The Appalachian Granny Magic Tradition, like many of the older ones, was passed on from parents to their children for many generations, and generally was not ‘taught’ outside of the individual family structures.
Because of the rural and secluded nature of the Appalachian community, the old customs, wisdom, and practices were not as often lost, forgotten, or ‘modernized’ as the ‘old world’ traditions that came over to other, more urban areas of the ‘new world.’
Therefore, one will often find that ancient Irish or Scottish songs, rhymes, dances, recipes, crafts, and ‘The Craft,’ are more accurately preserved in Appalachia than even in Ireland or Scotland.
Many of these old Scot/Irish traditions, as well as the Tsalagi traditions, both magical and mundane, were carried on in Appalachia until modern times.
Some songs, spells, and such have been passed down for many years that way, though sadly, sometimes only by rote, with the original meanings beings lost in the shifting sands of time.
In the secluded mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, the Virginias and the Carolinas, this denomination of the ancient religion of Witchcraft continued right on through the decades of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and the early twentieth centuries; a time when Witchcraft elsewhere was being nearly forgotten and abandoned by the increasingly modern and monotheistic world.
The people of the mountains still relied upon Mother Nature in a way, that ‘city folk’ did not anymore.
The fertility of the crops, the livestock, and of the people themselves was as paramount to the Appalachians of 1900 as it was to the early American colonists in the 1600’s.
Therefore, fertility, and the worship of Mother Nature, Jack frost, Father Winter, Chloe, Spider Grandmother, Demeter, and such varied deities continued in the Appalachian region, staying a current part of the people’s faith, rather than becoming a mythic memory as such ‘nature worship’ did elsewhere.
In fact, we still see “Lady Plenty and Lady Liberty” Goddess of the harvest, with cornucopia in hand, and Goddess of freedom, on the official North Carolina State seal.
Amazingly, even the terms “Witch””, “Witchcraft”, “spells”, “charms” and such never became taboo in the modern Appalachian culture.
Nearly every mountain top and ‘holler’ community had their local ‘Witch’ who was openly called such, as a title of honor, not as an insult or a charge of crime, as the term came to be used in other more urban American cultures of the seventeen, eighteen and nineteen hundreds.
