Root doctor Earl Marlowe, featured in my Doktor Snake’s Voodoo Spellbook, always said the the most powerful place to perform sorcery is in the graveyard. One of the key entities involved in graveyard work is the Graveyard Snake.
I remember Earl once going into great detail about the Graveyard Snake. We were walking along the River Thames on London’s south bank. It was a glorious summer’s day and the river seemed to glisten as he talked. Here are some of the things he said, which I recorded in my notebook:
“When you do a working in the cemetery you have to make it your business to become acquainted with the Graveyard Snake. This snake is very unusual to look at. It is black with yellow splotches on its back. It lives in the cemetery where it grieves and moans.”
“The Graveyard Snake came about this way. Long, long ago, the Devil was busy trying to tempt Adam and Eve. He’d taken the form of a serpent, and when he succeeded in tempting them, he laughed so much he split himself in two – into a spirit part and a material part. The spirit part of him goes about the world tempting folks and helping out conjure doctors; while the material part lives in the graveyard. You can contact the spirit part through the material part. That’s what we do in graveyard work.”
“The Graveyard Snake is Ole Satan himself and he can help you in your black art. That’s ’cause he’s a master of the black art. To call the Graveyard Snake, you need to sew up a piece of silver in a small piece of red flannel. Wear it over your heart. Then say a verse from the Holy Bible backwards at 12 o’clock in the graveyard on a moonlit night. Within a short time, Old Nick will come and meet you.”