Crossing and Uncrossing

To cross someone is to put a condition on them, and to be crossed is to be under one; uncrossing is the work of taking it off. The pair is the tradition's basic diagnosis and its basic cure, and the vocabulary runs through every account in the collections: a person is 'crossed', 'tied up', 'blocked', 'hoodooed' or 'fixed', and the symptoms are the ones any blocked life has - money that will not stay, a body that will not heal, a household that keeps breaking, a run of luck that will not turn. Not every cross is a work: the tradition also names a 'natural cross', a condition that comes from a person's own conduct or from grief, and treats the two differently.

Uncrossing is the tradition's largest service. It begins with a reading that establishes whether the condition is a work or a natural cross, who is behind it if there is someone, and what it will take; then comes a course of baths, washes, floor work, candle work and, where the tradition uses them, purging and herbal medicine, with a final cleansing of the house and a protection set afterwards. The work is judged by whether the run of events changes, and a case that does not shift is read again rather than repeated blindly.

The diagnosis is the ethical crux. Naming a neighbour, a relative or a co-worker as the source of a client's trouble is a serious accusation in a small community, and the tradition's better workers are cautious about it - the collections contain as many warnings against a hasty diagnosis as they do diagnoses. Uncrossing a person is also, in the tradition's own terms, only half the work: a house and a household have to be cleared and protected afterwards, or the condition returns.