Also called Pennsylvania Dutch powwow charm, Brauche charm for keeping stock, Hohman's salt stone
A farm charm from Johann Georg Hohman's 1820 book: walk your animals three times around a stump or stone with salt so they always come home. Here it is adapted into a home rite for keeping what you have and drawing it back to you.
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Take care: Salt kills plants and harms soil; use it only on stone or paving and clean it up. Do not feed animals salt licks without checking with a vet.
Hohman tells the farmer to take salt to the fields, lead the cattle three times around the same stump or stone in one direction, and let them lick the salt from it, so they will return home. Another remedy has cattle fed from the family's own cooking pot for the same purpose.
Uses: salt, stump or stone
For a just claim in court, write the names of the twelve apostles on large sage leaves and put them in your shoes before entering the courthouse. It shows how Hohman's charms mixed Christian names with plain household plants.
Uses: sage leaves, pen
Hohman's farm prosperity advice is often practical: a feed of bran mixed with rabbit droppings to keep hens laying. Folk magic and husbandry sat side by side in the same book.
Uses: bran
Johann Georg Hohman emigrated from Germany in 1802 and settled near Reading, Pennsylvania. In 1820 he published Der Lange Verborgene Freund, a small book of charms, prayers and remedies for people and animals. He made a rough English translation in 1846, and a smoother one, The Long Lost Friend, followed in 1856. Later reprints were sold as Pow-Wows, the name the practice is still known by.
Powwowing, or Braucherei, was the healing and protective magic of Pennsylvania German Christians, worked with prayer, gestures and simple objects. Hohman's book was carried as an amulet and was still widely owned in the 1920s, when it became notorious during the York hex murder trial of 1929. Daniel Harms published a full annotated edition in 2012, tracing many charms back to older German books.
On the first day of each month, stand outside your front door and blow a pinch of ground cinnamon into the house to invite money and opportunity. This is a modern social-media custom from the early 2020s, loosely echoing older Hoodoo and Caribbean powder-blowing.
When you first see the new moon, turn over the coins in your pocket so money will not run short until the next moon. A widespread British and Irish superstition.
Tell us what you need and we will craft a custom spell, charm or reading for it. Or call to book a reading or a road blessing in person.
