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

 Zora Neale Hurston writes: "They are the bodies without souls. The living dead. Once they were dead, and after that they were called to life again."  We're talking of the zombies .  While the concept entered pop culture in the 20th century and became a type of horror monster more similar to the medieval style vampires , the concept was at first a folk belief and somewhat less gorey than the brain-eating, contagion-spreading creatures of Hollywood. The earliest mentions of zombies in English describe only evil spirits, usually ghosts of the dead. The Oxford English Dictionary admits the probability that the word is related to duppy and jumbie , other regional terms for such spirits. They bear some similarity to the intranquil spirits (plural) of Latin American lore. The idea of the zombie as a fully reanimated dead person seems to be uniquely Haitian. Carlos Esteban Deive mentions them in his book of Dominican magic, Vodu y Magia en Santo Domingo , but specifying that ...

The year is 19 AD. The Roman Empire is in turmoil. The emperor Tiberius is old and sick, and the succession is uncertain. In this time of chaos, one man stands out as a beacon of hope: Germanicus, the nephew and adopted son of Emperor Tiberius. Germanicus is a popular and charismatic figure. He is a brilliant general and a skilled diplomat. He is also a devoted husband and father. But Germanicus is also a threat to Tiberius' power. The emperor fears that Germanicus will one day usurp the throne. In 19 AD, Germanicus is sent to the East to quell a rebellion. But while he is there, he falls ill and dies. The official cause of death is fever, but many people believe that Germanicus was poisoned via witchcraft. Proofs also of fascination and sorcery were pretended to be found, such as the ashes and bones of human bodies, dug up again half burnt and stained with black blood, magic forms of devoting persons to the infernal gods, and Germanicus's name graved on sheets of lead. Robert ...

Antoine Wiertz was a popular Belgian artist of the 19th century. He painted a variety of subjects, many of which were perfectly pleasant , but the ones for which he is best known are dark subjects like a trainee witch , a vanitas and a premature burial.  He was successful in his lifetime and has a museum in Brussels dedicated solely to his artwork. One of Wiertz's most famous works was a triptych called, in English, The Visions of a Guillotined Head .  Sadly the original painting is now in poor condition (Wiertz wanted a paint that would resemble the matte look of a fresco, and to this end he created a paint medium which did not hold up well with time.) The art style is meant to resemble the works of Peter Paul Rubens .  But perhaps more interesting than the painting itself is the story of how the artist did his research into what it's like to be decapitated. I have translated from the original French given in a 19th century catalogue of his paintings. Vi...

Coffin nails aren’t props. They’re not there to make your spell feel scarier or cooler. They’re tools. If you need to shut something down, hold something in place, or push a bit of death and finality into your working, they’re the right tool. If you don’t need that, use something else. A coffin nail is exactly what it says it is: a nail that’s come from a coffin. That might mean one removed before burial, or after. In some cases, it just means a nail taken from a board used in a funeral or grave context. But either way, the name isn’t figurative. We’re not talking about something that “symbolizes” death. We’re talking about something involved with death. In hoodoo, that matters. There’s a long tradition of using items associated with the dead in spellwork, and coffin nails are one of the best-known — though not always best-understood — examples. They’re used in spells for cursing, revenge, protection, binding, spirit work, and yes, even the occasional healing when a curse has to be na...

Teke-Teke or Click-Clack Ghost Managed to terrify myself with Japanese urban legends of ghosts again. Tonight's terror: Teke Teke. Teke Teke is an imitative noise, to represent a scraping or thumping sound. In this instance, to imitate the specific scraping sound of a bloody torso dragging along the pavement, being pulled on its own elbows. Teke Teke, see, was a girl who fell on some railroad tracks after some childhood bullying gone awry; she was unable to move away in time to avoid the oncoming train and was sliced in half. Her ghost now wields a scythe and she, legless, creeps around on her elbows, pulling herself along to chase down victims whom she slices in half in imitation of her own disfigurement. As she hunts you down you can hear her come: click-clack, click-clack, click-clack ( teke teke ). Nice also: "Anyone that hears of this story will see Teke-Teke's lower half walking aimlessly around the countryside within three days." Kuchisake-on...

William Buehler Seabrook, a journalist in the 1920s, set out to live with African cannibals so he could learn the answer to a perplexing question: what does human flesh taste like? Unfortunately, after all that trouble he found that the cannibals he met weren't interested in sharing, so he was reduced to bribing an intern at the Sarbonne Hospital to steal a slice of meat from the corpse of a recent accident victim. It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. Knowing this much, what then becomes the best wine pairing? According to World Wine , the answer may be, as we've alw...

An old-time ingredient one finds in certain medicines and remedies is Mummia , a powder made from ground up Egyptian mummies. (And oh -- wouldn't that make a first-class goofer dust? )  Mummia is a good example of the lack of distinction held in the past between scientific and magical practices -- most of the properties attributed to mummia would now be considered more on par with magic than with legitimate medicine or chemistry, but for ages it was felt to be otherwise. I today wish to discuss the history of a particularly interesting pigment known as Mummy Black. Egyptian mummies have a dark color to them when unwrapped, which color the skin takes on as a side effect of the embalming process. It was believed in ancient times, by foreigners and maybe even by uneducated Egyptians, that this black color, and much of the whole preservation, were achieved by using large amounts of mineral pitch in the mummification process. In fact the hue is merely a side effect of the...

Was changing an overhead lightbulb the other day, the type in a big fancy ceiling fixture that needs to be taken apart to get at the bulb itself. Took apart the fixture and it was absolutely filled with dead spiders. It was like, "My God! No wonder it's been so dark in here!" Don't know how any light was getting out at all through that mess. Unfortunately, changing the bulb required removing all those dead spiders, which were wound up in their own rotting webs, from the light sockets. It was a disgusting task to say the least. But, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade; and when life gives you spiders, you make Goofer Dust. Goofer Dust can be made with many things. Graveyard dirt or powdered snake skins are the most common base ingredient (and sometimes, the only ingredient.) But many other items can go in, especially anything black, gray, dead, or otherwise unpleasant. Dead bugs are excellent additions, in my opinion. My favorite are adding black widows, sinc...