SAMPSON SNAKE ROOT

"You can take the dirt up out of their foot track... put it all together, and then wrap that up, and bury that. Put it in a bottle and stop it up right airtight, and bury that. That'll make you stay." — Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo, Conjuration, Witchcraft, Rootwork, 5 vols. (Hannibal, MO: Western Publishing, 1970–78), entry 5640.

While there is another Sampson's snakeroot (Orbexilum pedunculatum), the Sampson Snake Root commonly used in rootwork and conjure is purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). It rises out of the tallgrass prairies of the central and eastern United States on a stiff, hairy stalk, its ray petals drooping backward from a spined, coppery cone like something bracing for a blow it has already decided to survive. The root beneath is tough, dark, and bitter, and generations of rootworkers have read that toughness as instruction.

Named for a Biblical strongman, Sampson Snake Root is worked for what it is said to confer: strength that holds under pressure, mastery in a courtroom or a hard negotiation, solid footing when someone else means to pull yours out from under you. It is carried in mojo hands and dressed into oils for respect and for keeping a job, tucked into a shoe to steady the walk of someone who needs the room to believe them. Worked toward the body rather than the will of another, it is reached for in matters of virility and of holding a lover close, and laid down as a ward against crossed conditions and the work of enemies. Root doctors have also called on it to make someone stay, bound not by charm but by something closer to gravity, dirt and salt and pepper and snakeroot sealed airtight and put into the ground, so that leaving stops feeling like an option.

This oil pours dark amber-red, thick as clay caught in a boot heel. Cracked coneflower root and black pepper sit low against a base of dug earth and iron filings, with a single thread of clove pulled taut through the center.

Proceeds from this 5ml perfume oil will be donated to Juntos, a “community-led, Latine immigrant organization in South Philadelphia fighting for our human rights as workers, parents, youth, and immigrants.”