Kim Schwenk

Kim Schwenk

Lecture & Workshop Host

LECTURE: The Earth is my Shoes, and Heaven is my Hat: Plant Magic of the Pennsylvania Dutch
Pennsylvania Deutsch (Dutch) Germans left the Old World in the 17th and 18th centuries to settle in the wilds of Appalachia bringing with their cunning sensibility and verdant faith. As mostly farmers, the immigrant community listened and cultivated the land, preserving the domestic and household tradition of folk healing and commoner ritual. Although fundamentally religious, the belief system and dirt lore of the braucherei (healing) and hexerei (witchcraft) of the PA Dutch skirted folkish phenomena with patent medicine remedies. Essentially, the plant lore informs practical applications of sympathetic magic using simplified material medica. Plants used for hexing, can also heal; the cup is a bell when struck; the spoon a wand when striking the cup. This presentation carefully considers the mostly oral traditions and family based practices of the Braucherei with cosmological reverence in specific numerology: Seven, the sacred number of heaven; seven, the points of a hex sign, and seven plants for seven days of the week. Each of the seven plants discussed is represented in PA Dutch language, formula and recipe, as if baked into the bread of a harvest’s offering. All plants are region specific and remain integral for current folk magical practices.

WORKSHOP: Zauber und Hexenhaus: Household Charms
3 HOUR INTENSIVE– space is limited to 20 participants

Magical objects in Appalachian folk magic are everyday objects: spoons, fabric, bottles, nails, butter dishes, horseshoes and strings found at home. They are the building blocks of home and household.  For security and protection of the home is critical. Many utility objects become the same objects recruited for magical uses, like a nail in wood, a red string over a fire, or a folded piece of wool sewn into a shirt.  This workshop focuses on creating a potent charm to protect your surroundings, as well as, ‘hex’ unwanted sources. Integrating plants from the camp landscape and a few home and personal objects, the participants will construct a physical charm seeming both decorative and decisive. The next segment of the workshop is immersive and stimulates the objects. All participants have a role in the ritual, either with sound, body, or speech. Participants will engage in a traditional PA Dutch braucherei ritual working under the direction of the braucher. Materials provided and collected on-site.

$65 workshop add on fee
$10 materials fee
*Materials fee paid to Kim at time of workshop

BIO:Kim Schwenk, is an occult scholar, rare book librarian, and an antiquarian bookseller with Lux Mentis, Booksellers. She has a subject specialization in North American, Latin American, and European witchcraft history, early printed occult texts, demonaltry, and cunning folk magic using plants and objects. She is an herbalist with Of Oak and Ash Apothecary, studying bioregional flora of the Pennsylvania Dutch and their magical uses. She is currently teaming with an artist in Norway, Katz Plunkett, to create an indie “oracle” deck, titled “Daemonium hortus…”

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