Hudu Magic

[Quincey Homer]

Hoodoois a set of spiritual practices, traditions, and beliefs that were created by enslaved African Americans in the Southern United States from various traditional African spiritualities and elements of indigenous botanical knowledge.[1][2][3] Practitioners of Hoodoo are called rootworkers, conjure doctors, conjure men or conjure women, and root doctors. Regional synonyms for Hoodoo include rootwork and conjure.[4] As a syncretic spiritual system, it also incorporates beliefs from Islam brought over by enslaved West African Muslims, and Spiritualism.[5][6] Scholars define Hoodoo as a folk religion. It is a syncretic religion between two or more cultural religions, in this case being African indigenous spirituality and Abrahamic religion.[7][8]

Many Hoodoo traditions draw from the beliefs of the Bakongo people of Central Africa.[9] Over the first century of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, an estimated 52% of all enslaved Africans transported to the Americas came from Central African countries that existed within the boundaries of modern day Cameroon, Congo, Angola, Central African Republic, and Gabon.[10]

Another possible etymological origin of the word Hoodoo comes from the word Hudu, meaning "spirit work," which comes from the Ewe language spoken in the West African countries of Ghana, Togo, and Benin.[15] Hudu is one of its dialects.[16] According to Paschal Beverly Randolph, the word Hoodoo is from an African dialect.[17]

The origin of the word Hoodoo and other words associated with the practice could be traced to the Windward Coast and Senegambia. For example, in West Africa, the word gris-gris (a conjure bag) is a Mande word.[18]

The Oxford English Dictionary cited the Sunday Appeal's definition of Hoodoo as a word from different African dialects with practices similar to the mysteries of Obi (Obeah) in the Caribbean.[19] In the Bahamas, Hoodoo is referred to as "obeah." According to author Zora Neale Hurston, "Roots" is the Southern Negro's term for folk doctoring by herbs and prescriptions, and by extension, and because all hoodoo doctors cure by roots, it may be used as a synonym for hoodoo.[20]

Recent scholarly 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 distinguish it from commercialized hoodoo, which is spelled with a lowercase letter. Other authors have different reasons why they capitalize or lowercase the first letter.[21][22]

According to Yvonne Chireau, "Hoodoo is an African American-based tradition that makes use of natural and supernatural elements in order to create and effect change in the human experience."[25] Hoodoo was created by African Americans, who were among over 12 million enslaved Africans from various Central and West African ethnic groups transported to the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries (1514 to 1867) as part of the transatlantic slave trade.[26] 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.[27] From Central Africa, Hoodoo has Bakongo magical influence from the Bakongo religion[28] incorporating the Kongo cosmogram, Simbi water spirits, and Nkisi and Minkisi practices.[29] The West African influence is Vodun from the Fon and Ewe people in Benin and Togo, following some elements from the Yoruba religion.[30][31]

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.[32] Enslaved and free Africans learned regional indigenous botanical knowledge after they arrived in the United States.[33] The extent to which Hoodoo could be practiced varied by region and the temperament of the slaveholders. For example, the Gullah people of the coastal Southeast experienced an isolation and relative freedom that allowed the retention of various traditional West African cultural practices. Among the Gullah people and enslaved African Americans in the Mississippi Delta, where the concentration of slaves was dense, Hoodoo was practiced under a large cover of secrecy.[34][35][36] The reason for secrecy among enslaved and free African Americans was that slave codes prohibited large gatherings of enslaved and free Black people. Slaveholders experienced how slave religion ignited slave revolts among enslaved and free Black people, and some leaders of slave insurrections were Black ministers or conjure doctors.[37]

The Code Noir was implemented in 1724 in French colonial Louisiana. It regulated the lives of enslaved and free people and 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 conducting their spiritual practices in secluded areas such as woods (hush harbors), churches, and other places.[40] Slaves created methods to decrease their noise when they practiced their spirituality. In a slave narrative from Arkansas, slaves prayed under pots to prevent nearby white people from hearing them at such times. A former slave in Arkansas named John Hunter said the slaves went to a secret house only they knew and turned the iron pots face up so their slaveholder could not hear them. They would place sticks under wash pots about a foot from the ground, because "[I]f they'd put it flat on the ground the ground would carry the sound."[41]

Former slave and abolitionist William Wells Brown wrote in his book, My Southern Home, or, The South and Its People, published in 1880, about the life of slaves in St. Louis, Missouri. Brown recorded a secret Voudoo ceremony at midnight in the city of St. Louis. Slaves circled around a cauldron, and a Voudoo queen had a magic wand. 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.

Some scholars assert that Christianity did not have much influence on some of the enslaved Africans as they continued to practice their traditional spiritual practices. 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 the power of God through praise and worship, and Hoodoo rituals would free slaves 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 the early years of the Black church during slavery on plantations were influenced by Voodooism.[46] Black church records from the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth century in the South recorded that 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 setting 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 suggest 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 Black people.[49][50] Conjure bags, also called mojo bags, were used as a form of resistance against slavery. In the 1830s, Black sailors from the United States utilized conjure for safe sea travel. A Black sailor received a talisman from an Obi (Obeah) woman in Jamaica. This account shows how Black Americans and Jamaicans shared their conjure culture and had similar practices. Free Blacks in northern states had white and Black clients regarding fortune-telling and conjure services.[51]

In Alabama slave narratives, it was documented that former slaves used graveyard dirt to escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad. Freedom seekers rubbed graveyard dirt on the bottom of their feet or put graveyard dirt in their tracks to prevent slave catchers' dogs from tracking their scent. Former slave Ruby Pickens Tartt from Alabama told of a man who could fool the dogs, saying he "done lef' dere and had dem dogs treein' a nekked tree. Dey calls hit hoodooin' de dogs". An enslaved conjurer could conjure confusion in the slave catchers' dogs, which prevented whites from catching runaway slaves.[52] In other narratives, slaves made a jack ball to know if a slave would be whipped or not. Slaves chewed and spit the juices of roots near their enslavers secretly to calm the emotions of the slaveholders, which prevented whippings. Slaves relied on conjurers to prevent whippings and being sold further South.[53] A story from a former slave, Mary Middleton, a Gullah woman from the South Carolina Sea Islands, tells of an incident where a slaveholder was physically weakened from conjure. A slaveholder beat one of his slaves badly. The slave he beat went to a conjurer, and the conjurer made the slaveholder weak by sunset. Middleton said, "As soon as the sun was down, he was down too, he down yet. De witch done dat."

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