Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/269

 sleeping in the woods if possible, and eating little or nothing. During this time he must give his mind to a consideration of the power and strangeness of the new life upon which he is about to enter. He must sleep as much as he can, and pay great attention to his dreams. Dreams that come at this time are all fraught with meaning and prophecy. Some object he will dream of he will at once feel is his peculiar fetich or medicine. When the nine days are over he must present himself to the conjurer who is to be his teacher."

Alexander expressly states that a man's teacher should be a woman, and a woman's should be a man. His instructor was a man, but one night he dressed in woman's garb, and the next his master assumed the undivided raiment. Then begins the preparation for full membership in what Alexander, Arthur McManus, John Palmer, Aunt Stacie, Aunt Dorcas, and others call "The Circle" This preparation consists in learning the "Luck numbers" (not lucky numbers), a simple feat, "for seven is a lucky number to cunjer or hoodoo by, but nine is better; three is a good number, but five is better." Four times four is the Great Number. Neither the devil nor his still greater wife can refuse to assist in the working of a charm with that number "quoted in". "Sometimes devils are contrary, just like folks", Alexander explains, "but they can't help giving in to four times four times four." Ten is the unlucky number. At the first lesson the student receives a secret name by which he must call himself when he is working spells. Alexander's name is Eminaw.

The second initiation—the one I received from Aunt Dorcas, a little, lame, poverty-stricken old black woman, whose ability to "fetch luck" evidently did not extend to herself—was as follows:

"Go at midnight to a fallow fields go bare-footed, bare-headed, walking backward, and not looking on the ground. Stoop down in the field, reach your hand behind you, and pull up a weed by the roots. Run home, fling the weed under your bed, and leave it there until sunrise. At sunrise strip off its leaves, make them into a little packet, and wear it under your right arm for nine days. At the close of the ninth day, take the packet, separate the leaves and scatter them to the four winds of heaven, throwing them, a few at a time, over your right shoulder as you turn round