll light dat candle an' yo'll put it.in dere. Now, yo' want to come clear an' yo' want de judge to be lenient wit yo', so yo' take de judge's name. An' yo'll take de judge ame, den yo'll git yo' a block of ice, 'bout fifty pounds of ice. Yo' put it in a little pail an' yo'll sweeten it. Den yo'll light de candle, but yo'll light it straight up [the candle will be standing upl. An' den yo' see, sweeten de judge. But this othah part what yo' do, yo' take an' yo' put de candle - yo' turn 'em upside down, yo' get dat coarse snuff an' all dat, an' put in dere. Well dat make de district attorney be fightin' against dem. An' de people, what he got fo' witness, goin' to speak against yo'. Anything dey drink, perhaps dey drink whiskey. Some might drink gin or somepin like dat. Well yo'll get dat [liquor] an' yo' put dere name an' set yo' a little glass. An' put dat candle on dat [name and liquor in the glass] an' ah'll guarantee every one of 'em will go to court drunk. An' yo'll come out clear 'cause dey'll be drunk. Dey won't know what they're sayin'. They'll be lying backwards and forwards.
(What'll that ice do?)
Well, yo' see, de ice, dat's to cool, dat's fo' yore part. De ice makes yo' cool. Yo' know ice makes yo' cool. [Usually ice freezes apponent's tongue.] Well, de judge won't be fiery wit yo'. See, he'll be cool an' calm. But on dis othah side, yo' get dat snuff an' yo' put dem names in dere an' yo' get dat beef tongue. Yo' put dem things in dere an' shove dat tongue, all down in de throat, an' just hang dat tongue up an' den yo'll see. Yo'll see an' dey'll be lyin' an' dey'll be drunk. Just what dey drink, yo' set dat candle in dere [in the glass]. An' dey'll be lyin' an' dey won't say a thing against yo'. What color...just what candles you select. Don't try de black candles.
(Anything but black?)
But black candles.
(How many do you burn?)
Yo' burn - see, if dere's five people, yo' put five candles. An' if it's three, yo' put three; just accordin' to how many is against yo', yo' put dem many candles. An' den what they drink, yo' get a little glass, just what fit de candle an' put dat [liquor] in dere, an' ah'll guarantee yo' every one will be drunk.
Entry 9000
If yo' know de judge's name. Yo' know 'is name? Two days 'fo' yuh is goin' tuh court - two days 'fo' yuh go dere...
(Yes?)
Listen me well now. Two days 'fo' yuh go dere, yuh know 'is name. Put 'em tuhgethah. Yuh puts some cinnamon an' sugah in a saucah, an' put 'is name undah dat saucah. Dat's tuh sweeten 'im up, yuh an' 'im. Dat's right. (That's all you have to do?) Dat's all yuh do. Jis' git 'is name an' yuh name tuhgethah, an' put de cinnamon an' sugah, an' put it in a saucah an' put de candle- on top 'is name, undah dat saucah on de table.
(What kind of candle do you put on that saucer?)
A black - ah, ah white candle.
(White candle.)
Plain white candle.
(I see.)
All yuh gotta do.
Entry 9001
Uses de Bible on dat. Ah uses - take de 13 chaptah of Ezekiel [for] dat, but ah takes it backwards, read it backwards. Aftah when ah read it back- wards an' sit down an' write chure name, yore crime dat chew committed, an' yore luck [fortune], all onto hit. See. Fold it up an' give to yo' an' sent yo' tuh court say, "Go an' ah'll go wit chew." Yo' go tuh co't at nine 'clock. Ah'm goin' be workin' directly fo' yuh at nine 'clock through de Bible, an' light two candles. On dese candles ah have judge's name an' yore name. De candles is a Wax candle. Lights a black candle. An' ah would have 'em white an' colored - all, tuh git a very low sentence an' a lot of 'em would git loose.
(Where do you buy these candles?)
Ah orders all of mine from Kingston, Jamaica.
(Kingston, Jamaica - I see. What is the name of the firm down there?)
Peterburg Factory - Peelburg, Pillsburg. Dat's where ah orders all mine, dese candles from.
Entry 10113
You get hold of a cat to do different things with. You can use a - take a cat, a black cat. You take a black cat and you kill the black cat. And you kill this black cat, you boil it. And you take a bone from him after you boil 'em. You boil 'em until every bit of the meat [here, having heard this much many times, I stopped recording. The words "round bone" restarted machine].
(You get that round bone, you say?)
Yes, sir. (Any kind of a - you mean a bone like the tip of your finger, or it's round that way?)
[Here I may have demonstrated a circle.]
Yes, sir.
(Then do you do anything with that bone?)
I'll cut four corners in it.
[Informant must have gone through motions of filing.]
(Then you file those?)
I'd file the sides, make it good and round. I don't want no rough edges, no corners on it at all. (Oh, I see, you round each end of that round bone?) Yes, sir. (I see.) Then I... [pauses]. (Then what do you do?) Then I'm going to cut it. You see, I cut it [demon- strates] thisaway; cut it like that, and then disaway. (Make four notches in it?) Four notches on each end. Now, when I get them four notches in this bone, I take - well, I get me a piece of silk thread. See, I get silk thread and I'm going to wrap that bone thisaway nine times into them notches. (Now, this bone is like the little stick that you wrap your fishing cord around?) Yes, sir.
(You have the notches - the notches don't run round the [thickness of the]
bone, but it [the notch] goes out to the end [the length] of the bone.) My notches come on the end, you see, and my notches set like this [demon- strates]. See, I got four notches on each end.
(I see, go ahead.)
See, the notches cut in the bone cross the two ends thisaway, see [demon- strates]. Well, I'm using this bone different. I'm going to wrap this bone thisaway [demonstrates]. (You only have two notches in that bone, in the end of that round - it's like a cross [+] on each end of the bone?) Yes, sir.
(0r like grooves, one groove across the other one.)
Yes, sir. They cross.
(That makes four grooves?)
Yeah, four grooves.
(All right.)
Well, I'll take and use silk thread; see, blue or pink. I take and I cross it this way for nine times. I wrap it for nine times thataway and then I come back nine times thisaway. I gets me [I interrupt to annote]. (You wrap the thread nine times around one of those notches at each end and you turn around like that and wrap it nine times through the other notches in the opposite end?) You see, I'm wrapping it by the straight...
(I understand that.)
Jest come down straight thisaway, not thisaway.
(I understand.)
Thisaway. And I get me - after I wrap it around that bone, I get the thread around the bone thataway, I go and I get me some of this war powder. I'll get me war powder and with this powder that I'll scrape off of this bone, I'm going to mix that together, see. I lay this bone into a piece of silk paper.
(What kind of paper?)
Silk.
(Silk paper.)
Silk paper, see. And I lay that bone in there and I gets me one of these small candles. Small candles. You know them little bit of yellow candles. They are about three for a nickel.
(How high are they?)
They little bit of candles about this [high].
(Oh, just small candles. All right.)
Little small candles, about little bit bigger than a match stick. They about that long. Get you one of those - three, I mean. And I'm going to lay two - one on each side of this thing - this bone, you see. But I'm going to lay it in a Way, I'm going to put it in a frame-like, but it ain't going to burn, and I'm going to light them candles. Light all three of them, but I'm going to light two here and I'm going to light one on the top.
(You have these candles in a triangular form, and the bone's inside the form?)
In the center. I lights those and now when I lights these, I let 'em burn. I light 'em at twelve o'clock in the day. Every day for twelve o'clock - no more, no less. I light 'em at twelve an' let 'em burn 'till about twelve-thirty, see. Twelve- thirty, if the work ain't done, I put 'em out, an' the next day I light 'em at twelve-thirty. And then for about three or six days, whatsomever I'm after, it's got to come in the six days. In the sixth day I get whatsomever I'm after. (Here's your - now, let me talk. Here's your cat bone - it's round like that. [I should have given description!] You file off both ends and you make the both ends round. Then you make a groove, you put a cross on top of the groove. At each end make a groove. Then you wrap the thread nine times around this way and nine times around that way - just like you wrap fishing tackle.) That's right.
(All right.)
Entry 10158
(You can wet it either with drink [alcoholic] or with perfume.)
Perfume.
(I see, all right.)
They have this oil they call gerangement [geranium] oil. You use that to make him stay at home.
(How do you use it now?)
Now you have to take this and write his name on a plain white piece of paper - just let it be a plain white piece of paper - with about a tablespoonful of sugar, and now, you take his name and you write it nine times, and yours nine times, but always on the top - always on the top of his'n, and you get a white clean sau- cer - but let it be a white saucer, and you put - you make a hole in a piece of pasteboard top, just a round [hole] that the candle can hold in it because it liable to fall. Then you take that sugar and you put that name and cover that name with the sugar. Then you put that gerangement oil on top of it - it's very expensive. You put that gerangement - it smells wonderful. You buy nine wax candles - that pure white candle - and you uses that. Then you take that white candle in them nine days and you use it. Now in the ninth day, if you don't see the changement in the ninth day, you burns this whole thing out and it makes a blaze. But it always - put it in a pan that it won't set nothing afire. That's in the ninth day. Now, in the ninth day, it'll make the difference in the ninth day - guarantee you. Don't care if you in New York or wheresomever you [are], you going to come back here. That thing will make you come back. It smells wonderful but it make you come back. Now, in that ninth day - don't cease to worry you - you kin tell when somepin [is] on the way because you feel all frightened and all worried and scarey, but that someone is on the way coming. And then, in the future, when you hear somebody knocking to your door and calling you quick, to see whsomever it is that's coming - cause I have did it. And dere's a man - it was in Kentucky - and I have did it. And I was so scared that I didn't know what was the matter. I hadn't seen him atall and was waiting for him for money and couldn't get nuthin. And when that man come, the woman come acrost and say, "Julia, there's somebody, quick, wanta see yuh." And all that evenin' I was ironin'. I just wasn't able to do anything because I knew dere somepin wrong, and when I made it to the door, dere was the man. I was so glad and happy to see him that I didn't know what to do. Well, when he came, he says, "Well, you lookin' all right." I says, "Yes, I'm lookin' fine." I says, "Well, how are you?" He says, "All right." He says, "Well, ah think ah come back to stay." Ah says, "Yeah, well, that's wonderful." I had a roomin' house and I was going with him then. He said, "All right." I says, "Well, how did you enjoy your trip?" He says, "Fine." When that man left and went on [left me again], I repeated it over again. It's expensive. They gives you that much [demonstrates] for a dime.
(This oil. Well, now, this oil, it's oil of geranium is it?)
Gerangement oil. (Gerangement oil. You mean it's the same name as that flower that grows in pots, that has red flowers on it and pink flowers. The same name as that?) It's a gerangement, yes. It makes a little red flowers and things, certainly does.
(All right.)
Entry 10163
You kin make a table [altar] with that [rite] you see. You understand, that's if it's something that choo want, well you kin make a table with that. You kin, that is, if it's for you to make a sacrifice, something that you want. Well, git choo three candles, you put the picture - you fold the picture up you under- stand.
(This picture of the Lord?)
This picture of the Lord. That's right.
(On the table?)
On the table. That's right. An' then you make it like a rainbow [a semi- circle]. You put one candle - you git three candles. You make [place] one right here, an' one right around here, an' let it [candles] come aroun like a rainbow. An' you make you a wish fo' wha' choo want, an' you say a prayer. You say, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, the 23rd Psalm. You say that Psalm an' then you get 'down an' repeat the Lord's Prayer for what you want. Yo' make a wish with these three candles. Then you let them burn plumb on out... right in front of the Lord's picture... You do this about 6 o'clock in the morn- ing or 6 o'clock in the evening or 9 o'clock at night.
Entry 10169
If you want to bring a woman back home to you, after she done left you and - you want to get her back home. Now, you take her name, and you take you two pins, just fix them like this here. Just cross it like a "x" you see; right over her name, you see. And you burns it with a candle, you see. You burn that for nine days and in nine days that woman'll come back home to you.
(What do you burn, a white candle?)
No, burn a red candle. Red candle is - black candle is evil, red candle and white candles is all good ones. You see, brings her home.
Entry 10170
A friend of mine wanted tuh git rid of her husband an' she wuz in love with anothah man at de same time, an' so she took his picture, her husban's picture, an' she had some bergamot an' vinegah, salt an' peppah - jes' ordinary black peppah. And she kept it undah his bed.
(What did she do with these ingredients?)
Had them all together, folded togethah, an' even a piece of his hair. An' she folded that together an' she lighted a candle an' kept that burnin' undah his bed.
(The candle burning under his bed?)
Yessuh, little small tapers - white ones, very small. As soon as one would go out, she'd light the othah one. She kept a boxful, yo' know, continually. An' finally he left. [Some of the small tapers or candles are about the size of an old-fashioned wooden match.]
Entry 10171
Light candles - it's a white and blue candle, see. And they burn from seven o'clock 'till nine - that's the white one. They'll light the blue one, they'll burn it from nine 'till three in the evening. The red one, they'll burn it from three 'till nine at night. [Three candles are used: red, white and blue.] (From three in the afternoon until nine at night?) Yassuh. They say that's to draw [customers]. That's for luck in de house, see. (Do they burn them separately or together or what?) No, no! They burn one at de time, jest like I light the white one this morning. Well, you see, I burn dat 'till nine. Well, then I'll put hit out. Then I'll light the green [blue] one and burn it 'till three this evening, and then I'll pinch it out. Then I'll light the red one this evening [afternoon] at three o'clock and I'll burn it 'till nine tonight, and then I'll pinch it out [candles are not blown out]. Well, I won't burn no more 'till tomorrow. See, that's burning it too hard. See, you'll burn so hard that way 'till they [customers] take sick from it.
Entry 10174
To run crazv. stand pic- ture upside down behind bed, face to wall, light candle, red, burn "plum out" - make wish.
Entry 10175
Now, that like if someone that they want to kill 'em, get 'em out chore way. You stick this black candle with 9 bran'-new needles, the darkest hour of the day, 4 o'clock in the mawnin', an' make yore wish, see. An' burn that candle ev'ry 9 days till that happens...an' yo' let the room...you put it in real dark room. Let the room be real dark.
Entry 10177
Burn de candles ever other mornin'.
(You burn these candles every other morning?)
Ever other mornin'. You burn 'em from seven until nine for nine mornings like dat - ever other morning for nine mornings.
(From seven in the morning until nine in the morning?) Yes. (I see. And what else do you do?)
You jes' burn de candles from seven until nine.
(What is that supposed to do?)
Well, dat's jes' supposed to gain influence wit people and if anybody tryin' [to] harm you, or to keep anybody from harmin' you.
(I see. Well, do you burn any special color or anything of that sort?)
Use a pink.
Entry 10183
If they're burning a candle on you, you burn - now this is the same thing you kin do. You kin burn this same red candle. You burn this red candle, you stick it in 3 pins. See, you fightin' against them. You says, "I wish my enemy would leave me alone." An' then you go an' throw you a handful of salt in the fire an' you says, "I wish my enemies quit working after me an' leave me alone In the Name of the Lord." An' take you a bath in some saltpeter, blue- stone an' sugar, an' repeat the Lord's Prayer 3 times, see. You see, you burn this candle, that would set them down. Or else, you kin put 'em down sick. You kin git a purple candle an' you light it an' you make your wish an' put some salt in there an' spit in it, see. An' you burn it on 'em again an' you says, I wish ohosomever this is that's workin' after me will leave me alone, "' an' spit in it. You see, that'll drop 'em. That'Zl drop 'em. That'll put 'em down sick. That'll make 'em drop. An' continue to burn brimstone [not men- tioned previously in this rite but surely in some pre- vious part of interview]. See, that brimstone is the best thing in the world, that brimstone. An' sugar. Continue with that sugar in the fire, see: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. [Mem- phis, Tenn., (960, excellent hoodoo woman, my rapid hand transcription of cylinder missed by my transcriber, 1544:9.]
Entry 10186
An' then here's another thing. There's - some things are over others zhoo know. You see? Well the nex' thing to do, if you wanted to make 'em leave town or anything like that, you Write their name down 9 times. Understand? An' stop it up in a bottle an' go to the running water, to the river and throw it in. Throw it ovah the left shoulder an' don't look back, an' says, "I wan' zhoo to go." An' then you take a red candle. You get a red candle, you understand now, an you stick you three pins in it. You burn that at 12 a'clock at night, see, an' you make a wish. You says, "I wish my enemies would leave me alone In the Name Of the Lord."
Entry 10190
Burn candles fo' luck. You take the candle, an' put it in each of the four corners of your house an' on that you sprinkle a little of that sulphur. As ah said, sprinkle a little sulphur on it, and in a few minutes that sulphur will be burned away, but that atmos- phere is still there. You light each one of those candles and burn them, and while those candles are burning you says your prayers, an' that create luck in your house that way.
(What kind of luck do they do that for?)
Any kind of luck.
(What color candle did you say they use?)
Jest a plain white candle.
(Do you burn them at any special time?)
Twelve 'clock at night. You get more results out of those things at that time of night.
Entry 10195
Three candles are burned: white, green and pink. While burning them keep saying, "To keep the law away." Before you do this hang a red apple over the door. [Red apple or red onion the meaning is the same, customers, as material somewhere in Boodoo explains.]
Entry 10196
Dey burn dose an' den dey read de Bible.
(How do you do that?)
Dey jes' sets 'em all round, but one will do.
(One candle.)
Yes, one will do. Set it in de room an' den yo' git chure Bible an' yo' read a verse, de firs' verse dat chew [see when you] open de Bible. Den yo' read dat. (And what color candle do you use?) Well, yo' kin git de red candle. (What is that supposed to do then?) Yo' burn it fo' luck. (What kind of luck?) Well, luck in anything come in, any kind of business yo' got, dat yo' wanted tuh increase.
Entry 10199
A candle for luck and success you burn to St. Peter. He hold de key in his hand. All right dat opens. They call that open the way for you, you see. St. Raymond that's money. You burn to him and he keeps you with a piece of money; and you got to give him a piece of money, and he keeps you with a piece of money. That's the Way that is. (Do you know any other saints? St. Micahel? Any other saints they burn candles to?) Yes, St. Micahel. They burns to St. Peter, St. Raymond and St. Anthony.
(What do they burn to St. Anthony for?)
They burn to St. Anthony for to bring people back, mens back to - women back when they done quit. You make a wish and burn that light to him. Go to the church anywhere and light a light, if you don't have the saint at the house. If you have had the saint blest and put at your home and you prays to it three times a day, that's to bring anybody back to you what done left you.
(Do you mean three times one after the other, or?)
Three times a day, twelve - say six in morning, twelve in the day, and six in the evening. That's three times, you pray to this saint. And have your light burning. It'll - in nine days you see an improvement.
Entry 10208
If there's something that you don't want taken regardless of what it is, if you don't want it taken - for an instance if you take, if you lock your house they going to break in, and you don't know how to do for to keep 'em from taking your things. Well, then, first I would go and I would get me some sassafras [roots or pieces of bark]. I'd get some sassafras and I'd get me a knife and I'd trim this sassafras, see. I'd trim it and every little piece that I'd whittle off it [demonstrates].
(Every piece that comes off, what do you do with that?)
Every piece I trim off - I'm going to trim it off until I get to nine pieces, and every time I get the nine pieces, I'd count the nine pieces. I'd get them nine pieces and I'm going to put nine pieces here [demonstrates]. I cut off until I get nine more pieces and I'm going to put that there until I get four times nine. See? Well, all right. Now, I'm going to set it on the outside of my door. That's the corner of my house and that's the corner of my house. I'm going to set nine pieces there and nine pieces there, and at the back end of my house. I'm going to set nine pieces.
(You have nine pieces in each corner of the house.)
In each corner of the house, but on the outside. Under my house, if I can get under there and get to where the fire part is - the fire-hearth part is; under the house, you know.
(You what?)
Get under the house, underneath the house and get to the fire-hearth, see.
(Oh, the chimney - the fire-hearth.)
Yes, the chimney. I take and I put me a Bible there. I put that Bible there. I puts the Bible up under that house and I puts a candle there, and I leave that candle burning, see, and I leave the Bible open. But I put a piece of something in front where nobody can't learn that candle's burning there, you see, and leave it burning there. And then I come out from under that house and I locks my door, and as I'm coming out I'm sprinkling a little sugar, you see. I sprin- kle sugar as I come out, you see, until I get at least fifty feet from my house, you see. Then I won't sprinkle no more sugar and I can go and stay from three or four days and come back. Nobody will go in that house, nobody never go in there.
(What sort of a candle do you burn on that chimney?)
I'm got a ordinary white candle. (A white candle, I see.) [Here we have a quincunx, 4 corners and a double central point - Bible and candle.] [New Orleans, La., (832), 1249:2.] [If the reader is approaching this multi-volumed HOODOO archive for the first time, he or she must be told that the present beliefs and rites about sex are perely a continuation of 167 pages of similar material published in volume 3, Nos.3ll0-3830, Pp.2341-2509; material listed in logical sequence according to the Table of Contents for volumes 5, 4 and 3. The material now following could not be so conveniently arranged, though it does have a certain amount of alpha- betical order and other continuity. I am dividing this section into two parts: (1) COMPLETE RITES and (2) CONDENSED RITES, these latter sometimes a reference oaly.]
Entry 12462
If you want a woman, there's two or three ways that you can bring people to you. Just - the question you've asked me - there's two or three ways that you can do these things. It's always worked on the dark of the moon. See, just like if you want to do good, you do it on the new moon - of course, it be on the new moon and on the Balance. And if you want to do bad to them, you do that on the dark of the moon, work under the signs, the twelve signs. See.
(The twelve signs of the zodiac?)
Yes. See, just like if you want to make love or friendship, you set candles on a person that get the tendence[?] the two little Twins, at least. See. And if you want to do earth work, say, if you want to bury anything, you do that on the Balance. If you want to use any water from any river or anything, you use that on the Balance [surely the Waterman]. Just like if I want to break up a man and a woman. She done left me and I want her to come back to me. Well, I takes a linen sheet and I has it on the bed, after I done set my work[?] for her to come there, and I get morris [myrrh], aloes and cinnamon. [Preceding vord tendance = attention?]
(This myrrh, and what else?)
Aloes and cinnamon.
(Cinnamon?)
Yes, mixed in together. And I makes a powder and perfumes my bed with that. And she come there and [lay on] my bed, I ain't got to worry about her no more. See. She ain't going nowhere.
(She is going to stay right with you?)
Yes.
Entry 2891
Now, jes' say now for an instance if a man is gone and left his wife, yo' might say or sweetheart, and he's away off in another country probably and she want him back. She care fo' him but he's gone off and done 'tract his 'tention with somebody else, and his mind is offa de one that he left. If she got his photograph, she kin jes' take it and jes' turn it upside down on his haid, see. And den take a green candle and a yellah candle and put de photograph right - put it down, set de candles in some kin'a little [tin] top of something, put dis heah photograph behin' de light [candles], and light chure candles and make yore wush. See. Put de photograph upside down and put some sugar, some brown sugar in de saucer [or tin top] wheresomevah dose candles is; some brown sugar and some honey, and put de two candles in dere - de yellah candle and de green one.
[Brown sugar is often used for colored person; white for white person.]
And set 'em in dat saucer with dat sugar and dat honey and put de photograph right by dose, upside down. Well dat will make dat individual git on his head to come back, see, to where he left from. Jes' in a few days he'll git all upset, wanta come back, and ain't nuthin going to keep him away from dat individual. (Now here are the two candles sitting up in this can. You put the photograph upside down, head down, leaning against one of those candles - jest leaning against one of those candles.) Leaning against whatsomevah de candles is in. And den de person - lak ah'm doing dis, jes' lak if ah was going to light de candles for mah husband and tell him to come home, and [demonstrates] ah jes' put de photograph down dere, and ah tell him, "Now, ah mean fo' you to come home to me now. Ah mean fo' you to come home and don't you stay away no longer. Ah mean fo' you to come home." [Three times.] And in about five or seven days [odd numbers] he will be back.
Entry 2892
Git a white an' a black candle an' burn that. Jis' burn it soon every mawnin' 'bout five or six a'clock an' de same time at night. See. An' yo' hol yore han' ovah dat smoke an' make a wish, an' prob'bly no doubt yo' li'ble tuh be lucky an' den yo may not. Dat's in gamblin (You burn both these candles together?) Uh ah - yo' burn one at de time. If yo' burn a white one dis mawnin', yo' burn a black one dis evenin' [alternate magic]. See. Burn a black one now an' de white nex'.
(You just simply reach your hands over the smoke?)
Yeah. Jis' make a wish. [See margin-title Smoke 'Em, p.723f.] [Memphis, Tenn., (930), 1512:1.] '
Entry 2894
You can go to people and they can tell you what to do. Well, just like if you go to people and they tell you what to do. I know a fellow [a hoodoo or shrine-keeper] - well, if somebody have stole something from you - well, all he'd do is to say this prayer at nine, twelve and three, and tell the Lord, say, "Now, Lord, such-and-such-a one done stole something from me and I really need it." But you mean that from your heart and you sets that candle - a 25c candle - which is to burn eight days - and in eight days it is supposed to bring it back to you.
(Just an ordinary white candle?)
An ordinary white candle, cause I know a lady had a graphaphone stole from her and that's the way she got it back.
Entry 2895
Tuh burn candles. Well, yo' take those candles an' yo' kin take the Bible an' read the Bible - jis' lak some- one have mistreat you. Well, yo' take those candles an yo' take the Bible an' yo' read it an' yo' prays, an' Pray ovah that candle while it's burnin', see, an' yo'll do that ah think fo' 'bout nine days an' nights, an' yo'll gain friendship wit de party that mistreats you.
(What color candle do you burn for that?)
Dat's white.
Entry 2897
The black candle is fo' evil. That black candle does all the harm in the world. Well, yo' jest - say, if yo' wanted to do someone harm, in the day at twelve a'clock, make it no later, yo' go into yore room, pull yore blinds down, set chew a dark candle behin' yo'. An' yo' set wit chure face pointin', say to the east an' yo' set there. Yo' set there until - if yo' haven't got their picture, yo' set there until yore mind jest kinda picture them. An' yo' take that picture, say if yo' wanta cause them to git killed some way - by running into a car, by running into a train, or land somewhere where de train kin run ovah them. Well, jest whut chew want, that one particular thing to do, why yo' jest call dat an' dat black candle will be burning behind yo', see. All right, chew call dat persons name nine times. Den yo' crosses - take yore fingers an' cross it like dat. Pull it, see like dat - pull the fingers together. (Pull your fingers together like that - these big index fingers.) [Crook index fingers and pull.] Uhmm. Say, "To hell, to hell, yo go. Drift forever. No content. There's no rest for the weary." And then turn, blow the candle out an' then kneel in front of the candle an' say, ask for six feet. Then that gives that candle time to cool off. See, ask for it slowly - s i x f e e t. Why den all de smoke from dat candle an' everything will go off. Take yore candle an' go on back about yore business.
Entry 2898
Now, you take that [hat] bow and you puts it in a enve- lope, you see. And after you puts it in an envelope, you takes a black candle and you light that candle and you write your name, you see, and lay your name in there, you see, with that bow, and you burn that candle on it, you see. When you burn the candle on it, well, that'll get you - it don't do you no harm, but it get you the headache. You always suffering with the headache all the time - misery of the head.
(Do you mean if I were burning it to someone I would write my name on it?)
No, nol What the person name.
(Oh, that person you are trying to harm?)
Yeah, the one you going to harm, you see. Not your name, the one you are going to harm, you see.
Entry 2899
Now, a black candle is fer enemies, a white candle is fo' luck. Yo' kin buy a 25c candle. Anything yo' want, yo' kin git down on yo' knees and pray and ask de Lord fo' it. Ah be's in de habit fo' sometime to fast and pray, an' you'll really git it. An' if you have enemies removed, you could get a black candle and put it in a dark place and burn it. Burn it fo' nine nights and ask de Lord to move them, and he'll move them.
Entry 2900
My husband left me and stayed five months. But I didn't burn the can- dle myself, but his cousin burnt the candle. I never saw that before. She take a pink candle and instead of burning the candle as it is sup- posed to [burn] like, she cut that top off there and she turned it upside down and burn the bottom of the candle first, you understand, and when that candle burnt out - he went away from home, hadn't had no fuss or nothing, and stayed five months. Well, I tell you what I did - and not knowin' that she [cousin] suppose to do me no harm - I wanted to be sure there was nobody wanted to do me no harm. I went and got three white candles. [Demonstrates.] I burnt his name under the candles nine times, as I showed you just then on that piece of paper. And I would light the candle at night to burn while he was sleeping - of course, he wasn't with me, and when I would light the candle, I would knock on the wall three times and I would call his name. And when I burnt nine candles he came back, and he been back ever since.
Entry 2901
If yore loved one gone, yore man or yore husban' or whosomevah an' yo' want him back. Yo' git chew nine pink candles. First git chure parchment papah, yo' know dat white parchment papah, an' yo' write his name nine times on dis papah an' git chew nine wax candle. Dey say wax. Ah tried dat mahself. Whut ah'm tellin' yo' ah did dat mahself. So ah knows. An' set de candle on dis table an' every candle yo' sets, yo' moves it up a little. Yo' jis' move it up jisa speck. [This is the magic rite of diminishing distance similar to diminishing time, quantity, etc.]
(The first one you put down at the bottom of the paper?)
Yeah. Yo' see, yo' put it lak dat [demonstrates]. "Dat's de name, see - right there. See, dat's de name. Now, yo' done burned that one [candle], see. Now yo' moves it [next candle] up agin. [These candles are successively moved nearer to you.] Sometime it won't set if yo' put it at de end. Sometime yo' have tuh put it right direct in de center. [This candle in the center of a sheet of paper makes the magic quincunx - see No. 2799, p.802.] See, right in de center, fo' it tuh hold, cause sometime it'll creel ovah [probably means keel over]; but now when yo' light de candle, Wash it - yo' wash yore candle first. But chah turn it bottom upward so dat de wick won't git wet, an' yo' wash it off wit clean watah - jis' let de watah drip off it, lak that. Den yo' light chure candle. An' then yo' git that incense temple [temple incense] - dat goes wit dem can- dles. Yo' burn dat. Yo' put a little dribble - well, say it's a dram in anothah saucer. Den yo' put de candle ovah in dis saucer an' yo' burn dat light. See, dat makes de smoke dat goes with dis name an' dis candle. Now, sometime in burnin' dis candle it'll bring back 'fore nine days. An' he'll come unexpected. Yo' [when he appears at the door] gotta rush back an' pinch it out. Don't blow it out. Yo'll have tuh wet chure fingers an' pinch de light out. An' burn it in a tub lak a zinc, cause yo' know candles is somepin dat ketch fiah sometime when it fall ovah. An' yo' put it [candle saucer and perhaps incense saucer] in a tub an' yo' burn it in yore private room where yo' sleep. Dat means in yore bedroom - not in yore front [room], neight [right] in yore back [room]; neither in de sides [hall or side room if any]. Yo' gotta burn it right where yo' sleeps in yore bedroom tuh bring back yore loved one. It gotta be right dere where yo' at.
Entry 2904
If a person leave an' yo' want 'em back, yo' burn dat candle and yo' burn sulphur. Yo' take a bran'-new box, jes' a five-cent box of sulphur, and yo' take a little piece of newspaper and yo' light dat piece of newspaper. And yo' call de person name and jes' dip yore hand in dere [the box] three times; and call dere name and while de paper be burning, yo' put dat sulphur in dere [burning paper]. Yo' know sulphur flames up like yellah, makes a different color. Drop it down dere three times and call dere name. Make a wish and burn dat sulphur three time a day. An' when dat sulphur be burning on and dose candles continously burning, dat 11 bring 'em back toward yo'.
Entry 2910
Take nine broomstraws - in fac' yo' kin take one straw an' break it up into nine pieces, an' yo' kin take dat straw an' lay it on a plate. An' lay dat straw on de bottom of a plate an' yo' set a candle light, an' yo' burn dat candle light eve'y mawnin' fo' 'bout twenty or thirty minutes. An' have it set right in de midst of those straws, an' yo' burn it eve'y mawnin' fo' 'bout nine mawnin's. Den yo' put it out. When yo' put it out yo' put dat name in de bottom of it, an' dat's fo' food. Yo' always keep plenty food in de home.
(What color candle do you use?)
Yo' use a white candle. Yo' could use a green candle - it's mo' faster, but yo' use a white candle.
Entry 2912
(What have you heard about that?)
Well, if you have a fellow and he will leave home and you wanted him back, why you get you a candle - and you go out to the Crackerjack Drug Store some place. (To what drug store?) It's a drug store in New Orleans called the Crackerjack Drug Store on Rampart Street. And you kin get you some candles for a quarter - just pink-looking candles, not white. You'd get you some lump sugar. And you write his name down nine times and you take that - you know, put that candle on top of that name.
(What do you write the name on?)
A piece of writing paper.
(All right.)
You take that writing paper and you write the name nine times, and then you see, you have that candle up there and you set the nome to it. And you put those nine lumps of sugar around them then, makes your wish, and light that candle, and then he'll know the woman is - and he'll have to come back.
(Do you light those candles at any certain time?)
Yes, sir.
(What time?)
Well, about nine - about nine till eleven.
(In the night or morning?)
Well, you kin do it in the morning or you kin do it at night.
(And you burn it until he comes back? Or do you burn it for a certain time?)
No, you just burn - see, burn it from nine till eleven just for a couple of days and nat'rally, why he'll come back. (You take a piece of paper and you put it on something [not flammable], and then you melt some wax, and then you stick this candle on top of that paper.) Yes, sir - piece of writing paper. (And you put this paper down under the candle and you put these nine lumps of sugar in front of the candle in a circle.) But you have to write his name on that paper.
(I understand - nine times.)
Yes.
(Do you write the name, one right under each other? Or any way?)
No, just write it under each other.
(One right under each other in a line?)
In a line.
Entry 2948
I've heard that you could take a glass and take a - if a person's burn- ing a black candle on you, you would take a glass and break the bottom out of it, and turn hit bottom upwards over a white candle and light it and sprinkle devil dust on that candle and let it burn. It'll worry that person just as much as it will you. (It won't put the other candle out though?) No, sir.
(But it will worry them. I see. You mean by devil dust that devil's snuff?)
Yes, sir. [Chances are that devil snuff comes not from devil's-snuffbox but from hoodoo store.]
Entry 2951
Well, whenever they're trying to harm you, if it's with a candle, you take the Bible and you get up every morning fust before sunrise, look to the east and you make a prayer. Then you read a verse in the Psalms, the 9lst Psalm, which is supposed to be one of the strongest Psalms of David. You read it - a verse out of that back- Wards. Stead of reading it down, you reads it backwards every morning for nine mornings straight.
(Would that make the candle go out?)
Yeah, reading this Bible backwards for nine mornings, that'll put that candle out and set the house on fire.
(I see. And set the house on fire?)
It'll set the house on fire.
(I see, I see.)
Cause they generally have the candle in a closed space and wherever that is, the heat'll be so that it will ignite. The way the candle'll do it, it will bend over and eventually burn the paper - whatever they got under there. Sometimes they writes your name for nine times on this paper, backwards and forwards, prob- ably crossways. But you must use an indelible pencil, see. And sometimes the candle drops over - it's always a matter that it looks like it's a accidental way to do. It'll drop over and probably burn the scarf or ketch the paper wherever the wax have run, you see, and it will set fire. I've seen it happen many times.
Entry 2959
Take two needles and put across your head and get you a bottle and put you nine needles in there and nine new pins - [he corrects to] nine new needles and some holy water and put it in there. Shake it and stop it up. An' turn it bottom up and set it in a corner. Leave it stay there. And every morning you go and shake it. [Magic rite of shaking.]
(What will that do?)
Well, that keeps him from - you know.
(Well, what do they do with those candles?)
What you do with the candles?
(Oh, what do you put those needles in your hair for?)
Somebody is burning candles on you and that is to stop 'em from burning candles. ["To stop 'em from burning candles" - though informant does not say so - are preceding nine needles and holy water in bottle turned upside down and shaken. For other versions of this water rite, see following margin-title AGAINST BURNING CANDLE USE WATER.]
Entry 2964
Yo' kin take a little pinch of salt an' put it in yore hair near de mole [mold] of yore haid. Well - an' den yo' take two matches an' cross 'em in yore haid. Dat puts it out - dat candle's out an' it cain't do yo' any harm.
Entry 2970
Ah was cooking fo' a lady in this town - now this is real fresh [personal experience] - and another lady, a real dark lady, wanted the job. She wanted the job where ah was at. And of course ah took sick. In a few days ah recovered and went back down there and the [boss] lady had hired another woman. Well, she [new cook] got afraid that the lady was goin' tuh take me back - which she had tole me tuh come back to the job - she was afraid she was goin' tuh take me back, understand. Then she [boss lady] told me, she says, "Sarah, is yo' able to work?" Ah said, "Yessum, ah kin work some, Miz Smith, but ah'm not give you all the labor that choo do have, and ah drather not work, not jest now." So ah goes back down there when ah got able tuh work and under the kitchen cabinet as ah went out of the door ah viewed two - three black candles.
(In the kitchen where you worked?)
Where ah worked at, yes sir, under the kitchen cabinet, and all three of 'em was aburning. Well, ah didn't say anything to her about those candles.
(You didn't say anything to the cook about them?)
No, ah didn't say anything to her. So that night when ah went to bed, ah dreamed about those candles, and she told me in mah sleep, "Those is to keep you away an' to keep you ailing." And then ah told another old Indian lady [hoodoo doctor] about it that come to our house, and she tole me, she say, "You take a looking-glass and turn it on its face under yore bed and you'll put those things out." Well, ah did that and shore enough, ah never seed any more of 'em. Ah visited jest to see was they still burning. So ah didn't say anything to her about 'em atall. But ah found out [from doctor] through that that's what she was burning 'em fo'. An' she's got the job today - today.
Entry 1723
[Several of the following examples illustrate aspects of preceding rite though a black bottle is not always used.] I see a hoodoo woman did that to a man [man's wife] - a woman that went off from her husband - didn't stay [with him] - he was staying right where I was. She [hoodoo woman] taken her [wife's] mess out of the bucket and put it in a bottle and stopped it up [in a tree]. I went my own self and I knocked it down. And I say, "Do you know you can kill this woman? You oughtn't to do that." I say, "Me my own self, I knows a plenty - I'm my mother's seventh child." And I say, "I'se born with luck." I say, "I can tell you a plenty." And I say, "Don't do that." And I say, "In nine or ten days that woman'll be dead. Don't do it." So she [wife] told me, she say, "I suffer very often with my head." Well, because her bowels didn't move, you see. So he had the mess stopped up and I went and broked it down from the tree and that made herself all right. And I went back the next day and she say to me - that was in the country, she say to me, "Dinah [informant], you know, I sure do feel good." I say, "Do you?" And she say, "Yes." She say, "My bowels is all right." All the medicine the doctor gave didn't do no good, although she did have a little - they give her enema. That's the only way she could have her passing. Otherwise, he wanted to kill her 'cause she had run off from him. I said, "Well, why don't you go to some hoodoo, if you believe in good - try to get her back?" Well, he say, "I will - I'm going to burn those little candles." I say, "Well, go ahead and go to church, else make you a novena." He say, "And then I'll try to get her back." I say, "That's right - don't kill her." I say, "She don't want - or if you don't want her, maybe you can get somebody else. Don't take the woman's life.` He say, "Yeah, I'd rather see her dead than have somebody else." I say, "Well, you go ahead and have somebody else." He say, "Oh, no, I want her." I told him though, I say, "Don't kill her."
A man in the reported dialogue plans to burn little candles; neither the burning nor its intended result is verified.
Entry 2993
No. You don't burn that candle for an evil purpose and you don't fool with none of those good saints. But Black Hawk or some of those bad saints, you burn black candles. Black Hawk is supposed to be one of the old evil saints. That's the man that died - he was not infidel, but he did not believe they had a god, see. You burn a black candle to him - Black Hawk. You burn the candle in the same way as you do for the diff'rent saints, for his evil purpose.
The informant contrasts good saints with Black Hawk and other 'bad saints' while describing black candles; these characterizations stay attributed.
Entry 2995
After they get the - after they burn that candle good on you [if some- one is burning a candle against you], you go to this yere, this saint they call - you know a saint they call Expedite saint? (St. Expedite? No.) Uh-huh. You go to Expedite saint and you carry Expedite saint a little small kind of - go to the Ten Cent Store and you get you a small hammer; not no big hammer, a little toy hammer the chillun play with. You carry him a toy hammer and a nail. Well, after you go there and carry him this toy hammer and this nail, you get you a black candle and you carry it to him and you light it there. And I guarantee you it's good.
(You leave the hammer and nail?)
You leave the hammer and nail; don't take it away from there.
(Well, suppose I was living here, where would I find St. Expedite?)
You'll find Expedite saint in the church or else in a book store - in the book store.
(Well, you have to bring the saint home, then?)
Yeah, you bring that saint home and you fix it at your house. But always nail it right at the door where they got to come in.
(You mean inside the door or above the door?)
Inside the door - inside the house. And burn that candle and some tape lights [tapers] - always burn the tape lights around it - little red tape Zights - well, burn 'em. Expedite saint is on a horse with swords in his hand and a whole lot of snakes around him. That's the Expedite saint.
The informant describes carrying a black candle in the St. Expedite account and lighting it there; the claim that it is good remains attributed.
Entry 2803
You take his name, the boss's name, and put it in a soup plate.
(In a soup plate?)
In a soup plate.
(Just write his name once on a piece of paper?)
Nine times, and put it in that soup plate and light a candle and set it on it - a little short candle, fat candle. (A little short, fat candle - like they burn in the church? A white one?) A white one - that helps you get a job. Changes his
[boss's] mind.
The informant directs lighting a short, fat candle in the written-name account. The job and mind-change effects remain source claims.
Entry 2815
Well, if you know the person that stole, that stole from you, all you have to do is take their name, you understand. And write it down nine times - write their name down nine times and turn it face down, you understand. And light you four white candles on it there and get you some of this - get you some incense and a piece of that coal. (Coal - black coal?) This little black coal they gives you with that when you buys that - with that incense. And light that incense. You light that coal [charcoal] and that in- cense will burn, you understand. And that incense will burn over this name, you understand, underneath the candles. [Since the incense burns "over this name...underneath the candles," it is evi- dent that the incense container rests on whatever the candles stand. I suggest that four candles with incense pot or lid in the center form the magic Quincunx, I have mentioned several times. See also p.710 and Index.] And in nine days that person'll come right back there and acknowledge to you that they took whatsomever they had taken from you.
(That coal must be burned, though?)
That coal burns, yes sir. That coal burns and burns that incense, see.
The informant prescribes four white candles. The editor separately suggests an arrangement; the predicted return and confession remain source claims.
Entry 2955
Well, the protection from that [spell] in hoodoo is to take and burn a black candle in [your] back shed, back out in the open where the air can hit it and [it can] go into the dark corners, and that [going into dark corners] drives the evil away from you anywhere. [Candles against a person are often burned in a dark corner, which in my note (p.797) I changed to hidden corner sought out by spiritual smoke. The smoke from my informant's candle is not quite so spiritual, because it needs open air to penetrate the four corners of the earth. This latter expression - deservedly prominent in hoodoo and frequently used in this book (p.751) - comes from the Bible: And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth - Rev. 7: i. My four winds and five waves (five seas) in note on page 797 come from a hoodoo source, title on page 752. See also 2870, p.827.]
The informant directs burning a black candle; the long bracketed discussion is editorial. The protective effects remain source claims.
Entry 2963
You could cross matches, or something of the kind in your head, to put 'em [candles] out if they were burning to get - make you sick or give you the headache. Some candles that they burn will keep you with the headache at certain hours. They say you can cross matches in the mole of your head to put the candle out.
The informant directly names candles in a headache account. The claimed timing and match-crossing counteraction are unverified; the head wording remains unresolved.
Entry 3061
(St. Rita. What have you heard about St. Rita?)
Ah would set a pink light tuh her.
(Give me an example - a parable of how you would do that?)
Ah would send her de light - to St. Rita, an' ah would rap. Make up piece [prayer] in mah home lak, if me an' mah husban' misquarreled a lot at home. Ah would rap an' ah would call her name an' she would give me a rap, yo' see, an in three days time ah would git mah wish.
(You burn a pink candle for her. For what length of time would you burn it?)
Ah burn it fo' three days, from three tuh nine days to her.
(At any particular time during the day?)
Ah light it in de mawnin' at fo' an' ah light it agin at twelve an' ah light it agin at fo' in de evenin'. [For candle-burning time, see pp.828-831.]
(How long do you burn it each time?) [See p.829.]
Ah burn it each time about fifteen minutes.
(Who was St. Rita, anyway? Do you know anything about St. Rita?)
Ah heard dat she wus a honest woman an' her husban' didn't believe her an' she got mistreated through life. Then she run him off an' anothah man married her an' he mistreated her so she jes' went on tuh be a sister [nun].
The interviewer names a candle and the informant gives burning intervals. The practice, timing and Rita story remain attributed source accounts.