Whenever I need inspiration for the next short story or even
a novel, or need to research
for a nonfiction ghost book, I surf the Net or read books
from true supernatural tales to
myths and legends books. But I wasn’t looking for this
particular piece of information at the time when I ran across this article
online. Bottle trees. Fascinating, I never knew about this. It inspired me to
write the horror short story, “Bottled Spirits.”
A lot of places these days, gardeners get a fake tree or
even use a real one, and hang blue bottles or all different colored bottles from
the tree. The belief in and use of
spirit bottles can be traced back to 9th and 10th century Congo, where colorful
bottles, traditionally cobalt blue, were placed on the ends of tree branches to
catch the sunlight. The thought being an evil spirit would see the sunshine
dazzling from the beautiful bottles and growing enamored, enter the bottle.
Like a fly, the spirit becomes trapped within the bottle; too dazzled by the
play of light. The spirit prefers to remain in its colorful prison, rather than
trouble the world of the living, trapped for all eternity. This practice was taken to Europe and North America by African slaves of the 17th and 18th centuries. While Europeans adapted them into hollow
glass spheres known as "witch balls" the practice of hanging bottles
in trees became widespread in the Southern states of North America, where they continue
to be used today as colorful garden ornaments. For a long times, the use of spirit bottles, even spells due to them,
could be found among the African-American people. In the New World, the bottle-as-talisman took on different
forms.
Like witch's
bottles traced as far back to the 1600s, bottles began to be used in spellwork.
Bottles of all colors, shapes and sizes were filled with herbs and other items
of significance for the purpose of protection, repelling evil, or attracting
luck. Eventually, the bottle spell became a fundamental element of Hoodoo
magic.
Today, all sorts of
people have these bottle trees in their yard. Usually in the United
States, they could be seen in the country or along the
bayous of Louisiana,
Mississippi,
Tennessee,
and Alabama,
though nowadays they are all over, not just these four states. And not just
blue bottles, either!
Getting spirits into
bottles and even jars actually exist in many places of the world. There
are jars and bottles for housing the spirits of dead babies in Thailand and
called Guman Thong. There’s the lamp holding the genie in Aladdin. The Djinn
have also been captured in rings and bottles, too. There’s even “The Spirit in the Bottle,” a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers
Grimm.
If you like to
make your own bottle tree as I plan to this spring, here are some directions
I’ve found:
Find a strong
tree or stump with branches, like crepe myrtles and cedars trees that are
traditionally used, but pretty much any kind of tree will work. Trim all of the
foliage off and cut the branches down until you have as many bare branches as
you have bottles. Then slid your bottles onto the branches.
A variation is to take a fallen branch and prune it the same fashion, making a portable
tree. Plant it outside of your home, near the entrance, in the garden, or where
you want it in your yard and slip the bottles onto the branches. A third way is
find a large branch or stump, tying two bottles at a time with shoelaces over
the branches so they hang from the tree.
And here's a tip: If you put a little oil on the bottle necks, the spirits will
slip easily into the bottles and become trapped that much quicker. Give it a
day, then return to your tree when there’s a wind blowing and if you listen
closely, you might hear the moans of the trapped spirits in the bottles when
the wind blows. Just pray they’re not calling out your name though. . .
