Like Sands Through an Hour Glass...: Jewish Magical Soap Opera

[Two women walking on the sand - not that there's anything wrong with that]

I just read a story that even left me baffled. Apparently a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) man in B'nai Brak, Israel, learned that his wife was having a lesbian love affair. Consulting his rabbi, the rabbi handed him a sack of sand, told him the sand was "special," and told him to spread it over the threshold of the offending lesbian. As soon as his wife set foot on the sand, so he was told, his wife would return to him.

Apparently the man sent his son to lay the sand before the doorway, but in an improvisation on the ritual, decided to torch the woman's laundry also. This may have made a pleasing odor unto the Lord, but it also drew the police. Father and son were pinched and confessed to the whole affair (the magical one, that is).

So, this is a novel ritual even to me. I know one may write in sand as part of a ritual, or use it to detect the passing of demons, but I know of nothing like this. Anybody have a source or lead for the use of sand as a love segullah or as a defense against lesbianism?

To learn more about the other Jewish occult practices I do understand, read the Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism: http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Jewish-Myth-Magic-Mysticism/dp/0738709050