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 inhabiting the crossroads but has limited influence within their own realms. 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.
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. |
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, the 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 that is 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 captain of the good team 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 follow 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 spiritual structure in which Goetic Hoodoo employs their works.
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