Pow-Wow Tradition and Braucherei

Pow-Wow, known within its own community by the German term Braucherei (from the verb brauchen, meaning “to use” or “to need”), is a Pennsylvania German folk healing and protective practice that has been passed down through German-speaking immigrant communities in the American Mid-Atlantic region since the seventeenth century. It combines spoken charms in German and English, drawn primarily from the Christian scriptures and Protestant devotional tradition, with laying on of hands, sympathetic techniques, and a deep confidence that God”s power is directly available through the practitioner to heal the sick, protect the vulnerable, and restore what has been harmed.

The tradition is not occult in the popular sense. Its practitioners, called Pow-Wow doctors or Brauchers, typically understood themselves as Christian healers acting within God”s authority, using inherited methods to channel divine power. The apparent paradox of a folk magick practice embedded in conservative Protestant Christianity is, from inside the tradition, no paradox at all.

History and origins

German-speaking settlers began arriving in Pennsylvania in significant numbers from the 1680s onward, bringing with them the folk healing traditions of their home regions in Germany and Switzerland. These traditions drew on the medieval and early modern German charm book culture, a body of oral and written healing formulas rooted in Christian prayer, folk medicine, and the remnants of older folk belief.

The term “Pow-Wow” as applied to this practice appears in English-language sources from the early nineteenth century. One influential account is the work of Johann Georg Hohman, whose 1820 text “Der Lange Verborgene Freund” (The Long Lost Friend) compiled many of the oral charms of the community into printed form, providing the tradition with its most widely known written source and spreading the practices beyond the immediate community.

The tradition remained active and largely invisible to the broader American public throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Academic attention increased in the mid-twentieth century through the work of scholars of Pennsylvania German culture, including Don Yoder, whose research documented the tradition before many of its older practitioners had died. Contemporary practitioners continue to operate, some within their heritage communities and some offering their practice more broadly.

Core beliefs and practices

The foundational belief of Pow-Wow is that God”s healing and protecting power is real, immediate, and available through faith and the proper use of inherited formulas. The practitioner does not generate the healing power themselves but acts as a channel. This theological humility is often expressed in the traditional statement that the gift comes from God and cannot be charged for monetarily, though some modern practitioners have moved away from this position.

Core practices include:

Spoken charms: The verbal formula is central. Charms are specific to their purpose: there are charms to stop bleeding, to cure thrush in infants, to bring relief from burns, to remove erysipelas (a bacterial skin infection formerly called St. Anthony”s Fire), to protect a household from fire and lightning, and to turn away ill-wishing. Most charms address the condition directly, invoking divine authority and stating the desired outcome as accomplished fact.

Laying on of hands: Physical contact accompanies many charms. The practitioner touches the affected area while speaking the charm, sometimes making specific passes or gestures as part of the formula.

Sympathetic techniques: Some practices involve symbolic actions mirroring the desired outcome: tying knots to bind a condition, burning something to destroy it, burying something to remove it.

Psalm work: Specific Psalms are associated with specific needs and are recited as part of or alongside the charm.

Open or closed

Pow-Wow is not formally closed. There is no initiatory body controlling access, and people outside Pennsylvania German heritage have learned and practiced the tradition. However, the transmission conditions traditional practitioners describe do create meaningful boundaries. The knowledge is ideally passed in person, not from a book; it is given freely and not sold; and the recipient must themselves be willing to hold and pass the knowledge on. A practitioner who acquires charms from the Long Lost Friend and uses them without any living connection to the tradition is using the letter of the tradition without its relational spirit.

How to begin

Someone with Pennsylvania German ancestry who wishes to connect with the tradition should seek living practitioners within their family or community. Regional organisations connected to Pennsylvania German heritage sometimes maintain knowledge of active Brauchers. The scholarly work of Don Yoder and Patrick Donmoyer provides historical grounding. For those outside the heritage community, engaging with Pow-Wow as a studied neighbor tradition is appropriate; attempting to claim it as one”s own without that connection raises real questions about cultural continuity and integrity.

The Long Lost Friend remains the best available printed introduction to the charm tradition, and it is best read alongside Donmoyer”s scholarly commentary rather than in isolation.

In myth and popular culture

Pow-Wow”s most significant literary monument is Johann Georg Hohman”s “Der Lange Verborgene Freund” (The Long Hidden Friend, 1820), which was reprinted and circulated widely across Pennsylvania and beyond throughout the nineteenth century. The book contains hundreds of charms for healing and protection, from stopping blood to curing erysipelas to protecting cattle and homes. Its widespread distribution made many Pow-Wow charms available in print for the first time and cemented the tradition”s association with the Pennsylvania German community in the popular imagination.

The scholarly documentation of Pow-Wow reached a wider audience through Don Yoder”s academic work, including his essay “Hohman and Romanus: Origins and Diffusion of the Pennsylvania German Powwow Manual” (1965) and his broader studies of Pennsylvania German folk culture. Yoder”s work was instrumental in distinguishing the tradition from Indigenous American powwow ceremonies, which share only the name, and in situating Braucherei within the broader European charm tradition that includes German Zauberei and British cunning craft.

In fiction, Pennsylvania German folk magic appears in Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (2016), a Dutch horror novel set in a Pennsylvania community haunted by a witch whose story draws on regional magical folklore. While the novel is horror fiction rather than documentary, it reflects an awareness of Pennsylvania German magical tradition as a coherent and regionally specific practice. The “Hex” of the title refers to hexes (spells) in the German-American tradition, and the novel has contributed to popular awareness of this tradition”s distinctive regional identity.

Patrick Donmoyer”s “Powwowing in Pennsylvania” (2018) provides the most thorough contemporary documentation of the tradition, including interviews with active practitioners, photographic documentation of hex signs and amulets, and analysis of the tradition”s relationship to broader European charm practice. Donmoyer”s work at the Kutztown Folk Cultural Center has been important in preserving the tradition”s history.

Myths and facts

Several widespread misunderstandings about Pow-Wow and Braucherei circulate in popular and occult writing.

• The most common confusion is between Pennsylvania German Pow-Wow and Indigenous American powwow ceremonies. The two are entirely different practices with no historical connection; the shared term is coincidental, deriving from a different Algonquian word that entered English through distinct routes for different purposes.
• A widespread assumption holds that Pow-Wow is a pagan or pre-Christian tradition with Christian elements added as camouflage. The tradition is fundamentally Protestant Christian in its theology; practitioners understood themselves as working within God”s authority, and the charms” Christian content is not a surface overlay but the theological core of the practice.
• Some sources describe Pow-Wow as a closed or secret tradition available only to Pennsylvania German heritage practitioners. The tradition has specific transmission conditions (ideally passed in person, given freely) but has never had formal initiatory closure; people outside the heritage community have learned and practiced it, though questions of cultural connection remain meaningful.
• It is frequently claimed that hex signs painted on Pennsylvania German barns are magical protective symbols from the Pow-Wow tradition. Many scholars of Pennsylvania German folk art hold that the barn decorations were primarily aesthetic rather than magical; the interpretation of barn hex signs as magical amulets was popularized in the early twentieth century and is not well supported by the historical record.
• A common assumption holds that Pow-Wow practitioners were universally respected community figures without controversy. Witchcraft accusations, debates about the legitimacy of folk healing, and tensions with mainstream Protestant clergy were part of the tradition”s social history; the community context was more complex than the idealized image of the benevolent healing-woman suggests.