Rob, begging your pardon -- I had to scrounge around, and find my Cherokee Medicine Book
Shaman Swimmer originally recorded this with a "title" which read like a doctor's prescription, more than a poem. He had no English whatsoever, but the literal translation of his "title" from the Sequoyan syllabary in which he wrote it, (cryptic and impenetrable, or I would post it), would be "This is to frighten a storm."
Neither my use of the word "formula" nor the "frightening" is original. The medicine men did not refer to these, ever, as "spells" or "incantations." It was
medicine to them, remember -- not magic. They used the scientific word "formula."
Thanks again, for mentioning that. All I have really done is a bit of cut-and-pasting from a thousands-of-years-old doctor's prescription slip, to help the reader, poetically.
Jennifer