Category: st. michael

questions from readers

A reader asks: How can there be such a thing as a relic of St. Michael the Archangel? 

A: Ooh, this is a great question.  The Catholic Church currently recognizes different kinds of relics, and you’ll most often see a "class" system in operation, in English-speaking countries.  First class relics are bones or other bits of the body of the saint; Second class relics are things the saint used in life, like a book or article of clothing; Third class relics are bits of cloth that were touched to a first or second class relic.  According to this scheme, there really can’t be any relics of St. Michael.  But you’ll see them, and what you’re usually seeing are bits of cloth that were touched to a rock or other bit of geography associated with an appearance or apparition of St. Michael.

Now, that’s not to say that there haven’t been people who claimed to have a feather from the wing of St. Michael, or some such.  People have claimed to have all kinds of things.  In fact, competing claims to possession of Jesus’ foreskin have so incensed Rome that the Vatican threatened to excommunicate anybody who kept arguing about it. [1] If each parish priest in medieval Europe were to be believed, there were dozens of holy foreskins floating about.  The Church has maintained a hands-off practice when it comes to relics and apparitions, generally only stepping forward to recognize or condemn them when popular pressure became such that the Church simply had to take a stand.  Generally, though, the Church leaves such matters in the hands of local authorities, and allows devotional practices associated with them as long as they’re not heretical.

Often you’ll see a relic labeled "ex indumentis," and these are usually relic cases with a bit of cloth attached or inside. These are most often "brandea," which are  "third class" relics, bits of cloth touched to 1st or 2nd class relics.  This is a little misleading, as "ex indumentis" actually means "from the cloth," and would imply a second class relic.  These "ex indumentis" relics are usually third class relics, and if you have a relic of St. Michael, it’s technically none of the above, as Michael was never a living human being.  (FWIW, if you find a relic "ex praecordia" of St. Michael, please let me know, because I would like very much to have one, despite the fact that it cannot possibly be legitimate.)

But these lines are not hard and fast, despite what some folks would insist.  Popular practice and faith have always blurred the neat lines that some authorities would like to have arranged around such categories.   And it appears that in some cases, God is just fine with that. For instance, as Caesar of Heisterbach recounts, a 12th century knight unwittingly purchased a fake relic (a bridle of St. Thomas a Becket’s horse), but God stepped in to reward his faith nonetheless. Caesar writes,

  • God truly, to whom nothing is impossible, wishing to reward the faith of the knight and for the honor of his martyr, deigned to work many miracles through the same bridle.  The knight seeing this founded a church in honor of the martyr and in it he placed as a relic the bridle of that most wicked priest [ie, the priest that sold the fake relic]. [2]

The moral of the Caesar of Heisterbach’s story seems to be that God is a little more concerned with faith, devotion, and an attempt at honest piety than he is with relic categorization or even provenance.  If a relic of St. Michael helps you in your devotion to St. Michael, then more power to you.

[1] Silverman, Eric.  From Abraham to America: A History of Jewish Circumcision.  Devon, UK: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
[2] "Dist. VIII."  Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History.  Philadelphia, University of Penn. Press, 1897.

***

Q: For a mojo bag, do you put the herbs in the bag all together, or do you put them in in separate packets?  Where do you store your mojo bag when not carrying it? **

A: I have never in all my years seen a mojo bag called such when it contained separate little bundles of herbs wrapped in plastic.  Put your herbs in there and let them mingle.  An exception to this would be something like my Rattlesnake mojo bags, in which the whole rattle is put inside a small plastic or metal container so that it doesn’t get crushed from regular handling.  I imagine that separate combination-amulets could be added as a single ingredient, even if they themselves contain multiple "things."  For instance, if you put a fixed nutmeg in a mojo bag, it would probably count as a single ingredient even if the nut itself contained several ingredients in its hollowed-out center.  And if you added a small paket wanga to a mojo bag, then you would have some ingredients "contained" separately from the others.  But if you’re adding an herb or powder to a mojo bag, you’d generally just add it. 

Where to keep it depends on what it is.  For love/lust work, I recommend the bedroom area – under your pillow could be a good choice, if you don’t have a love altar going (in which case I would probably keep mine on my love altar).  For my own protection mojo, I keep it in my purse.  People who don’t carry purses will doubtless be nonplussed at this tidbit; in that case, you might consider keeping it with your keys, so you always remember to take it with you when you go out.  For money/business success type stuff, I would keep it in my office or shop if I ran my own business.  I might keep it in my car if I were a traveling salesperson.  I have about a billionty altars, and am often building new, short-term ones for very specific client work, so I usually keep mine on or under the applicable altar when I’m not carrying it.  But one of my protection mojos has some very unique items, and it would be irreplaceable if something happened to it; I keep that one under my pillow when I’m not carrying it.  I wouldn’t risk leaving it lying anywhere where some visitor or a friend of my daughter’s might casually pick it up and go, "What’s This?"

** See, S.?  I love ya.  Sorry if I snapped at you, and sorry if it took me so long to answer this.  I have a very bad habit of going "Where the fuck did you hear that shit?!" sometimes, when people bring up questions that strike me as being odd, and I should be better about walking a mile in somebody’s shoes than I am, and realize that when somebody is first getting into this stuff, it can be hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.  Mea culpa.

new stuff

I have just upgraded to a paid account, so expect more pictures, as they’ll be easier for me to post now.

School is about to slam me hard, so don’t feel shy if I promised you something and you’re wondering where it is.  If I don’t get to it soon, it may be months before I can finish it (and keep in mind I have prior commitments to reading clients, the few client cases I have taken on altar work for, and custom pieces I have in the queue).  Similarly, keep in mind that some stuff just takes longer to make than other stuff, and sometimes it takes longer to *start* just because I have to "get the picture" before I know what to do, if that makes any sense.  Sometimes I have to hunt down just the right piece or component, and that  has meant that some more complicated pieces have taken me *months.*  In one case I can think of, I started a custom cosmetic box probably about two years ago, now, have pulled it out and done one or two things to it every few months, but have not found the "thing" to tie the whole thing together yet.  I feel bad, but I can’t rush myself on this stuff or else nobody is happy with it, and this is why I don’t take deposits on custom work – I won’t work according to anybody else’s timeline if it means I have to ship something I am not happy with.

Tau Thomas, I finished a Lazarus medal, and you have first dibs if you like it.  If not, no worries, you won’t hurt my feelings.  Whee, why don’t I use my new paid account to post some pictures *right now*?! 

Here’s Lazarus (these medals are notoriously difficult to photograph, sorry for the quality):
Continue reading “new stuff” →

a set of reader questions

A reader asks for ways to get rid of enemies, aside from the trusty old hotfoot formulas (of which there are more than you can shake a stick at). 

Some folks say that you should say the 48th Psalm every Monday facing sunrise, adding these words: "In de Name of de Father, Son an’ Holy Ghost, my enemies dat workin’ against me, seekin’ after my soul, shall come down." If you want these enemies to stay far away, mention that in the heartfelt prayer you say before the closing bit. 

Now St. Michael the Archangel is probably my favorite for protection work, but I know not everybody is into saints and angels.  But if you are in trouble, St. Michael is a good one to have on your side, so don’t dismiss him outright – give him a chance!  If enemies are bothering you in your neighborhood or place of work, hang a flannel packet full of Guinea Grains, with a holy card or medal of St. Michael attached, over your doors.  If they are at a distance, write their names and place the paper under the foot of his statue, or just light a novena candle to him and pray for protection.  Nahnee, the Boss of Algiers, one of my favorite old-school Hyatt informants, said you should write your enemy’s name on the back of St. Michael’s picture, turn the picture so it’s facing the wall, and set a red light while praying for St. Michael to take charge.

Another Hyatt informant from the same neighborhood says you should get a little sword and dress it with oil of clove and oil of cinammon and keep it in your pocket.  Hold onto when you speak to your enemy, and speak sternly and with self confidence.  You should have a red light set at home when you do this, too, ideally.

There are some container spells that don’t always involve typical hotfoot ingredients in which the enemy is basically bottled up (or coconuted up, or mirror-boxed up) and thrown onto railroad tracks or in a moving river to get them away from you.  A lot of them do involve hotfooting ingredients; there’s a definite crossover.  Some involve "drive ’em crazy" type of ingredients too.  I have seen lemons used for something similar, lemons and coconuts, which are filled with restlessness-inducing ingredients and sent away from the worker or petitioner.

St. Michael and St. George from Hyatt

(St. Michael?)

Yeah, that’s correctly. Well, yeah, there’s a Saint Michael, see. That’s a saint that is coming from something like heaven with two swords in his hands. See, there’s St. George, he’s coming with two swords on his horse. All right. St. Michael – you use a red candle to St. Michael. Do you get the idea about that? All right. And St. George, you uses a blue candle to St. George. Get the idea about it? And you use that blue candle for nine days – as one candle burn out, you light another one – for nine days, continue on nine days. And those candles do most anything that you want them to do.

(You just light the candles and make the wish to them?)

Make a evil wish to do that. Tell him what to do and mean it – with a evil ‘vironment, and then after that, you cuss it. You get the idea about that?

[New Orleans, LA; Informant # 840 – Dr. Caffrey; Cylinders A447:8-454:1 =1263-1270.]

Dedication of St. Michael the Archangel, September 29

Still playing catch-up with the Saints Days.

This day is the anniversary of the dedication of the Basilica of St. Michael and the Catholic Church would honor him and all the angels who were faithful to God. It’s called the Feast of St. Michael these days and used to be called Michaelmas.

Introit: Ps. 102, 20. Bless the Lord all ye His angels: you who are mighty in strength, and execute His Word, hearkening to the voice of His orders. (etc)

Now, St. Michael is a badass in folk Catholicism and in hoodoo. St. Michael’s name was the name other angels traded on. Gabriel credits Michael with being the Prince of Angels in the Book of Daniel (though theologians have never come to a consensus on just where Michael ranks in all those disputed hierarchies).

In contemporary iconography, you usually see St. Michael slaying Satan in the guise of dragon. He mostly has his Badass status back (for a while there, a few hundred years ago, he was mostly called on as a healer rather than a warrior). So these days, among the more Catholic-influenced strains of hoodoo (like around New Orleans), you’ll see his image above doors.

Here’s a hymn I copied from somewhere on the back of an envelope and failed to note the source (sorry):

Commander of the armies of God and minister of divine glory, Prince of the bodiless angels and guide of men: Ask what is good for us and for great mercy, O Supreme commander of the bodiless hosts.

And here’s Pope Leo XIII’s prayer to him:


Saint Michael, Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

St. Michael

A few brief notes on St. Michael.

I have been working on a hoodoo  “home protection system” involving certain key ingredients sewn into a red flannel bag adorned with a holy card of St. Michael. They don’t look very good yet (I’m not much of a seamstress), but I like the *idea* and will eventually figure something out.  If I weren’t too lazy to do embroidery, the cards would look wonderful with satin stitch detailing over some of the clothing and maybe the sword…

I found a reference to a 40s era tidbit of folklore on St. Michael that involves a hotfooting type action; this is a reminder to myself to dig it up and post it.

Also, you might have to be registered here to view this article, but there’s a bit at Fortean Times about a mosaic from Palmyra that archaeologists speculate may have inspired the St. George legend. The mosaic shows Bellerophon killing a chimera.