Graveyard Dirt

Graveyard dirt is soil taken from a grave, and it is the strongest material in the tradition's materia because it carries the presence of the dead person whose grave it came from. Which grave the dirt comes from decides what it can do - a soldier's for courage, a child's for innocence, a known ancestor's for family work, a sinner's for harm - and it is the base of goofer dust. Hyatt's fourth volume is the great record of the material, and Hurston describes the etiquette of taking it as she was taught it.

The dirt is taken after asking the dead for leave and leaving payment, from the foot of the grave, in the amount needed and no more, and it is carried in a packet or a hand, laid as a trick, or worked into a doll or a candle. It may be kept on an ancestor's altar rather than used, which the tradition treats as a legitimate and even preferred relation. The practice that governs the taking is its own entry in this file, because the ethics are inseparable from the material.

Dirt taken without leave and without payment is, in the tradition's own terms, a debt owed to the dead, and the corpus records that rule without supplying the words or the amounts. The living have claims too: a grave belongs to a family and a cemetery to a community, taking soil from it is a crime in most jurisdictions, and the descendants have not consented. Dirt from an unknown grave is not interchangeable with dirt from a known ancestor, and the commercial sale of 'graveyard dirt' is a twentieth-century supply-house product with no grave behind it.