In urban Hoodoo tradition, packaging and labeling have always been essential magical tools. Product labels are vital in increasing brand visibility and spiritual or magical perceptibility. Spiritual supplies manufacturers communicate the product's value to the customers and spiritual entities through their artistic labels. It's one of the essential means of communication between the brand, the root workers, and the spirits they work with. The product labeling contains crucial occult information that is printed on the packaging. Labeling is not just about branding and product promotion; conjure workers believe spirits also note far more critical symbolisms when they see the labels.
Due to this, marketeered Hoodoo supplies and paraphernalia with attractive labels and graphics began appearing in mail-house order catalogs, Jewish and Chinese drugstores and pharmacies, and spiritual supplies shops.
In the years before the Civil Rights movement and the "Black is Beautiful" revolution that grew from it, African-American women have consistently peddled cosmetics, hygiene supplies, and also home-care products with transparent Westernized motifs. The societal pressure to achieve the widely accepted 'American' ideal, much like the pressure cast on American women of all colors, shapes, sizes, and backgrounds, was pervasive long before Jewish chemists and pharmacists like Morton Neumann, Joseph Menke, Morris Shapiro, and LeRue Marx came along. What these individuals did do, however - thanks to the provocative nature of their label designs - besides helping to shape the urban Hoodoo world, also gave a new commercial platform to an unashamedly more homey, progressive, literate, domineering, aggressive, romantic, and sexualized images of the modern Black women.
Following the ancient belief of native Africans concerning the significance of symbolism and imagery, these designs were created to share and understand the meaning of advertising messages. African-Americans, including conjure workers, are attached to images because of their ancestral consciousness. Traditional signs and symbols are believed to be dynamic human activities and conditions that touch every living domain for meaningful development and peaceful coexistence.
The illustration of symbols and other imagery is a tradition of Central West African origin. Animal prints, geometrical figures, line patterns, ritual emblems, and figurative rock and wood arts are attested in the slave trade regions. The practice of giving significance to symbolic and allegorical imagery in Hodoo, therefore, owes its origin to African cultural convergence.
We are not sure if this directive came straight from the Jewish merchants or from the influence of their Black colleagues and employees, but the lovely novel artwork, along with catchy product names like "Follow Me Boy" sachet powder, "Kiss Me Now" perfume, "Essence of Bend-Over" floor wash and "Red Fast Luck" dressing oil became calling cards through the entire history of Hoodoo. The cosmetic mail-order catalogs gave their target clientele apparent cause-and-effect scenes of the passionate and auspicious moments awaiting them if they used the product in question.
To get acknowledged on a pharmacy or occult shop shelf or in the hands of a door-to-door salesman, these Jewish merchants felt the best response was by employing mostly black designers, salespeople, copywriters, and manufactory workers. These people could also market their concoctions in a style and language that is more likely to resonate with the intended market.
Labels helped build brand and product efficacy, spiritual recognition, and communication, promoting consumer loyalty and overall magical potency. However, the most effective signs and symbols would be those that the consumers could easily culturally and consciously relate with since a familiarity bond had previously been created already. Hence, most symbols they used were those items or curios, commonly used in spell works, that evoke the "lucky" imagery of the brand name, such as heart, four-leaf clover, wishbone, horseshoe, dice, eye, key, black cat, hand, crown, star, etc.
Dedicated collectors now scour the globe looking for rare tins and bottles of these vintage products due to the artistic merits of those stunning labels. |
More often than not, most people think that all products with labels can be used in Hoodoo practice. This is incorrect. A commercial product can only be used in Hoodoo if it passes extensive research and thorough testing by several Hoodoo practitioners. That testing determines the level of awareness and efficiency among mundane consumers or how figurative or emblematic the commercial design is.
The more graphic the product label is, the stronger the product's performance is in Hoodoo magic. If the product has a dominant, attractive, and symbolic graphic, that product would likely be used in spiritual workings. That is because a strong graphic design means that a specific product is the first to be recalled when a specific magical or spiritual condition is mentioned.
A Conjurer's collection of vintage African-American anointing, rubbing, and massage oils, hair-care products, colognes, perfumes, ointments, balms, etc. (Photo courtesy of Lucky Mojo Curio Co.) |
Some of the labels of Tim + Neal anointing and dressing oils. |