Whiskey

“Well, dat’s a wicked person – yo’ git de graveyard dirt from a wicked person.” A Florida gambler was explaining why a lodestone bag holding graveyard dirt had to be fed whiskey, while one without it took Hearts Cologne (Hyatt 1973 · St. Petersburg, Fla. · informant 998).

That is the logic of whiskey in hoodoo. The dead, the sinners and the spirits in a hand liked a drink in life and still want one. Whiskey pays them, wakes them and keeps them working.

What it is

Whiskey in Hyatt’s volumes is three things at once: food for a hand, an offering to spirits, and a carrier for tricks put into someone’s drink.

• Feeding: pouring whiskey on a mojo, lodestone, root or bottle to keep its spirit alive and active.
• Paying the dead: whiskey poured at the grave, the door or the treasure hole for work done.
• Dosing: graveyard dirt, blood, hair, nails, snake parts and fish soaked or dropped in liquor and given to a victim.

Hyatt called these battery hands: they weaken unless recharged, and whiskey is one of the liquids that recharges them.

What Hyatt’s informants said

Whiskey moved spirits to act. In Waycross a hoodoo man was given graveyard dirt from the head of a grave and promised a woman, “Ah will have him released in ten days.” Her husband was on the chain gang. The doctor put whiskey on the dirt, shook it in a bottle and had her use it round her bed and yard, and the man broke out of the convict camp and went off to Florida with her (Hyatt 77 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1120).

Whiskey also settled restless spirits. A Little Rock informant put it in one line: “Put whiskey roun’ de do'” because the spirits want to drink (Hyatt 1661 · Little Rock, Ark. · informant 896). In Fayetteville a drink poured down for a spirit that had been a drunkard sent it away for good (Hyatt 534 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1398).

Even the saints drank. A New Orleans worker said “you gotta handle St. Peter so rough”, and if you drank, you wet his image with liquor (Hyatt 3036 · New Orleans, La. · informant 855).

Variations

• A dried frog sewn in chamois and fed whiskey as a gambling toby (Hyatt 1887 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 948).
• Lodestone, steel dust and paradise seeds in a flannel bag, set in a saucer and seasoned with whiskey or good gin (Hyatt 2314 · New Orleans, La. · informant 866).
• A man’s hat bow kept in a small bottle and fed whiskey every month to keep him worried after her (Hyatt 4711 · Wilson, N. Car. · informant 1487).
• A lock of a lady’s hair, lodestone and nine needles in red flannel, fed whiskey and worn to draw love (Hyatt 6013 · Mobile, Ala. · informant 677).
• Whiskey poured in three saucers, an egg broken into each, set at three corners of the world before calling up the spirit that guards buried money (Hyatt 428 · Charleston, S. Car. · informant 509).

Whiskey in tricks

Liquor was the easiest way to get something inside a person. One Florida man told Hyatt he had been given graveyard dirt in whiskey, and ever since, when the moon changed, the drinking spirit came on him and he heard his insides talking (Hyatt 959 · St. Petersburg, Fla. · informant 1022).

A rattlesnake’s tail soaked in whiskey and given to someone to drink would put the snake in them (Hyatt 6649 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 949).

The cure for the drinker came the same way. Minnows left in whiskey for two days, the liquor then given to the man, made him vomit and quit (Hyatt 7042 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1184).

In their own words

“Well, those kind of people wasn’t nothing but a drunk all dey life”

(Hyatt 428 · Charleston, S. Car. · informant 509)

“po’ some whiskey on it fo’ about fo’ or five days”

(Hyatt 2034 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1447)

“An’ he won’ nevah take anothah drink.”

(Hyatt 7042 · Brunswick, Ga. · informant 1184)

How it’s worked today

Feeding a hand with whiskey is still standard conjure. Workers dab or pour it on mojo bags, roots and lodestones on a regular schedule, often alongside a cologne or oil.

Whiskey is the usual payment left at a grave when dirt is taken, poured as a libation for ancestors, and set out on altars for spirits who drank in life.

High John the Conqueror and other roots are still steeped in whiskey to make a working liquid. Putting things into a person’s drink remains one of the oldest delivery methods in the tradition.

Learn the work

← Back to The Hyatt Files

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.