Is Hoodoo Satanic Or Demonic? ~ Filipino Conjure & Rootwork

There is no such thing as Satanic Hoodoo. Satanists do not call on the blood of Jesus Christ, pray and devote to the Judeo-Christian God, and recite scripture to empower their magical and spiritual work.

The 'Devil' that we, Hoodoo practitioners, invoked in our works differs from Satan. The devil in Hoodoo is a revered spiritual entity. He is like Papa Legba, Eleggua, or San Simon, a trickster spirit who inhabits the crossroads but has limited influence within their own realms and ours. Some people see him as a lesser chthonic entity that is essentially malicious at times and is quite good at name-dropping, posturing, and pretending to be more influential than He really is.

He is definitely a psychic construct or, in the concept of the Book of Enoch, an 'egregorial power' that has so much energy. Fear and adoration fed into it, forming its own existence and becoming the entity that the fearmongers created. If one tracks the mentions of the ha-Satans through the Holy Scriptures, there's a fairly significant gap between 'Satan' and 'The Devil' and the functions they actually serve in the various texts over time. So for most Hoodoo practitioners, we don't equate The Devil with Satan, Lucifer, Baphomet, or any of the Ba'al or ha-satan entities. The Devil is The Devil, and his influence only goes as far as you allow it to because he's a collective psychic construct.

In Conjure tradition, though, he can be a helpful ally to guard one's property, make someone lustful, dominate or cause harm to an enemy, drive unwanted people away, compel a debtor to repay money owed, and get easy money without much effort.

Red Devil Lye is an American brand of lye (a caustic chemical used in liquid soaps and toilet bowl cleaners) used by old conjure works to protect and send enemies away.

Actually, an old-fashioned work utilized a drain cleaner bearing a drawing of the face of the devil. This product, called 'Lewis Red Devil Lye,' was sold in boxes before with labels of a big, furious, smiling devil (they now replaced it with plastic bottles and reduced the size of the devil, as shown above). That artwork of the devil in the vintage container was why some practitioners bury four unopened containers of Red Devil Lye at the four corners of a property with the Devil images facing outward to guard one's premises.

But I know few conjure men who work with the Demons, primarily chthonic entities from the Judeo-Christian pantheon and the Goetia; I was one of them. The synthesis between Demonolatry and Hoodoo has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th Century with the experimentation of the urban conjure workers of Chicago and similar areas because of the availability of Judeo-Christian grimoires and pseudepigraphical writings to the public like the Keys of Solomon, the 6th and 7th Books of Moses, Book of Enoch, Lemegeton and many others.

I didn't worship Satan because I had never been contacted by him, and I was neither a Theistic nor a LaVeyan Satanist. I did practice Demonolatry, though, to some extent, but differently than the usual practice of ceremonial magicians.

Now, one may ask, do practitioners who practice Goetic Hoodoo still worship the Biblical God? How is it possible?

Goetic Seals.

In my previous post, I discussed the two kinds of "servitus"; latria and dulia. Latria is the service given to God alone. At the same time, dulia is a service different in nature and degree from that given to God because it is paid to the saints, angels, non-Christian deities and spirits, and even 'demons.'

There are those very intensely dogmatic people whose worldview is a great battle between the two forces in the world - good and evil. The good team captain is the Biblical God, the Father, assisted by His Son Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and a host of angels, saints, and blessed spirits. The captain of the evil team is God's archenemy, Satan, assisted by Lucifer and other demons and evil spirits.

This approach does not keep with most forms of Hoodoo and Jewish tradition. The so-called 'Satan vs. God' approach is an anathema to my personal beliefs and Folk Jewish tradition because of the whiff of dualism inherent in it. The Infinite God is One and only One. He acts in many different ways, but I don't believe that there are 'two' armies fighting for humanity's souls in the world's complete sense.

The Bible does speak of the entity called 'Satan.' Still, it sees Satan and other demons as intelligent agents of God, testing the sincerity and inner worthiness of man's deeds, the strength of his convictions, and the endurance of his spiritual and moral fiber. Although I agree that Satan and some demons seem to entice man to do wrong, they are not inherently evil beings who can control other people. Instead, they are conducting a 'string' operation, overtly enticing mankind to do evil but, in reality, working for God. The book of Job explains Satan's role here on Earth: "God sends out Satan to test Job's righteousness." This is the kind of spiritual structure in which Goetic Hoodoo employs their works.

See, What Our Path Is

Being immensely interested in African diaspora religions and Folk Catholicism, we primarily honor our ancestors, Church saints, angels, folk saints, and Afro-Caribbean spirits such as loas and orishas. If we absolutely have to put a label on ourselves, we prefer the label of “Folk Judeo-Christian” as we live according to the customs and traditions of conjure workers and root doctors from the Deep South and syncretic followers of Christ in various nations of the Caribbean and Latin America.

Our spirituality includes West African-based Caribbean-style tradition as well as Esoteric Christianity and Yoruba religion. Generally, we practice Gullah folk magic popularly known in the Deep South as Hoodoo or Lowcountry Voodoo; the ancient wisdom founded by Orunmila in Ile-Ife called Ifa, and a bit of Lihim na Karunungan (Filipino Esotericism or Philippine Mystery Tradition).

Respect, What Hoodoo Is

Despite visible evidence of Central West African, Islamic/Moorish, Native American, Judeo-Christian, European, and even a few East Indian/Hindu, Chinese, and Latino/Caribbean retentions, influences, and admixtures, this does not mean that Hoodoo is an open and unrestricted system of eclectic magic.

Conjure, and Rootwork is rooted in African-American culture and Folk Protestant Christianity. Any practitioners of Hoodoo who did not grow up within African-American culture should still have a fuller understanding and high regard for its origin.

In the beginning, the early conjure doctors were entirely Black. The students were all Black, the elders were Black, the teaching was Black, and they focused only on Blacks as their audience. But other races were accepted when they had also been brought into the Hoodoo community and learned the tradition. Even so, we should still acknowledge that Hoodoo, Conjure, or Rootwork is not ours but only belongs to the Black community. We are just believers who are grafted into their rich yet humble tradition and, by word and deed, embrace genuine African-American folk spirituality and magic. This is all we can do for all the blessings we received from God and our Black ancestors.

Hoodoo's lack of religious structure and hierarchical authority do not mean that any person or group can appropriate or redefine it. If one cannot respect Hoodoo as it is and for what it is, then please, do not play with it.

Learn, How Conjure Is Worked On

Authentic Conjure is not all about blending and selling oils and casting spells online to make money. Hoodoo has its own spiritual philosophy, theology, and a wide range of African-American folkways, customs, and practices which include, but are not limited to, veneration of the ancestors, Holy Ghost shouting, snake reverence, spirit possession, graveyard conjure, nkisi practices, Black hermeneutics, African-American church traditions, the ring shout, the Kongo cosmogram, ritual water immersions, crossroads magic, making conjure canes, animal sacrifices, Jewish scriptural magic, enemy works, Seekin' ritual, magical incorporation of bodily fluids, etc.

Unfortunately, they are currently missing in marketeered or commercial Hoodoo, as they are being removed, disregarded, or ignored by unknowing merchants who simply want to profit from an African-American spiritual tradition, thus reducing Hoodoo to just a plethora of recipes, spells, and tricks.

Tim and I are completely aware that we are not African-Americans, so we are doing our best to retain and preserve the customs and traditions of the slave ancestors to avoid unnecessary conflict with the larger Black-Belt Hoodoo community and prevent them from labeling us inauthentic outsiders and our practice as mere 'cultural misappropriation.'

Accept, Who We Are

The byproduct of eons of slave history, Black supremacists believe that only people with African or African-American blood are real Hoodoo practitioners and are often inclined to consider themselves as the elite of the Hoodoo community; a place in which they believed that Whites, Latinos, Asians or any other races who do not have Black ancestry do not belong. Black supremacists are prone to be very hostile towards both “outsiders” and those accepting of them, fearing that their promotion and acceptance would dilute or even negate the Black identity of Hoodoo.

Although we do understand why some Blacks hold this stance, since a lot of people nowadays are misappropriating many aspects of Hoodoo and teaching the spiritual path even without proper education and training (for purely monetary purposes), we would, however, want to say that not all non-Black Hoodoo practitioners are the same.

WE respect what Hoodoo is, and we never try to change it, claim it as our own, disregard its history, take unfair advantage of it, speak against the people who preserve it, and mix it with other cultures (like our own) and call it Filipino/Pinoy Hoodoo, Gypsy Hoodoo or Wiccan Hoodoo because there are no such things.