Also called putting it on ice, ice spell, freezing spell
A modern folk practice that puts a written problem in water and freezes it, to stop something in its tracks. The safe version freezes your own bad habit or the gossip about you, never a named person.
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Take care: Use plastic, not glass, since glass can crack in the freezer, and label the container so no one eats or drinks from it. Never name, picture or target a real person; freeze your own habit or a situation. If someone is harassing or threatening you, contact the police or a trusted advocate rather than relying on a spell.
The best-known form writes a person's name and freezes it to stop them acting against the writer. It is often called hoodoo, but no early written record of it has been found, and it cannot predate household freezers. This encyclopedia gives only the self-focused version.
Uses: paper, water, freezer
Some practitioners freeze a description of a situation, such as a stalled conflict or a spiralling worry, to put it on hold while they gather strength. It is the gentlest form and the closest to a ritual of self-control.
Uses: paper, water, freezer
Writers often link the freezer spell to ancient defixiones, lead sheets inscribed to bind a rival and dropped into wells or graves. The link is one of idea, not of descent: both fix a written target in a cold, closed place. The ancient tablets aimed at real people and are documented here only as history.
Uses: lead sheet, stylus
The freezer spell is honest folk magic of the modern kitchen. Household refrigerators with freezer compartments only became common in American homes in the middle of the twentieth century, so the spell in its present form cannot be much older than that. It is often labelled hoodoo, the African American tradition of rootwork first mentioned in print in 1849, and it does share hoodoo's habit of working with jars, water and written names. Still, no early hoodoo source describing it has come to light.
What it borrows is very old: the idea of sympathetic magic, where acting on a symbol acts on what it stands for, and the long history of binding magic, from Greek and Roman curse tablets onward. Freezing a habit of your own, or the talk around you, keeps the image of stopping something cold without wishing harm on anyone, and pairs well with practical change.
A sealed bottle of pins, nails and personal traces hidden in a house to trap or turn back harmful magic aimed at the people living there.
A small jar of honey, sugar or syrup holding a written name, worked with candles over days or weeks so that a person or situation turns sweet toward you. In Hoodoo it is used for love and also for bosses, judges and family peace.
A spell that ties up a harmful force so it cannot act. Ancient bindings targeted rivals; the consent-safe modern version binds your own harmful actions or a destructive pattern, never another person.
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