Mining The Earth: Happy Hoodoo Heritage Month
Hoodoo makes people uncomfortable due to the demonization of the practice, but it is a critical piece of Black medical history and an ancestral wellness practice.
Sprinkling salt across the door frame. Stitching ancestral symbols into quilt squares. Using herbs and roots to heal common ailments. Placing a bay leaf and a $20 bill in your wallet to attract money. Using the color blue to ward off bad juju. That’s all hoodoo.
Hoodoo, or rootwork, refers to using herbs, roots, and other natural objects for spiritual and medicinal purposes. It’s a spiritual practice deeply aligned with using the earth to heal and protect oneself and one’s community through striking spiritual balance or connecting with one's ancestors through worship. (This is not to be confused with voodoo, a distinctly different practice.) And, like many things rooted in Blackness, hoodoo has long been misconstrued as demonic despite being a healing and protective practice at its core that was cultivated in Black churches. Hoodoo makes people uncomfortable due to the demonization of the practice, but it is a critical piece of Black medical history and an ancestral wellness practice. It is a modality worth learning about in-depth and without being judgmental.
FWIW, there’s a lot of debate surrounding whether hoodoo is a closed practice/community, meaning the only people who can participate in hoodoo are those who were born into or underwent an initiation. Closed practices and communities are very common within divination. My advice is, regardless of the debate, if you’re not Black, just read the links and keep pushing.
Instead of writing an explainer, I left that to those immersed in hoodoo as practitioners or historians.
Take care.
Uncovering the Power of Hoodoo: An Ancestral Journey
Mojo workin': the old African American Hoodoo system
Black Magic Matters: Hoodoo as Ancestral Religion
Hoodoo: Black Magic or Healing Art?
Digital Loa and Faith You Can Taste: Hoodoo in the American Imagination