Can We Alter Family Or Old-Fashioned Recipes? ~ Filipino Conjure & Rootwork

Can We Alter Family Or Old-Fashioned Recipes?

My teachers' and mentors' spiritual supplies recipes are Conjure and Rootwork treasures for me. They are botanical-scented and magical-infused heirlooms that draw all their students and family members together and give us a common purpose: to keep our teachers' spiritual supplies preparation tradition alive, no matter how times change or Hoodoo magic evolves.

Family or traditional recipes are more than the ingredients and the compounding, blending, and other preparations that go into making them. They are memories, histories, and the individuals who first made them for their families or community. In my case, the conjure oils and some other spiritual products transport me right back to my teachers' altar space (and their teachers' place as well, and to their ancestors'). And in the making of them every month, I and my clients can hear their voices as we dab our wrists with oil, sprinkle bath crystals into our bathwater, or use powders to dress our candles. Making and employing the spiritual supplies almost physically conjures up my mentors and their ancestors.

Still, times - and magic - changed. Suppose your teacher has used Rose Otto or Attar of Roses to make his Come to Me conjure oils, for instance. In that case, you might opt for something less Rose Otto-ish, like Rose Geranium oil or Wisteria oil, since Rose Otto is so expensive, unaffordable, and impractical for most people. Or suppose your mentor has used the endangered Adam and Eve root for blending Marriage oil. In that case, you might substitute High John the Conqueror root with Queen Elizabeth root since the former botanical curios are challenging to obtain.

Do those changes make them any less of family or traditional recipes? Aren't they still your mentors' recipes, just minus a few costly or nearly extinct ingredients? Or, in altering the tried and tested recipes, are you committing an act of familial and traditional irreverence?

Tim and I were not born and raised in an African-American Hoodoo family. Still, many of our recipes were originally from the American South, passed down through generations of root doctors. Over the years, they changed a few ingredients here and there to reflect the times and availability of the ingredients, whether it's swapping out traditional cooking oil for sweet almond as the carrier oil of their magical blends or shifting the conventional gathering of herbs to collect them in what they say is 'convenient,' more modern way.

Have they ever felt guilty altering some recipes that date back generations?

Not at all. One of our mentors shared family recipes with me that she tweaked by adding some ingredients to make them more potent. She said she loved blending oils with some aroma so they are not bland. When her great-grandaunt smelled some of her variations, she was so proud of her as she thought the oils were more powerful than ever.

I would, however, stress that before making any changes, one should understand the original versions of the recipes first. As our mentors always say, they don't appreciate and respect when people change a recipe just to change it. You have to learn the original. You can't run if you don't know how to walk.

When I was marketing and selling conjure oils in TCD (The Crystal Diva - an occult and metaphysical shop based here in the Philippines) for the first time, I decided to try making some of my mentor's recipes (with her permission) on my own. The actual process was a mystery to me, so I sent her an e-mail, prepared to hear folksy directions like "go into the garden and pick fresh mint, basil, and rosemary" or "carefully pour your oil into the bottle while reciting this litany."

Instead, I read, "Well, I don't measure. I just throw everything in there." And then she went on to list the ingredients again, ask me to buy some of them in the grocery or supermarket, tell me to use my five senses when speaking with the herbs before putting them inside the bottle, and remind me to potentiate them using Psalms. I hid my disappointment when she revealed this information to me since I already knew it. I was looking for a more ceremonial type of procedure. I am exposed to different spiritual and magical paths known to have complex rituals when working with magic, so I was expecting to read something else.

Nonetheless, I decided to embrace my teachers' roots. Watching the herbs sink into the sweet almond and olive oils didn't excite me. But once the mixture started blending, like magic, our entire altar space smelled like Church, apothecary, or some vintage perfume store. I haven't been there at my teacher's home, but I know in my heart it smells the same!

TCD clients didn't just rave about Tim + Neal conjure oils when we first launched them; they became the top-seller products in the shop for years afterward. I wish I could say that I didn't deviate from trying to configure those recipes. But there was a moment when I made some tweaks as I wanted to try something new. Unfortunately, they didn't get nearly as many raves and sales as my teacher's old-school recipes, nor did they make any kind of lasting impression. For my part, I thought they were good enough because how can you not like my painstakingly-researched combinations? However, they just weren't the same. Unlike my teacher's conjure oils, there was no 'soul' in them. So my friend and a former colleague advised me to stick with the tradition.

The thing with family and traditional recipes, though, is that whether we realize it or not, they usually evolve and change in subtle ways over the years before they even get to us. Recipes vary based on the following:

Availability of the ingredients and curios.
Cultural shifts and social influences.
Economic impacts.
Environmental changes.

Unless a rootworker has a family recipe book, which I reckon some African-American families have, with detailed instructions passed down with strict instructions to never substitute anything, personal touches, adjustments, and shifts would have probably found their way into the recipes.

Then again, whoever created that recipe a century ago might jump at the chance to buy modern carrier oils now instead of using the underwhelming cooking oil or mineral oil or use a coffee grinder at home instead of compounding the herbs and minerals with mortar and pestle. By the same token, there's something to be said for engaging with the past and engaging techniques, aromas, and trials that might seem oldfangled in our modern lives but build connections with those that came before us.

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.