Most amazing WV film becomes a book - Signs, Cures and Witchery
Signs, Cures, and Witchery- the book
from the official website for the book - German Appalachian Folklore
By Milnes, Gerald C. The persecution of Old World German Protestants and Anabaptists in the seventeenth century-following debilitating wars, the Reformation, and the Inquisition-brought about significant immigration to America. Many of the immigrants, and their progeny, settled in the Appalachian frontier. Here they established a particularly old set of religious beliefs and traditions based on a strong sense of folk spirituality. They practiced astrology, numerology, and other aspects of esoteric thinking and left a legacy that may still be found in Appalachian folklore today.Based in part on the author’s extensive collection of oral histories from the remote highlands of West Virginia, Signs, Cures, and Witchery: German Appalachian Folklore
describes these various occult practices, symbols, and beliefs; how they evolved within
New World religious contexts; how they arrived on the Appalachian frontier; and the prospects of those beliefs continuing in the contemporary world. By concentrating on these inheritances, Gerald C. Milnes draws a larger picture of the German influence on Appalachia. Much has been written about the Anglo-Celtic, Scots-Irish, and English folkways of the Appalachian people, but few studies have addressed their German cultural attributes and sensibilities. Signs, Cures, and Witchery sheds startling light on folk influences from Germany, making it a volume of tremendous value to Appalachian scholars, folklorists, and readers with an interest in Appalachian folklife and German American studies.Gerald C. Milnes is the folk arts coordinator of the Augusta Heritage Center at Davis and Elkins College. He is the editor of Granny Will Your Dog Bite and Other Mountain Rhymes and author of Play a Fiddle: Traditional Music, Dance, and Folklore in West Virginia.
The above is from the website for the book verson of Gerald Milnes amazing film about German hex magic in the highlands of West Virginia. I have been showing it to anyone I could including my just-turned 98 year old German-American cousin Harley Schneider in New Ulm, Minnesota. Hex magic tells people that they have to walk back in the door of a building they exited; you can steal milk from a neighbor’s cow; and one person in the film version claims to have run into the Devil himself on a road in broad daylight. It definitely is a film you will never forget. I am so pleased that Milnes made a book version so that long after DVDs turn into dust, the book will be there to tell the world about the amazing world he has documented.
I have shown the film to the producers of a worldwide TV show about unusual events - and they hoped to use some of it in the series. Just like “Dancing Outlaw” the first time I saw it, I had to watch it a second time. Buy the video - and the book - and start your own exploration into German-American culture in West Virginia.
