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

First of all -- we all understand that I'm writing about magic and folk beliefs, not science or medicine, correct? Good. Now onto the article. Magic spells to protect against disease are some of the oldest known occult workings. It is very logical when you remember that, until fairly recently in history, people didn't know what caused diseases, and so they seemed "magical" as anything. There was a lot of assumption that disease was caused by hexes or evil eye. With so much danger lurking, many remedies and protective charms were devised by the old time magicians to guard against disease and illness. One famous charm was the SATOR SQUARE. It is a palindrome written in the Latin language, dating back to Roman times and in use well into the 19th century and, arguably, still in use today as a talismanic charm against misfortune, hexes and disease.  In modern form, you can wear this charm as part of a face mask (itself a protective talisman of sorts) -- You can get the Sat...

There are a variety of grimoires attributed to King Solomon which date from the middle ages onward. They may even have their origins in a genuine ancient source. Such Solomonic grimoires have impacted hoodoo practice, partly through their dissemination into European magical traditions which were then absorbed into the American hoodoo tradition; and also through direct reprintings of the grimoires, such as those made by De Laurence, which were sold into the American hoodoo market. Even Lewis de Claremont, of Ancient's Book of Formulas fame and probable inventor of the 7 Holy Spirits Bath , composed his own guide to Solomonic conjuring called The Ancient's Book of Magic . Many of the grimoires instruct the practitioner to wear a certain ring while conjuring, with the designs sometimes varying quite wildly from manuscript to manuscript. Some common basic designs include the three above, going from left to right. Solomon's pentalpha. The version used in the oldest kn...

Talismanic magic is used all over the world. In the hoodoo tradition, certain popular European grimoires of the 18th and 19th century made a big impact upon which talismans were favored by American practitioners. The recognition that not everyone in the 18th or 19th century could read is an important consideration when relating how these talismans were used. Owen Davies in his history book Grimoires remarks that merely owning a grimoire was commonly believed to bestow special powers to the owner, even if he or she could not actually read its content. Even today, many magical talismans contain writing in languages that a practitioner might not be able to read or understand, yet they copy these foreign phrases to the best of their ability. Above we have the Fifth Pentacle of Mars, as put in L.W. De Laurence's 1914 edition of The Key of Solomon the King . (I choose this edition for being a traditionally popular one amongst hoodoo practitioners, even if many people are ho...

I've seen so many texts that advertise their stuff as "old time" when the stuff in fact can be dated to the 1920s at best. I was sick of this. I decided I would make a more authentic book of old time spells. And so we have  -- The Wiccan's Book of Medieval Witchcraft. Note that these are not hoodoo spells. As the name indicates, they are more alike to Wiccan spells, though actually are not technically even Wicca since everything in the book predates the creation of the Wiccan religion in the 20th century. They are nevertheless true and legitimate older European spells, some taken directly from medieval sources.  Contrary to the modern perception that all witchcraft was banned in medieval times, there was actually quite a bit of what we'd nowadays classify as witchcraft going on -- however, at the time it was viewed as just superstition, folk remedies, or sometimes even understood to be legitimate science! Basically, as long as it wasn't bei...

The modern gris-gris is viewed similarly to a mojo -- sometimes the words are even synonymous. Generally the gris-gris one finds in the United States today are either miniature mojo hands made with herbs wrapped in cloth or leather, or else decorated balls filled similarly, meant to be hung up in a house. A popular folk-etymology is that the word means "gray-gray" because it exists in a halfway point between black and white magic; another explanation is that it refers to the color of old-style herbal mixtures. However, research indicates the similarity to the French gris (gray) seems to be coincidental -- merely an effort to transcribe a native African word according to French spelling rules, apparently having been first introduced to Europe through the works of Le Maire in 1695 . The earliest gris-gris were something rather different than the modern herb charms -- something much more specific. The 1797 Encyclopedia Britannica gives an entry on the word: Grisgris: a...