FYI: TRIVIUM RESEARCH TIDBITS ON NEW ORLEANS VOODOO, HOODOO and ANGELS

Introduction

In the first part of Trivium: The Lovers, Lena Hebert stumbles over and breaks what Billie identifies as a witch ball or New Orleans Voodoo Hoodoo conjure bottle.  Billie  interprets the bottle as a hybrid warning and malediction--an ill wish delivered to her doorstep to provoke paranoia and anxiety. 

The Spherical Glass Witch Balls Found in Modern Curiosity Shops

Historically, homeowners displayed round witch balls as protective charms to guard against evil spirits. Usually crafted from colored glass and traditionally used as fishing floats, these glass spheres earned their reputation during witch hunts and trials. Suspect witches were often bound and thrown into a local body of water. If the said witch floated, people believed the water found her unworthy of baptism's second chance and confirmed an alliance with the devil.  Because glass fishing floats strung together inside a net bob on the water's surface, people assumed the glass floats possessed apotrophaic* properties, in the same way that the blue eye glass amulets of Greece and the Middle East deflect misfortune by averting the Evil Eye. Consequently, superstitious people  suspended these glass globes from the ceiling of their home, hoping this tradition of apotrophaic magic offered them magical protection from witchcraft.

Many of these blown-glass balls contain the suggestion of a tree growing from within it.  These may well reflect the American South's custom of attaching bottles to the branches of trees to protect the property owner and his land from sterility and black magic.

Many witch bottles found via excavation date back to the 16th and centuries. They were concealed between buildings, beneath thresholds, hearths, and wall and floor spaces. Anti-witch materials like pins, nails, human hair, nail clippings and fabric bits were placed within a bottle semi-filled with urine and sealed with candle wax.  Meant to counteract witch's spells and protect personal property,  farmland and dwellings, witch bottles acted as negative energy neutralizers.

When English colonists immigrated to the New World, they brought their superstitions and witch-repellents with them.

The Witch Ball Found on Fascination's Doorstep

Lena stumbles and breaks a bottle rectangular in shape--similar to the bottle in the illustrative photograph above. Red and Black melted wax once sealed the cork to the bottle's neck. Before its shattering, the bottle contained a malodorous menstruum** of apple cider vinegar. Billie identifies the solid contents as: Dead Sea salt crystals, whole black pepper balls, cayenne flakes, fabric thread and animal hair. Gaspar, the owner of the Botanica in the Warehouse District, declares the bottle benign. The absence of nails and pins along with what he calls "Personal Concerns" (body fluids and debris  like nail clippings or human hair) reduces the bottle's evil intent and renders it more a joke than a serious threat. Like its other contents, the red feather works as a fictive device leading to the identification of the conjurer.

The African American Conjure Bottle
The psychological foreboding  attached to Billie's witch ball corresponds more closely to the fear instilled by the African-American conjure bottle. Conjure bottles are ritual objects used in syncretic*** African-American folk religion (more on this in the upcoming November 2020 article). Although they date back to  the slave era, conjurers still use them today.  They serve to broadcast the conjurer's familiarity with black magic and frighten the receiver by underscoring its target's vulnerability and exposure to someone's more powerful will.

Historians believe African American conjurers adapted the colonist's Old World witch bottles to create their own versions by including powdery concoctions familiar to West African magical concoctions. Otherwise, they filled each bottle with magically-imbued substances like nails, hair,  powdered herbs, dirt, brick dust and other easily-acquired everyday items like knotted strings. Like their European counterparts, they concealed the finished products within walls or buried them underneath passageways so their victims could be targeted for bad luck when they passed over or under the hidden object.  

Those believing themselves to be 'conjured' would hire a hoodooist to reverse the spell. A hoodoo doctor would determine whether the afflictions cited by the victim were caused by magical intervention. Through divination, they would decide the magic spell's form and who cast it. The cure involved eliminating the source of the malevolent magic--usually a conjure bag or bottle found again through divination. Removing all signs of the spell from the victim. Only then could the hoodooist turn the spell back on the person who cast it.****

Conjurers melded the older, perhaps traditional utility of the European witch ball  to better facilitate, legitimize and authenticate their New World magic in the mind's of their clients. Or… perhaps, combining the two instruments of magic produced  effective results when combating both European and African American antagonists--an example of fighting fire with fire.

Unfamiliar Vocabulary:

*Apotrophaic: intended to ward off evil
**Menstruum: a solvent
***Syncretic: the union of different or opposing principles and practices in religion.

Much of the information from this article comes from the book, Conjure in African American Society by Jeffrey E. Anderson, University of Monroe, Louisiana and Insar Haq's research paper entitled: The Creation of Conjure Bottles: A Study of African American Culture through Ritual Magic.

If you want to learn more, check out the following articles: 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/25/us/witch-bottle-virginia-civil-war-trnd/index.html https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/sorcery-display-witch-bottles https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/witch-bottle-full-teeth-pins-and-possibly-urine-discovered-chimney-180973448/ https://www.cunning-folk.com/craft-posts/the-witch-bottle-curse-cure-gift https://daily.jstor.org/is-there-a-witch-bottle-in-your-house/