Pow-wow (folk magic)

Pow-wow, called Braucherei in Deitsch, is a system of American folk religion and magic associated with the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Its name comes from the book Pow-wows, or, The Long Lost Friend, written by John George Hohman and first published in German as Der Lange Verborgene Freund in 1820. Despite the appropriation of "pow-wow", taken from an Algonquian word for a gathering of medicine men, the collection is actually a collection of European magic spells, recipes, and folk remedies of a type familiar to students of folklore. The formulas mix Christian prayers, magic words, and simple rituals to cure simple domestic ailments and rural troubles.

Early Pennsylvania was a melting pot of various religious persuasions, as William Penn's promise of religious freedom opened the doors for many Christian sects: the Anabaptists, Quakers, Lutherans, German Reformed, Catholics, and all manner of religious mystics and free-thinkers. It is from this blending that the Pennsylvania German Pow-wow tradition was born.

The tradition is also called braucherei or Speilwerk in Pennsylvania Dutch; its adepts are sometimes referred to as hexenmeisters or braucher, though this is not common for all practitioners. The tradition of Hex signs painted on Pennsylvania barns in some areas is believed by some to relate to this tradition; the symbols were pentagrams, thought to have talismanic properties, though many current hex signs are made simply for decoration. Many scholars disagree with this claim, however, and generally the hex signs are believed to be the natural progression of German fraktur art.

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