Folk Magic

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Origin: American Folklore, descended from a mixture of Scots-Irish, European Pagan, African-American, Native-American, and other origins.

Description

A variety of loosely-connected folk-magic traditions that might be adapted into a rural American setting.

Wards

Evil spirits ("bad luck") might be warded off in a variety of fashions:

  • Salt, sprinkled on thresholds of doors, window sills, and other places that spirits might enter a home; spilled salt is considered bad luck, and a little spilled salt tossed over your shoulder is said to discourage devils lurking behind you from mischief.
  • Haint Blue, a sky-blue paint, traditionally painted on porch roofs to discourage "Haints" (Ghosts and Elementals) and other spirits from lurking around the entrances of home, waiting for an opportunity to enter the home.
  • Iron decorations around the home; iron fences/gates are rare in poor, rural areas and even sprawling farms and plantations (but might be found around a wealthy New England mansion), but rural shacks might be decorated with iron horse-shoes hung over the entrance (horns-up,like a bowl to hold "good luck"), or iron nails might be nailed into magical patterns on or over doors (for example, three iron nails hammered into a triangle.)
  • Hex Signs, complicated geometrical patterns or symbols painted onto the sides of barns, most commonly in regions settled by "Pennsylvania Dutch" communities (including the Amish, Mennonites, etc.) The symbolism of these patterns is complicated, with each combination of symbols and colours having its own distinct meaning, and these "Hex Signs" can serve more purposes than just warding off evil spirits (they might be thought of as being similar to a coat of arms), but a vaguely-described "Hex Sign" painted onto a barn might serve a storytelling purpose similar to an Elder Sign (symbol), and might appear in other locations than barns in unusual circumstances for narrative purposes (for example, a Hex Sign painted on the floor of a child's bedroom might appear in a story in which children of a previous owner were tormented by evil spirits.)
  • Silver is a traditional ward against evil spirits like werewolves and faerie-folk in horror and dark fantasy fiction. In Manly Wade Wellman's "Jon the Balladeer"/"Silver John" stories, Wellman's mysteious folk-hero travels through the mountains with an enchanted guitar strung with silver strings which can be played to banish evil spirits. Silver coins, for example, might be nailed to a door frame, or buried near a doorstep, etc.
  • Burning Sage incense - "smudging" - is a common cliche in modern horror movies and ghost-hunting type "reality" shows based on New Age magic: a bundle of dried sage leaves is burned, and the smoke from the burning sage is blown into rooms of a house as part of an exorcism of evil spirits; the practice is said to be of Native American origin, with some Christianization in relation to a Mosaic temple incense, and some interest in the New Age movement for its supposed benefits in "clearing the aura": the ability to cover up or banish foul or stale smells contributes to the rationale that the incense "purifies" the air and home from evil spirits. (This is more likely to appear in a modern setting.)
  • Painted Mirrors - mirrors may be painted black to prevent evil spirits hiding inside the mirrors from escaping into the material world from the "Other Side"; mirrors might be painted in this way following a funeral to prevent the ghost of the deceased from haunting the living.
  • Bottle Trees - small trees with branches hung with bottles - may be planted near the entrances of homes to confuse and entrap evil spirits seeking refuge from sunlight inside the bottles (see Djinni for a similar concept from a different culture.)
  • Witch-Bottles - bottles, jars, jugs, or other containers holding knotted red thread or twine, silver coins, grains of rice or sand or salt, nail clippings, holy water, urine, iron needles or nails, old shoes, bones, red wine or vinegar, rosemary or garlic or other herbs, stones, shells, mummified animals, thorns, wood, or other materials. An older variation on the charm, the "Greybeard", would be a fired clay jug glazed with salt in the form of an elderly man's bearded head, but later charms could be simple glass jars or bottles; the charms are typically sealed and hidden in the house near entrances such as doors, or under hearth stones. The charms are constructed according to two theories: either the bottle contains something that repels evil spirits from entering the home (such as iron, silver, salt, or holy water), or the bottle contains something that attracts the interest of an evil spirit and traps it in the bottle (the spirit might stop to count the grains of sand or rice, or untie the knotted thread, and be impaled on the needles, or drown in the vinegar, etc.) According to instructions, the witch-bottles are to be cast onto a fire after the evil spirit has been trapped inside; the air and liquid inside the bottle will expand until the bottle explodes with a loud report, which is understood to be a curse being dispelled.
  • Witch-Balls - fishing floats, in the form of heavy balls of typically green-coloured glass with knotted string embedded inside, often tied up in knotted nets of rope or cord, and just slightly less dense enough than sea water to allow the balls to float, might be hung in the eastern windows of coastal areas (such as "Lovecraft Country" New England states) to serve as wards against witches. The theory of their construction is that evil spirits - including disembodied witches - are attracted by night to the brightly-coloured glass, which they may try to peer inside for the purpose of scrying, and then become trapped and imprisoned until daylight in the glass while trying to unravel the knotted thread embedded within.
  • Dreamcatchers - a framework (typically wooden, usually of willow wood) upon which is woven a web-like network of string, hung with beads, feathers, and other items, designed as a charm for "catching dreams" or spirits (either ensnaring bad dreams or spirits to prevent them from troubling the sleeper, or attracting and keeping good dreams and protective spirits near the sleeper, depending on the design of the charm), which are hung near or over a crib or the head of a bed; a tradition adopted by the American New Age movement (such as spiritualists, hippies, etc.) from some Native American magical traditions.


Tomes

A variety of similar tomes of practical magic for independent farmers were popular in early US history, serving as a sort of collection of folk cures for common ailments of family, and livestock and crops, along with practical spells for enhancing good luck or warding off bad luck, increasing one's fortunes at the expense of neighbors, or preventing neighbors from stealing one's own fortunes, etc. These tomes are generally a collection of occult (often allegedly "oriental" - including "Kabbalic", "Egyptian"/"Gypsy", etc.) charlatanism often including invocations of devils, loosely disguised as a sort of Christianity by mixing the Pagan and occult elements with prayers and invocations to saints and angels. Some examples of such tomes, along with a sampling of the spells that might be found inside:


Magic and Spells

Methods of divination:

Charismatic abilities:


Keeper Notes

There isn't actually a single folk-magic tradition in North America - rather, there are regional variations derived from different mixtures of sources, so some concepts will be out-of-place in many regions of the USA, but folk magic tends to be a practical and personal thing, with practitioners adopting whatever works from various sources (including some weirdly exotic ones), and in general keepers and other storytellers can pick-and-choose what works for a given story, for pulp/Weird storytelling purposes, with perhaps a few minor changes to disguise a specific regional origin, when in doubt.



Other Mythos Elements


References

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