Hoodoo, Rootwork, Conjure, Obeah
Hoodoo, Rootwork, Conjure, Obeah Links
- Hoodoo: Definition and History An article by Catherine Yronwode comparing hoodoo folk-magic with African Traditional Religions such as Vodoun and Santeria; also included is evidence of the Native American and European-American admixtures that give hoodoo its syncretic charcater.
- Mojo Bags, Conjure Hands, Tobies, and Nation Sacks The most frequently asked question about hoodoo is, "What is a mojo?" This essay by Catherine Yronwode explains the African origin of mojo bags (mojo means "prayer") and provides instructions for making your own luck-, love-, or money-drawing mojo from common roots, herbs, minerals, and other curios.
- Rethinking the Nature and Tasks of African-American Theology Anthony B. Pinn of Macalester College provides scholarly examples of how hoodoo and other African-based religious practices form a "second stream" within African-American Christianty, forcing a recognition of theological complexity beyond the merely folkloric or religio-magical orientation of conjure.
- Doktor Snake: Voodoo Spells and Lore Offers free ebooks on hoodoo and voodoo and a free monthly ezine.
- Superstitions & Folklore of the South Online reprint of a historically important 19th century essay on hoodoo by Charles W. Chestnutt comparing North Carolina African-American folk-magic with African religious practices.
- Hoodoo: An Afro-Diaspora Tradition A New World name of an Ancient African Magical Tradition.
- Hoodoo and Rootwork A brief introduction to hoodoo that features lengthy text extracts from Harry Middleton Hyatt's oral histories about rootwork and conjure, collected from 1,600 African-Americans living in the South during the 1930s.
- Invisible Culture: Hoodoo in Georgia and South Carolina Nicole McCleod describes Hoodoo and Conjure in the American South, with a review of "Blue Roots: African-American Folk Magic of the Gullah People," by Roger Pinckney.
- Laying Down Tricks and Disposing of Ritual Materials Lengthy illustrated article on the methodology and practice of African-American hoodoo rootwork.
- Obeah: Afro-Shamanistik Witchcraft An occultist's compilation of views on Jamaican Obeah, stressing magical aspects and minimizing religious ones, with extracts from W. Somerset Maugham and Azoth Kalafou.
- UCLA Folklore Archives - Hoodoo Heritage: Hyatt Field Recordings A brief introduction to UCLA's holdings of the collected papers of the folklorist Harry M. Hyatt, who interviewed hoodoo practitioners throughout the South during the 1930s and again in 1970. The site contains sound clips and transcripts from a 1970 interview with The Healer Sarheed.
- Luck-Balls Online reprint from "Voodoo Tales as Told Among the Negroes of the Southwest," 1893, by Mary Alicia Owen; contains an important eye-witness account of the making of a jack or luck-ball.
- Hoodoo - Conjuration - Witchcraft - Rootwork by Harry M. Hyatt An explanatory and descrtiptive Table of Contents for Hyatt's 4,766 un-indexed pages of interviews with 1,600 African-American hoodoo practitioners in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Links lead to hoodoo topic pages on which the Hyatt interviews are used as documentation and to a list of Hyatt's named informants (most remain anonymous).
- Index of 19th Century Southern Texts An archive of texts by Charles W. Chestnutt, Joel Chandler Harris, and Mary Alice Owen that mention African-American hoodoo beliefs that derive from African religious sources. Also included at the site are extracts from Mark Twain's works that mention European-American witchcraft beliefs.
- Hoodoo in Theory and Practice by Catherine Yronwode An online book with hundreds of interlinked illustrated web pages on African-American folk-magic (a.k.a. hoodoo, rootwork, or conjure). Included are descriptions of how to lay tricks; burn candles and incense; sprinkle powders; make mojo bags; prepare spiritual baths and floor washes; use dressing oils, herbs, minerals, and roots; perform spells for drawing luck, love, and money; take off jinxes and crossed conditions; and more.
- African American Magic and Tradition in Hoodoo About.com site on the tradition and history of Hoodoo.
- African-Americans and Predictive Dreams by Anthony Shafton Belief in precognitive dreams runs between 25% and 50% in the general U.S. population, but among black Americans predicitve dreaming or "dreaming true" is affirmed by 84% - 92% of those interviewed. This difference reflects an African heritage that places importance on ancestor visitation dreams, fluid boundaries between dreaming and other states of consciousness such as waking vision, and the spirituality of dreams as expressed in religion and social culture.
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