Known as Asheville’s village witch, Byron Ballard practices what she calls “hillfolk hoodoo,” a form of Appalachian folk magic. Ballard came by hoodoo naturally, growing up in a poor community in the mountains of Western North Carolina where hoodoo was practiced. She laments that the practice is disappearing: “Local hillfolk are no longer practicing hoodoo, but it’s within living memory. There’s a kind of sadness that the culture of the hillfolk is fading.”
Hoodoo is different from voodoo, she explains, even though the words sound alike. Voodoo originated in Haiti and follows the West African Yoruban religious tradition. Hoodoo, on the other hand, is a nonreligious practice with cross-cultural roots. It grew out of the interactions of three cultural groups — the Scots-Irish who immigrated to Western North Carolina, the indigenous Cherokee and the Pennsylvania Dutch (Germans) who migrated to the area through the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.
Ballard goes on to say that immigrants from Europe, fleeing religious persecution, settled in isolated mountain coves that gave them the privacy and freedom they sought. Theirs was a hardscrabble way of life, but it gave them independence, she says. In the 1930s, when the textile mills moved into the area, the culture began to shift from agricultural to industrial. The money was better, but it took away the independent streak of the mountain people, who were selling just enough of their cash crop to buy coffee and other goods they couldn’t grow. With contact from outside people, their folk practices began to erode, she continues.
“I call myself a forensic folklorist,” says Ballard, “because I’m excavating the practices from older generations.” She aims to preserve what she can of the traditional folk practices, and her book Staubs and Ditchwater is the result of her research into her Southern Highlands roots and its practices.
Although Ballard admits she is attempting to dispel the “hillbilly” and “redneck” stereotypes in her book (she prefers “hillfolk” to “hillbilly”), she nevertheless reclaims them: “I am totally a redneck. I grew up wild and poor in the country … understanding that violence is a way to solve problems. I am stubborn and willful, and I hate authority. I’m always having to suppress my tendencies toward violence.”
As the hillfolk culture is thinning, Ballard says, it is also becoming gentrified by “outlanders” — the affluent people who move into the area. These outsiders are hungry for folk traditions that feed them spiritually and are willing to appropriate any of the practices for their own benefit, she says. But she calls this process of stripping away pieces of the local culture by outsiders “cultural strip-mining.” The culture itself gains nothing and is in fact left weaker by the exchange, she says, comparing it to mountaintop removal and clear-cutting.
Ballard confesses that she is torn about whether it’s better to let the cultural practices die with the people who practiced them or pass them on to the larger world, which may be able to use them for spiritual and environmental purposes.
Although she’s “excavating” a dying culture, she is also actively practicing it, relying on what she learned as a child. Like the “cove doctor” of her forebears, Ballard’s carrying on the tradition of “workings,” or magical spells, to help people heal or get what they want. She gives an example of a working she might do to help someone get a job: “It could require dressing a candle with particularly potent oil and having the person burn it while focusing on their intention to get a new job.” Ballard adds that she tells the person to keep looking for a job meanwhile. “This is definitely a belt-and-suspenders type of magic,” she says.
Most people who come to her for help want healing work, she notes. “Healing is a big thing. The culture we live in is diseased. Hoodoo can help on a one-to-one basis.” She uses herbs, or “yarbs,” for the healing of many physical ailments, noting that they are often more effective than allopathic remedies. Ballard tells the story of her daughter, who saw many doctors to get rid of a wart. None of the treatments she received was effective. Finally, she tried bloodroot, an indigenous herb, and the wart went away.
Many people in the mountains are known for doing disease-specific healing, Ballard reports. “I had a great aunt who could rub a wart or a mole between her fingers, and it would disappear,” she says. “The whole time she would say something like, ‘I don’t know why people think I can do this,’ and in three days it would be gone.” A characteristic of folk magic, Ballard continues, is that practitioners deny they have the ability to do the healing — perhaps out of humility, acknowledging that the power is merely passing through them. She points out that other hillfolk use a different remedy to remove warts — wrapping the affected area in a dirty dishrag, then counting or saying the Lord’s Prayer, followed by burying the dishrag off the property.
Ballard says we often don’t know why traditional folk remedies work. She gives the example of catnip tea, which is given to infants to prevent hives. One theory about how it works, she explains, is that after some of the tea is given to the child, the mother drinks the rest of it. Since it’s a soporific, the mother is more relaxed, which helps her milk production. As a result, the child is healthier from being better nourished.
Often Ballard is called upon to do love spells, but she always refuses. “The problem,” she says, “is that they work. And sometimes the person asking for the spell ends up not being as interested as they thought they were, or they draw a person to them in an unhealthy way, such as stalking.”
Although hoodoo is not a spiritual or religious practice per se, Ballard notes that it can often involve a spiritual or religious overlay. She says that although there are religious-specific pieces, such as reading a part of the Bible to stop the flow of blood, hoodoo works regardless of the lens that’s used. “Religion can be an important part of the cultural practice,” she says, but “utilizing the earth energy is what works. It just depends on how you access it. … Hoodoo is about using earth energies in the quest for personal agency. It’s all about moving your position in the world to where you want it to be.”
Ballard points out that folk magic practices were developed by cultures in the Old World that lacked a sense of agency. “When you live in a feudal system, you don’t have a lot of access to justice or healing,” she says. “Their practices became a form of peasant medicine and psychology.”
When folk magic practices were brought to southern Appalachia, they took hold there as well because they helped provide a sense of personal agency and justice for impoverished mountain dwellers. “The ability to access justice is thin unless you have money and time,” she says, “and the hillfolk had neither.”
Acknowledging the issue of class and economics in the discussion of folk magic “honors the people who developed and practiced it, who are either our literal blood ancestors or … our spiritual and practice ancestors,” she says. “It honors them to say they were not people of great means for whom personal agency was easy.”
Ballard continues the tradition of using hoodoo to bring about justice. “I don’t work for peace. I work for justice,” she says. “I believe, and I think tribal people in Europe believed, that when you have justice, peace is a byproduct of that.”
Ballard teaches local courses about hoodoo. Information about them can be found on her Facebook page, Asheville’s Village Witch, or at myvillagewitch.com.
Great interview! Thanks from Macha in California.
I really enjoyed reading this article. Thank you.
I loved this article.
I think it’s wonderful that the old ways are still being used and honored. Too often we forget where we are from which disconnects us from our roots, it makes us lost and unknowingly causes our anger. Bless this woman for holding on so dearly!
Thank you so much for the work you’ve done! My great-auntie was a “root woman” and I really wish I had been old enough to learn from her.
I love this so many doesn’t understand the fact that we are not just stupid redneck hillbillies. if anyone took the time and effort to sit and watch, follow listen and learn our ways the world might just be a better place. I am 31 and have lived in the mountains most of my life. I thought I wanted to travel until I did and I realized that I had everything anyone could ever want in these by. seems as if cash makes the world go around come on down to the hills and mountains and I will show you just how broke you truly are and why we are the better off. either way you done done us all a huge favor (yes im aware of done done and I know it isn’t correct but here it is!) too many in the world today have forgotten whats its like to come from nothing and still have everyone jealous and wondering how you have everything they lack
Dear Sam:
What you say is truly appreciated as you are aware of the true wealth: the mountains you live in! Who needs to go anywhere else – as a New Yorker I am blessed in some ways because I have been exposed to any and almost every form of culture. I found that the Appalachia, as far removed as it may seem from the “mainstream” is lucky to have synthesized so many cultural influences. The ancient ways are being revamped today . I just hope that today’s Appalachian youth awakens and does not fall prey to the numbing effects of drugs, alchool and other detrimental distractions,
Great article thank you for sharing this!
My Mother was raised in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky her Father was full Blooded Cherokee and her Mother was Scots-Irish , she was a coal miners daughter! she was raised going to church but also believed in Magic Hoodoo, she was proud to be called a Hillbilly and I’m proud she was my Mother.. LOVED this interview! Thank you Byron Ballard, Blessings Be yours )0( <3
do you know someone that still pratices
I wanna thank goodness &her for standing up for keeping the Appalachian folk magick alive.
I wanna thank goddess & her for standing up for keeping the Appalachian folk magick alive.
Yes I know that I did.
Yes!!!
Thank you for the information, very nice article.
Hoodoo and Appalachian folk magic, a.k.a. “granny magic” are not the same thing. They are different systems of folk magic.
I call the work I do “hillfolks hoodoo.” There are many “hoodoo” systems–all of which are folk magic, folkways. What I practice–and what I’m finding many, many people practice–doesn’t have a name. “Granny magic” is simply another handle on a system so old and gnarly, it doesn’t have a name. Most of the people who do this don’t call it magic–it is system of healing modalities, with some justice and relationship work thrown in.
What you practice is called Appalachian folk magic, a.k.a. granny magic. That’s the official title. However, it’s true that many people don’t really use names themselves for what they do, but there is a name no-less. What you are not practicing is hoodoo. Hoodoo is a separate system of folk magic. It shares a common Scott-Irish and Native American background as Appalachian folk magic but it has the additional African influence from the slaves. Hoodoo is primarily practiced by black people. You can be white and practice it but the majority of people who practice hoodoo are black. The majority of people who practice Appalachian folk magic, as well as Ozark folk magic are white. So no, there are not many “systems” of hoodoo because what you practice is not hoodoo and those who are educated on the topic know that you are not practicing hoodoo but rather Appalachian folk magic.
So, if you’re of African descent and grew up in Appalachia with a grandfather who could “work herbs”, would you call that “hill majik”?
By the way, Voodoo is a remnant of the Vodun worship from ancient Dahomey. Traditional Yoruba see the world as a set metaphysical principles codified into a compendium of wisdom called “Ifa” (pronounced ‘ee’fah’). I believe each of these systems are animistic in nature, recognizing that divine energy flows through all things — thanks to ATOM-Adam and its constructs.
Hello me and my wife are having trust issues and we are not together right now because of it can you please help me
I am from the Appalachian mountains and my granny practiced granny magick. She would have never called it magick but she taught me the ways growing up. I agree that’s it’s not hoodoo, but Byron can call her practice anything she wants because that’s what witchcraft is all about being able to practice your own tradition. We are even practiceing a form of traditional witchcraft. I have recently started a new website called Granny Magick where I plan to right about the old ways as well. It’s not the only tradition I’ve practiced or studied but it is the one I’ve grown up in!
Hoodoo is AFRICAN AMERICAN in origin. There is no such thing as Appalachian Hoodoo. Stop trying to white wash our practice. We call on our ancestors in hoodoo, what black ancestry do you have to call on? There are plenty of European practices that you can learn and use, leave hoodoo alone.
It would seem to me that Renée largely agrees with you. Was this meant as a reply to someone else or to the woman in the article?
Anyway, you’re absolutely right that hoodoo/conjure/rootwork is a well-defined African-American practice, not an umbrella term for any and all types of traditional folk magic in the US. People need to be more careful not to misuse the word and to respect that it is a closed practice.
then YOU stay away from pizza..spaghetti and all Asian foods…that’s “cultural appropriation” too!…oh and stop wearing blue jeans (first invented by the French)…and no T shirts either!..those aren’t from your “culture”…and drop the “American” from African American too…because you can’t be “American” and not share in “cultural appropriation” yourself…because “America” is one big melting pot…where everything from everywhere gets mixed and shared…take corn for example…corn came from the Indians…NOT from African culture…stop eating corn…or you are appropriating Amerindian culture!…
Hoodoo is not specific to one culture, especially in Appalachia, you need to do some research on the subject. My family, going back 10 generations, is from Appalachia, outside of Northern Kentucky, and have been practicing Hoodoo for years, there are African Americans that also practice their own brand of Hoodoo, who are you to decide that this is only an African American practice. Until you actually know what is really going on, maybe you should keep your mouth shut.
Hoodoo is sacred, its ancestral work that came from the Atlantic Slave trade. It’s practice was hidden because our ancestors weren’t allowed to practice their traditional beliefs. The fact throughout this article she didn’t even give credit to the ancestors who created it. Let alone take the name is disrespectful. Hoodoo is African American. Practice hoodoo if you want. But honor, and show respect of the enslaved who were forced to hide their magic.
Love this article. I grew up in Western North Carolina in a very small town near Maggie Valley. I had warts on my knee and my grandmother took me to a man who as I recall only placed his hand on my knee and they were gone. I have often told people this story and they didnt believe me. I feel very validated by your work. Thank you
My people are scotsirish,Pennsylvania Dutch etc and have been in wv. Since the early 1700s and they did a lot of strange things and they never called it magic. They said they didn’t know how they did its just what we do. It’s God working in us. They stopped blood,talked fire out of burns,bought warts, used dowsing rods and consulted a pendulum amongst a lot of other things. All this was brought over from the old country as far as I can tell. They seemed to do a lot of things on mayday eve. It was a very important time for them. They /we also have a lot of superstitions that we strongly believe in. Anyway I’m very proud of my appalachian roots and hold a strong connection to my ancestors. One thing I have learned in the 60+ years of my life is that all people are more like each other than we think and all medicine ways Belong to all people, we have all done this since the beginning so it belongs to all and it does come from our creator. I honestly believe that in Appalachia most of our ancestors were what they would call today pagan Christians at least those who believe in the Bible and yet still practice the old ways. Love and light to all ! And remember to pass what you know down to other family .members and keep the old ways of healing alive. In our family it went male to female and visa versa. Anyway enjoyed reading this and being able to share.