Moving to Appalachia. I hear "Granny Magic" has been passed down thru the generations. Can anybody explain?

Question

What exactly is Granny Magic? Was it brought over from the Old Country, IE: Scotland, Ireland?
I know it sounds funny, but it is a serious question.
Thanks.

Answer 1

the people of Scotland and Ireland that settled in the mountains brought their folk magic and passed it down from generation to generation. the wise woman (Granny) teaches a younger woman how to heal and make simple spells and charms.

Answer 2

This is also Called Kitchen witching. It's making herbal tea, checking out the phases of the moon - etc. You will also hear tell of "Calling Signs" which is predicting the weather by natural events. The most famous of these is the Wooly Worm, where the bands are read to predict the severity of the coming winter. Also, Leaves will turn over and flies will bite just before a rain and the old adage "Red Sky at morning, Farmer take warning, Red Sky at night, Farmer's delight" Or substitue sailor if near the ocean. Also, the use of the Farmer's almanac. I was always told, Don't plant potatoes by the full moon, if you do you get all leaf, no potato.

Answer 3

Appalachian Granny Magic

Answer 4

Herbalism mostly with a little sympathetic magic and possibly some fortune telling. At one point "granny" (or its equivalent) was an honorary title synonymous with "witch" without the malevolent connotations. That many practitioners are/were elderly is a coincidence. (how much time does the mother of young children have free?) Sometimes they were spinsters. You have the ethnic background right (add English and welsh) in so far as all these groups have strong traditions of "wise women". The old teach the young and remember the traditional wisdom. Good luck!

Answer 5

Germanic hexcraft (Pow-Wow) is mainly in the Pennsylvania Dutch area. It's a mix of old German folk magic and Native American shamanism and herb magic. Hex signs on barns, that sorta thing.

Not exactly granny magic. I suppose grannies could do Pow-Wow, but that's not what the term describes.

Granny magic is folk magic based mainly on Scots Irish and English folk magic (not many Irish people moved to Appalachia until the Potato Famine era.) Maybe a little Native American stuff mixed in, though a lot of people in Middle Appalachia were wary of native people and didn't truck with them much. Of course, there was some intermarriage, but I don't think the native spirituality played much of a role in granny magic.

Basically, it's using folk remedies (herbs, sympathetic magic, moon phases) to help everyday problems. It's light on ceremony and ritual and heavy on folklore, omens, superstitions, and "fairy tales" (folktales designed to entertain while imparting deeper esoteric wisdom.)

Parts of Appalachia are pretty similar to Britain, but granny magic would have to account for the fact that settlers were isolated and unable to have access to their usual herbs and magical products and their traditional centers of spiritual power (like standing stones, fairy mounds, tombs, that sort of thing.) So it's old-world magic updated for a new location.

Grannies, with their time spent on repetitious tasks, like spinning, quilting, knitting, cooking, cleaning, that sorta thing, would be able to work magic into their arts and crafts and also to chat while they worked. Grannies aren't as tied down as mothers are with fresh children--grandchildren who have homes of their own aren't nearly as much trouble. Also, grannies have the security of years of experience and have often tossed aside the concerns of youth like dating, primping, politics, and keeping up appearances.

Crones have special power.

So grannies were the repository of a lot of folk magic. Though life has sped up and changed a lot around here, granny magic exists to some extent. The more recent bans on superstition (led mainly by the US government after WWII) have really killed off a lot of granny magic, or at least driven it underground. Folklore naturally changes with the times, but it has been attacked in an unnatural way by misguided attempts at "progress."

Granny magic should be protected and catalogued, because in all the flatlander rejection of "backwoods curiosities", a lot of important wisdom is being lost. Maybe if times change a little and people go looking for traditional knowledge, it will be treasured again if we can manage to preserve some of it.

Answer 6

No. My mum had to pass out to paintings whilst my dad and mom cut up up so I learnt to prepare dinner myself from the age of 8. There weren't the advantages lower back in the early 70s that there at the instant are.

Answer 7

A series of books called 'Foxfire" deals with Appalachian
folklore and life. Old time crafts PowWow magic, ginseng etc.
I think they're still being published.

Answer 8

Probably (in Appalachia) has something to do with Germanic hexcraft.

Answer 9

witchcraft.......seriously.