Owls and Buzzards

“Now buzzard feathers is de luckiest kind of feathers” (Hyatt 2443 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1086). That was a Georgia worker’s opinion, and plenty of Hyatt’s informants agreed with him.

The owl and the buzzard are the two great birds of the Southern night and the Southern carcass. One hunts in the dark; the other cleans up the dead. Conjure used both, as omens, as familiars and as raw material for tricks.

What it is

The buzzard here is the turkey buzzard or vulture, often the red-headed one. Informants cooked it for grease, burned its feathers, stewed it whole and robbed its nest.

The owl, especially the little screech owl, belonged to the witch and to madness. Its brain, feathers and body turn up in some of the darkest work in the volumes.

• Buzzard grease: for luck, limber joints and strength.
• Buzzard feathers: burned for luck and custom, or laid at a door to drive someone off.
• Buzzard lard hand: a gambling hand.
• Owl parts: for madness, impotence and wandering.

What Hyatt’s informants said

A buzzard could be fixed to haunt a person. In Florida a woman was given graveyard dirt in her liquor, and afterwards one buzzard circled over her house wherever she went. “They had witchcraf ‘er so that buzzard follow ‘er, follow ‘er.” She smelled like the bird itself until roots from the woods cleared her (Hyatt 204 · St. Petersburg, Fla. · informant 1022).

A root doctor near Wilmington told a fixed woman that a buzzard would fly over her house the next day. It did, and she began to lose her mind (Hyatt 203 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 272).

The bird gave its name to the most famous worker on the coast, Doctor Buzzard of Beaufort, South Carolina. In the tale, a buzzard rowed visitors across the water to his door, and turned back and drowned the wrong man (Hyatt 3070 · Sumter, S. Car. · informant 1387). A Charleston man put it plainly: “Dey tell me he kin fix buzzards so he make them row a boat” (Hyatt 3072 · Charleston, S. Car. · informant 506).

Owl work was harder still. In New Orleans a man’s urine was sealed in a tiny bottle, boiled in milk, and forced into a live owl: “ketch a owl and shove it up in that owl’s throat until it kill him.” The owl was buried head up, and the man was left impotent for life (Hyatt 10279 · New Orleans, La. · informant 863).

Variations

• A buzzard killed, buried three days, dug up and cooked to lard, rubbed from the left hand to the right for fast luck at gambling (Hyatt 1763 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1547).
• Buzzard grease all over the legs to make a wrestler limber and impossible to throw (Hyatt 2400 · Washington, D.C. · informant 638).
• The red-headed buzzard’s brains boiled, put in a cup and buried in the clay on the north side of the house for luck (Hyatt 10839 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1162).
• Robbing a buzzard’s nest of its big middle egg, so the male would bring a root to test the eggs; the root was the prize (Hyatt 1156 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1143).
• Owl-brain powder put in a man’s hat, after which he lost his mind and prowled the streets all night like an owl (Hyatt 936 · Fredericksburg, Va. · informant 70).

What it was used for

Luck and trade came first with the buzzard. Lizzie Smith of Waycross paid for dead buzzards and burned the long wing feathers under her rooming house to fill her rooms (Hyatt 2445 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1120).

The same bird served for harm. A stewed buzzard buried round an enemy’s door was said to bring sickness and death (Hyatt 10838 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1105). A buzzard egg with a name written on it, buried at the door, ran a person off or ruined them there (Hyatt 10840 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1154).

Escape was another use. One informant told of a jailed man whose brother brought him a killed buzzard in a lunch box; by morning the cell held nothing but the bird (Hyatt 834 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1429).

Cures and counter-work

The buzzard also cured. Its grease was rubbed on a child who never walked and on the stiff and rheumatic (Hyatt 1151 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1206).

For a person tricked into hopping like a frog, a Waycross informant kept a live buzzard in secret and collected what it vomited and passed. This went in a sack under the sufferer, then in a belt round the waist, until the trick drew up into it (Hyatt 1154 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1163).

In their own words

“The witch looked just lak a little squich owl.”

(Hyatt 433 · St. James, Md. · informant 102)

“Ef ah wanta run yo’ crazy an’ ah don’t like yo’ nohow, ah kin take a buzzard’s feather.”

(Hyatt 10843 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1435)

“That’s fo’ gamblin’. That’s a gamblin’ hand.”

(Hyatt 1763 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1547)

How it’s worked today

Owls and vultures are both protected under United States federal law, feathers and parts included, so the old bodily work Hyatt recorded is rarely done with the real bird now.

The symbolism lives on. The buzzard stands for clearing away what is rotten and turning the dead to use, and workers still call on it in cleansing and luck work through images, names and found materials.

The owl keeps its place as the witch’s bird: a sign of death, night work and the troubled mind. Doctor Buzzard’s name is still carried by Lowcountry rootworkers, just as it was in Hyatt’s day.

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.