Sugar and Sweetening

“Salt saves it an’ sugah sweetens it.” That is how a worker in Fayetteville, North Carolina put it to Hyatt, and it is as clear a statement of the principle as anyone recorded (Hyatt 8714 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1396).

Sweetening is one of the oldest and plainest ideas in hoodoo. What is sweet draws, soothes and binds. Put a name in sugar, honey or syrup and you mean to make that person sweet towards you: a lover, a boss, a landlord, a judge or the police.

What it is

A sweetening trick takes something sweet and puts a person’s name, picture or personal concern into it, or under it, or beside it. The sweetness is meant to pass into their mind.

Hyatt’s informants used whatever the kitchen held:

• White sugar, brown sugar and lump sugar
• Honey, often with cinnamon
• Karo, cane syrup and drugstore syrups sold under trade names
• Plain sweetened water, kept in a bottle or a glass

Hyatt noted that brown sugar was often used for a coloured person and white sugar for a white person (Hyatt, note to 2891 · Mobile, Ala. · informant 692). The same thinking ran through syrups and candles.

What Hyatt’s informants said

The simplest form was a bottle. A New Orleans worker told Hyatt to put your boss’s name and your own into “bottle of sweetened water – sweet – sweet – sweet” and shake it whenever you thought of him (Hyatt 2150 · New Orleans, La. · informant 826a).

Others set the sweetness under a light. A Mobile informant burned a holy candle for her brother on Wednesday, Friday and Monday, calling his name three times: “Ah sweeten it down wit some sugar” (Hyatt 3029 · Mobile, Ala. · informant 651).

In Algiers, Louisiana, a glass of sugar water went under a picture of the Sacred Heart to bring a person’s mind back. No names were needed (Hyatt 3064 · Algiers, La. · informant 1580).

In Fayetteville, salt and white sugar were sprinkled on a woman’s concerns and browned on top of a heater. As the sugar browned, her mind was meant to turn (Hyatt 8714 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1396).

Sweetening the law

Sugar and honey were working tools for anyone the police might trouble.

• A New Orleans woman said that if she were bootlegging she would wash her house out with honey and sugar to keep the law away (Hyatt 2425 · New Orleans, La. · informant 1558).
• Another put cinnamon and sugar in a saucer with the judge’s name underneath and a white candle, two days before court (Hyatt 9000 · New Orleans, La. · informant 877).
• Cinnamon, sugar and steel dust went into the left shoe on the way into the courthouse (Hyatt 9030 · New Orleans, La. · informant 830).
• Sulphur with sugar or honey was burned with frankincense on the fourth morning for a trial (Hyatt 2658 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1556).

Trade, home and the body

A New Orleans informant scrubbed a business from the front porch to the back with syrups chosen for the customers wanted (Hyatt 2725 · New Orleans, La. · informant 879). Another sprinkled brown sugar at the bed after scrubbing, for luck and to bring a tenant (Hyatt 2461 · New Orleans, La. · informant 853).

Sugar also carried the body’s own matter. In Memphis, a wife held sugar under her arm for about an hour, then used it to sweeten her husband’s coffee and break up his other affair (Hyatt 3945 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1529a). In New Orleans, a dried foot track was powdered into sugar for coffee or food, to make people like you (Hyatt 6489 · New Orleans, La. · informant 826).

When sweet turns sour

Sweetness could also be turned against someone. One New Orleans informant described bath water sweetened with sugar, stopped in a bottle and set upside down. The sweetened water soured, and Hyatt’s margin note records the result: the victim could not be peaceful anywhere (Hyatt 4499 · New Orleans, La. · informant 873).

A sweetened bottle with salt set under the bed was said to keep a man asleep until the woman came home (Hyatt 7184 · New Orleans, La. · informant 1558).

In their own words

“ah would take me some honey an’ sugah an’ wash mah house out wit it”

(Hyatt 2425 · New Orleans, La. · informant 1558)

“Den cook dat steak an’ take dat sugah an’ sweeten his coffee”

(Hyatt 3945 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1529a)

“If you wants white and colored trade, you get that white syrup and you get that red syrup”

(Hyatt 2725 · New Orleans, La. · informant 879)

“Yo’ offer dat glass of sweeten watah tuh de Sacred Heart of Jesus”

(Hyatt 3064 · Algiers, La. · informant 1580)

How it’s worked today

The honey jar is the best-known sweetening work in modern hoodoo. A petition with the target’s name is put into honey, sugar or syrup, sealed, and a candle is burned on the lid over days or weeks. It descends directly from the bottles and saucers in Hyatt.

Workers still sweeten bosses, lovers, family, landlords and judges, and still pair sugar with cinnamon for court and business. Sweetening is commonly done before other work, to soften a situation first.

The old distinction holds too: many workers match brown sugar, white sugar or a particular syrup to the person being worked on.

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.