SILVER DIMES

(MERCURY DIMES)

In folk magic, images of money are often used in spells to draw more money or a "lucky" coin is carried to attract finanacial good fortune. The near-universal use of this symbolism one includes the money bag charm, found in cultures as diverse as China, Europe, and the United States. Silver coins have been popular in European magic rituals from Medieval times onward. Encased coins, rolled coins, and specially-made good luck tokens are carried as lucky pocket pieces in many parts of the world, but in the United States, when it comes to standard-issue money, tradition dictates that the luckiest greenback is the rare $2.00 bill, and the luckiest coin is the silver dime. The little "LUCKY Dime Register Bank" shown here is only 2 1/2 inches square and about half an inch high, but it counts your dimes as you drop them in, all the way up to $5.00. It probably dates from the 1930s.

European charms utilizing silver coins sometimes call for filing a mark such as an "X" on the coin or bending it. Such transformations personalize the coin and make it a lucky token.

In Germany, from Medieval times to the present, it has been said that engraving the SATOR square on a silver plate or a silver coin is usful in putting out fires. One simply throws the coin or plate on the fire and the fire goes out. The SATOR square is a block letters that reads the same up, down, back, and forth. It looks like this:

                S  A  T  O  R
                A  R  E  P  O
                T  E  N  E  T
                O  P  E  R  A
                R  O  T  A  S

For another example of how the ancient Roman SATOR square is used in German folk-magic, see the page on John George Hohman's "Pow-Wows or The Long Lost Friend".

The African-American hoodoo tradition employs both dimes and two dollar bills in numerous money-drawing spells, mojo bags, and gambling "hands". The coins may be combined with a John the Conqueror root, a lodestone, sugar, or other ingredients.

According to some folks, a silver "Mercury" dime with a leap-year date (e.g. 1940) is especially propitious. These Mercury dimes do not really depict the Roman god Mercury, according to coin collector John Montierth (jmmontierth@ucdavis.edu) but "even though the coin in question was officially designed as Winged Liberty, everyone looks at it and thinks Mercury." Skip Floyd (SkipFloyd@worldnet.att.net), another coin collector, adds this information: "On March 3, 1916, the U. S. Treasury adopted the Winged Cap design of Adolph A. Weinman from a public competition. Weinman also won the award for the Half Dollar design. Not only is the face not that of Hermes or Mercury, it is NOT MALE. The portrait of Ms. Liberty is of Elsie Stevens, Mrs. Wallace Stevens." All that aside, the common name for this coin is still the Mercury dime, and that's how people who use the coin in conjure work refer to it.

A preference for the Mercury dime rather than another silver coin as a gamblers' charm makes a lot of sense when one recognizes that Mercury was the Roman god who ruled crossroads, games of chance, and sleight of hand tricks -- and as such he was equivalent to the African gambling and crossroads spirit variously called Ellegua, Legba, or Eshu, who had the same domain of influence and was known as the keeper of crossroads. Althouggh the figure engraved on the dime was long ago changed to that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, many folks still prefer the old-style dime -- one hoodoo man i talked to told me, "You need a Mercury dime to do you any good at all."

As for why a leap-year date on the coin is luckier than another date, i suspect that it is the rarity or unusualness of a leap-day (one day out of 1461) that recommends the leap-year coin to long-shot gamblers. In making gambling charms, some practitioners combine the leap-year dime with the added unusualness of a two dollar bill, also of a leap-year date, if possible. Again, it is the comparative rarity of this bill that suggests winning against long-shot odds.

The contents of mojo hands vary with the inclinations of their makers, but a typical silver dime gambling charm might consist of a Mercury dime, a small John the Conqueror root, a bit of sugar, and a lucky hand root (a wild orchid root with finger-shaped protrusions that evoke the idea of manual dexterity when playing dice), all wrapped in a leap-year two dollar bill and placed in a red flannel bag. To activate the mojo, its contents would be anointed with some sort of good-luck oil, perhaps red Fast Luck, Three Jacks and a King, or Van Van -- or, as some folks have done, with the urine or menstrual blood of their beloved.

Another hoodoo use for the silver dime is to wear one or at the ankle as a warning device and apotropaic charm: if the coin turns black, an enemy has laid out goofer dust, Hot Foot Powder, or Crossing Powder and you have stepped in it, but it will prove harmless to you. Since formulas for these malicious powders often contain sulphur, which turns silver black on contact, the dime's seemingly magical power is based in practical chemical knowledge. Similarly, a silver dime worn at the trhroat will turn black is someone tries to poison your food; the dime can alkso be tested by holding it briefly in the mouth to see if it tarnishes. with

Dimes are also used to counteract a curse in hoodoo practice. Typical recipes involve boiling a dime or the filings from its milled edges in water or milk and drinking the liquid to "kill" the effects of occult poisons such as graveyard dirt, goofer dust, rattlesnake eggs, or snake-shed dust,

The following documentation on silver dimes comes from "Hoodoo - Conjuration - Witchcraft - Rootwork," a 5-volume, 4766-page collection of folkloric material gathered by Harry Middleton Hyatt, primarily between 1935 and 1939.

IMPORTANT: If this is the first time you have encountered Hyatt material
at this web site, please take a moment to open and read the supplementary page called
"Hoodoo - Conjuration - Witchcraft - Rootwork" by Harry Middleton Hyatt.

SILVER DIME - LODESTONE - SUGAR - SEW UP IN RED FLANNEL - YOU CAN ALWAYS WIN UNLESS SOMEONE CHEATS
12992. You tie you a piece of -- some sugar, you takes a piece of lodestone, and you put a silver dime in that, you see. And you sew it up. You sew it up in a red piece of flannel. You make it like dat and you carry it in your pocket, but you won't have no luck though if they have the cheat against you. As long as you keep the cheat off you, you have luck.
(What do you mean "have the cheat against you"?)
"Cheat," of course, if you [someone] put down loaded dice or anything, you can't beat it. See, you can't beat anybody that have [loaded dice].
(Oh, they cheat against you.)
Yeah.
(Oh, I see.)
If they cheat, you can't beat a cheat, you see. It won't do no good, you see.
[This theme of 'unless someone cheats" is rare in hoodoo, since it would destroy confidence in "gambling hands."]
[New Orleans, La., (823), 1191:4.]

9 DIMES - BLUESTONE - ALUM - RED FLANNEL BAG: GAMBLE
13000. Take bluestone an' alum an' make a -- an' take nine silver dimes an' sew it up together, an' maybe yo' go, any kind of game yo' play, yo'll win all de money dey have.
(What do you sew that in?)
Red flannel.
[Waycross, Ga. (1134), 1842:9.]

SILVER MONEY - GARLIC - RED FLANNEL: GOOD LUCK
13007. Dey tell me dey take a piece of silver money an' put it in a red sack -- flannel -- an' put a piece of garlic to it an' tote it on yo'. That be fo' good luck.
[Brunswick, {Ga.} 1992:6.]

9 DIMES IN NATION SACK: PROTECTION AND TRADE
13008. {Get} nine silver dimes, file them, {and} wear in {a} nation sack with lodestone for protection and trade. [For the well-known nation sack, private bag worn by women, see interview, THE "NATION SACK" WOMAN, pp. 1449-1459, especially p. 1458, vol. 2]
[Memphis, Tenn., (967), 1564:7]

The blues singer Son House once told an interviewer that his friend the blues singer Robert Johnson "used that silver dime stuff." The interviewer didn't ask what House meant by that, but the implication is obvious: Johnson practiced hoodoo. In "Little Queen of Spades," his paean to a "gambling woman," Johnson sings, "everybody says she's got a mojo." Her mojo may have been a silver dime conjure hand such as those described here. More to the point, spell number 13008 above explains the otherwise cryptic line in Johnson's famous song "Come On in My Kitchen": "I taken the last nickel from her nation sack." A complete account of this special mojo hand or toby only worn by women, appears on the nation sack page.

SEARCH THIS SITE: a local search engine and a named link to each Lucky Mojo page
Lucky Mojo Site Map: a descriptive entry-level index to the whole Lucky Mojo pile
Lucky W Amulet Archive Home Page: an online museum of folk-magic charms
Sacred Sex Home Page: essays on tantra yoga, karezza, sex magic, and sex worship
The Sacred Landscape Home Page: essays on archaeoastronomy and sacred geometry
Freemasonry for Women Home Page: a history of mixed-gender Freemasonic lodges
The Lucky Mojo Curio Co.: manufacturers of spiritual supplies for hoodoo and conjure
The Comics Warehouse: a source for back-issues of comic books and trading cards
catherine yronwode, the eclectic and eccentric author of all the above web pages
nagasiva yronwode: tyaginator, nigris (333), nocTifer, lorax666, boboroshi, !
The Lucky Mojo Esoteric Archive: captured internet files on occult and spiritual topics