Voodoo Hoodoo Magic

The word Hoodoo is sometimes spelled hoodoo. Recent scholarship publications spell the word with a capital letter. The word has different meanings depending on how it is spelled. Some authors spell Hoodoo with a capital letter to make a distinction from commercialized hoodoo which is spelled with a lowercase letter. Other authors have different reasons why they capitalize or lowercase the first letter.[25][26]

Hoodoo was created by African Americans, who were among over 12 million enslaved Africans from various ethnic groups being transported to the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries (1514 to 1867) as part of the transatlantic slave trade.[29] The transatlantic slave trade to the United States occurred between 1619 and 1808, and the illegal slave trade in the United States occurred between 1808 and 1860. Between 1619 and 1860 approximately 500,000 enslaved Africans were transported to the United States.[30] From Central Africa, Hoodoo has Bakongo magical influence from the Bukongo religion[31] incorporating the Kongo cosmogram, water spirits called Simbi, and some Nkisi and Minkisi practices.[32] The West African influence is Vodun from the Fon and Ewe people in Benin and Togo following some elements from the Yoruba religion.[33] After their contact with European slave traders and missionaries, some Africans converted to Christianity willingly, while other enslaved Africans were forced to become Christian which resulted in a syncretization of African spiritual practices and beliefs with the Christian faith.[34] Enslaved and free Africans also learned some regional indigenous botanical knowledge after they arrived to the United States.[35] The extent to which Hoodoo could be practiced varied by region and the temperament of the slave owners. For example, the Gullah people of the coastal Southeast experienced an isolation and relative freedom that allowed retention of various traditional West African cultural practices; whereas rootwork in the Mississippi Delta, where the concentration of enslaved African-Americans was dense, was practiced under a large cover of secrecy.[36][37] The reason for secrecy among enslaved and free African Americans was that slave codes prohibited large gatherings of enslaved and free blacks. Slaveholders experienced how slave religion ignited slave revolts among enslaved and free blacks, and some leaders of slave insurrections were black ministers or conjure doctors.[38] The Code Noir in French colonial Louisiana, prohibited and made it illegal for enslaved Africans to practice their traditional religions. Article III in the Code Noir states: "We forbid any public exercise of any religion other than Catholic."[39] The Code Noir and other slave laws resulted in enslaved and free African Americans to conduct their spiritual practices in secluded areas such as woods (hush arbors), churches, and other places.[40] Enslaved people created methods to decrease their noise when they practiced their spirituality. In a slave narrative from Arkansas, enslaved people prayed under pots to decrease their noise to prevent nearby whites from hearing them have church. A former slave in Arkansas named John Hunter said the slaves went to a secret house only they knew and turn the iron pots face up and their slaveholder could not hear them. Enslaved people also placed sticks under wash pots about a foot from the ground to decrease their noise as the sound they made during their rituals went into the pots.[41]

Voodoo Hoodoo Magic

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Former slave and abolitionist William Wells Brown, wrote in his book, My southern home, or, The South and its people published in 1880, discussed the life of enslaved people in St. Louis, Missouri. Brown recorded a secret Voudoo ceremony at midnight in the city of St. Louis. Enslaved people circled around a cauldron, and a Voudoo queen had a magic wand, and snakes, lizards, frogs, and other animal parts were thrown into the cauldron. During the ceremony spirit possession took place. Brown also recorded other conjure (Hoodoo) practices among the enslaved population.[42] Enslaved Africans in America held on to their African culture. Scholars assert that Christianity did not have much of an influence on some of the enslaved Africans as they continued to practice their traditional spiritual practices, and that Hoodoo was a form of resistance against slavery whereby enslaved Africans hid their traditions using the Christian religion against their slaveholders.[43][44] This branch of Christianity among the enslaved was concealed from slaveholders in "invisible churches." Invisible churches were secret churches where enslaved African Americans combined Hoodoo with Christianity. Enslaved and free black ministers preached resistance to slavery and that the power of God through praise and worship and Hoodoo rituals will free enslaved people from bondage.[45] William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (W. E. B. Du Bois) studied African American churches in the early twentieth century. Du Bois asserts that the early years of the Black church during slavery on plantations was influenced by Voodooism.[46] Black church records in the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth century in the South, recorded a number of church members practiced conjure and combined Christian and African spiritual concepts to harm or heal members in their community.[47]

Known Hoodoo spells date back to the era of slavery in the colonial history of the United States. A slave revolt broke out in 1712 in colonial New York, with enslaved Africans revolting and set fire to buildings in the downtown area. The leader of the revolt was a free African conjurer named Peter the Doctor who made a magical powder for the slaves to be rubbed on the body and clothes for their protection and empowerment. The Africans that revolted were Akan people from Ghana. Historians suggests the powder made by Peter the Doctor probably included some cemetery dirt to conjure the ancestors to provide spiritual militaristic support from ancestral spirits as help during the slave revolt. The Bakongo people in Central Africa incorporate cemetery dirt into minkisi conjuring bags to activate it with ancestral spirits, and during the slave trade Bakongo people were brought to colonial New York. The New York slave revolt of 1712 and others in the United States, showed a blending of West and Central African spiritual practices among enslaved and free blacks.[49][50] Conjure bags, also called mojo bags, were used as a form of resistance against slavery. William Webb helped enslaved people on a plantation in Kentucky resist their oppressors with the use of mojo bags. Webb told the slaves to gather some roots and put them in bags and "march around the cabins several times and point the bags toward the master's house every morning." After the slaves did what they were instructed by Webb, the slaveholder treated his slaves better.[51] Another enslaved African named Dinkie, known by the slaves as Dinkie King of Voudoos and the Goopher King, on a plantation in St. Louis, used goofer dust to resist a cruel overseer (a person who is an overseer of slaves). Dinkie was an enslaved man on a plantation who never worked like the other slaves. He was feared and respected by blacks and whites. Dinkie was known to carry a dried snakeskin, frog and lizard, and sprinkled goofer dust on himself and spoke to the spirit of the snake to wake up its spirit against the overseer.[52]

Henry Clay Bruce who was a black abolitionist and writer, recorded his experience of enslaved people on a plantation in Virginia hired a conjurer to prevent slaveholders from selling them to plantations in the Deep South. Louis Hughes, an enslaved man who lived on plantations in Tennessee and Mississippi, had a mojo bag that he carried to prevent slaveholders from whipping him. The mojo bag Hughes carried on him was called a "voodoo bag," by the slaves in the area.[53] Former slave and abolitionist Henry Bibb wrote in his autobiography Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself that he sought the help of several conjurers when he was enslaved. Bibb went to the conjurers (Hoodoo doctors) and hoped the charms provided to him from the conjure doctors would prevent slaveholders from whipping and beating him. The conjurers provided Bibb with conjure powders to sprinkle around the bed of the slaveholder, put conjure powders in the slaveholder's shoes, and carry a bitter root and other charms on him for his protection against slaveholders.[54]

During the era of slavery, occultist Paschal Beverly Randolph began studying the occult and traveled and learned spiritual practices in Africa and Europe. Randolph was a mixed race free black man who wrote several books on the occult. In addition, Randolph was an abolitionist and spoke out against the practice of slavery in the South. After the American Civil War, Randolph educated freedmen in schools for former slaves called Freedmen's Bureau Schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he studied Louisiana Voodoo and hoodoo in African American communities, documenting his findings in his book, Seership, The Magnetic Mirror. In 1874, Randolph organized a spiritual organization called Brotherhood of Eulis in Tennessee.[63][64] Through his travels, Randolph documented the continued African traditions in Hoodoo practiced by African Americans in the South. Randolph documented two African American men of Kongo origin that used Kongo conjure practices against each other. The two conjure men came from a slave ship that docked in Mobile Bay in 1860 or 1861. According to Randolph, the words "Hoodoo" and "Voodoo" are from African dialects, and the practices of Hoodoo and Voodoo are similar to Obi (Obeah) in the Caribbean.[65][66] The Caribbean influence in hoodoo is evident in African American languages. For example, the word used to describe a rootworkers or Voodoo priest's pharmacy house (a house filled with herbs for herbal healing and conjure) is called an Obi hut or Obeah hut.[67]

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