Lightning-Struck Wood and the Thunderbolt

“Dey take dat tree fo’ trickeration – fo’ trickin’ people, an’ giv ’em ramblin’ min’s – spells lak.” So a Memphis informant described what conjure did with a tree the thunderbolt had hit (Hyatt 2336 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1557).

A lightning strike leaves wood that has been touched by the most violent power in the sky. Hyatt’s informants, from Louisiana to the Carolinas, treated that wood as charged. They boiled it, carried it, drove it into the ground and fed it to people.

What it is

Lightning-struck wood is bark, splinters or chips taken from a tree hit by lightning. Hyatt filed it under Wood (2), Struck by Lightning, in the cures and protection section of Volume 1, with more under hands and love work.

The thunderbolt is something else: the stone or metal object believed to have come down with the strike. One informant said it looked like a flintrock or an Indian arrowhead (Hyatt 2336 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1557). Another heard that you dig for it under the roots of the struck tree (Hyatt 2337 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1136).

A Wilson man described his as a slim metal piece with a ring round it, kept at home. It kept you safe in the jailhouse, and you watched its tip: “it changes colors sometime, de tip end of it.” If the tip turned, trouble was coming. Hyatt thought it was a mail-order arrowhead (Hyatt 635 · Wilson, N. Car. · informant 1439).

Cures

Most of what Hyatt collected is healing. The wood was boiled into a tea or a bath:

• A bath against pains (Hyatt 1676 · Algiers, La. · informant 1575).
• Bark from the west side for rheumatic pain (Hyatt 1677 · New Orleans, La. · informant 1560).
• A tea for someone long sick, or tricked, to bring their strength back (Hyatt 1678 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1188).
• Asthma (Hyatt 1679 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1556) and thrush (Hyatt 1680 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1391).
• Splinters smoothed and dressed with turpentine for a sick person (Hyatt 1681 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1518).

Toothache had a whole cluster of rites. You picked the gum with a splinter from the north side until it bled (Hyatt 1684 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1223). Then you drove the splinter into a tree, a split persimmon or the north side of an oak with the blood under the bark (Hyatt 1685 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1435; Hyatt 1686 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1128; Hyatt 1687 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1543).

Protection and counter-work

The same wood kept enemies and their roots off your place:

• Three chips laid towards the house, so an unwanted man passes by: “He’ll steer an’ go on right on ‘cross – he won’t come disaway” (Hyatt 1688 · Florence, S. Car. · informant 1331).
• Four stakes cut without letting the wood touch the ground, driven at the four corners so no one can put down roots there (Hyatt 1689 · Wilson, N. Car. · informant 1456).
• A chip stuck at the forks of a road while calling the enemy’s name three times (Hyatt 1690 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1161).
• A mock grave: an egg buried in the path with two lightning sticks for headboard and footboard, then cursed (Hyatt 1691 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1382).
• Scattered splinters burned to ash, mixed with Indian turnip and brimstone and sprinkled round the house to kill what an enemy laid down (Hyatt 1692 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1361).

Love and luck

Because it was fire, it could draw. A splinter boiled into whiskey and given to a girl was said to bring her: “dat will bring her to yo’ – ’cause dat’s fiah , bring her to yo’.” (Hyatt 2055 · Wilson, N. Car. · informant 1504).

In New Orleans the bark was burned to ash, mixed with Epsom salt and sewn in flannel with lodestone as a toby (Hyatt 2340 · New Orleans, La. · informant 1574). The Memphis thunderbolt was tied up with graveyard dust, luck oil and incense for gambling (Hyatt 2336 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1557).

In their own words

“Long as yo’ got that wit chew, yo’ cain’t nevah be disappointed”

(Hyatt 2340 · New Orleans, La. · informant 1574)

“yo’ kin git dat an’ make toothpicks tuh use fo’ yore teeth an’ yo’ll nevah have the toothache.”

(Hyatt 1683 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1549)

“if yo’ use de wood, de lightnin’ would strike yore house.”

(Hyatt 1694 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1233)

That last warning was not alone. Another informant held it was bad luck to burn the wood at all (Hyatt 1693 · Wilson, N. Car. · informant 1508).

How it’s worked today

Lightning-struck wood is still prized in rootwork and is hard to come by, which keeps its value high. Workers still collect it themselves after storms.

It is used in protection packets and hands, ground into powders for power and uncrossing, and set on altars for strength and justice work. Many tie it to the thunder spirits of the African diaspora, and in particular to Shango or Xangô, whose emblem is the thunder stone.

Old stone axeheads and arrowheads are still kept as thunderstones and carried for luck and protection, much as Hyatt’s Memphis informant described.

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.