Bluestone

“Bluestone is the strongest thing in the world that you could use.” So said a Vicksburg informant who dressed the house with it every morning (Hyatt 1129 · Vicksburg, Miss. · informant 757).

Bluestone sits beside sulphur and salt in Hyatt’s volumes as one of the hard minerals of hoodoo. It killed tricks, guarded doors and feet, kept the law away, drew luck at cards, and went into the work of the people laying tricks as well.

What it is

Bluestone is copper sulphate, also called blue vitriol: bright blue crystals sold cheaply at the drug store for farm and household use. Informants bought it by the nickel’s worth and beat it to powder, burnt it white, dissolved it in water or carried it as a lump.

The name could slip. Asked whether he meant the drug-store kind, a Wilson informant answered: “No suh, ah mean de main bluestone – ah mean lodestone” (Hyatt 1742 · Wilson, N. Car. · informant 1513).

What Hyatt’s informants said

Most of all it was a killer of work laid down for you. Its main uses:

• Doors and corners – against witches and haunts, a Wilmington informant would “put it in the four corners of the house and right at the steps where you go over” (Hyatt 488 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 241).
• Bluestone water – sprinkled round the steps every morning to kill out the power of everything (Hyatt 1129 · Vicksburg, Miss. · informant 757).
• Floors – scrubbed with bluestone and brown sugar (Hyatt 2104 · Vicksburg, Miss. · informant 725).
• Nine mornings – sulphur and bluestone sprinkled round the home, because “yo’ can’t be bothered if yo’ use that bluestone” (Hyatt 1578 · Wilson, N. Car. · informant 1486).

In the shoes and on the feet

Bluestone beaten fine with sulphur and salt went under the lining of both shoes (Hyatt 1483 · Mobile, Ala. · informant 651). With salt alone it would “kick”, that is kill, the powder an enemy laid in your path (Hyatt 1482 · Vicksburg, Miss. · informant 527). A Brunswick informant washed the feet in bluestone and red pepper (Hyatt 597 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1201).

Inside the body

For a client full of live snakes from a powdered-snake poisoning, a Vicksburg man described the hoodoo doctor’s cure: bluestone pills wrapped in tissue paper so they would not touch the teeth, swallowed with the head thrown back, followed by half a cup of cooking grease (Hyatt 1056 · Vicksburg, Miss. · informant 757).

Bluestone also went into healing salves with gunpowder and hog lard (Hyatt 1501 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1242), and into a tea with alum (Hyatt 1124 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 294).

Law, luck and gambling

• Lodestone, sulphur and bluestone sewn in new cloth and kept damp with Hearts Cologne kept the police off (Hyatt 2059 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1217).
• A mop of turpentine, bluestone and dragon’s blood kept the law away (Hyatt 2346 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 957).
• A gambler bathed head to foot in bluestone, saltpetre, sugar and his own chamber lye, saying the Lord’s Prayer three times (Hyatt 1719 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 959).
• A bat was killed and cut open, and its heart sewn up with bluestone and salt as a gambling hand (Hyatt 1715 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1217).

In the trick itself

Bluestone cut both ways. It turned up again and again in the tricks people dug up: in a bottle with camphor, hair and pins buried under the steps (Hyatt 902 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 256), and in a packet with hair and fingernails (Hyatt 250 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1153).

A Mobile informant told how bath water was buried with bluestone, sulphur and asafoetida to keep the bather wasting away (Hyatt 29 · Mobile, Ala. · informant 701). In a Wilmington story a witch mixed bluestone dust with dirt from a wicked person’s new grave, dusted a church with it and sent the ghost in (Hyatt 104 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 159).

In their own words

“Hoodoo doctor will give him a certain amount of bluestone.”

(Hyatt 1056 · Vicksburg, Miss. · informant 757)

“it had bluestone in it, an’ it had some kind of roots in it.”

(Hyatt 929 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 198)

“Go theah an’ terrify ’em, terrify ’em.”

(Hyatt 104 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 159)

How it’s worked today

Bluestone is still sold as a curio and is still mainly a protection and uncrossing mineral. It is dissolved in floor washes and spiritual baths, sprinkled at doorways and corners, and added to powders for the shoes.

It remains an ingredient in law-keep-away and protection formulas, and it still appears in the harder mixtures, alongside sulphur, saltpetre and gunpowder.

Learn the work

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Source: Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork, 5 vols., 1970-1978. Numbers refer to Hyatt’s own item numbers; the town and informant number follow. Written by Hoodoo Witch in our own words, with short quotations from Hyatt’s informants for reference.