Spells
Generally speaking, a magical spell is a formula that may
involve spoken, written, or chanted words; symbolic enactments;
candle burning; ritual baths; burning of incense; sprinkling
of powders, salts, or dusts; and/or the manufacture and deployment
of charms, amulets, or talismans.
The purposes of spells are
varied. They include "drawing" or
wish-fulfillment in regard to love, money, and good fortune;
apotropaic, "banishing" or "drive-away"
spells for ridding
oneself of unwanted influences; "jinxing," "crossing,"
or
"cursing" spells to bring bad luck or harm to another,
"binding" spells to keep someone's magic from affecting
you or others, and "summoning" spells to call up
spirits,
ghosts, or even demons.
"Hex" comes from
the German word for witchery or sorcery, "Hexencraft."
It is a regionally popular word in America's Pennsylvania
Dutch country, where it refers to a symbolic drawing (usually
a six-sided figure in a circle, related to the Greek word
"hex," or "six," as in "hexagon").
Hexes are made to protect farm animals to draw love, to symbolize
and strengthen a marriage, or to break a curse. The term hexencraft
(the making of hexes) has a different meaning in Pennsylvania
Dutch than in German, where it refers to magical spells in
general, and may also include medical herbology. One who makes
hexes is a "hexmeister" (hex-master).
You may have been told or
have read in a dictionary that the "hexes" of Pennsylvania
Dutch folk-magic are evil or malign in intention. People say
the same thing about African-American hoodoo and European
witchcraft -- they use the words hex and hoodoo and bewitch
as verbs synonymous with "curse" or "magically
harm," leaving off any mention of the love spells, prosperity
spells, animal fertility spells, or home protection spells
that are worked in these traditions. This is not done out
of malice but because they are describing essentially alien
cultures to their own and they have not bothered to research
the subject thoroughly.
Luckily, vocabulary-ignorance
only affects the people who are misusing a word -- it doesn't
infect the actual culture in which the term originated. Thus,
if you were to go to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, right now and
ask for a hex, you would not be given a curse, you would be
given the Pennsylvaia Dutch version of a sigil, talisman,
veve, or seal -- a six-sided geometrical image to be used
for magical purposes.
In some regions (e.g. in
the Ozarks) hexencraft or Germanic-rooted peasant-style folk-magic
is called "Pow-Wow magic" after the book "Pow-Wows
or the Long Lost Friend" first published in 1820 in Pennsylvania
(in German) and then in English in the 1840s. "Pow-Wow
magic" -- that is, Ozarks-style hexencraft -- forms one
of the bases for the Faerie (or Feri) Tradition of Neo-Paganism
transmitted by Victor and Cora Anderson.
"Hoodoo," "conjure"
(or "conjuration"), "rootwork," and "laying
down tricks" are also regionally popular terms for spell-casting,
either benevolent and malevolent. They come from the African-American
culture and are common terms all over the United States in
the black community.
Italian spell-craft is called stregharia. In Mexico the word
is brujeria, usually translated as "witchcraft."
| Authors Details: From the alt.spells
newsgroup |
More Articles On Spells
(13
Steps For Successful Spells)
(The
Art Of Casting Spells)
(Spells
& Magick)
(The
Ethics Of Love Spells)
Spells can be found in the Witchcraft
section
|
