THE BLACK CAT BONE SPELL

Zora Neale Hurston, who studied hoodoo in Florida and Louisiana in the 1930s, and Harry Middleton Hyatt, who collected over 13,000 individual spells from 1600 informants throughout the South in the same time period, reported at length on the many root doctors who claimed that every black cat has within its body one bone that will either grant the owner invisibility or can be used to bring back a lost lover. To secure this bone, a black cat must be thrown alive into a cauldron of boiling water at midnight. The animal dies in agony, and the heartless practitioner boils the carcass until the meat falls off the bones. Some say that the special bone will be the top one left when the water boils away, others say it can only be found by placing each bone in turn beneath the tongue while an assistant stands by to notify the practitioner that he has become invisible, and still others swear that if all the bones are thrown into a stream that runs north (uncommon in most of North America), the desired bone will be one that floats on the water and heads south.