Powwowing: A Persistent American Esoteric Tradition
David W Kriebel, Ph.D.
Powwowing, or http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2039 in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, is a magico-religious practice whose chief purpose is the healing of physical ailments in humans in animals, although it has had other aims as well, such as conferring protection from physical or spiritual harm, bringing good luck, and revealing hidden information. The practice has been present on this continent since the first German-speaking settlements were established in Pennsylvania in the early eighteenth century, although it has its roots in much older German esoteric traditions (Yoder 1976).
My research focused on powwowing as it has existed in south-central and southeastern Pennsylvania today throughout the twentieth century, with emphasis on the present day. I performed ethnographic fieldwork in Adams, Berks, Bucks, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Montgomery, Schuykill, and York Counties. Tracking down existing powwowers and powwow clients was difficult for three reasons:1. There is a perception within the culture area that powwowing is no longer practiced and less than half of the people I spoke with had even heard of it; 2. Former patients and practitioners are afraid that others will label them crazy, or at a minimum, old-fashioned and “dutchy”; and 3. There is sizable religious opposition to the practice, particularly among Conservative (Eastern) Mennonites, many of whom consider powwowing and other esoteric traditions to be the work of Satan.
Accordingly, my fieldwork involved a great deal of detective work, tracing consultants through people who knew other people and so forth. Much of it was sheer luck (walking into the right business establishment or farm and catching the right people in, having people overhear me as I performed documentary research at historical societies and libraries, and so forth). However, I was able to obtain information on at least seven living powwowers in southeastern and south-central Pennsylvania, and have reports that 8 to 12 others also exist in that region. Two of these, a Mrs. May in Lebanon County and Jenine Trayer (aka Silver RavenWolf) are open about their powwow practice. The former advertised her powwow practice on a placard outside her business at least as late as 1999 and the latter, a popular contemporary neo-Pagan writer, has published a mass-marketed primer on powwow (RavenWolf 1997). The others are known to potential clients through word of mouth and do not depend on their powwow practice for their income. The interest in the practice shown by children and grandchildren of active powwowers suggests that the practice will persist in southeastern and central Pennsylvania in some form for at least two more generations.
However, my research was also concerned with exploring other issues, such as whether powwowing is effective as a healing practice and how beliefs are created and sustained. There is not space enough to fully address these questions here. However, I will present some tentative answers, bearing in mind that the study was, by its nature, exploratory and all analyses must await confirmation through the drawing of random samples of the population. These tentative conclusions are based on 98 twentieth century cases collected from the culture area (65 from interviews with consultants, 29 from documentary sources, 4 from participant observation), partial information on powwowing which did not meet the criteria for cases (roughly datable, known ailment, known outcome of treatment, and minimal detail on the treatment), and 42 returned survey questionnaires.
Principal Written Sources of Powwow Cures and Other Spells
Most contemporary powwowers on whom I have collected information memorize the rituals they use, making it difficult to trace specific rituals to specific written sources. The living powwowers I know use a strictly oral means of transmission. Furthermore, many powwowers who practiced earlier in the century used recipes copied into notebooks, ledgers, diaries, and other repositories of personal writing. This is probably still the case, although I have been unable to document it, except in the case of sharing recipes for herbal mixtures and the like.
With this caveat in mind, the following works are considered the principal published sources of powwowing rituals, and most orally-transmitted rituals probably have their origin in them. They are listed in decreasing order of importance.
1. The Bible
The Bible is by far the most common source of powwowing incantations. Many of my consultants cited the use of the Bible by powwowers as evidence that the cures must come from God, rather than the devil, as some critics have alleged. The fact the cure was “taken out of the Bible” has also been used to explain why a powwower should not request payment (Reimensnyder 1982, 49).
Certain verses are considered effective for specific ailments. The most famous is Ezekiel 16.6, which is said to be usable and effective by anyone, not just practicing powwowers. It is also said to be effective over great distances. The verse as it appears in the King James Version is most often mentioned (Reimensnyder 1982, 62):
“And when I passed by thee and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.”
2. The Long Lost Friend [1
The Long Lost Friend, or Der lang verborgene Schatz und Haus Freund, in the original German, was written by John George Hohman in 1819 and first published in 1820 in Reading. It has been reprinted in numerous German editions and twice translated into English, once in Harrisburg (1850) [2 and once in Carlisle (1863), the latter under the more accurately translated title The Long Hidden Friend (Yoder 1976, 236). All subsequent English editions derive from these two independent translations, but the Harrisburg edition is the only one still in print. A bookstore in Lebanon, PA checked with its distributor and informed me that the latest edition of the book was published in 1993 [3.
The Long Lost Friend is a collection of recipes, spells, and procedures, most of them involving some sort of supernatural power. Hohman, an 1802 German immigrant who was himself an occult healer, borrowed heavily from other sources, especially the German charm book Romanusbuchlein, the “Romanus” book.(Yoder 1976). He also borrowed from Albertus Magnus’ Egyptian Secrets and other sources. Other than the Bible, The Long Lost Friend was the most common source of powwowing incantations. Hohman also claimed that the book itself could serve as an amulet of protection for its possessor and in one case (the York Witch Trial) its destruction was supposed to lift a hex placed on another by its owner. While this book was used regularly by powwowers in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, I have uncovered no definite cases in which it was used after the York Witch Trial (1929) in which the book figured so prominently.
3. Albertus Magnus, or Egyptian Secrets
This is one of the main sources for The Long Lost Friend. Its putative compiler is the Swabian Dominican monk Albertus Magnus (A.D. 1200-1280), a saint in the Roman Catholic Church and known as a scientist, philosopher, and theologian. Albertus Magnus was known for bringing ancient Greek philosophical works, particularly those of Aristotle, from the Islamic world into Europe. While the author (individual or corporate) remains unknown, the book does derive from European magical traditions [4.
The 1900 edition of which I have a copy is laid out much like The Long Lost Friend, containing “sympathetic as well as natural” remedies based in “white and black art.” According to Yoder (1978, 242) the first American edition appeared in German in Pennsylvania in 1842, under the title Albertus Magnus bewahrte und approbirte sympathetische und naturliche egyptische Geheimnisse fur Menschen und Vieh, [5 and the first English edition was published at Harrisburg in 1875.
4. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses
The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses [6 is considered a more problematic text than the others and is associated with black magic, because it contains procedures for conjuring spirits. Few powwowers will admit to owning one or using it in their practice, and it is often considered a hex book. One consultant recalls that when she was a little girl (1930s) her neighbor (who was regarded as a witch) had a copy of the book and loaned it to her. When my consultant’s grandmother found out about it, she angrily returned it to the neighbor. Geraldine, a Pennsylvania Dutch woman who is also an amateur historian, has read some of the Albertus Magnus work, but is afraid of this book, and she told me:
I’ve never read the Moses book—frankly, I’m superstitious enough that I will not touch it, and I don’t consider myself superstitious, but I do consider that…that there are powers on this earth that I don’t understand and I’m not going to mess with something that I figure I’m too ignorant to mess with.
http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIV/Powwow.htm