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Good old chicken feet curios, a probably-New-World invention – at least in the painted, decorated iterations -- that people nevertheless like to claim have been used in all kinds of magical traditions all over the globe for *centuries,* for everything from love to money to hexing the crap out of your roommate for leaving the toilet seat up.
(They’re used for protection, for the most part, though some pro workers use them in cleansing and healing rites as well. Not love or money, though, not that I’ve seen any evidence of – sorry.)
I’ve been making chicken foot charms for over 20 years now, but this batch is special.
I usually make them with commercially available chicken feet that come from the same source as the chicken you buy at the grocery store wrapped in plastic.
These are different. These come from a source I know firsthand to be cruelty-free and devoted to humane practices. I know for a fact these chickens had as good a life as it is possible to have as a chicken bred for meat. They were not cooped up their entire lives. They got to feel grass under their feet and sunshine on their feathers. And I know they were slaughtered cleanly and quickly with great skill and compassion. They did not spend their final moments in terror with the sound of machinery filling their ears.
Matter of fact, they were *individually prayed over* during the process and individually thanked for the gift of their life that in turn sustains other life. This is no assembly line anything. These birds’ lives were not taken for granted. No joke, I kind of had to do an interview about what I use them for and what kind of spiritual economy they’d be circulating within before this all got finalized. You can’t lie to the chickens, you know, and tell them they’ll be honored and appreciated if they’re just going to end up on the trash heap.
I don’t know how much she wants me to say about her in a public place, but they were provided by a family member who works at a very small organic, farm-to-table operation in Louisiana. In addition to knowing her way around farm animals, she also happens to be one of the most deeply spiritual people I know, and I mean the type that gets into the messy bits of life and deals with the real stuff instead of just isolating herself in an ivory tower where she doesn’t have to see and think about dirt and pain and poverty and death in the world (though she does have the ivory tower education – in theology, no less).
In short, I couldn’t dream up a more competent person to have made this a truly spiritual practice with genuine gratitude and deep connection, messy bits and all.
And while I totally get that not everybody is comfortable with materia magica like this, for those who do participate in the carnivorous economies and want to use these quite traditional curios, this is the most ethical way I can even imagine to obtain these things. And I am really grateful to be able to source them from a place like this – from someone I know to be a person of real compassion who is powerful in prayer and deeply connected to the life around her and the land under her feet.
Obviously I can legally make no claims guaranteeing you any particular results from your use of this charm, but I gotta say at the very least, if I were a thief scouting for my next target and I saw a chicken foot charm on a house, vehicle, or person, I would probably pick a different house, vehicle, or person to target instead of that one.
Get your own one-of-a-kind chicken foot charm now, a bit of spiritual folk art custom-made just for you according to your situation/petition.
And yes, Louisiana folks, I can do the hot pink ones. I don’t imagine most folks are gonna get to Courir de Mardi Gras in 2021 with all this COVID craziness, but you can have your own little brightly-painted piece of Mardi Gras, complete with beads, trinkets, even a doubloon if you request a Mardi-Gras themed chicken foot, [*] to keep your spirits up until the day comes when we can all go back out there, swill beer, dress like very cheerful killer clowns, fling things at each other’s heads — sometimes on horseback — and have a grand old time scarfing boudin or funnel cake, depending on where you’re from, hanging out in the streets getting dirty and loud.
God willing.
[*] And before anybody asks, no, it does not come with a Moon Pie.
