Notes on Charcoal in Folk Magical Practices

Charcoal is a fairly common curios to see mentioned in both historical and contemporary magical texts. In modern books and other media, we may see instructions to burn incense over charcoal discs or to use the crushed ash from such discs to create black powders for inks, salts, and chalks. In herbal medicine, we might see mention of charcoal capsules that can be purchased from the drug store or pharmacy. But the discs, briquettes and medicines that we most readily think of when we hear the word “charcoal” in modern context is not the same charcoal of early modern folk magic and folk medicinal texts.

Today, charcoal briquettes and incense charcoal are produced on a mass scale using wood waste from the creation of other products. This type of production began in the 1920’s, using sawdust, wood chips and wood pulp along with fuel for convenient self-igniting and cornstarch as a binder. The wood waste is heated in low oxygen environments to carbonized and pressed into the shape we know and use in our incense burners and grills. But, before this shift, charcoal was an entirely different product. Making it involved fewer steps and fewer ingredients. It was made simply by burning wood in a contained, low-oxygen environment (such as a vented soup can or steel barrel, depending on the scale of production). It was not self-igniting, and was made either at home in a small scale or commercially in brick kilns. It was very simply carbonized wood—no cornstarch, no coal*, no additives to make it turn white when lit.

Fun Fact: The “coal” in the word charcoal doesn’t actually refer to the coal that is added in its briquette form. The word charcoal comes from charren (to change something) and coal and refers to the process of “turning the wood to coal”.

This is an important distinction to keep in mind when one encounters mention of charcoal in folk magic and folk medicine texts of a certain age. Although more modern sources may be referring to briquette charcoal or disc charcoal, any text that is written before the 1895 patent for the charcoal briquette—and often leading up to the 1920’s when household use of briquette charcoal took off—is likely referring to natural wood charcoal.

Traditional wood charcoal is available to purchase for practitioners who are unable to safely make their own at home. This is the best option when charcoal is being burned as a fuel, carried for protection, used in divination or included on a medicinal item. But there are also many cases in which it might be suitable and appropriate to substitution charcoal for another ingredient, such as when the charcoal in a working is used for writing, marking, or creating black pigment in inks.