BLACK HENS, HEN EGGS, and FRIZZLED FOWL
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Many African-derived magic spells center around
foot-tracks and the
potential for harm that comes through contact with the
feet of the victim.
There are many ways to work
hoodoo foot track
magic, but one of the most popular is to
lay a trick or throw for
someone by sprinklingpowders
for harm (and also for good, albeit in a limited way) where they will walk and
step in that mess.
Once you become familiar with
foot track magic
and all of the practical conclusions that flow from it, you will understand that
because harm can be inflicted through the
feet, then it
follows that both
protection from evil and
uncrossing the spell
for the restoration of
good luck can be accomplished by cleaning, sweeping, or washing areas of
foot travel with
magically potent herbal and/or mineral
floor washes and sweeps.
So, with all that understood, we can finally approach the Black Hen!
In rural areas, where you have a large yard to control, the scratching of
chickens will clean off messes laid down by enemies. That is, someone may throw
powders for you, but
the bird will take it up. Hens are the most assiduous at this, because roosters
don't scratch as much as hens do.
The association between black chickens and the African
crossroads god
variously known as
Nbumba Nzila, Legba, or Eshu -- syncretized in American folk-speech
as "the devil" or "the black
man" -- gives black fowl a powerful magical charge in their own right.
In addition, their association with the famous European grimoire called "The
Black Pullet" adds to that reputation.
Like the crossroads
god, who can work either way, the eggs and feathers of black hens can be used
for good or ill. As Blind Willie McTell sang, back in the 1920s, "My mother told
me, when i was just a boy playin' mumbletypeg, 'Don't you drink no black cow's
milk, don't eat no black hen's egg.' I keep a couple of black Polish-Minorca
cross hens on my place and i do get requests for their feathers and eggs now and
then from folks who have some purpose or other in mind.
To use hen's eggs for good, one generally rolls them over the body (raw and
in the shell) allowing them to absorb all negativity and evil. Once they have
been rolled over the body, they are thrown away. This is done in a number of
ways, depending on the practitioner -- they may be thrown into an outhouse, into
running water, into the trash, or thrown and broken at the base of a tree or in
a crossroads.
The power of the black hen's egg to remove evil during rites of spiritual
cleansing is found in many parts of the world. A Mexican brand of spiritual soap
called Jabon de Huevos de Gallina Negra Para Limpias (Black Pullet Egg Soap for
Cleansings) is traditionally used for keeping oneself clean btween performances
of the full black hen egg rolling ceremony.
To work evil with a hen's egg, it is generally poked open at one end and
certain ingredients are added -- red pepper and
graveyard dirt
to make people move, or red pepper, sulphur, and feces to hurt someone. The
enemy's name may be written on the egg as well. It is common practice to throw
such a prepared egg over the house of the enemy, preferably from to East to West
so they will "leave with the setting Sun" or to throw it at their front door, to
break it, so they'll have to step in the mess.
Gina Karicas contributed this Jewish black pullet (young hen) egg spell from
the Middle Ages, translated from the Yiddish:
Despite -- or perhaps BECAUSE of -- the association of black hens' eggs with
infernal work and crossed
conditions, a black Minorca or Polish hen is said to do very well at
scratching up messes in the yard. But there is one breed of chicken thought to
be even better at this task than a Rose Comb Black Bantam, a Black Minorca, a
black Houdan, a Black Australorp, or, in a pinch, a White Crested Black Polish
-- and that is the black Frizzled Fowl.
Frizzled Fowl, usually called Frizzles by chicken breeders, are birds born
with a genetic abnormality that causes their feathers to not lie flat, but to
curl and twist all around in weirdly random ways. (Think of a Rex cat or Rex
rabbit, or a Portuguese Water Dog,
if you want to know the mammalian equivalent.) Frizzles can be line-bred to
remain true to type, and so they are a recognized breed, but they are not common
because the frizzling of their feathers deprives them of insulation from the
cold -- hence they are only able to live outdoors in the warm-winter areas of
the South and West.
The backwards curling of the frizzled feathers on these birds is seen as a
natural expression of their ability to undo bad work that has been
laid down to
walk over. Frizzles come in all the usual chicken colours and patterns, but
since black hens are the birds most often used to scratch up evil
powders in the yard,
it follows that a black Frizzled hen would be the best possible bird in the
world for that purpose. As with the
black cat, also much
admired and much feared in
hoodoo work, a black Frizzle hen's dangerous associations with the
infernal can be parlayed by a deft
root doctor
into a powerful tool for undoing and reversing evil and
uncrossing
clients.
When i was young, the older folks i listened to in Oakland, California, had
mostly grown up in the country in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, prior to
World War Two. I knew one conjure shop owner who kept a whole dried Black
Minorca hen's wing which he used as a whisk while brushing his clients from her
to feet and breaking their
jinxes and crossed conditions. This conjure shop propietor, and several
of the folks whom i met in his store, also told me of the jinx-breaking prowess
of this or that black Frizzled hen they had known back home.
The way they explained it, a black Frizzled bird was rare, so she would
naturally belong to a
two-headed woman or a conjure doctor.
In keeping with the community spirit of African-American
readers and root workers,
many of the people who kept a frizzled black hen loaned her out around the
neighborhood to clean the yards of people who suspected that someone had
thrown for them
around the house. Any frizzled feathers the hens dropped in the yard could be
kept and used in a mojo bags
or bottle spells for
protection. You would keep the frizzled hen for a month or so, all
the while doing other things to spiritually clean the place, such as burning
incense and
candles, and
scrubbing and sweeping the
floors, and then, her work done, back she would go to the aunty or uncle
who owned her.
Some doctors tied nine black feathers together and placed them over the door
lintels so that no witches could walk underneath and enter their homes. Some
added the frizzled feathers to
mojo bags. Some burned the feathers to ash and used the ash in preparing
powders to take off
crossed conditions.
Some collected their frizzled hen's moulted feathers and bound them together to
make a little "broom" to brush bad stuff off of clients.
A black chicken feather duster, feather whisk, or feather tickler like the
one shown here (which hangs from a stylish black ribbon) makes a very good
susbstitute for a either whole chicken wing or a home-made feather "broom" and
it can be used either to cleanse a client or to hang over a door as par of a
protection spell for
the home.
posted by VICKY @ 1:12 PM,
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