In 1939, Life magazine published a series of photos of the superstitious practices of people living in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. The photos were taken by D.F. Fox and captioned by Vance Randolph.
The first picture showed an Ozark “witch woman” with a doll made of dirt and beeswax, which she’d named after an enemy. Nails were driven into the doll to “hurt” the corresponding parts of the enemy’s body – an act of sympathetic or homeopathic magic.
The final picture in the spread was a sinister photo of two rag dolls, one dressed as a man, the other as a woman. Both were laid prone in front of a Bible with a skull on top of it. The female doll had nails driven into its back. The caption stated:
“…muttering secret spells, a jealous wife hopes to separate her husband from another woman. The dolls represent the adulterous pair.”
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I like the picture here Doc, the skull represents the vengeance or the “Ghede (Death) Lwa” which executes the judgement and the Bible represents the law of the Judeo-Christian God. Very powerful ritual here within the Folk Protestant Spiritual Judeo-Christian Magic. That’s one way of looking at it.
Good point there, yes… and it’s pretty cool as well, despite being a vengeance mechanism.
Hi Doc,
This photo is quite inspirational for my ritual. I tried out a poppet ritual with the voodoo poppets (made up of corn husks) which is similar to the photo from above (with a crucifix substituted for a human skull) and that ritual works Instead of the poppets facing down, they’re facing up (you get the idea 😉 ). Thanks for sharing out this photo, alongside that, your blog is eclectic and deeply inspirational for my path in the universal folk spiritualism and folk magic/ceremonial magic.
Excellent! And thanks, yes, I am very much eclectic… whatever works, being the maxim. And allowing imagination to reign supreme.