Kim Schwenk 2025

PRE-ORDER – VIDEO RECORDINGS WILL BE AVAILABLE w/i 2 weeks from the close of the event!!

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.