The Pennsylvania Dutch has been part of the
history of the Americans since the 1600s. They largely originated from the
Palatinate region of Germany and that is when people say “ummmmm….Pennsylvania
Dutch?” Exactly. If you want to be correct on the subject, they would be called
Pennsylvania German. The Pennsylvania Dutch are either monolingual English or
bilingual English and the Pennsylvania Dutch language which is a mixture of
various German dialects. If you want to find the old Pennsylvania Dutch people
you must go to Ohio Amish Country or the Southernmost regions of Pennsylvania.
Now that I have set
you up for the story by talking about the language and the people that speak
it, it is now time to talk about the witchcraft that surrounds their culture.
The people known to work their magic in the area are known as Braucherei but
sometimes they are also called hex workers (German Hexe, Dutch heks) hex is
German for “witch or sorcerer”. In English they are called Powwowing. This
occult system is mainly Christian folk magic and is known for treating aliments
of both humans as well as livestock. Of course, the word powwow is borrowed
from the Native Americans from the regions that spoke Narragansett and Massachusetts
languages, the word itself means healer or shaman. It is believed to come from an
ancient dialect of Proto-Algonquian word pawe-wa, meaning ‘he who dreams’. It
is believed that the Pennsylvania Dutch borrowed the word because of the
similarities between the Baraucheri and the Native American shamans. The term
powwow became synonymous with the Baraucheri in the 1700s and was first
published in 1820 in the famous grimoire Der Lange Verborgene Freund, or The
Long Lost Friend by Johann Georg Hohman. Hohman immigrated from Germany in 1802
and was an indentured servant around Reading, Pennsylvania. He was a farmer,
but he was also known as a Baraucheri and also for his work in Fraktur, which
is Pennsylvania German folk art. Fraktur is fascinating, relying on hand
drawing geometric designs in ink and paint to create the most amazing artworks
including Taufschein, or baptismal certificate, or Vorschriften (writing
samples), and also sigils that were drawn on buildings that was later known as
Hex- signs.
The powwow worker
like most of the magical practices uses gestures, body movements or
incantations “spells” along with material objects or substances, such as the
famous Hex bottle or Witch Bottle. Sometimes these old bottles wind up in
somebody’s attic for over a hundred years before they are discovered. Most of
the Braucherei’s witchcraft is what is known as sympathetic magic, something
similar to hoodoo, so it wouldn’t be uncommon for a copy of The Long Lost
Friend to make its way into the magic of the Appalachia and the Ozarks. The
Long Lost Friend was well received when it was published and it had a heck of a
marketing scheme. If you owned it and you carried it on your person, you were
safe from harm and if you put the book inside the walls of your house, the
house was charmed as well. The book became the main authority on powwowing.
The powwow
practitioner was common up until the 1920s. In 1929 there was the York 'Witch
Trial'. In which they tried to eradicate the powwowing by introducing
scientific education into the region. When reporters from New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore went to York, Pennsylvania, they found the citizens
steeped in “superstition”. Local officials demanded the Braucheri take a
backseat to modern progress and after that, the powwow workers began to go
underground. The irony is that about the time of the York ‘Witch Trial, several
murders took place because people felt that they were hexed or cursed by another
and took matters into their own hands.
You can see
powwowing at work in the modern day. All you have to do is go into the small
towns in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. You will see signs that have some sort
of geometric pattern on them. It might be a 12-pointed compass rose, or
something with hearts or perhaps the Tree of Life emblazoned upon it. You will
see them on barns, homes and even businesses. They are known as Hex Signs. For
most, they are merely decorations, reminding them of the culture, and some are
Fraktur. But for others, it is the most common embodiment of powwowing, and they
are said to be “painted prayers”.
I own a copy of The
Long Lost Friend, it is an annotated by an expert on Grimoires by the name of
Daniel Harms. It is an interesting book,
and I love it for its history, culture and insight on the people of the region.
