Laughing at Lemons: The Misguided Mockery of Citrus in Folk Magic

We’ve all seen the discourse on social media. Every time someone mentions “lemon hexes,” the same story shows up in the comments: “That’s TikTok BS.” Or, “Lemons are for cleansing, not cursing.” Or my personal favorites: “That’s not real baneful magic! Real witches use graveyard dirt, blood, bones…”, “That’s for baby witches! Real ones don’t use those!”

Cute. But wrong.

The historical, anthropological and folkloric record proves that lemons (and citrus in general) were used in baneful magic in Italy, Sicily, and other places around the world for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Every time someone goes on a rampage joking about a working that includes lemons, they’re essentially disregarding cultural practices they haven’t cared to educate themselves about. Aside from that, speaking as someone who has actually used them with success? They hit just as hard as any jar of rusty nails, bodily fluids, animal organs, or bones...but nothing says, you can’t combine them all.

Since I don’t like speaking without facts, I’m a complete nerd who did book reports for fun throughout school, and I’m tired of the lemon slander that runs rampant, I am going to take some time to try to set the record straight (there will still be naysayers, but I’m doing my part). Lemons curse, sour, rot, and hex just fine and you’re about to learn why.

Sicily, Midnight Mass, and Pins in Citrus

In Sicily, a folk spell was recorded (as in actually documented by an Anthropologist) where you take a lemon (or sometimes an orange- because ya know, in folk magic, you work with what you’ve got), peel it slightly, and pierce it with pins during Midnight Mass. As the Holy Host is elevated, you whisper:

“Tanti spilli infiggo in quest’… tanti mali ti calino addosso”
(“As many pins as I stick in this fruit, may as many ills befall you.”)

Then you toss the fruit into a cistern or well, where it rots and festers away from sight.

That’s not modern TikTok ‘new broom’ stuff. That’s documented Sicilian folk magic. Anthropologist Sabina Magliocco (whose work I, and many others, first read somewhere around 20 years ago before all the social media witchcraft experts emerged) cites it in her work on Italian vernacular magic, drawing on Italian folklorist Alfonso M. Di Nola (1993)【Magliocco 2009; Di Nola 1993】.

It’s probably pretty potent ‘folk magic’ for people to risk working a curse in a Catholic church at the most liminal moment of the year. But for some, that’s not enough, so let’s continue…

Leland, Aradia, and the Lemon’s Literary Life

Charles G. Leland’s Aradia: Gospel of the Witches (1899) includes “The Conjuration of the Lemon and Pins,” where pins of different colors are driven into a lemon to bless or curse. His work is debated, and to be honest, I’m not a fan of the guy at all, but the important point is that independent folklorists in Italy later documented nearly identical lemon-and-pins curses.

Even if you toss Leland out (which would be my preference - cause I’ll just say again that I don’t like the guy - but I’m citing it anyway), the practice stands. Lemons + pins + curses were real and recorded.

Why Lemons Work: The Magical Logic

So why lemons? Why not just bones, dirt, animal organs or blood? The answer is as simple as, because lemons embody the logic behind sympathetic magic. Want to pierce a target? Lemons are soft, easy to stab with pins, nails, or thorns and who or what says a lemon can’t be ‘baptized’ as a target? We baptize all kinds of objects as targets like sticks, corn husks, clay and candles. I’ve yet to hear a single argument that actually makes sense as to why a lemon is different. Need a connection soured? Lemons rot and sour just like any other organic material. Need something to withering away or a life force drained? They dry and collapse which mirrors physical and/or emotional decline.

Need an added bonus? Lemons can also act as a container for other ingredients. A lemon is a compact, natural vessel. Toss it into a well, river, or crossroads, and you’ve got a completed working and no harm to the environment because it’s biodegradable and safe (pending of course you haven’t put anything poisonous on it if you’re leaving it within reach of wildlife or letting it seep into ground water). Want to contain ingredients inside the lemon so they don’t scatter about the jar and you can cause rot and decay from inside out? Just core it, stuff it, and plug it. Done.

And yes, a lemon can be a poppet. Poppets aren’t about the material, they’re about the link the practitioner is able to create between the object and the target. Wax, cloth, clay, roots, or other kinds of fruit can and have all been used to embody someone when baptized throughout folk traditions worldwide. Lemons just happen to bring their own baneful symbolism to the role.

Folk Magic IS Making Something Out of Nothing

One of the hallmarks of folk magic is practicality because let’s be so for real, 100 years ago most of our ancestors or those practicing ‘folk magic’ were broke and didn’t have a store to run to for supplies and they certainly didn’t have Prime. Practitioners have always used what was around them whether it was onions, bread, string, vinegar, rusty nails, old shoes…Some might think of this as ‘cheap’ or ‘simplistic’ magic but it’s also the most practiced, and practical, magic and because of that, usually the most effective especially for those who are working in conditions where they are oppressed. Let’s not forget, that’s probably the reason most magical practices started….survival, oppression, control of the natural environment and protection from unseen forces.

Historian Owen Davies notes, vernacular magic in Europe “made the everyday object extraordinary” by charging it with new meaning【Davies 2004】. Sabina Magliocco emphasizes that Italian folk healers and witches relied on kitchen staples and common plants not because they lacked sophistication, but because ‘folk cosmology saw the sacred and dangerous in everything’【Magliocco 2009】.

That’s why the lemon matters. It’s abundant in Southern Italy and Sicily. It’s sharp, sour, symbolic, and available. That accessibility is power and isn’t that the point of magic? To put power into the hands of those who may be powerless by outside or ‘worldly’ standards so that the playing field can be evened and/or so that survival can be assured?

Folk magic has always been about making “something out of nothing.” It’s not the exoticness of the tool, it’s the knowledge of how even the most mundane items can have the energies they carry harnessed to be used and energy of the worker that brings it to life. Don’t mistake what I’m saying as ‘magic is only about intent’ BUT to a certain extent, to our ancestors it was. Regardless, lemons carry not only collective energy from generations before who used them in baneful work but their natural energies and symbolism.

‘Break Up/Separation’ jars done with lemons as part of my practice. They look simple but have been as effective as any other similar working with different ingredients.

Btw, Catholics do it, too….

Let’s flash back to something I mentioned at the beginning of this post. While you probably haven’t seen an Italian Catholic stabbing a lemon with pins during Mass, it happens and it has for hundreds of years. Why? Because Catholic ritual timing provides liminality and power. If you don’t understand why liminal time and space is important in magic, I’d advise doing some research about that as well.

In Southern European folk Catholicism, magical acts often piggybacked on church feasts and sacraments. Midnight Mass at Christmas was especially charged for many reasons. It was/is seen as a hinge point in the calendar. Midnight on Christmas Eve is the only time during the year where one can teach or pass down a secret prayer to cure the ‘malocchio’ to others. It’s the time to perform magic and/or invoke blessings and protection. In this case, by timing the curse to the elevation of the Holy Host, the worker tapped into the peak of divine presence and inverted it for malefic purpose. While some might consider that ‘inauthentic’, that’s how vernacular religion (or grass roots religion and folk magic, for those who aren’t familiar with the term) has always worked, by blending formal ritual with unofficial practices.

Lemons don’t belong to just one deity, but citrus has always carried a sort of sacred weight. The “golden apples of the Hesperides” in Greek myth (probably early citrus) were tied to Hera and Juno, symbolizing fertility and immortality. Apollo was linked to citrus groves for their purifying and healing energy. In Jewish tradition, the etrog (citron) is used during Sukkot as a symbol of blessing and devotion. In South Asia, lemons are hung with chilies to ward off the evil eye, tied to Goddesses like Shitala Mata, who protects from disease, and Alakshmi, who brings misfortune. Citrus shows up over and over again across the world and across cultures which makes it a lot less shocking that lemons work just as well for both protection and baneful magic.

I say all that to say, when a Sicilian witch pierces a lemon, they’re not just stabbing fruit. They’re working with a plant family already symbolically loaded with power. If someone doesn’t understand those associations, it doesn’t mean the Sicilian witch is wrong, it means the person laughing is uneducated.

Myth vs. Fact: The Lemon Hex Debate

Here are the most common “hot takes” about lemon hexes and why you shouldn’t buy into them.

Myth: “Lemon hexes are made-up TikTok BS.” or “Only new brooms use lemons”
Fact: The practice has been documented in Sicilian folk practice (Magliocco 2009; Di Nola 1993) and recorded and used long before TikTok, or even the Internet, was a thought.

Myth: “Lemons are for cleansing, not cursing.”
Fact: Folk magic materials rarely only have a single use. Salt blesses and destroys, fire purifies and burns. Lemons protect in one ritual, curse in another. Learning ALL of the potential uses of any tool is important to a well rounded practice and magical working knowledge.

Myth: “If it doesn’t use graveyard dirt or blood (or something that sounds equally as ‘bad ass’) it’s not a real curse.”
Fact: Baneful is baneful. Folk witches hexed with pins, onions, and bread as often as with anything else. Not all practices even employ graveyard dirt or blood in any of their baneful work….but it still works….To say otherwise would be to invalidate hundreds or even thousands of years of peoples cultural and magical practices from around the world.

Myth: “A lemon is too soft to be taken seriously.”
Fact: Tell that to the Sicilian who risks it for the biscuit to hex with one during Christmas Mass. Lemons rot, sour, and pierce just fine.

Citrus Across Cultures

Though I am not extremely well versed or able to speak on cultures that I am not a part of outside of any research I’ve done or anthropological documents I’ve read, and I’m sure there are practitioners who are a part of those traditions that may choose to, I can say that there is evidence from folk magic workings through many cultures and places in the world that have mentioned lemons as protective, warding and full of hexing and souring abilities. If there is a particular practice or culture that you are a part of or interested in learning about, I urge you to reach out to other practitioners in those traditions for education and experience and compensate them for their time accordingly if they are willing to share their knowledge.

Modern Italian-American Context

Italian-American practitioners today, like Mary-Grace Fahrun in Italian Folk Magic (2018), stress that Italian folk magic includes the full spectrum: healing, blessing, protecting, binding, cursing. Items like lemons, rue, salt, and iron live on both sides of that spectrum.The idea that everything was only ‘light’ or ‘positive’ is modern positivity culture and ‘love and light’ bs.

The Psychological Benefits of a Lemon Curse

Another layer that critics overlook? The psychological impact and benefit of working with lemons.

For the practitioner, watching a lemon slowly rot, shrivel, and collapse reinforces the spell in many ways. This is especially true for those practitioners who do well with visual reinforcement be it because of neurodivergence or if they are new and need the energy boost of ‘seeing’ it working in order to ‘believe’ it is working. Each day the fruit darkens, it visually mirrors the intended suffering or decline of the target. That steady, tangible reminder strengthens focus and conviction. These two things are some of the most important driving energies in folk magic.

Let’s look at it from the other side too. While we normally would discourage letting someone know work was done on them in most cases, imagine finding a lemon pierced with pins and linked to your name. While advanced practitioners might shrug it off and find a way to remove the work done, most normal people would freak out, especially if they sat there watching it rot while panicking about what could possibly be about to happen. Folk communities took symbolic acts seriously. Fear of a curse could weaken someone’s health, confidence, or luck long before the “magic” landed and honestly it’s not much different today if you think about it on a core energetic level. In anthropology, this is sometimes called the nocebo effect (the negative twin of the placebo effect).

So in essence, a lemon hex doesn’t just work magically. It works psychologically. And in folk systems, that dual action is a very underrated part of the ‘magic’ of things.

My Practice: Sour and Effective

I’ll add from personal experience, I’ve hexed with lemons and will continue to do so. It works and I believe that while we can always improve anything, if it’s not broke, why fix it? They rot, shrivel and sour beautifully. Pins pierce them easily, and as I’ve already mentioned they make excellent literal vessels as well as being great vessels for directed malice. If you think lemon hexes are a joke, I’d argue you’ve never seen one properly worked. There are a lot of people who laugh at baneful workings with lemons, especially in the form of jar spells or magic and even moreso, when it comes to break up or separation work with lemons and jars. You can laugh but I can assure you that the targets of mine are not going to be laughing with you and I have years of receipts to prove it.

In conclusion, people can sleep on lemons in baneful magic all they want but it doesn’t change the truth that Sicilian witches did it, scholars documented it, many cultures mirror it, practitioners still successfully use it, and the visual of it can be helpful to those who practice and are neurodivergent. Folk magic has always been about making something powerful out of what’s at hand. A pinned lemon hex is no less baneful than any other curse.

Keep laughing at lemons. The fruit doesn’t care and neither do those who use and embrace them.

Further Reading (For the skeptics or those who would just like to educate themselves)

Sabina Magliocco, “Witchcraft, Healing, and Vernacular Magic in Italy.” In Magical Religion and Folklore in Europe (2009).

Alfonso M. Di Nola, La Nera Signora: Antropologia della Morte e del Lutto (1993).

Owen Davies, Witchcraft Continued? Popular Magic in Modern Europe (Manchester University Press, 2004).

Charles G. Leland, Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899).

Mary-Grace Fahrun, Italian Folk Magic: Rue’s Kitchen Witchery (2018).

British Journal of Ophthalmology, “Evil eye, nimbu-mirchi and the medical gaze” (2014).

Emma Wilby, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits (2005).