Here’s what we’re going to talk about in this one.
Hello everyone, I’m Angela, and welcome to my symposium. I am a Ph.D. and a university lecturer and this is your online resource for the Academic Study of Magic and Magic-practising Religions and Traditions.
Before we start, I want to make a couple of premises. The first is that Hoodoo is a very complex phenomenon and there appears to be a lack of consensus on some of its aspects. The second is that here I’m going to focus on the academic research on this tradition, not on sources produced by the community of practitioners. Also, this video will not – nor does it intend to – be an exhaustive explanation of the Hoodoo tradition but just an introduction. Let me know in the comments if you’d like me to cover specific aspects of this tradition in more detail.
But now let’s move onto the topic, shall we?
According to Hazzard-Donald, it is difficult to pin down one satisfactory definition of Hoodoo that may encompass all of its complexities. And yet, she defines it for the purpose of her study as the ‘indigenous, herbal, healing and supernatural-controlling spiritual folk tradition of the African American in the United States’ (Hazzard-Donald, 2012, p. 4).
‘Hoodoo— also known as “rootwork,” “conjure,” “conjuration,” and even “trickeration” — ‘is a complex and nebulous belief system with deep roots in the African American South. Boasting no dogma, ecclesiastical structures, congregations, or religious hierarchy, Hoodoo is perhaps best comprehended as a way of understanding the workings of nature and destiny- as Wilson beautifully puts it.
As such, it offers believers both a system of explanation and a system of engagement— a way to explain the often-inexplicable workings of the world and a way to act upon it. Usually, bringing about these changes in the world involves the use of roots and other plant materials; hence the name “rootwork.”'(Wilson, 2009, pp. 392–393)
According to Maduro, ‘the Hoodoo subculture within the wider Afro-American culture has become most organized and differentiated in the American South along the Gulf Coast. The most well-known Hoodoo centres, known to his informants in San Francisco, were in Texas and Louisiana: New Orleans and the surrounding area, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, and Houston. These regions were settled by Haitian emigrants in the wake of the island’s revolution in 1791. That’s when large numbers of black slaves were brought, by their French owners, to Louisiana, the nearest French possession'(Maduro, 1975, p. 427).
Yvonne P. Chireau sees Hoodoo as a religious tradition, more specifically as a ‘vernacular religion’(Chireau, 2006, p. 3), seemingly endorsing an argument quite popular among religious studies scholars according to which the term religion should not only identify traditions resembling the Abrahamic or the World Religions but rather be more inclusive to the non-dominant, non-institutionalised and non-dogmatic manifestations of religiosity.
On the other hand, Katrina Hazzard-Donald states that Hoodoo is no longer a religion. Although it used to be, she explains that Hoodoo, now, can be seen as ‘the reorganized remnants of what must have been, albeit short-lived, a full-blown African-based religion among African American bondsmen.’ (Hazzard-Donald, 2012, p. 2).
Analogously to many west and central west African traditional religions, the Hoodoo religion entailed practices such as spirit possession, ancestor worship, water immersion, herbal medicine, sacred music, circle dancing as well as having shaman-like figures who took on different roles in their community, for instance, leading religious ceremonies or sacred rituals such as the Ring Shout (Hazzard-Donald, 2012, p. 3).
When the African religion turned into hoodoo, a significant role was played by cultural exchanges with Europeans, white American settlers, and Native Americans. Although a direct influence of Native American spirituality on Hoodoo has little supporting evidence, the herbal healing practice found in Hoodoo shows remarkable similarities with Native American customs suggesting that some degree of cultural exchange did, in fact, occur (Hazzard-Donald, 2012, p. 7).
Moving on to the philosophical components of Hoodoo we find two main philosophical foundations underpinning this practice.
The first is that elements found in the natural world and human by-products – such as oils, hair, roots, and bones – possess an inherent power. Different elements hold a different amount of power and their combination can increase or decrease their effectiveness for a given purpose. This power is believed to be neutral, neither good nor evil.
The second philosophical stance – or underlying belief – is that human beings can access and manipulate this power. The extent to which this power can be exerted depends upon the knowledge of the individual.
Knowledge, in hoodoo, is often gained through the means of stories and tales of personal experiences. As Wilson suggests, ‘Generations of practitioners have known that chewing the root of Chewing John and then spitting it toward the person one hopes to influence will yield the desired result. Similarly, stories about the money-drawing power of lodestones have long circulated among gamblers and lottery players’. It is also noteworthy to mention that some of this information is freely shared while more esoteric knowledge remains only accessible to those who are traditionally referred to as rootworkers, hoodoo doctors, conjurers, and root doctors (Wilson, 2009, pp. 395–396).
Contemporary practitioners of Hoodoo deem the source of their esoteric knowledge to come through spiritual revelation, sometimes referred to as being ‘given by God’. In other instances, knowledge is passed down via generational inheritance through kinship. However, it is interesting to notice that those who seek help from rootworkers show little to no interest in where their knowledge comes from. The key point is the effectiveness of that practice, for both the practitioner and the client.
In a similar manner, the causal relationship between the workings and their effects holds little relevance to those involved with the practice, as what really matters, once again, is obtaining the desired result (Wilson, 2009, pp. 395–396).
Another fascinating element of contemporary African American Hoodoo is its individualised nature, alongside the absence of a pantheon of Saints of Spirits to seek assistance from. Most root doctors practise alone rather than in groups or with other practitioners. Adopting this individual spiritual revelation, traditional rootwork has no centralized body of knowledge and no authoritative text beyond the Bible. (Wilson, 2009, p. 397).
The set of practices in Hoodoo is quite varied, just as its now worldwide outreach that goes far beyond the United States. But these may be topics for future videos, granted you express your interest in the comment section.
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REFERENCES
Chireau, Y. P. (2006) Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition, First edition., Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press.
Hazzard-Donald, K. (2012) Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System, 1st edition., Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press.
Maduro, R. J. (1975) ‘Hoodoo Possession in San Francisco: Notes on Therapeutic Aspects of Regression’, Ethos, [American Anthropological Association, Wiley], vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 425–447.
Wilson, C. R. (2009) The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 14: Folklife, University of North Carolina Press.