Powwowing was part of the medieval tradition which German immigrants from the Rhineland and Switzerland brought with them when they came to the New World in the seventeenth century and later. What we call powwow is called brauche in the German language. The formula (eg. incantations) in use since the time before the Reformation included many Christian elements of a Roman Catholic variety. Powwowing is white magic.
The "Church" (Lutheran and Reformed) and "Plain" (Amish and Mennonite) people who resorted to this practice did so not in antagonism to regular physicians but rather in addition to them. The traditional ways seemed more utilitarian and less costly, more practical and less theoretical than the newer, less personal, and (to their traditional mindset) less proven than the ways of the powwow healer.
Powwowing is difficult to define clearly because of the overlap and/or combinations of factors and ingredients which are mingled in the pursuit of folk healing cures. The "home remedies" of our ancestors utilized herbal and other ingredients believed to have a specifically corrective and healing effect. Some people in every generation look favorably on unconventional cures, perhaps because of their confidence in local persons like themselves and a resistance to the fees of the scientific professionals. (Gerald C. Studer, Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage, July 1980)
I learned something new over the weekend about one of these mixed practices. The little bags in the frame below were worn around the necks of children to "keep them healthy." The bag contained a piece of asafoteida, an oleo gum resin obtained from the rhizome and root of a plant.
Asafoetida has a fetid smell and a nauseating taste; characteristics
that also burdened it with the name devil's dung. In the Middle Ages, a
small piece of the gum was worn around the neck to ward off diseases
such as colds and fevers. Whatever effectiveness it had was probably due
to the antisocial properties of the amulet rather than any medicinal
virtue.
The man who displayed these artifacts told us his grandfather wore one of these smelly little asafoetida bags. So the practice was carried down by Mennonites from the Middle Ages into the nineteenth century. Did his mother believe it had medicinal value or was it a charm? Whatever her reasons, if it worked at all it was (as the paragraph above says) because the smell kept people and their germs at a distance.
While there are some natural remedies that are beneficial, we do well to consider the source of any alternative medicine before accepting it. What appears to be folk or natural medicine may be rooted in white magic. As Christians, we cannot have any part in such things.
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