Pow Wow Healing

One of my first recollection with a healer was a pow wow healer by the name of Eddie Quillman, who came and healed my cousin of water on the brain. He said a prayer and gave her a penny and that's all I can remember.

Pow-Wow (also called hex work or Speilwerk) is Pennsylvania Dutch/Pennsylvania German folk healing. It combines Pennsylvania Dutch Germanic/Nordic European healing traditions with religion and Native American traditions. Pow-Wowers use a collection of European magic spells, recipes, and folk remedies with simple rituals to cure health ailments, protect livestock, cast or remove hexes (curses), and invoke blessings.Pow-Wowers are Christians and believe their powers are spiritual gifts from God. Religious sects like the Amish and Mennonites oppose Pow-Wow as a satanic practice.

A Pow-Wower's source of spells comes from these books:

1) The Bible.The most common source of Pow-Wowing incantations.

2) The Long Lost Friend, or Der lang verborgene Schatz und Haus Freund.Written by John George Hohman in 1819 and first published in 1820 in Reading, Pennsylvania.It is a collection of recipes, spells, and procedures.

3) Egyptian Secrets of Albertus Magnus.This is one of the main sources for The Long Lost Friend. Its compiler is the Swabian Dominican monk Albertus Magnus (A.D. 1200-1280), a saint in the Roman Catholic Church and known as a scientist, philosopher, and theologian.

4) The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses.The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses is associated with black magic because it contains procedures for conjuring spirits, it is often considered a hex book.

5) Secrets of Sympathy by William Wilson Beissel.Originally published as a 16-page chapbook in 1938 and republished in 1998 as a section of the book Powwow Power, by William Wilson Beissel's great-nephew James D. Beissel.

I remember once as a kid, when some other children stole Mr. Quillman's Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, both children got hurt in accidents later, one breaking his arm as he fell out of a tree, which made for some good stories about the hexes associated with this book.

Lately I have been thinking about this kind of healing or spell work, since this is were some of my roots come from. So as I delve deeper, I will sometimes share with you on this blog.