Book Reviews: Folk Magic, Bigfoot, and More Folk Magic

Book, books, books! I have a lot of books about folklore and legends, but somehow alway find room for more. This week I'm reviewing some recent books I really enjoyed. 

First up, let's talk about New World Witchery, by Cory Thomas Hutcheson. This book is a massive, 452-page compendium of magical folklore from across North America. Hutcheson has a PhD in folklore and is the long-time cohost of the New World Witchery podcast, so he really knows his stuff. I was a guest on the podcast several years ago and had a great time. 

Like many of my readers, Hutcheson is also a practicing witch, and New World Witchery is written primarily for an audience eager to get its hands dirty and do some magic. Other people will enjoy the book as well - there's so much information in it! - but he includes exercises and tips for those who want to do more than just read. 

New World Witchery covers a wide range of topics, with chapters on divination, animal magic, counter magic, necromancy, dealing with the Devil, and a whole lot more. The book draws upon the many diverse magical traditions found in North America, including Hoodoo, Southern Conjure, Mountain Magic, Cuaranderismo and Brujeria, Pow-Wow, and Neo-Paganism. Even if you're familiar with a variety of folk magic traditions you'll definitely learn new things. I did. 

For example, in addition to the traditions above, Hutcheson also discusses New England Witchery, which is a favorite topic of mine. I've been studying it for years but I still found new insights in his book. Before reading New World Witchery, I didn't know that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an article about the hallucinogenic ointments witches allegedly used to fly to their devilish revels. Now I do! 

Another book in a similar vein, but also very different, is Folkloric American Witchcraft and the Multicultural Experience by Via Hedera. The publisher, Moon Books, sent me a copy for review, but I would have purchased this one anyway. 

Hedera is a practicing witch who lives in the Pacific Northwest, and she is also ethnically multi-racial, which shapes the tone of Folkloric American Witchcraft. 

Every one of my grandparents were a different ethnicity from the other; my siblings, their siblings and I all have different fathers and thus have different genetic backgrounds. My mother was adopted so I spent a good deal of my life immersed in cultures that I am not ethnically related to but very familiar with. It's an old story, an American one, a magical one... (Via Hedera, Folkloric American Witchcraft, p.21)

While New World Witchery provides you with maximum magical information, Folkloric American Witchcraft gives you the inspiration to use it. Hedera does include spells and charms that you can use, but she is more concerned with finding the motivation to practice folk magic in America's weird, messy, and often violent history. 

American folk magic and witchcraft is a crossroads of clashing cultures. Brought together by adversity, theft, enslavement, expansion, love, war and liberty, our culture as Americans is defined by our diversity, and our traditions of magic were birthed first by a synthesis of European, African, and Indigenous spiritual beliefs and superstitions, and then later by all the many parts of the world (Via Hedera, Folkloric American Witchcraft, p. 64)

After reading Folkloric American Witchcraft you'll want to get off the couch and start casting spells. I know money is tight these days for many people, but if you can afford it I would recommend both New World Witchery and Folkloric American Witchcraft. They work together well as companion books. 

Finally, and on a totally different topic, there's Mike Dupler's On the Trail of Bigfoot: Tracking the Enigmatic Giants of the Forest, which was sent to me by New Page Books. I am a Bigfoot fan, and really enjoyed On the Trail of Bigfoot. There are a lot of Bigfoot books out there, and I liked Dupler's book because it provides a nice overview of current thinking about Bigfoot. 

Dupler addresses questions like the following: Does Bigfoot make structures in the woods? How does Bigfoot communicate? If those topics sound dry (and they aren't), you might enjoy the chapter titled, "Is Sasquatch Interdimensional?" Dupler believes Bigfoot is a physical animal, but does speculate about other dimensions. Here's a description of something seen at the famous Skinwalker Ranch in Utah:

While watching from a bluff one evening, team members saw a strange yellow light appear. This glowing anomaly grew and morphed into a tunnel. One of the crew watched the spectacle through binoculars and, to his amazement, a large faceless black humanoid exited the tunnel and lumbered away. The creature seemed reminiscent of a Sasquatch. The tunnel then dissipated as if it had never been there, leaving the creature in the night with the shaken investigators (Mike Dupler, On the Trail of Bigfoot, p. 117)

I love a strange Sasquatch story, and Dupler includes many in his book, including classics from the 19th and early 20th century with titles like "The Salmon River Devil" and "The Beast of Mica Mountain." Trappers and hunters sure seemed to encounter lots of weird, hairy humanoids back then. 

There you have it: books about folk magic, folk magic, and Bigfoot. Perfect beach reading as summer begins!

Chloe Russell: "The Old Witch or Black Interpreter" and Her Dream Book

Chloe Russell was born in 1745, about three hundred miles southwest of Sierra Leone. At the age of nine she captured by slave traders, brought across the Atlantic, and sold to a Virginia plantation owner named George Russel. When Russel died his cruel and violent son inherited the plantation. He was incredibly abusive towards Chloe, and she contemplated suicide:

Such a cruel treatment at length drove me to the resolution of destroying myself!... But the night previous, I dreamed that I saw my father, who told me that he had just come from the world of spirits, where there was nothing but joy and happiness. He informed me that he was killed by the fire of the Baccaranas (white slavers) twenty moons after I was captured by them, in attempting to rescue my mother, whom they had taken. 

He said that he had been made acquainted with my resolve to destroy myself, and had come to persuade me not to do it, as it would soon be well with me, and I should be free from my master. This singular dream made such a deep impression upon my mind, as to deter me from committing suicide the succeeding day... (Chloe Russell, The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book, 1827)

Things didn't improve for Chloe though, so she once again contemplated suicide. Her father appeared to her again in a dream, this time accompanied by a spirit clad in purple who gave Chloe the ability to foretell the future:

Young woman, stay thy hand and raise it not against thy own life, for thy afflictions shall shortly cease. Thy unjust punishments have enkindled the the wrath of the Most High, who has commissioned me to unrivet thy chains, and to vest thee with power to foretell remarkable events, and prophecy things that that shall surely come to pass, whereby thou shalt gain thy freedom, and be ranked among the most extraordinary of thy fellow-creatures... (Russell, The Complete Fortune Teller, 1827)

When she awoke from the dream, Chloe Russell had the power to predict future events. She supposedly foretold the American Revolution and many other major occurrences. Her reputation spread through Virginia, and eventually a neighboring plantation owner asked for her help. His uncle had died after hiding a fortune worth $60,000 and hadn't told anyone where it was. Using her powers, Chloe told the plantation owner it was hidden inside a wall in the uncle's house. He found the hidden money, and used part of it to purchase Chloe's freedom. He also paid her $500, with which she purchased a house and started working as a professional fortune teller. She was quite successful, and eventually spent $3,000 purchasing the freedom of other slaves from her violent former master. 

That story appears in the 1827 edition of a small book called The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book, whose author was "Chloe Russell, a woman of colour in the state Massachusetts, commonly termed the Old Witch or Black Interpreter." The book was first published in Boston around 1798. There were several other editions, but Chloe Russell's biography only appears in the 1827 edition, which seems to have been the last. 

Her biography seems almost unbelievable, and there are some aspects of it that are clearly not true. She mentions that tigers live in Africa (they don't), and says she spent her childhood 300 miles southwest of Sierra Leone (which would be in the middle of the ocean). On the other hand, she was sold into slavery at the age of nine, so her memory of her childhood home may understandably have been faint. However, many readers may also be skeptical of her claims to psychic powers, and recall that other well-known fortune-tellers, like Lynn's Moll Pitcher, also supposedly predicted the American Revolution. 

On the other hand, records indicate that a free Black woman named Chloe Russell did indeed live in Boston in the early 19th century. Censuses from 1820 - 1833 indicate that she lived on Belknap Street, which was in Beacon Hill's historic Black neighborhood. Her occupation is described either as a washerwoman or a cook. She also owned a building which she may have operated as a rooming house.

It seems very likely that Chloe Russell also worked as a fortune teller. As I mentioned in my recent post about treasure digging, after the Puritan era many people worked as dream interpreters, fortune-tellers, and magical consultants. These people often came from the society's lower echelons, and it was a good way to earn some extra income if you had the talent.

The contents of The Complete Fortune Teller vary by edition. Some contain lists of dream interpretations. For example:

Cards - If you dream you are playing at cards, it denotes you will soon be married.

Cattle - To dream of driving cattle, is a sign you that you will be prosperous through life. 

Cat - Should you dream of a cat, you must expect trouble. 

I don't know much about cards or cattle, but I do know that cats are trouble, so maybe there is validity to these interpretations! Some editions contain instructions on palm reading, and on how to determine a person's character by the moles on their body.  

Love spells are included as well. For a man who is romantically interested in a woman, Russell counsels him to soak flowers in musk and cinnamon oil and wear them on his body for three days, bathing them each day with the aforementioned fragrances. After three days, he should send half the flowers to the woman in a small packet with a note, and keep the other half of the flowers on his person. True love will result. 

Scholars question who actually wrote The Complete Fortune Teller. Its contents are very similar to other popular fortune-telling books of the time, and it seems likely that an enterprising publisher simply repackaged older material under a new title. Little is known about Chloe Russell's life beyond the book, but I suspect the publisher attached her name to The Complete Fortune Teller in order to capitalize on her reputation. Hopefully Russell got a portion of the profits. 

There are lots of questions. When and how did Russell get from Virginia to Boston? Did Russell write her own biography, and how much of it is true? Nicole Aljoe, the director of Northeastern University's Africana Studies program, is working with her students to find out more about Russell's life. You can see a presentation by Professor Aljoe on the topic here. Hopefully she'll publish a book or article on the topic.

Other than Professor Aljoe's presentation, I got most of my information from Eric Gardner's article, "The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book: An Antebellum Text by "Chloe Russel, A Woman of Color," The New England Quarterly, June 2005, Vol. 78, No. 2 (June 2005), pp. 259 - 288. 

One last note: if you're into Tarot cards, Chloe Russell is represented on a card in the Hoodoo Tarot Deck.

Old New England Cemetery Lore: Watch Your Step

This past Saturday was warm and sunny, and although I'm always happy to stay home with a pile of obscure books I decided to go for a walk. I went to one of my favorite places, Brookline's Old Burying Ground. 

It's a really charming cemetery, well-cared for with just the right amount of decay. Although it's only a few miles from downtown Boston it feels like a rural environment. A few notable folks are buried there, including Zabdiel Boylston, a local physician who inoculated people against smallpox in 1721. It was the first inoculation campaign in North America, and Boylston got the idea from Onesimus, a slave in the household of Cotton Mather, the (in)famous minister associated with the Salem witch trials.

Cotton Mather's stepmother, Anna Mather, is also buried in Old Burying Ground. Her husband Increase Mather (also associated with the Salem trials) is buried at Copp's Hill in Boston, but she outlived him by several years and was buried in Brookline in 1737. Her grave is marked by a beautiful and well-preserved stone. 

As I wandered through Old Burying Ground I thought about some old New England cemetery folklore I've been reading recently. Some of it is probably familiar. For example, if you feel a cold chill for no reason it's probably because someone has walked over the site of your future grave. I think that one is well-known. 

A related piece of lore says that you should never step on anyone's grave when you're in a cemetery. That makes sense to me. If the living get a chill from someone just walking over their future grave, think how annoyed the dead must be when you step on their actual grave. Unfortunately, sometimes this advice is hard to follow, particularly in old cemeteries. The graves are placed really closely together at Brookline's Old Burying Ground, and it is hard not to step on one. There are also lots of unmarked graves, so you're probably unintentionally walking on someone. I think the intent behind this piece of lore is what's really important: treat the dead with respect. 

Many years ago when I was a kid I went for a bike ride with my friend Bobby in a neighborhood cemetery. We were riding pretty fast and goofing around, and I started to worry that we weren't being respectful. I said, perhaps half-jokingly, that we shouldn't be too loud or we'd disturb the dead. 

Bobby laughed and said, "I'm not afraid of any dead people!"

As soon as he said that he skidded, fell off his bike, and scraped his knee up really badly. His pants were torn and there was a lot of blood. We both left the cemetery immediately and went home. We kind of laughed but were also a bit spooked. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but I've never forgotten it. 

Speaking of forgetting, according to another piece of old lore you shouldn't spend too much time reading gravestone inscriptions. This is bad news for me, since I really like to read old inscriptions. I'm not sure what constitutes too much time and hopefully I am under the limit. I can understand the sentiment, though, because when I read too many gravestones I do feel a little lightheaded from all the dates and names. It's like when I spend too much time on Instagram!

One final piece of advice: you shouldn't walk through a cemetery on your way to see friends. You run the risk of carrying death to their house if you do. Happily, I just went back home after visiting Old Burying Ground. It was a pleasant way to spend a sunny afternoon. 

I got this cemetery lore from Clifton Johnson's What They Say in New England (1896) and Fanny Bergen's Current Superstitions (1896).

Rats, Cats, and Death: Horror on Haskell Island

Haskell Island is located off the coast of Harpswell, Maine. It's a small island, and apparently has no full time residents these days, just vacation homes. It looks quite idyllic, but like many quaint New England locales Haskell Island has a strange past. 

According to legend, the island was first colonized by the two Haskell brothers, way back in the 1600s. The Hakells were very industrious and transformed the island into an agricultural paradise. They planted an orchard, plowed the land into fertile fields, and fished in Casco Bay. The brothers prospered in their little Eden. 

Unfortunately, one day they accidentally brought some rats to the island in their boat while transporting supplies. Haskell Island had everything the rats could want: food, water, places to nest, and no predators. The rats multiplied rapidly and soon threatened the brothers' livelihood.

Antique Haskell Island postcard from Amazon. "A pretty place which I visited yesterday..."

To stop the rats, the Haskell brothers brought a couple of cats to their island. The brothers didn't provide any food for the cats and expected them to survive by killing rats. The cats met their expectations. They ate rats, and there were so many rats that the cats thrived and multiplied. Soon there were more cats than rats, and eventually there were no rats left at all, just an island full of hungry cats. 

The cats roved the island, howling with hunger. They climbed the apple trees, roamed the fields, and paced the shore, looking for something to kill and eat. 

The Haskell brothers had to do something about the ravenous felines, but something happened before they could devise a plan: one of them became sick. He fell seriously ill, so his brother took the boat and went to the mainland to get a physician. "Hurry back," the sick brother said weakly as he lay in bed. 

Can you see where this is going? An island full of hungry cats, an incapacitated man lying weak and helpless in bed? When the healthy brother returned to the island, he and the physician were horrified by what they found inside the Haskells' house. The sick brother had been ripped to shreds, and the cats were tearing the last morsels of flesh from his body. At last their hunger was sated. 

*****

It's a simple little story, but really resonates with me. It appears in Horace Beck's 1957 book The Folklore of Maine. The Maine Encyclopedia says Haskell Island was named for a Captain Haskell who purchased, but never lived on, the island, so I don't think the man-eating cat story is true. Still, it has the power of a good horror movie, and reads like an environmentalist fable. The brothers try to master the island, but end up doomed by their own actions and the invasive species they brought to the island. 

It reminds me of "Bart the Mother," a 1998 episode of The Simpsons where Springfield is overrun by ravenous lizards. At first people are happy because the lizards eat all the pigeons, but then realize they'll need to import snakes to eat the lizards, and then gorillas to eat the snakes...

Horace Beck notes that there is a coda to the story. According to some people, the sick brother was not killed by cats, but by pirates. He had seen the pirates burying their treasure on Haskell Island, and they killed him to keep their secret safe. Then they made it look like the cats had done it to deflect attention. I don't find that explanation quite as compelling, though. The story is structured like a version of "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed A Spider," and randomly introducing pirates just doesn't make sense. 

Mountain Ash, or the Witch-Wood Tree

Although it's now socially acceptable to be a witch, that wasn't always the case, particularly here in New England. Many people today identify as witches, which usually means they are interested in the occult, folk magic, and possibly paganism. These are all good things, and most modern witches are lovely people who just want to be left alone with their candles and dried herbs. 

In the past, though, no one wanted to be called a witch. The activities we associate with modern witches today - fortune telling, herbal magic, protection magic - were widely practiced across New England, sometimes by specialists called cunning folk, conjurers or seers, but more often just by average people. Curious to know if you were going to marry the boy next door? Grandma would break out the Bible, bind a key inside it, and start asking questions. Troubled by bad dreams? The farmer next door would tell you to place a knife under the bed. Everyone knew a charm or two, but no one called themself a witch.

This is because people believed witches used magic for evil: ruining crops, killing farm animals, making children sick, and causing death. Sometimes witches were motivated by jealousy, sometimes revenge, and sometimes they were working for the Devil himself. No one wanted to be a witch. Calling yourself a witch in the past would be like saying, "Hi! I'm a serial killer" today. 

Image from the Arbor Day Foundation. 

A community might accuse its most unpopular members of being witches, but these accusations were always false and motivated by the need to blame someone for life's misfortunes. Crops failed? Blame the mean old widow down the road and call her a witch. Child sick? Blame the crotchety guy who swears at everyone - he must be a witch. 

These people weren't really witches, but there was plenty of magic for protecting one's home and family from the imaginary threat. A horseshoe placed above the front door was the most popular method, but there were others, including this one I found in Clifton Johnson's What They Say in New England (1896):

It is well to have a piece of a branch cut from a mountain ash in the house. It is as good to keep to witches as a horseshoe nailed over the door. 

The practice seems to have been relatively widespread. John McNab Currier was a physician and folklorist who lived in New Hampshire in the 19th century. Currier knew a woman who blamed witches for all the misfortunes in her life and wore a necklace of mountain ash beads to deflect their evil influence:

They were cut about three eighths of an inch in length, the bark being left on, and strung on string running through the pith. She was careful to keep them concealed, but sometimes they would work up above her collar and be conspicuous. This species of tree was once quite popular among New England witch-believers as a charm against witches... (“Contributions to New England Folk-Lore,” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 4, No. 14 (Jul – Sep. 1891)

Folklorist Fanny Bergen also notes that many people carried pieces of mountain ash wood in their pockets and the tree was sometimes called the "witch-wood" tree (“Some Bits of Plant-Lore”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol 5, No. 16 (Jan – Mar, 1892).

Image from the Arbor Day Foundation

Although many folks still hang lucky horseshoes over their doorways, I haven't encountered anyone who carries around pieces of mountain ash, let alone wears a necklace made of it. Partly it's because we don't practice as much folk magic as our ancestors did, and even when we do the meaning has changed. People who hang horseshoes today usually do so to bring luck, not to keep out witches. We just aren't as afraid of witches as we once were, which is a good thing.

I also think New Englanders, and Americans in general, are less familiar with trees and plants than we were were a century ago. Very few of us work in agriculture or even outdoors, so we don't need to be well-acquainted with what's growing around us. Industrial and scientific progress has made us less superstitious (and less likely to hang our neighbors as witches), but it's also disconnected us from our immediate environment. 

Even if I wanted to make a mountain ash necklace, I probably couldn't identify the tree. They tend to grow in higher elevations, and I've lived most of my life in the coastal regions. The mountain ash (sorbus americana) is a small tree that bears orangey red berries. Sorbus Americana is very similar to the European rowan tree, which has a lot of magical lore attached to it, and I assume that's why magical powers are ascribed to the mountain ash. 

There's a mountain ash tree nearby me in Arnold Arboretum. I've been meaning to visit if for years. Maybe this spring I'll finally do it!