At last, I know that my family were not the only weirdos in the Appalachians. Just joking! The lore of bottle trees have been a part of my family tradition for generations, and it’s become Folk Art up here in the mountains of North Carolina. I’ve known Christian families who do this, as well, though I imagine its more for aesthetic reasons than spiritual ones. When I was young whenever my family had a problem we would add bottles to a tree and project those problems into the bottles so that the spirits that brought the misfortune might be trapped within the bottles. It was more of a tradition than actual spell-work, but as a kid I thought it a load of fun anyway.
Dave Tabler posted a most interesting summation of bottle tree traditions and history on the Appalachian History web site. I thought it might be interesting to readers of PaganCentric. Excerpts follow.
Are your premises safe against haints, furies and other such ornery spirits? Have you painted your front door blue? Has the neighborhood seen a sudden upsurge of bottles dangling upside down in the trees?
She knew that there could be a spell put in trees, and she was familiar from the time she was born with the way bottle trees kept evil spirits from coming into the house — by luring them inside the colored bottles, where they cannot get out again.
~ Livvie, by Eudora Welty
Glass “bottle trees” originated in ninth century Kongo during a period when superstitious Central African people believed that a genii or imp could be captured in a bottle. Legend had it that empty glass bottles placed outside, but near, the home could capture roving (usually evil) spirits at night, and the spirit would be destroyed the next day in the sunshine. One could then cork the bottles and throw them into the river to wash away the evil spirits.
Furthermore, the Kongo tree altar is a tradition of honoring deceased relatives with graveside memorials. The family will surround the grave with plates attached to sticks or trees. The plates are thought to resemble mushrooms, calling on a Kongo pun: matondo/tondo [the Kongo word for mushroom is similar to their word to love].
And so, trees and bottles eventually came together.
This practice was taken to Europe and North America by African slaves. Thomas Atwood, in History of the Island of Domi (1791), made particular note of the bottle tree as a protection of the home through an invocation of the dead. Atwood writes of the confidence of the blacks “in the power of the dead, of the sun and the moon—nay, even of sticks, stones and earth from graves hung in bottles in their gardens.”
While Europeans adapted the bottle tree idea into hollow glass spheres known as “witch balls,” the practice of hanging bottles in trees became widespread in the plantation regions of Southern states and from there migrated north and inland into Appalachia.
Traditionally the bottles are placed on the branches of a crepe myrtle tree. The image of the myrtle tree recurs in the Old Testament, aligned with the Hebrews’ escape from slavery, their diaspora and the promise of the redemption of their homeland.
Bottle tree colors can range from blue, to clear, to brown, but cobalt blue are always preferred: in the Hoodoo folk-magic tradition, the elemental blues of water and sky place the bottle tree at a crossroads between heaven and earth, and therefore between the living and the dead. The bottle tree interacts with the unknown powers of both creative and destructive spirits.
The bottles are placed upside down with the neck facing the trunk. Trees need not be thickly populated with bottles. Malevolent spirits, on the prowl during the night, enter the bottles where they become trapped by an “encircling charm”. It is said that when the wind blows past the tree, you can hear the moans of the ensnared spirits whistling on the breeze. Come morning they are burnt up by the rising sun.
Today, the bottle tree has entered the realm of folk art. Companies now market bottle tree armatures meant to serve, once clothed with milk, wine, or milk of magnesia bottles, as colorful garden ornaments. The poor man’s stained glass window, you might say.
Sources:
- www.cullmantimes.com/features/local_story_171000245.html
- www.lovelycitizen.com/story/1257420.html
- Tradition and Innovation in African-American Yards, by Grey Gundaker, African Arts, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Apr., 1993), pp. 58-96
- Alabama, One Big Front Porch, by Kathryn Tucker Windham, NewSouth Books, 2007
This is so interesting. I had no idea there was any history to a bottle tree. I thought it merely a trend in yard art. Thanks for the story!
My mother and I did this when I was a little girl, but it was never a part of our tradition or spell-work. It felt about as deep as dressing up for Halloween, and we never put much more stock in it than that. But Mother always told me that it was part of an old tradition. I really had no idea of the history of a bottle tree until I stumbled across this article, but I’ve seen them my whole life around in the North Carolina mountains where I grew up.
More of a tradition than actual spellwork……id call that proof of old lineage..,,…your ancester assumed youd know without bein told….
Thank you for this article. I’m a medium and my bff’s grandmother, an old NC wise woman, cane through and told me to tell her to do “the thing with the bottle and the tree.” And I honestly had no clue what this was until now. Thank you
I have 4 different metal trees. Got them because they looked neat. Will be getting more blue bottles. Will buy a six pack beer that come in cobalt blue bottles but will use the beer in the BBQ sauce I make and put the bottles on the tree but maybe I will get another tree this summer at the craft fair in June. Thanks for the story.