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astrology to change the course of events, or to predict them”. 43
From Fischer’s perspective, Appalachian folk magic constitutes
nothing more than “a simple set of homespun superstitions,
designed for use by small groups of unlettered people.” 44 He went
on:
The magic of the backcountry was remarkably secular in its
nature and purposes. It retained vestigial beliefs in the Devil,
witches, stars and planets. But mainly it sought to control
worldly events by the manipulation of worldly things.
Backcountry magic was highly materialistic, experimental
and empirical in its nature. Its ancient rituals and homespun
remedies were mainly a device by which these people struggled
to understand and control their lives in the midst of many
uncertainties of their world. 45
As Fischer explains it, the people of Appalachia simply had
no better system of understanding and coping with the secular
uncertainties that surrounded them.
Butler (1990) proposes that the origins and development of
folk magic in Appalachia can be traced to the folklorization of
magic and the development of popular religion in early American
society. Butler cites numerous reasons such as intellectual change,
increasing Christian opposition and government coercion, which
contributed to the suppression of occult and magical practices
among the social elites and contained it within the poorer segments
of society. In time, these practices became part of what Butler
calls “popular religion.” According to Butler:
The term popular religion in this context means no less and
no more than the religious behavior of the laypeople. It is
defined by its clientele rather than by its theology, by its actors
rather than by their acts. In the period I am discussing, popular
religion was not necessarily anticlerical or anti-institutional,
nor was it necessarily rooted in occult or quasi-pagan folk
customs. Popular religion was what the laity made it. In
some historical instances it emerged as anti-institutional, anti-
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