“If there are seven sons in a family, and no daughters, the seventh son is clearly intended to be a physician. The seventh son of a seventh son is a physician in spite of himself, endowed with healing powers which cannot be denied. Even if such a man does not study or practice medicine, he is very often called “Doc” or “Doctor” by common consent.”
– Vance Randolph, Ozark Superstitions (Columbia University Press, 1947)“Many supernatural specialists were “born with the gift”—marked, or chosen, at the start of their lives. Anomalous births were considered significant in the conjuring tradition. Being born with a caul, the amniotic veil covering the face of the newly delivered infant, was interpreted as evidence that one was gifted with enhanced insight into the invisible realm. Another well-known belief held that the seventh child of a seventh son or daughter would enjoy an auspicious spiritual lineage. “If you are a double-sighted person and can see ghosts, if you happen to have been born on Christmas Day, or are a seventh son, you are born for magic,” claimed one folklorist.”
– Yvonne P. Chireau, Black Magic – Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (University of California, 2006)And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power – 1 Corinthians 2:4
Certain signs attend the birth of a healer.
Walter McCannon’s great-great-grandfather, Daniel Webster Paul, was born the 7th son of a 7th son.
Although he died in 1932, people in Oglethorpe County Georgia still remember the miracles that occurred when ‘Doc’ Paul laid hands and prayed.
Video Transcript –
He’s the seventh son of a seventh son (Source: Walter McCannon, Oglethorpe County, GA – 2015)
“They took armchairs like this and they tied sheets between four chairs and laid the baby there, they couldn’t handle it. Every time they’d handled it it would go black and blue. So my grandmother…his grandmother found out about it, she said he was like four or five years old. She said I’m going down there, he’s the seventh son of a seventh son, and said I believe the Lord will take care of this baby. She went and got him as a little bitty boy, and made him sit there and play with the baby, just touching him and all. From that moment when he left from that moment on they could handle the baby and from then on they always knowed, they called him Grandpa Doc, his name was Daniel Webster Paul.
That’s how he got his name Doc.
And I’ve heard my grandfather talk about cutting metal with a chisel, and it flew back on his sister and burnt her arm. And his momma was pretty strict back then, and said “Adam what you done done to Ophelia?” He said, “well I done cut a piece of hot metal and done burned her arm, I’m going to Grandpa Doc’s.” And she said “That’s the thing to do” and he said that’s was the last thing his ma said about that.
And said that when he got there, he would sit there and rub, Aunt Ophelia told me this now, sit there and he said rub and said “If the Lord Jesus was here he’d touch your arm and he’d take all this pain and all out.” And he sat there and rubbed it and next thing you know it, and she showed me, she said you see a scar, and there wasn’t no scar or nothing. Took the fire out of that thing.
There was a guy with warts on his feet, she would talk about that he couldn’t walk and he’d come to school with rags tied on his feet…and all. And she convinced, as a little girl, convinced that school teacher to let the school out one day to go to her Grandpa Doc’s store. He run that old store, and he went over there and he rubbed his feet and everything and lo and behold it cured it right up. There’s just story after story…”
