LMHR Hour Chat Log July 5, 2006 Hidden Treasure, Lost Objects, Missing People - Chat Log Only

[MissMichaele]

LMHR Hour Chat Log July 5, 2006

Chat Log and Partial Word-for-Word Transcription (Audio Filles were lost).

Topic: How to Find Hidden Treasure, Lost Objects and Missing People, Uncover Thieves and Murderers

Panel Discussion: Miss Cat, Dara Anzlowar, Miss Michaele (as Mother Lode), Eoghan Ballard, Dr. Kioni, Ron, Sindy Todo, Nagasiva Yronwode

Notes taken as the show was in progress by Miss Michaele

MISS CAT: This is a specialized area of spellwork, although many go to readers for this service. German folk magic has a large bodies of such spells.

Finding lost treasures was more relevant before the creation of the banking system; people would bury their savings without necessarily showing their family precisely where it was; family might have to hire a dowser after Papa died.

I was taught to use a willow wand when dowsing for water because willows grow near water, and to use other materials appropriate to what you are seeking.

Quoting "Pow-Wows, or Long-Lost Friend: A Collection of Mysterious and Invaluable Arts and Remedies" by John George Hoffman.

And, by the way, rent "Apprentice to Murder" w/ Donald Sutherland to see this kind of Pennsylvania German folk-magic in action.

"To Make A Wand For Searching For Iron, Ore Or Water.

"On the first night of Christmas, between 11 and 12 o'clock, break off
from any tree a young twig of one year's growth, in the three highest
names (Father. Son. and Holy Ghost), at the same time facing toward
sunrise. Whenever you apply this wand in searching for anything apply
it three times. The twig must be forked, and each end of the fork must
be held in one hand, so that the third and thickest part of it stands
up, but do not hold it too tight. Strike the ground with the thickest
end, and that which you desire will appear immediately, if there is
any in the ground where you strike. The words to be spoken when the
wand is thus applied are as follows:

"'Archangel Gabriel, I conjure thee in the name of God, the Almighty,
to tell me, is there any water here or not? do tell me!' + + +

"If you are searching for Iron or Ore, you have to say the same, only
mention the name of what you are searching for."

"Pow Wows" is Pennsylvania Dutch -- but it was distributed by DeLaurence Co. starting around 1905, which was the largest supplier of books to AA magical community until the founding of King Novelty / Valmor in the 1920s, and King Novelty also carried the book. So it has been widely accented among hoodoo practitioners.

Archangel Gabriel is Jewish, and he is called up because he announces things -- pregnancies, the last judgement, etc. But the date -- Christmas -- is Christian. Specific words required -- that's European.

A more African method for finding treasure:

Take Gall of the Earth, Coral Root, (a rare orchid root, though Althaea is also used). Put it in shoe, call on the Three Highest Names, saying "Lead me to the treasure" and you will be spirit led.

DARA: I love St. Anthony -- great benefactor to me, very close to *us*, very kind, willing to help. Do call on him if you misplace or lose something.

"Saint Anthony, Sanint Anthony, Please come down
Something is lost and must be found."

There are many charms in use, but an impromptu prayer is perfectly good. The only time this has not worked for me was when I had some jewelry stolen. I perceived him bowing and apologizing that he could not act promptly. Found it a year later -- thief had returned and secreted it in my house.

MISS CAT: There is another couplet to that Saint Santhony rhyme:

"Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, to you i pray;
Bring it to me without delay."

DARA You can also preform dowsing with a pendulum over a map or diagram of area to be searched.

MISS CAT: Then here is *Horary* astrology. You construct a chart based on the moment you asked the question, and the chart contains the answer. One of my students, Chris Warnock, of renaissanceastrolgy.com, is a maser of this. When Chandra Levy was missing and suspected dead, Chris constructed a horary chart that revealed where she was; her body was found in that spot two weeks later. This isn't folk magic -- requires a lot of mathematics, very technical, very accurate, but if you need it, go to Chris and he can perform the reading for you.

"Pow Wows" again:

"In making divinatory wands, they must be broken as
before directed, and while breaking and before using them, the
following words must be spoken:

"'Divining rod, do thou keep that power,
Which God gave unto thee at the very first hour.'"

Note that this refers to the power of the plant itself, which God gave to it at the moment of creation. This is ancient nature magic.

MOTHER LODE: "Pow Wows" is available at
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ame/pow/index.htm

MISS CAT: Thank you! Yes, that's the English-language edition of 1848. There's an 1858 edition, less crudely translated but also less accurate, that's not on line. Original was published in German in 1820.

Here's a German charm that isn't in _Pow Wows_. I heard it from an African American lady in Oakland, and many folks I know are familiar w/ it.

Write each suspect's name on a separate piece of paper, boil in salted
water -- and let it boil dry. While boiling, say, "If [name] is the
thief, let him come here." If he does NOT show up, take the paper out,
rinse it off, refill with water and same salt, and boil the NEXT name.

I've used it and it works.

EOGHAN: Now that's another coincidence; several Bantu tribes have boiling-water oracles to find out criminals of various kinds. One variation has suspects present, and each places stone in boiling pot;
everyone must remove a stone. Only the guilty party will be scalded. Shows up in Brazilian Inquisition records. African diviners also used in secular courts during colonial period (and not only in Brazil).

When clients come to African diviners, they are expected to do their work without *any* prior info from client. When tested in public, client will hide object in vicinity; diviner must tell what has been hidden and where. If he can't that's the end of his career.

MISS CAT: That reminds me of _The Fabled Dr. Jim Jordan_ by F. Roy Johnson. According to the people Johnson interviewed, Dr. Jordan's fame spread because he could find lost things; prior to that he had just
been a middlin' root doctor. Then he had several spectacular successes finding lost or stolen livestock and his fame was secured. In the old days that gift was absolutely necessary to professional rootwork.

Here's a real thriller from Hohman, and think about the Africanisms in this one:

"To compel a thief to return stolen goods: Walk out early in the morning before sunrise, to a juniper-tree ...

Juniper trees are associated with the dead and with truth-telling in German folk-lore too, and are even mentioned as such in Grimm's Fairy Tales

" -- and bend it with the left hand toward the rising sun, while you are saying: Juniper-tree, I shall bend and squeeze thee, until the thief has returned the stolen goods to the place from which he took them. Then you must take a stone and put it on the bush, and under the bush and the stone you must place the skull of a malefactor. + + + Yet you must be careful, in case the thief returns the stolen goods, to unloose the bush and replace the stone where it was before."

Notice how this uses the rising sun, and the skull of a criminal to find another criminal.

DARA: Finding lost treasure became important during the civil war era; lots of buried treasure was lost then.

MISS CAT: I knew a man whose grandfather could find lost treasure. I never saw it done, but he described it to me. His grandfather had an old silver dollar (possibly a Walking Liberty silver dollar, but i don't know for sure) which he used as a pendulum. He wore it as a necklace around his neck, and to find treasure, he'd take it off and walk with it at arm's length and when it trembled, throwing off flashes of light, he'd know where to dig.

EOGHAN: That's interesting on two counts: In many Africa traditions, trembling is associated with spirit presence and possession. And it is customary among diviners to use a pendulum, not a coin, but some sort of pendulum, and to wear it as part of a necklace until it is needed for use.

MISS CAT: The reason a coin worked here was that, the way it was described to me, the trembling created flashes of light.

EOGHAN: Lest we forget, Robert Farris Thompson named his book on African magic _Flash of the Spirit_ because that is another way that spirits reveal themselves, by a flash of light.

MISS CAT: Exactly!

DARA: There are traditional Native ceremonies for finding lost things. They are held outside sweat lodges, but indoors, in blacked-out rooms. Spirits come in, race around, make noise, and either bring lost object into room or throw it onto roof.

MISS CAT: Dreaming of lost objects is a popular hoodoo method of finding them; you call on friendly spirits to reveal the location to you. You can incubate the dream by fasting ahead of time, drinking psychic herb tea -- prepare yourself as if seeking lucky numbers.

Contacting lost people is different. Some NA methods have entered hoodoo. Using tobacco to find lost people is probably NA because tobacco is not African: Take tobacco snuff, sprinkle on mailbox to get letter from missing person or tobacco oil on mailbox or phone, mixed with salt. Compare use of tobacco in court cases.

Dara, do you know any more about NA use of tobacco this way?

DARA: No. Ceremony I described is very involved, involves trained singers, flags marking 4 corners of space., etc.

MISS CAT: 1 more from Hohman: [Cat paraphrased this on account of its length, but I paste it here in full. -- MCM]

"How To Recover Stolen Goods.

"Take good care to notice through which door the thief passed out, and
cut off three small chips from the posts of that door; then take these
three chips to a wagon, unbeshrewdly, however [i.e., making sure no
one sees you]; take off one of the wheels and put the three chips into
the stock of the wheel [where the axle goes], in the three highest
names, then turn the wheel backwards; and say:

"Thief, thief, thief! Turn back with the stolen goods: thou art forced
to do it by the Almighty power of God: + + + God the Father calls thee
back, God the son turns thee back so that thou must return, and God,
the Holy Ghost leads thee back, until thou arrive at the place from
which thou hast stolen. By the almighty power of God the Father thou
must come; by the wisdom of God the Son thou hast neither peace nor
quiet until thou hast returned the stolen goods to their former place;
by the grace of God the Holy Ghost thou must ran and jump and canst
find no peace or rest until thou arrivest at the place from which thou
hast Stolen. God the Father binds thee, God the Son forces thee, and
God the Holy Ghost turns thee back. (You must not turn the wheel too
fast.) Thief, thou must come, + + + thief, thou must come, + + +
thief, thou must come, + + +. If thou art more almighty, thief, thief,
thief; if thou art more almighty than God himself, then you may remain
where you are. The ten commandments force thee -- thou shalt not
steal, and therefore thou must come. + + + Amen."

DARA: Those crosses in the _Pow Wows_ text are *signs* of the cross -- NOT the usual Catholic "crossing yourself" -- forehead, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder -- but tracing the cross with your thumb. Pow
Wow also uses head covering during work.

MISS CAT: Those chips from the door post are your only magical link to the thief. You have no direct link to him but the door he passed through. Note that each member of the trinity is called on to do something different.

DR. KIONI: I haven't had much call for this service as a practitioner. When seeking lost items, I simply rely on scripture:

"There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed," (Luke 10:2)

-- and go on about my business -- missing object always located.

RON: Dara once mentioned a spell where you use a Psalm, go to window, call person's name, should hear in 3 days; it has worked for me.

DARA: This is it. http://hoodooroots.com/encourage.htm :

"Read the 92nd Psalm all the way through. Read the 35th Psalm all the way through. Read the 103rd Psalm all the way through. Go back and read the 92nd Psalm again. This time, after each verse, call out the person's name. At the end of the Psalm, walk to an East-facing door or window. Open it a little and call the person's name nine times. Tell them that no matter where they are, no matter what they are doing, they will have no peace, no rest, no contentment or joy until they call you. (Of course, it helps for them to have to have some notion of where to reach you!) The above was given to me by a Hungarian friend and gifted, long-time worker. She swears by it, and says it works in three days."

I'm thinking of some entries in Hyatt about buried treasure...

MISS CAT: For those listening to the radio show who are unfamiliar with him, "Hyatt" is Harry Hyatt, who interviewed about sixteen hundred African American rootworkers and practitioners in the South during the late 1930s, recorded their interviews, and published them.

DARA: One of the things that comes up constantly in the Hyatt material is the need for *silence*; the treasure will sink out of sight if it hears you talking. If you must speak, let it be scripture.

Whirlwinds can also lead you to buried treasure; where hey rest, the treasure is buried.

MISS CAT: I remember a few spells from Hyatt's interviewees about finding out murderers: raw eggs are placed in the dead victim's hands before burial; when the eggs rot and explode, the murderer will come back to town and inadvertently reveal himself.

SINDY: I just looked in Hyatt's folklore book (_Folklore from Adams County, Illinois_): Several informants concur about praying and invoking saints to find things. My mama taught us to pray and NOT look. Let go of obsession with finding it.

Have you heard this: when you lose a marble, throw away another one…?

MISS CAT: Not about marbles per se, but I have been taught to throw something after a lost object -- to "send another one to fetch it". My German-Jewish grandma, whose eyes were bad, once dropped a needle and she couldn't find it, so she told me, "I'll just have to send another one after it to fetch it," and she threw a second needle on the floor and listened to it fall, and it worked -- the two needles were right next to each other!

SINDY: Write the names of the apostles on 12 sage leaves to recover stolen objects.

DARA: Writing the names of the apostles on sage leaves and wearing them in the shoe is a good trick for many purposes.

MISS CAT: Regarding the wearing of rare plants in the shoe to find things -- rationale may have been: if you can find something as rare as that, you can find anything, or rare leads you to rare.

Althaea, the standard substitute for things like Coral Root, is wonderful in its own right -- when you need to "find your way in" to solving a medical problem, it is also useful.

NAGASIVA: Seals are also used for finding lost things -- the seals Jupiter and Mercury from _The Key of Solomon_ and other seals from _The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses_ and _The Black Pullet_.

MISS CAT: Yes, thanks for mentioning those. These seals came mostly from the practical Kabalah and passed into hoodoo via occult book stores -- again, DeLaurence, and Morton Neumann's Valmor and King Novelty during the early 20th century. _The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses_ was wlldly popular in Jamaica, where it was actually outlawed. I always remember the money and fortune finding seals with AGLA on them -- that's a Hebrew acronym for one of the names of God.

SINDY: Mad props to Chris Warnock; let's interview him!

MISS CAT: He mixes hoodoo with Renaissance astrology, he's eclectic *and* honest, always credits his sources properly. He has refused several requests for interviews, though.

DARA: If you ask him a question, be prepared to hear answer. He doesn't pull any punches.

MISS CAT: Let's consider the word *spellbound.* Commonly used now to mean fascinated, "having your *attention* fixated as though by a spell," but spellbinding is a particular kind of German spell -- to
stop someone in their tracks -- and it is used on thieves. Literally it means they are bound; they cannot stray from the spot where your spell catches up with them. Usually done in name of Jesus, Peter, or he Three Highest Names. Also, when performing a spell binding, you are instructed to remember to ask for their repentance, and when you have it, let them go -- or they'll die.

SIVA: Do you contact the dead to help find things?

MISS CAT: Yes, especially those who have been murdered, to find their murderers.

EOGHAN: This is found in African cultures too.

MISS CAT: You can go to grave of he victim and pray that they reveal the name of killer. Sleep on their grave, take dirt home, or boil suspects' names.

You can also ask the dead to reveal things they had hidden themselves before they died.

EOGHAN: In Africa there are diviner-specialists who work with the dead to reveal culprits. One method is to carry the corpse in procession past suspects; corpse will move a certain way in front of guilty party. This practice is no longer used.

MISS CAT: Another method to find treasures -- i forget where it comes from -- concerns the dowsing rod. You use a metal rod to find metals and put a sample of the object you seek in the handle of the dowsing rod. Dip a willow rod in water to help it find water; tape gold, silver, etc., to a metal rod.

You can also "train" a dowsing rod: Bury a piece of money and dowse for it. Then direct rod to find you some more money. You're training the rod. Dowsers i knew in the Ozarks during the 1970s would begin a water-dowsing job by training their rods on known water sources on the client's property. Like say you had water at your house but you wanted a new well for your new barn. They'd ask, "Where's your water-well?" And they'd make the rod, dowse it, then walk off a ways and say, "Okay, that was one source, now we'll find another" And they'd find it too.

DARA: I really like dowsing. I think a lot of people have this gift. When I dowse (with a rod), I get hit in the forehead -- it rises, doesn't dip.

EOGHAN: That's why I don't use forked stick. I use the L-saped rods. My rods are made of copper wire that have copper tubing handles in which rods swivel freely. Incredibly sensitive instrument. You can even sense electrical currents in your house.

MISS CAT: I've never been able to use those L-shaped rods effectively. My ex-partner, Peter, could make them show anything. I've been better able to use willow rods, an aurameter, or a pendulum. Try everything.

EOGHAN: And once you find your method, don't fix what ain't broke.

MISS CAT: We're taking 26 weeks off from the Hoodoo Rootwork Hour; also thinking about starting a series on blues songs that mention hoodoo and conjure, Including songs about gambling and luck. Not a call-in show. No idea how long the series will be.

DR. KIONI: Reruns to continue as usual, in chronological order. More recent shows soon to arrive in audioblog -- expect two next week.

Props to TJ who is signing up for your course; a regular listener and the proprietor of Heaven and Health Deep Tissue Massage, "The Wizard of Aahs," in Palm Bay, FL.
.

[MissMichaele]

--- In hrcourse@yahoogroups.com, "motherkali" <redjasper@...> wrote:

> > Here's a German charm that isn't in _Pow Wows_. I heard it from an
> AA lady in Oakland, and many AA's I know are familiar w/ it.

AAARGH. "AA," of course, stands for "African American." Usually I'm
savvy enough to edit that.

> > Contacting lost people is different. Some NA methods have entered
> hoodoo.

And, of course, NA means "Native American." Just a couple of
abbreviations that creep in when I'm trying to type as fast as people
can talk.

Michaele / Mother Lode

(No problem, Michaele, but thanks for the clue for those in need of one. And thanks so much ofr all your dedicated work making these transcriptions available. --cat)

[Quimbisero]

To be honest, I am amazed at your detail! "Incredible 'mana!" Well done.

Eoghan

[catherineyronwode]

Thanks to Miss Michaele for taking notes on this podcast. The audio files are long gone, but she has preserved the dialogue. THANK YOU, Miss Michaele!