Can Ritual Baths, Rub-Downs And Any Other Cleansing Rites Be Taken Regularly? ~ Filipino Conjure & Rootwork

Can Ritual Baths, Rub-Downs And Any Other Cleansing Rites Be Taken Regularly?

We know what a medical check-up is - a thorough examination, precisely a physical one. I must have received hundreds or even thousands of check-ups in my existence. And I believe everyone would agree that it is important to have regular check-ups to help us obtain the health care that is best for our individual needs. During check-ups, we can mention any complaints or concerns about our health. The doctor will also ask about lifestyle behaviors like smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, sexual health, and exercise. The doctor will also check on our personal and family medical history.

As a spiritual worker, like a medical doctor, I also undertake fundamental steps that are focused on good history-taking with my clients, learning spiritual habits and family backgrounds, as well as to conduct a routine psychic diagnosis and spiritual examination to ensure their improvement and total healing, recovery, and wellness. Conjure doctors are not called doctors for nothing.

Most conjure doctors or root doctors, if not all, strongly support modern medicine. Medical practices are undeniable gifts from God. Relying solely on these physical gifts, however, is risky. It can easily pollute the mind. It is saddening to note that spiritual health is often disregarded, if not ignored. Some people have become fully occupied with anything physical and material, forgetting where these all started.

A root doctor-client relationship starts with the routine check-up through psychic readings and divination, the first interview. This initial encounter is crucial as the doctor gathers information from the client and recommends the best treatment plan to develop a healing process. As in any relationship, most especially for us spiritual practitioners, it's essential to put God at the center. This means we should always relate to God our plans, thoughts, and desires concerning the care of our clients. With God's presence, we would get the best diagnosis, guidance, advice, treatment, and protection, thus giving us more confidence.

Similar to making repentance (known as altar calls in Evangelical Christian Churches and confession in Roman Catholic Church), five steps could be recommended for our client:

1. Examination of conscience - a client must recall his behavior and lifestyle: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

2. Contrition of sins - recognize and accept possible causes of spiritual maladies, and be sorry for them.

3. Purpose of the amendment - with humility and honesty, assure the doctor that he will give up unhealthy habits or stay away from toxic people that bring spiritual diseases such as jinx, hexes, curses, spirit attachment, or evil tricks.

4. Obedience to God's commandments - strictly follow the doctor's advice and treatment plan. The advice does not just come from the doctor but the Divine. It could be ritual bathing, anointing the head, spellwork, or drinking a prescribed herbal tea.

5. Fulfillment of penance - have regular spiritual check-ups and follow-ups, attend Church services, and participate in charities.

Performing spiritual check-ups and treatment with clients regularly is advisable and illuminating to both parties. The frequency of a rite could be monthly, quarterly, or yearly, whatever suits their situations and meet their needs.

Preparing spinach-water solution for ceremonial head washing with other cleansing items such as incense, citrus-scented cologne, cascarilla powder, coconut oil, shea butter, and a fan made of black rooster tail and raven feathers.

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.