According to the Texas Exes website the legend of the Hex Rally is as follows:
Leading into the 1941 Longhorn football season, the Longhorns had been unable to beat the Aggies at Kyle Field for 18 straight years. Many Longhorns believed this was because the Aggies had jinxed UT.
So before the game in 1941, a group of students went to a fortune teller, Mozzelle "Madame Augusta" Hipple, for guidance. The fortune teller told the students to burn red candles the week before the game as a way of “hexing” the Aggies.
Throughout the week of Thanksgiving, candles were burned in store windows, fraternity and sorority houses and university residence halls all throughout Austin.
That year, the Longhorns beat the Aggies in College Station 23-0 and ended the 18-year jinx.
I always assumed that the actually rally began in 1941.
I discovered in an interview with Jim Nicar (Director of Campus Relations, Committee Liaison: UT Heritage Society) that this assumption wasn’t entirely true.
According to Jim the actual “rally” didn’t take place until the 1980s.
In the ‘80s there wasn’t the UT student community that we know so well now in 2010.
Back then the UT community wasn’t unified, because of this Jim and some other UT students decided to create a community whose sole purpose was to try and dig up UT traditions.
One of these traditions was the hex that the Longhorns had placed on A&M.
When the hex first happened there wasn’t a rally, it was just the Austin community lighting red candles in store windows, fraternity and sorority houses and university residence halls.
Jim and his fellow students decided to create a "Hex Rally" to bring together the UT student community.
As we all know now, the Hex Rally was a HUGE success.
So there you have it: the true origins of the Hex Rally
The pictures and information displayed on this blog post were taken from: www.texasexesscc.org and www.texasexes.org
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