Live Things In You ~ Filipino Conjure & Rootwork

Causing and treating 'live things in you' is one of the folkloric trademarks of Hoodoo practice. This malignant work is similar to "barang" in the Philippines, where the sorcerer makes the insects crawl underneath the skin and eventually makes them come out of the victim's body. Live things in you first came to the attention of White folks in the post-Emancipation period, when former slaves began talking about their hardships during slavery. These Black American narratives, also known to writers as 'conjure tales,' emerged and became the source of oral and written stories about animal entities' intrusion into the body. Though I was taught how to perform this, I don't really recommend it to other folks.

I learned about this sorcerous work from a conjure worker who claims to be of Black Seminole descent, now living in California. He often calls his work 'tricks in your skin'. He said that for them to get the real magic of live things in you, they must follow the precise process that their ancestors taught them; no alterations, no substitutes, so as not to lose the potency of powders or curios they use in this magic.

On a specific day, they gather and/or produce the things they use in this trick, such as:

Snake eggs, head or skin sheds
Frog eggs or tadpoles
Horsehair
Spider legs and web
Lizard or salamander eggs or tail
Dried or live insects
Ground puppy.
Crushed scorpion heads or tail
Slugs or snails
Worms

Evil conjure workers only use one of the animal curios mentioned above, and as you notice, the usual species of animal invaders are associated with mud, dirt, or slime. These associations embody impurity and pollution.

Then the day after, they visit old cemeteries to collect soil mixed with the bones of the dead. He also said he knows other folks who even include toxic plants and metals in the mixture. They start chopping, grinding, or compounding the particular animal curio with graveyard dirt and bones the next day. Then, they put the powder into small vials and bottles, and before using it, they are told to place the container between their thumb and index finger of their left hand and address it in prayer, in which, in the end, the powder 'becomes alive.' The actual process is more complex and elaborate than this, but I refuse to share more since this is a horrible job, and historically, this condition has already killed people when it isn't removed. A root doctor from Georgia named George Little, skilled in domestic medicine, even once testified and described the deadly consequence of such infestations: "Frawgs an lizuds and sech tings is injected intuh people's bodies an duh people den fall ill an sometime die."

Live things are usually acquired through ingestion, but some people also say that one can acquire them too when he steps upon or sits on the poisoned powder or when the victim is sprinkled with it via other bodily orifices like ears, nose, and open sores or wounds. The victim then feels the effects of the invasion of the live things through certain diseases depending on how one gets inflicted; swollen feet if he stepped upon it, hemorrhoids if he sat on it, stomach aches when he ingested it, and other similar cases. For such illnesses, no amount of conventional medical treatments would supposedly work. Sometimes, they would even get worse. It reveals its real cause when people are already seeing animals such as small snakes, insects, lizards, spiders, millipedes, worms, and bugs crawling just beneath the skin surface, especially on the legs, arms, and belly. Others say its harmful effects are worse as they witnessed afflicted people fall on four, howl like a dog, and die.

Traditional Cures and Remedies

Folk magical treatments for such ailment vary from one practitioner to another. But the most traditional is to induce vomiting by drinking three doses of tea made of black or leptandra root, mixed with alum crystals, or by taking an emetic of poke root, olive oil, and saltpeter. For safety reasons, I do not recommend the latter. This kind of remedial work is actually a Cherokee influence, where they blend and drink what Native Americans call 'black drink' to induce vomiting for purification purposes during their ceremonies.

Bathing oneself with tea-infusion of nettle leaves, agrimony leaves, mint leaves, rue leaves, and wahoo bark is also said to cut off dangerous and deadly sorcery such as this.

Dusting the victim's afflicted body part with powder, mixed with the herbs I noted above, is also a common practice.

Wearing silver dimes or mercury dimes, or any silver plates at the ankle with engraved SATOR square is an excellent protective talisman:

If the plate or coin turns black, you have stepped on a cursing powder, but it would be ineffective. This protection combines Pennsylvania Dutch, Judeo-Christian, and African folk magic - with a distinct reminiscence of ancient practices from the Ewe, Fon, and Ibibio groups.

Origin of Live Things in You

According to some accounts, the practice of afflicting and healing such conditions is a mixture of African and Native American influence, as the stories regarding these are commonly collected from Black people with American-Indian ancestry. This sorcery is actually a type of imitative magic. The most common use of animals such as worms, insects, snails, and other small reptiles is to obtain their symbolism or representation. For example, some insects, such as roaches and flies, are vectors of disease as they are known to carry bacteria. These said insects are used by some evil root doctors to bring illness to their victims. A narrative concerning this particularly bizarre condition of a Cherokee-African- European free man of color can be read at this site: Southern Spirits.

Personal Advice to Clients with this Affliction

It's good to maintain a healthy skepticism, not to accept at face value everything a person who claims to diagnose a person with such affliction, but to verify everything first by following these recommendations.

And also, many folks only do sleight-of-hand tricks and claim they take out what's causing the illness. Charlatans always commit such fraudulent activity in the name of money.

However, this kind of activity becomes a stereotype of curing Live Things In You because multiple allegations and actual sightings of playacting were documented. And because of this, authentic conjure workers who know their practice suffer from misconceptions, leading to upsetting prejudice.

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.