Magick Circles in Appalachia

Reading my way through Hubert J. Davis’ collection of Appalachian folklore The Silver Bullet and Other American Witch Stories, I am astounded to come across references to Magick Circles- astounded, but not absolutely surprised, because I figure that the Magick Circle was a part of folk-culture Witchcraft in England in the 1500s-1600s: Jonson’s The Masque of Queens; Shakespeare’s Macbeth; and Middleton’s The Witch all date from the early 1600s, and all contain Witches practicing Witchcraft through the generation of what we might call “Circle-Energies” (the Witches basically make Magick Circles, in which to raise their Magickal Energies). The Magick Circle existing in England, it should not surprise that it crosses the Atlantic along with New World settlers to Virginia (named by Raleigh after Elizabeth, the most famous Virgin in history other than the Mother of Jesus)- as for instance, in the tale of “Aunt Nancy Bobbit of Witch Mountain” (p. 13).

Witch Mountain makes for a fantastically picturesque impression; lying about seven miles north of Hillsville, Virginia (near Big Island Creek), its high, craggy terrain casts strange shadows and a misty haze often seems to hang. A clan of people who practiced Witchcraft settled there, and there are many references throughout Davis’s book to the ”witches and witch doctors” that lived there. One of these was Aunt Nancy Bobbit, who lived alone up a narrow, dark hollow. As Hosiah Ward reported to I.M. Warren in 1939, he used to visit Old Aunt Nancy in her cabin as a boy, listening to her stories of Witchcraft. “Aunt Nancy was a firm believer in witches and their magic, and she told me that the mountains hereabouts were full of witches still. She said that she knew of a whole coven- twelve witches and the Devil- and she knew them all personally, including the Devil.” Needless to say, Witchcraft (in this mountain milieu) is very heavily Devil-associated; nonetheless, it is interesting that a 1939 Mountain Witch has the idea of Witches joining in a “coven.”

His imagination stirred, young Hosiah determines that he wishes to become a Witch when he grows up, and asks Aunt Nancy how to go about it. She cautions him that turning Witch is not an easy thing to do, but advises that one who wished to know the Witches’ Art must: “Fust he’d have to climb to the top of the highest knob on Witch Mountain and tote either a black cat or a black hen. Then, he’d have to find the Indian graveyard at the place nigh where the two Indian trails cross. Then he’d have to draw a big ring in the dust ’bout fifteen feet acrost, and dance in this circle each morning at the break of day for eight mornings in a row. Then on the ninth morning, he’d have to put one hand on top of his head and ‘tother on the sole of his foot and say, ‘I give all betwixt my two hands to the Devil.” Then the Devil comes over the ridge and bites him on the shoulder.

OK- never mind the Devil, as literally since the Dark Ages, Christians have forcibly shoe-horned the Devil into any circumstance Pagan; indeed, folklorist Katharine Briggs points out, the mere presence of the Devil at times serves as practically an accusation of a prior Heathenism. If you remove the Devil from this account- you have someone becoming a Witch by climbing to the highest peak on Witch Mountain (carrying either a black cat or a black hen, either as a sacrifice or to make a “conjure bone” out of); locating a Native American burial site at the point where two trails crossed (a crossroads); he then draws a fifteen-foot Ring, and dances in the Circle at dawn for eight days in a row (Appalachian folklore is big on doing things in repetitions). On the ninth day, he becomes a Witch.

How are Appalachian mountain-folk going to have the idea of a Magick Circle, associated with Witchcraft- unless they have carried the idea from England (or Scotland, or Ireland, as all three are Celtic countries and may well have shared the concept of a Witches’ Circle)?

That this ceremony for initiation into the Craft of Witches reflects genuine folklore and is not an anomaly, here is “Firm Believers in Witchcraft” (p. 202), told to James Taylor Adams by the Rev. J.H. Coleman in 1940. Born a slave in a one-room log cabin, Rev. Coleman remembered this story about becoming a Witch (basically identical to Aunt Nancy’s): two men who had resolved to become “Conjurers” contacted the Devil, who told them what they needed to do. “Fust they had to kotch somebody’s black tomcat and tote hit out to Drake’s Crossroads nigh Scott’s Crick clost to Longview graveyard.” [Again we find a crossroads located near a cemetery described as an important location.] “They done this, and when they got there, they drawed a big ring on the ground ’bout fifteen er twenty feet acrost right in the middle of the crossroads. Then they sed some magic words the Devil ‘ud told ‘em, and built a fire in the middle of the ring. They filled a pot with water and put hit on to bile.” Well, the cat gets tossed into the “biling” pot; when the meat boils off the bones, the mess gets tossed into the Creek: what floats upstream is the “Conjure Bone,” an important part of Appalachian Witch-Working.

Again, if one ignores the Devil, one finds an account filled with elements of European Witchcraft- including boiling a pot in the middle of a Magick Circle (shades of Macbeth); the kicker is the formation of a Magick Circle, which agains parallels the Witchcraft presented in Jacobean Witch-Plays.

Much Appalachian folklore surrounds “Witchballs,” which are Charmed Balls fired at Witching victims, or (like supernatural time-bombs) left buried somewhere the victim is sure to travel (fascinatingly, the Appalachian Witchballs are very like the Elf-Shot that Elves and Faeries were frequently tossing about in Celtic lore). The story “How Witchballs Are Made” (p. 31), recorded in 1939 and reported as a story handed down through four generations, describes the process of Witchball-manufacture. “When we met at the crossroads down nigh the graveyard, the Devil fust drawed a big ring ’bout nine feet acrost. The witches rounded up some firewood and built a big fire in the middle of hit. When hit started burnin’ good, the Devil poured a mess of things on hit to make the blue, green, red and yeller flames. Then each witch throwed in the stuff she’d brung into the pot- After this, we all joined hands and danced ’round the fire while the Devil chanted:”

The situation then becomes eerily like the Cauldron Scene in Macbeth, as the Witches recite a grotesquely macabre litany (the same thing happens in Middleton’s The Witch and Jonson’s Masque, so I assume that the Foul Witches’ Brew represents a Jacobean convention, recalled from the 1600s until 1939- in itself, demonstration of the power of folklore to remember and preserve): “A pair of dead spiders’ legs, guts and bladder of a black cat, dead baby’s toenails, buzzard’s eggs, blud of a weazel and tail of a rat” [it goes on like this for four paragraphs].

Abandoned cabins were viewed with suspicion by the Appalachians, who felt them likely spots for Witches’ Meetings- so Appalachian folklore had the concept of a Witches’ Meeting. Again, if we scratch the Devil from the above- we have Witches meeting in an assembly to form a Circle, dancing around the same to generate Magickal Energies and to Empower Magick: basically what Witches do in Masque of Queens, Macbeth, and The Witch.

An example of an especially Celtic instance of Appalachian Witchcraft is the story of “The Devil, A Beetle, and a Bleeding Toe” (p. 16), collected by Cornelia Berry from Woodrow Ciarose in 1939. One night, out hunting during the dark period of the moon, Clint Hill and Jeff Thorn discovered Rindy Sue Gose, back on Wolf’s Head Ridge. “When she come to a stoopin’ birch tree, she stopped, picked up a stick, and drawed on the ground a big ring round thet tree. Then she made a cross in the ring, and sed mumble jumble sich as we’d never heard afore. Then she heisted her dress to her knees and started to dance. She danced for ’bout five minutes and then made a beeline torge her cabin.” Well, Clint and Jeff had heard that a woman who wished to become a Witch would dance about a birch tree and then the Devil would come to dance, and make her a Witch.

So they watch- for the next twelve nights, “effen she didn’t come to thet same white birch tree, make a cross in the ring, dance fer a spell, then go back to her place.”

Well, the thirteenth night, she dances in the ring as she has before- only this time, she cuts the throat of a black hen, lets the blood spurt against the tree, then throws the carcass as far into the dark woods as she could. The Devil stepped out-

So these hunters’ story ends with them seeing the Devil; once more, though, if you erase the Devil and retain the dancing in a ring around a tree- you have basically the ending of The Merry Wives of Windsor (although they dance around an oak). If we consider that in MWW, the oak is dedicated to Hern the Horned One, with Falstaff imitating Hern with a deer’s antlers on his head- then perhaps the presence of “the Devil” in Christian versions of Witchcraft story should not surprise.

In Part II: the Magick Circle in action in Appalachian story. But again- what excites is that: if these Appalachian mountain-folk possessed folkloric knowledge of the Magick Circle, doesn’t it make sense to imagine that they inherited it from their Old World ancestors?

Since what they describe as Witchcraft (involving a Magick Circle) parallels Jacobean Witch-Plays- doesn’t that appear to reinforce the perception that the Magick Circle was understood as part of English Witch-Culture during the 1600s, and carried to America in the migrations that started at that time?

If so, doesn’t that suggest that it might still be part of English folk-culture by the 1930s- when Gerald Gardner comes across it.