• Other names: Dirt Dauber Nest, Organ Pipe Wasp Nest
• Magickal uses: Help in business, Control other people

Mud Daubers and Organ Pipe Wasps are inoffensive, gentle insects that carefully build tube nests of fine clay, which they carry a bit at a time from a nearby pond to a sheltered place protected from rain and snow. The tubes are constructed of contiguous compartments, and in each compartment the wasp places a paralyzed spider, on which it lays an egg. The egg hatches into a larva, eats the spider, pupates, and then metamorphoses into a mature wasp that bites its way out of the nest.

Each compartment is used only once, but the adult wasps return to their birth places with fresh clay, and add new compartments to the old nests. They like to build under protective overhangs, and year after year, if the nests are not disturbed, generations of wasps add to these structures, so that in time, their “organ pipes” can cover a wall.

Because Dauber wasps avoid touching people and never sting unless accidentally crushed, country folks tolerate them on porches and barns under the eaves, and take pleasure in watching them at their work.

Dirt Dauber nests are broken off the wall and powdered for use, either to control people or to help in business.

Success in Business – The Dirt Dauber gets its mud off the ground but builds its nest up high, symbolizing success. Therefore, if you take Dauber Dirt, powder it with Grains of Paradise (which also symbolizes a high place) and sprinkle it up high around your new place of business, you will have success there, and the business will grow.

The magickal association between Dirt Dauber Wasps and spells for stay-at-home husbands is based on observation. These wasps are one of very few Hymenoptera in which the male stays at the nest and guards it while the female is off hunting spiders, and also because mating occurs at the nest, where it can easily be observed by human beings.

In addition, the Blue Mud Dauber specializes in killing Black Widow Spiders, which makes it a magickal ally to wives whose husbands may fall prey to the charms of a young widow woman.

If your husband runs around – not necessarily with another woman, but if he goes out with his friends, when he should be at home – you can mix Dauber Dirt from nine nest compartments that still have the larvae inside, grind them up, and add a pinch of this to his coffee every day. He will be compelled to stay at home, like the larvae in the nests.

For a woman to control her husband – Carefully remove a whole Dirt Dauber Nest, with the larvae still inside, from the wall without breaking it and place it in a teacup full of water. Let it soak for fifteen minutes, then drink the water off straight away. Repeat as necessary. This is said to cause your husband to come under your control.

A number of different spells using Mud Dauber Dirt as an ingredient can be found in the Book of Shadows.

Source: Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic