Trees: Whipping, Boring and Burying at the Roots

A Memphis woman who sold whiskey kept a little tree in her yard. She read it a verse from the Bible, burned dragon’s blood and frankincense at its root, and then “she’d grab de tree an’ whip it an’ den she jes’ turn it back up.” It kept evil spirits and the law away from her door (Hyatt 1241 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 1527).

That is the gentle end of tree work. In Hyatt’s volumes, a tree is mostly a living body that can be made to carry a person’s fate. What happens to the tree, or to what is sealed inside it, happens to them.

What it is

Tree work uses a growing tree as the engine of a spell. Something of the person is bored into the trunk, plugged, nailed in or buried at the roots, and the tree’s own life does the work.

The effect followed the tree’s life:

• The sap rising in spring and falling in autumn.
• Bark slowly growing over a wound.
• Roots spreading and closing over whatever lies beneath them.
• The tree itself sickening and dying.

Trees that cure

A New Orleans informant described measuring a child with measles against a tree. A strand from the crown of the head went into an augered hole, a peg was driven in, and the child improved as he outgrew it. It had to be “a young tree though, willow tree or something of that kind that’s growing” (Hyatt 1082 · New Orleans, La. · informant 819).

Asthma was plugged up the same way, using the sick person’s bodily waste. Hyatt flagged stopping up a person’s passage as a dangerous rite (Hyatt 1001 · New Orleans, La. · informant 816).

Trees that kill

Hair was the most common thing put into a tree, and the rites varied with the tree’s life:

• Bored in and plugged, it kills in nine days (Hyatt 6222 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 976).
• Taken from the temples and plugged in before the sap rises, it brings headaches and then death (Hyatt 6238 · Norfolk, Va. · informant 473).
• Nailed in at the start of spring, the victim loses their mind as the sap rises, and dies when it falls in autumn (Hyatt 6239 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 973).
• Nailed in on the sunrise side with a ten-penny nail, the victim grows weaker and crazier as the bark heals over (Hyatt 6248 · New Orleans, La. · informant 815).

An informant’s mother told of a woman who plugged a lock of a man’s hair into a tree. He had spells, swelled out of his head, barked like a dog and died (Hyatt 776 · St. James, Md. · informant 104).

Other concerns went in too. Sand from the left footprint was pegged into a hole and cut off smooth, to wreck the mind or take the life (Hyatt 5723 · St. Petersburg, Fla. · informant 1015).

A man’s excrement was bottled airtight and pegged into a hole at the root. Of the victim, the informant said: “HE’LL NEVAH [wake] NO MO’ TILL HE HEAR DE FIRST TRUMPET.” (Hyatt 4438 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1415). In Charleston four nails were driven round the plug, for the four corners of the world (Hyatt 4421 · Charleston, S. Car. · informant 509).

Menstrual cloth was put into the hollow of a tree and smoked with a fire beneath (Hyatt 3877 · Algiers, La. · informant 1594). It was also stopped up with graveyard dirt in a hole on the north side (Hyatt 3957 · New Orleans, La. · informant 791). Poured into the root on the waning moon, the wash water was meant to make a woman bleed to death (Hyatt 957 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 973).

Under the roots

Burial at the root worked by smothering:

• A left sock in a hole cut at the base, with the tree harmed so it dies and the owner with it (Hyatt 5051 · New Orleans, La. · informant 820).
• Toadfrog dust wrapped in stockings at the root of a young tree: “fin’ly dat root covah it up an’ smothah it so it cain’t git no air, yore gone.” (Hyatt 9933 · New Orleans, La. · informant 1569).

In their own words

“when dat rottens, it rotten de tree an’ dey rots down an’ dey dies.”

(Hyatt 3877 · Algiers, La. · informant 1594)

“git right at de root of a tree, an’ dig a fresh hole an’ turn it face down”

(Hyatt 8364 · Florence, S. Car. · informant 1307)

“bore a hole with a auger and put that in there and stop that up. He’s got no more astmee.”

(Hyatt 1001 · New Orleans, La. · informant 816)

The Florence informant was describing a photograph buried 300 yards from the victim’s house. The cure was to find out who had done it and have the spell turned round on them, fast (Hyatt 8364).

How it’s worked today

Tree work is still part of rootwork on both sides. Practitioners measure children and the sick against young trees, and peg illness into trunks to be carried off as the tree grows.

On the baneful side, plugging hair, nail clippings or a name paper into a bored hole remains a known way to lay a slow, wasting curse tied to the seasons. Burial at the roots of a tree, especially in or near a graveyard, is still used for work meant to hold or smother.

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.