What Is The Current State Of Hoodoo? ~ Filipino Conjure & Rootwork

King Novelty Curio Catalogs advertised some assortments of African-American cosmetics and spiritual supplies in the Black-owned and nationally-distributed Chicago Defender newspaper.

You will often hear practitioners of different spiritual paths or religions manufacturing and selling conjure oils, powders, herb baths, mojo bags, and other spiritual supplies for particular situations or conditions nowadays, and I hope you long think about what Hoodoo is and isn't before buying such spiritual and magical items.

Enslaved African-American ancestors were amazing people who struggled to preserve their culture in the face of slavery and oppression. They would not condone practices that bastardize the field of their own folk magic. If Hoodoo, Conjure, or Rootwork is just about commercially making and distributing magical and spiritual items, Black ancestors would have advocated this practice way before any modern or urban pseudo-practitioners would.

In the past, if people had a problem, they would go to a spiritual worker if there was nobody in their family that could help them. The workers would fix up something for them to use. In contrast, today, 'commercial Hoodoo' is superseding and almost destroying the need for a spiritual worker. It is convenient and agreeable that Hoodoo products became available for general public use. The problem is that the marketed versions of Hoodoo have little to do with the original old African-American practices that slaves and their descendants engaged in. Subsequently, our community is currently dominated by marketers and manufacturers who use a legitimate spiritual path and a magical system for commercialization. People have appropriated much of it for their monetary benefit, taking as much from African-Americans as possible, further removing the practice from any authentic spiritual working. This condemnable practice is also one that has shown the most eclecticism, as non-Christians and non-Hoodoo practitioners have attempted to claim the practice for their own, disregarding the long history of Hoodoo and Folk Christianity, and have incorporated several foreign spiritual elements into the tradition.

A genuine practitioner of Hoodoo will teach the tradition to their clients. Marketers, on the other hand, would just label their products with popular Hoodoo formula names such as Van Van, Lucky Mojo, Fast Luck, Has No Hanna, or Essence of Bend-Over and would include short, vague instructions but they would not give detailed information, simply because they lack heritage, and also proper education and training for non-Black practitioners.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against marketing. Tim and I market our products too, but if you sell Hoodoo spiritual supplies, then make sure you actually understand and practice this path and respect what it is, or else, you are already crossing the line. Most marketers won't even be able to tell you the fundamental components and elements of the Hoodoo tradition or some other old-time recipes and procedures that conjure men and women used for healing or luck-drawing and how they were developed because they pursue it purely as a business and not because they have respect for slave history and culture.

There are indeed a lot of cultural, traditional, religious, and spiritual admixtures to Hoodoo, but it is still important to return to the core of the tradition. In other words, just because this African-American system of folk magic contains visible evidence of Esoteric Christian, Jewish, Native American, Afro-Caribbean, New Age, and even a few Asian admixtures does not mean that it is an outstretched system of eclectic magic where 'anything goes.'

Hoodoo is African-American folk magic, primarily the folk magic of African-American Protestant Christians, with some inclusion of African-American Catholics, Spiritualists, Muslims, etc. - and is well documented. Its standard cultural repertoire of tools, formulae, recipes, ritual procedures, techniques, and beliefs are utilized to consistently perform a known kind and quality of magic for specific conditions. And within that standard cultural repertoire, conjure men and women make their own choices of how to do their spells or blend their products - but they remain within the cultural repertoire as their practices will produce the magic that is close to identical in appearance, manifestation, and efficiency every time it is performed, no matter who follows the tradition and what tools or methods they used.

Hoodoo spells incorporate traditional tools, supplies, and procedures.

We genuinely hope the introduction of Hoodoo and some other concepts and practices we shared from our previous articles in this blog give you an idea of how Hoodoo is made up of various elements and influences and how rich its history is.

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.