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To: alt.magick,alt.lucky.w From: catherine yronwodeSubject: Re: Magick for profit..... Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 04:25:01 GMT Joe Cosby wrote: > > [X] wrote: > > >But did [John Dee] sell graveyard dirt and spell kits? > > Graveyard dirt? No, but he was a Christian, and this would have > been a little ticklish for him. I agree that few Christians of Dee's era and culture would deal in graveyard dirt, for not only might it seem sacriligious to traffick in it, but they would literally have no USE for it. On the other hand, in African-derived magic such as hoodoo and Obeah, graveyard dirt is an important "magical link" (in the Crowleyan sense of that term), because of the powerful culutral beliefs centered around the role of the dead in rituals of invocation. This was and remains especially true in the Kongo, from whence most African-American slaves came, and in West Africa, where most Afro-Caribbean slaves came. (You may find veneration of ancestors rather misleadingly called "ancestor worship" by earlier Western scholars, and you will often see it referred to in that way in books published in English prior to the 1990s, but American and Eurpeoan scholars have recently come around to using the more accurate African term "ancestor veneration," due to their contact with Africans who have entered academia and gotten on the internet .. and still practice ancestor veneration.) In Palo Mayombe, a mostly Cuban and Brazilian survival of Kongo religio-magical practgice somehwat admixed with Catholicism, the dirt from graves is kept in a "prenda" on an altar. In hoodoo, as in African magic and in Palo, graveyard dirt can be used for good or for ill. There are several well-known love-spells that utilize graveyard dirt, and just as many spells to hold someone down or restrain them in some way (what British people might call a "binding spell". Inhoodoo, the ritual of collecting graveyard dirt -- by the practitioner him- or herself -- is called BUYING graveyard dirt. The usual payment in the US, since the 19th century at least, has been a silver dime, preferably a Mercury dime (this brings up thoughts about that earlier thread about Mercury / Hermes / Eshu / Nbumba Nzila / Eleggua). Customs vary, but generally the dime is offered to the dead in the entire graveyard or to the specific spirit from whose grave one will dig the dirt. If one wished to do harm, one might buy the dirt of someone who "died badly" -- before their time, through execution, or so forth, because their spirit, once invoked, would be inclined to perform evil deeds with little compunction. If one wished to bring about love, one might buy the dirt from someone who loved one in life (a relative or a deceased spouse, for instance) because their spirit, once invoked, would be inclined to help one achieve lasting love. Some workers prefer dirt from a baby's grave, because they say that the spirit thus invoked is malleable and biddable; but others say it is too weak, being young, and will not prove as effective as dirt from the grave of an adult. This practice of the individual buying dirt from a graveyard led early on in hoodoo to the root worker / herbalist buying the dirt and then re-selling it. No stigma is attached to this practice, but the re-seller may be questioned closely as to whether the dirt was properly "bought and paid for." I have ads in old catalogues in my coillection dating back to the 1920s in which graveyard dirt was offered for sale to the African-American community, so this is not a recent phenomenon. -- like most of the merchantile aspects of hoodoo, it arose as urbanization made the personal gathering of symbolic ingredients difficult to achieve. The price of graveyard dirt is usually nominal -- we sell it for $2.50 for a good-sized packet. (It's dirt cheap.) Neo-pagan authors such as Scott Cunningham have written that graveyard dirt is "just code" for certain herbs, such as mullein, but this is easily proven untrue by simply asking the average root-worker. In the African-American cummonity (if not the Wiccan community) graveyard dirt is dirst from a grave that's been ritually "bought and paid for." I have written a far longer essay on this subject, covering also the topic of goofer dust, the most important compound made with graveyard dirt. It also provides oral history context and a few sample spells indicating how graveyard dirt is used. If this interests you, please see the non-commercial Lucky Mojo web page http://www.luckymojo.com/gooferdust.html And, for those who have doubted it (but why doubt it?) yes, the graveyard dirt we sell is from a local graveyard, and it was collected after payment with a dime, in the manner deemed proper. > Spell kits? Yes. He [John Dee] did sell charms to people. > > One was a ring, that was supposed to help some lady with a problem > she was having. I'll look up the details, if you're curious. Another well-respected ceremonial magician, Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825 - 1875), whose writing greatly influenced Aleister Crowley (compare ""Will is Omnipotent, Love lieth at the Foundstion" - PBR to "Love is the Law, Love under Will" - AC) sold not only his own books (to Jonathan Yarker, among others) but also sold "The New Orleans Magnetic Pillow" (a spiritual dream-aid to draw love or money), a full line of scrying mirrors backened on the reverse with a proprietary combination of hashish and the conjoined sexual fluids of himself and his wife, and was also for a time, the single largest importer of hashish into the USA, advertising same in all of the Spiritualist and Psychical journals of his era. The list of mages who made money from publishing is long: Reverend Hargrave Jennings, one of the "saints" named in the collects of Crowley's Gnostic Mass, published and sold his own books. Others, such as Mathers, Waite, Crowley, Levi, et al have already been named, but one should not overlook Frater Achad (Jones), nor Peter Carroll, nor ... well, as i said, the list of those who offer "Magick for profit" is long. cat yronwode Hoodoo in Theory and Practice -- http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html No personal e-mail, please; just catch me in usenet; i read it daily. Lucky Mojo Curio Co. http://www.luckymojo.com/luckymojocatalogue.html Send e-mail with your street address to catalogue@luckymojo.com and receive our free 32 page catalogue of hoodoo supplies and amulets Copyright (c) 2001 catherine yronwode. All rights reserved.
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