Magical and Black Magic Use of Corpses in Occult Rituals

In what is probably a surprise to many people, lots of hoodoo style spell casters will not perform negative workings like death spells or jinxes. Despite a culture that considers "voodoo" and "hoodoo" to be synonymous with evil and black magic, the fact is that hoodoo is used for lots of other purposes; and, furthermore, many practitioners have moral or religious objections to performing these types of wicked workings -- even if they might know how to perform them, they won't.

I am one of the practitioners that will perform harmful magic spells. I've even written a book teaching how to perform them. That said, I don't do cursing spells indiscriminately -- I will usually be willing to perform a spell of equal payback for anyone, and otherwise I will do death and misfortune magic in suitable cases.

Examples of unsuitable cases I might get are:

*When the curse isn't the point -- for example, someone who wants someone dead because he's a love rival. The death of this person isn't really what's desired, but the acquiring of the woman. I turn these down, as well as any other type of spell, good or bad, where one event is presumed to lead to an indirect outcome.

*When someone wants a really specific misfortune to befall a person, such as "I want her arm to feel like it's on fire all the time and for her dog to die." These I won't do -- I will only do misfortunes of a general sort.

*People who lie and give really suspicious motives for why they want the work done. If you're lying about why you want the work, that potentially even negates the ability of the spell to succeed, if it's a revenge spell -- but worse, it indicates that even you think your real motive is a poor one and you're too ashamed to admit what it's actually about. If it's not really a good reason, don't waste your time or money getting hexing spells done.

The following is an excerpt from the book Conjurin' Ole Time, a how-to guide about historical American hoodoo and voodoo magical spells and practices from 1800 to 1920. The book is now available, in revised form, under the title Conjuration: Hoodoo Spells from 1800 to 1920.

It used to be said that the practice of hoodoo and other folk magic would be eliminated by better education. To a degree this had been true. Some examples of things that in the past were thought to be caused by hoodoo but which now are rarely attributed to such (if indeed these diseases are still suffered at all) --

• infected wounds causing swollen limbs and death
• impotence
• swollen abdomen 
• tapeworm and other parasites
• insanity/schizophrenia

There is also an ongoing belief in certain parts of the world that AIDS is caused by (and thus can be cured by) magic.

Evidence that they're not caused exclusively by witchcraft can be easily found. For instance, once modern medicine created antibiotics and an enhanced understanding of cleanliness, reports of being "hoodooed" to cause swollen limbs became rather rare -- even if other types of hexes remain commonplace. Reports of "live things" also nearly vanished once better sanitation and food preparation practices made parasites rare. 

Why are corpses and bones so much associated with hoodoo practices? Ancestor worship, also called – perhaps more accurately – ancestor veneration, exists in many cultures and is a prevalent practice amongst many African tribes. The term ancestor “worship” should not be taken to mean that the dead are considered to be gods or god-like, but rather that they are believed to still have the power to affect and influence the world of the living and are therefore presumed to still require care and sustenance. Ancestors are presumed to have the most vested interest in preserving social orders on earth, and they offer a link between the divine world and the mundane which entitles them to a special place as the go-to source for any spiritual help needed by their descendants.

And yet, in old time hoodoo practice, the documented reports suggest that it is not beloved ancestor’s graves that are most highly sought by the American hoodoo man for aiding in his magical intents, but the graves of those poor souls who “died bad” (that is, unnatural death — especially by murder or suicide) or else people whose situation in life related in some way to the circumstances one desires to bring about, such as a gambler’s grave to improve one’s luck with money. This would appear to bear a more like resemblance to a practice of African magic called muti, where people of certain conditions are specifically murdered or sacrificed in order to use their bodies for spells. It is a practice still followed today: “The victim is not first killed and the parts removed,” a recent article reports, “No, for if the medicine is to have greatest effect the parts in question, limbs, genitals, eyes, ears, even the whole skin, must be removed while he or she is still alive, in the belief that their agonising screams add to the potency of the magic.” Several hoodoo beliefs using parts of animals echo this particular notion, such as the black cat bone spell wherein a cat is boiled alive to provide a lucky bone, or the belief that a mole’s paw cut only from the live animal could bring luck. The 21st century African film director Neill Blomkamp, in his commentary on his own movie District 9, describes a practice in modern African muti of using dead men’s hands to attract good luck — he even remarks on its similarities to American Voodoo. Compare to the report of American author James William Buel around the year 1880: “In earlier years grave-yards were frequently desecrated by negro resurrectionists whose sole impulse was to obtain parts of the corpse from which to make charms. It is even now common for negroes to carry about on their persons the hand of a dead man or woman, with all the putrifying flesh attached. Bodies of murdered men are most sought for, as these are regarded as possessing greater mystic virtue than the bones of one that has come to a natural death. It may be asserted [many negroes] ... carry either in their pockets or attached to strings about their necks, finger-bones of a human hand. The thumb is more generally used as an amulet, but every finger-bone is regarded as being very efficacious in bringing good luck.”

Retrieving body parts from strangers’ graves certainly does not appear to have been a common custom of ancestor worship. Does American hoodoo derive the preference for those who “died bad” as a replacement for the ritual medicine murders of Africa?

The popular conjure ingredient of grave dirt appears to be another item of Atlantic African origin: in historical sources it is typically mentioned as being used in hoodoo or obeah rites, but rarely ever in European spells. The grave dirt’s power is provided by the spirit of the person from whose grave it is taken: it can be added to mojo charms, powder blends, or sprinkled alone to produce its desired effect, which can range from working love spells to deadly curses. Typically, it is expected that a few coins, or some food or drink will be left on the grave as payment for the service of the one from whose grave the dirt has been taken. Some of the old accounts specify the dirt should be taken from particular spots on the grave (as at the foot of the grave, in the center of the grave by the heart, from the dirt that touches the coffin, etc.) or that it should be collected at certain times (such as the dark of the moon, or at midnight.) It was apparently felt that the grave dirt would only possess an effect for the person it was intended to be used against, and it could otherwise be handled freely by the magical practitioners or by innocent bystanders.

Buel provides further information, writing of the hoodoo belief that “every instrument causing death is endowed with a supernatural power which may be utilized by any one who possesses the ghostly trophy ... We have now the horrifying spectacle of a greedy scramble among white men and women every time an official execution takes place, to obtain pieces of the rope with which the hanging was accomplished, and sometimes parts of the scaffold are also broken off and preserved by superstitious persons.” Buel assumed the belief in the beneficial powers of the dead to be of purely African origin, but employing the dead or their associated artifacts for drawing positive influences is also traditional amongst whites. European grimoire spells make use of funeral shrouds, graves, and ropes from hanged men in gambling and money drawing rites. Love potions could include the flesh of a thief amongst the ingredient list. In England, a law was passed in 1604 forbidding anyone to “take any dead man woman or child out of his her or theire grave ... or the skin, bone or any other parte of any dead person, to be imployed or used in any manner of Witchecrafte, Sorcerie, Charme or Inchantment,” suggesting that people had been so doing up till that time. A powder called mummia, originally made from pulverizing Egyptian mummies and later made from any kind of dried human remains, was a popular medicine in Europe in the middle ages and remained available for purchase from legitimate medical suppliers as late as 1908: it was believed to be efficacious for preventing decay and degeneration of the body if swallowed or applied, and was even added to artists paint in the belief it would prevent colors from fading. Even the very concept of the holy relic – preserved body parts from saints, still believed to possess special abilities to bless those who would come into their presence – proves the European’s view of the dead was not purely negative. Use of coffin hardware, often as a protective or medicinal agent, is known from European magic: rings from a coffin were used against colic and digestive troubles; coffin nails were used against epilepsy, rheumatism, toothache and other ailments; funeral shrouds were employed as a power-enhancer. But the dead of Europe did have their harmful use, too: a German spell to cause death was to put a coffin nail into a living victim’s shoe, and a Danish/German spell to bring about someone’s death was to put a piece of the victim’s clothing onto a corpse so he would sicken and die as the garment rotted with the dead man.

Old reports claiming to detail Voodoo in America sometimes make reference to cannibalism as being a part of the practice. An article in the Journal of American Folklore describes a case circa 1885 wherein “an old negress … had cut up a small child and salted it away in a barrel,” but notes that there was no evidence for the crime being related to any occult practice. I, too, have found no knowledgeable accounts of old style hoodoo or Voodoo that I would classify to include cannibalism (though by a stretch one could claim certain love spells, whereby one feeds their own hair, skin or blood to a potential lover, might be able to count.) However, given the frequency of the claim, and the fact that cannibalism is still known to occur in certain instances in modern Africa – with recent examples in Liberia, Congo and Sierra Leone – it seems possible that some early slaves may have initially attempted to preserve this practice, and the stories it bred kept circulating for a few generations even after it was discontinued. At the same time, the European beliefs and claims that witches would eat babies were also popular from the middle ages onward, and yet have little worthy evidence for support; so it may just be one of those things people always say about witchcraft, but nothing more.

Back when I hung around on pagan forums, back when I was a schoolgirl reading books on occultism and witchcraft (yes, yes, no wonder those horrible people at school thought I was a witch, even when I really wasn't) -- I noticed there seemed to be some fashion of whining about victimization of Executed Witches of the Past, with claims that they were just practicing "herbal healing" and other helpful works, and for some reason the mean old Church/Men/Ignorant Scientists couldn't fathom it.

In fact, the historical records of executed witches never accuse them of herbal healing (though they do mention herbal poisoning, occasionally.) Actual medical doctors until the beginning of the 20th century often relied on herbal medicine -- that's just about all the medicine there was, so nothing about it was inherently "occult." Entities like Mother Bombie, the Cunning Woman of Exeter, and other Wise Women of record indicate it wasn't all just some random sexist thing to say any woman who knew this stuff was a "witch" while men were respected to do as pleased. (Also note: men were tried and executed for witchcraft as well.)

As it was, the Europeans understood there to be two kinds of magic: black magic, being the evil or heretical practices usually associated in classical tradition with witches and devil-worshippers; and white magic, also called Natural Magic, which was the predecessor of what we call Science. It included arts like alchemy, cosmetics, optics, brewing and other useful things, as well as some of what we'd now just think of as magic. The Petit Albert is a good collection of Natural Magic or White Magic. Another example of the workings of Natural (White) Magick is here:

“To know any part of Silver mingled with Gold. Take a perfect Balance, and put in one Scale of any metal. In the other as much of the same metal, but the purest of its kind. And when the Scales hang even in the air, put them into a vessel full of water, and let them down under water about half a foot. Then will it be a strange wonder, for the Balances that hang equal in the air, will change their nature in the water, and will be unequal. For the impure metal will be uppermost, and the pure will sink to the bottom. The reason is, because pure Gold compared, with that kind, is heavier than all impure Gold, because pure Gold takes less place. Wherefore it will weigh heavier by the former reason. If then we would know how much Silver is in the Gold, put as much pure Gold in the other Scale, as will make the Balances equal under the waters. When they are equal take them up, and the weight you added under water, will be the weight of the mixture. If you would know how much Gold is upon a vessel Gilded. Put the cup in one Scale, and as much pure Silver in the other, that the Scales may hang equal in the air. Then put them under the water and the vessel will sink down. Put into the other Scale as much pure Gold, as will make them equal under water. Draw them forth, and that is the weight of the Gilt of the plate. You shall do the same for Silver, Brass, Iron, white or black Lead. But would you know whether in money, Brass be mingled with Silver, or coin be adulterated with Copper. Put the money into one Scale, and as much of the finest Silver into the other. Balance them equal. Then up them under the water. The money will go down. Add as much Brass as will make the Scales equal, then take them forth. And it will be the weight of the mixture. Now will I set the weights of metals, how much they weigh more in the waters, then in the air, whereby without any other experiments we may know mixtures. An Iron ball that weighs nineteen ounces in the air, will weigh fifteen in the water. Whence it is that proportion of Iron in the Air to the same in the waters, is fifteen to nineteen. A Lead bullet of the same magnitude, weights 31 ounces in the air, in the water but 27. A Marble bullet little less for bulk, weighs 7 in the air, and 5 in the water. Copper weighs 16 in the air, and 12 in the waters. Silver weighs in the air 127, in the waters 113. Brass in the air weighs 65 Carats, and one Grain, in the waters 50 Carats and two Grains. Crown Gold in the air weighs 66 Grains, in the waters 62. Gold called Zechini in the air weights 17 carats, under water 16 Carats. Turkish Ducat Gold weighs in the air 34, under water 32. Common French Crown Gold weighs in the air 67, under waters 60. Common Crown Gold of Hungary that is old,in the air weighs 17, in the water 16. Crown Gold of Tartary weighs 16 in the air, and 14 under water."

Much as with modern magic -- in my view -- it was a phenomenon where what we consider "science" didn't entirely understand the reason for it, but the act itself contained nothing supernatural.

And classically, that is the difference between white and black magic -- black magic was unnatural. White magic was all in tune with God's normal working.