The Spellcaster's Source Hoodoo and Voodoo Witchcraft Blog of Talia Felix

I'd written once before, just a little, on De Laurence and his influential Great Book of Magical Art and Hindu Magic (aka The Obeah Bible .) It's interesting to see early uses of common hoodoo ingredients, like when I found 17th century references to lodestone and swallow's heart love spells in Wecker. De Laurence -- plagiarizing from The Magus , which was itself plagiarizing from earlier sources -- brings up the first mention I've seen of black cat and black dog hair for a breakup spell, in the following: ...for divorce and separation of the man from the woman, make a seal of red copper, being the image of a dog biting his tail; and then perfume it [ id est , smoke it in an incense] with the hair of a black dog and a black cat. Interestingly, some of these "seals" that De Laurence/Barret describes in the Great Book, I've seen described elsewhere as being more like poppets or voodoo dolls (in this case, a copper state of a dog biting its tail.) I...

Not so long ago, running water on tap was not all that common a thing. This was especially the case for folks living in poor or rural areas -- like your basic old-time hoodoo practitioner was like to be. The habit of finishing a traditional hoodoo bath spell by way of chucking the water out into a road or river probably seemed more logical when a "bath" didn't mean a giant porcelain tub full of liquid. It meant a sponge and a bucket. Perfumes and scented herbs apparently were even still added when using this washbucket method -- maybe this is why some old spells instruct to use what seem pointlessly miniscule amounts of oils or soaps in the baths ("three drops" etc.) In any event, have fun and use what you can from this data. According to Chavasse's  Advice to a Wife and Advice to a Mother on the Management of her own Health,  a spongebath should be done as follows: [One needs:] (1.) A large nursery basin, one that will hold six or eight ...