I have always loved cemeteries, instead of fearing them, I had a healthy respect for them and the dead. When I was a child I used to play in the Tahltan Cemetery and I had to walk through it every day on my home from school as the school itself was built on top of the oldest part of the Native burial ground. I was only ever afraid of it at night. The little white house in the image below is a warrior’s grave – on the other side is a carved spirit mask. The children used to have a legend that if you put your hand in the mask’s mouth, it would bite it off, and that if you looked under the house into the grave, the spirit of the warrior would come to you at night in your room… Children are so morbid!
Graveyard dirt is used for many varying purposes in folk magic and hoodoo – not all are negative purposes as many may think. Graveyard dirt can be used in workings for love, protection, laying tricks on enemies, or communing with the ancestors, the beloved dead. The use of the dirt depends on where it was collected from, i.e. dirt collected from over the heart had different magical properties than the dirt over the head, feet or hands.
It is very important when collecting graveyard dirt to leave offerings for the spirits of the cemetery, talk to them and ask their permission before collecting. It is very rude to walk into a grave yard and “steal” dirt without the permission of the spirits of the dead, hence why the practice is called “buying graveyard dirt”. The most common offerings left are three pennies and some whiskey or rum. Other acceptable offerings include foodstuffs, flowers, and other alcohol libations. For the dirt I collected last week from a local graveyard, I left behind nine pennies and a mickey of rum and stopped to talk to some of the spirits and leave them blessings. As the proverb says: The dead have few friends, be one of them.”
Once I got home, I spread the dirt out on a thick plastic bag and left it on my porch to dry out in the sun. Once it was completely dry I brought it inside to the kitchen floor and went at the dirt with my rolling pin, crushing all the clusters of dirt into powder. Once I had a nice powdery consistency, I sifted the dirts to sort out all the roots, sticks, rocks and any bugs (make sure you leave the worms at the graveyard!). When the dirt was sifted to my satisfaction, I then funneled it into glass jars for storage and clearly labelled them. If you are a hoodoo, vodou, or other folk magic practitioner, you will probably have soils from all different places on hand, so labelling is important — you don’t want to mix up your graveyard soil with dirt from a bank or courthouse!
