Spiritualities:Hoodoo

Hoodoo

Caption
Name	Hoodoo
Type	Syncretic
Region	Origin West-Central Africa

Summary

Hoodoo is a spirituality that, in a broader context, functions as a set of spiritual observances, traditions, and beliefs—including magical and other ritual practices—developed by enslaved African Americans in the Southern United States from various traditional African spiritualities and elements of indigenous American botanical knowledge. 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 an autonomous spiritual system it has often been syncretized with beliefs from Islam brought over by enslaved West African Muslims, and Spiritualism.[5][6] Scholars define Hoodoo as a folk religion.

Caption
Name	Hoodoo
Type	Syncretic
Region	Origin West-Central Africa

Etymology

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 words wanga and mooyo (mojo bag) come from the Kikongo language.[15]

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.[19][20]

History

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.."[23] 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.[24] 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.[25] From Central Africa, Hoodoo has Bakongo magical influence from the Bakongo religion[26] incorporating the Kongo cosmogram, Simbi water spirits, and Nkisi and Minkisi practices.[27] The West African influence is Vodun from the Fon and Ewe people in Benin and Togo, following some elements from the Yoruba religion.[28][29]

After their contact with European slave traders and missionaries, some Africans converted to Christianity willingly. At the same time, other enslaved Africans were forced to become Christian, which resulted in a syncretization of African spiritual practices and beliefs with the Christian faith.[30] Enslaved and free Africans learned regional indigenous botanical knowledge after they arrived in the United States.[31] The extent to which Hoodoo could be practiced varied by region and the temperament of enslavers. 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 enslaved people was dense, Hoodoo was practiced under an extensive cover of secrecy.[32][33][34] The reason for secrecy among enslaved and free African Americans was that slave codes prohibited large gatherings of enslaved and free Black people. Enlavers 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.[35]

Influence

Cultural anthropologist Tony Kail conducted research in African American communities in Memphis, Tennessee, and traced the origins of Hoodoo practices to Central Africa. In Memphis, Kail interviewed Black rootworkers and wrote about African American Hoodoo practices and history in his book "A Secret History of Memphis Hoodoo." For example, Kail recorded at former slave plantations in the American South: "The beliefs and practices of African traditional religions survived the Middle Passage (the Transatlantic slave trade) and were preserved among the many rootworkers and healers throughout the South. Many of them served as healers, counselors, and pharmacists to slaves enduring the hardships of slavery."[78] Sterling Stuckey, a professor of American history who specialized in the study of American slavery and African American slave culture and history in the United States, asserted that African culture in America developed into a uniquely African American spiritual and religious practice that was the foundation for conjure, Black theology, and liberation movements. Stuckey provides examples in the slave narratives, African American quilts, Black churches, and the continued cultural practices of African Americans.[79][80][81]

Practices

Seeking

Coffin Point Praise House In a process known as "seeking", a hoodoo practitioner will ask for the salvation of a person's soul for a Gullah church to accept them. A spiritual leader will assist in the process, and after believing the follower is ready, they will announce it to the church. A ceremony will commence with much singing and a ring shout practice.[253] The word "shout" is derived from the West African Muslim word saut, meaning "dancing or moving around the Kaaba".

The ring shout in Black churches (African American churches) originates from African styles of dance. Counterclockwise circle dancing is practiced in West and Central Africa to invoke the spirits of the ancestors and for spirit possession. The ring shout and shouting look similar to the possession of the African spirit. In Hoodoo, African Americans perform the ring shout to become touched or possessed by the Holy Spirit and to communicate with the spirits of dead ancestors. African Americans replaced African spirits with the Christian God (Holy Spirit) during possession. In African American churches, this is called "catching the spirit." African Americans use music, clapping, and singing during the ring shout and in modern-day shouting in Black churches to bring down the spirit. The singing during the ring shout has Christian meaning using biblical references.[281][282]

During slavery, enslaved Africans were forced to become Christian, which resulted in a blend of African and Christian spiritual practices that shaped Hoodoo. As a result, Hoodoo was and continues to be practiced in some Black churches in the United States.[283][284] In the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor[285] area, praise houses[286] are places where African Americans gather to have church and perform healing rituals and the ring shout.[287]

The ring shout in Hoodoo has its origins in the Kongo region of Africa with the Kongo cosmogram. During the ring shout, African Americans shuffle their feet on the floor or ground without lifting their feet, believing that creating static electricity from the earth connects them with its spiritual energy. Shuffling like this with singing and clapping is also done to communicate with ancestral spirits. The spiritual energy intensifies until someone is pulled into the center of the ring, shouted by the spirit. This is done to allow the spirit to enter and govern the ring.[288][289]

Researchers noticed that the African American ring shouts resembled counterclockwise circle dances in West Africa. In West Africa, a counterclockwise circle dance is performed during a funeral to send the soul to the ancestral realm (land of the dead) because energy and souls travel in a circle. This practice continued in the Gullah Geechee Nation, where African Americans performed a ring shout over a person's grave to send their soul to the ancestral realm. In addition, the ring shout is performed for other special occasions not associated with death.[290]

In 2016, Vice News went to St. Helena Island, South Carolina and interviewed African Americans in the Gullah Geechee Nation and recorded some of their spiritual traditions and cultural practices. Their recordings showed African cultural and spiritual practices that have survived in the Gullah Nation of South Carolina. The video showed a ring shout, singing, and other traditions. African Americans in South Carolina are fighting to keep their traditions alive despite gentrification of some of their communities.[291] The ring shout continues today in Georgia with the McIntosh County Shouters. In 2017, the Smithsonian Institution interviewed African Americans and recorded the ring shout tradition practiced by the Gullah Geechee in Georgia. The songs sung during the ring shout and in shouting originated among their ancestors who were transported from Africa into slavery in America, where they replaced African songs and chants with Christian songs and biblical references.[292][293]

Initiations This process of seeking in Hoodoo, accompanied by the ring shout, is also an initiation into Hoodoo. African Americans in the Sea Islands (Gullah Geechee people) performed initiations of community members by combining West African initiation practices with Christian practices called "Seeking Jesus." Young people spent time in nature "seeking Jesus" and received guidance from Black religious leaders. The spiritual mothers of the African American community provided prophetic guidance to those "seeking." After their initiation, initiates were accepted into the religious Black community.[294][281] Zora Neale Hurston wrote about her initiation into Hoodoo in her book Mules and Men published in 1935.

Hurston explained her initiation into Hoodoo included wrapping snakeskins around her body and lying on a couch (sofa) for three days nude so she could have a vision and acceptance from the spirits.[295] In addition to lying on a couch nude wrapped in snakeskins for her initiation, Hurston had to drink the blood of the Hoodoo doctors who initiated her from a wine glass cup.[296] There are other ways people become a Hoodoo doctor, such as being born into a family of practitioners or through a mentor under an apprenticeship. Initiations are not required to become a Hoodoo doctor or rootworker.[297] Other Hoodoo initiations include ritual isolations, learning about charms, herbs, roots, and dream lore from a community elder.[298]

Burial traditions

A Sankofa Symbol was etched onto the memorial wall at the African Burial Ground National Monument. Archaeologists discovered evidence of continued West-Central African burial practices in a section of Lower Manhattan, New York City, which is now the location of the African Burial Ground National Monument.[299] Along with historians involved in the project, they noted that about 15,000 Africans were buried in a section of Lower Manhattan called the "Negroes Burial Ground". Only 419 Africans buried were exhumed; over 500 artifacts were excavated, showing continued African traditions in New York City's Black community. Of 146 beads recovered, nine of them had come from West Africa. The other beads were manufactured in Europe; these had also been used by enslaved and free people for burial practices, incorporating an African spiritual interpretation of European beads. For example, many of the Africans buried, including women, men, and children, had beads, waist beads, and wristlets. In some African societies, beads are believed to bring protection, wealth, fertility, and health to the wearer. In contrast, in West Africa, African women wear beads around their waist as markers of beauty. Also found were beads still wrapped around the waist of the remains of enslaved women and about 200 shells. Beads, shells, and iron bars are associated with the Yoruba deity Olokun, a spirit that owns the sea. Shells are associated with water and help the soul transition in the afterlife because seashells help the soul move from the realm of the living into the realm of the dead (ancestors), which is associated with water. Other artifacts found at the African Burial Ground were shiny objects and reflective materials. Africans used these to communicate with spirits because shiny and reflective materials were thought to be able to capture the "flash of the spirit". Between 1626 and the 1660s, the majority of Africans imported to colonial New York were from the Kongo-Angolan region because New York had been colonized by the New York Dutch, whose merchants carried on trade with the west-central coast of West Africa. Historians and archaeologists found Kongo-related artifacts at the African Burial Ground, such as minkisi and Nkisi bundles buried with African remains. These Nkisi and minkisi bundles became the conjure bags in Hoodoo.[300]

After 1679, the majority of Africans imported to colonial New York were from West Africa because the colonial rule of New York shifted from the Dutch to the English in 1664. West Africans imported to the colony included Akan, Fon, Yoruba, and other ethnic groups. These diverse African ethnic groups brought their traditional cultures with them and adorned their dead with adornments made from American materials but with an African design and meaning. The excavations revealed an indication of Ghanaian burial practice when a funerary clay pipe with a Ghanaian design called ebua was discovered with the remains of an African American woman.[301] Also excavated at the site were conjure bags (mojo bags)—these conjuring bundles had crystals, roots, beads, feathers, animal parts, and other items for protection from malign forces and to communicate with spirits. Other artifacts found at the site that linked to West Africa, researchers suggest, was the finding of an Akan Sankofa Symbol on a coffin.[302] The Akan Sankofa Adinkra symbol was a means to remember one's ancestors and look to the future while not forgetting the past.[303] West African spiritual beliefs were mixed with the Christian faith, and free and enslaved West Africans started their own African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches in New York City.[304][305][306] The African Burial Ground reserved a location called the Ancestral Libation Chamber for people to perform spiritual ceremonies to pay their respects to the enslaved and free Africans buried at the monument. African Americans and other African-descended people continue to travel to the African Burial Ground from across the country and around the world and perform libation ceremonies to honor the 15,000-plus African people buried in New York City.[307][308]

Researchers found burial practices by African Americans in Florida that were similar to those of Bantu-Kongo peoples. Researchers noticed the similarities between the grave sites of African Americans in Florida and those of the Bakongo people in Central Africa. Headstones with a T shape were seen in Black cemeteries and at grave sites in the Kongo region. The T-shaped headstone peculiar to Black cemeteries in North Florida during the 1920s through the 1950s corresponds to the lower half of the Kongo cosmogram that symbolizes the realm of the ancestors and spiritual power. In Bantu-Kongo spirituality, the spirit realm is white. African Americans decorated the graves of their family members with white items such as white conch seashells, representing the watery divide located on the horizontal line of the Kongo cosmogram that is a boundary between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead. By placing seashells on graves, African Americans were creating a boundary (barrier) between the recently deceased and them, keeping the spirit in the realm of the dead below the Kongo cosmogram.[309][310] Another reason was to guide the recently deceased into the ancestral realm or return their spirit back to Africa.[311][312]

In the Kongo region, Bakongo people placed broken objects on top of graves so the recently deceased could travel to the land of the dead. The broken items symbolized that the person's connection to the living was broken by death and that they needed to return to the realm of the dead. Placing seashells on top of graves in African American cemeteries continued beyond the 1950s. It was noted by researchers in Archer, Florida, and in other African American cemeteries in the state, as well as among the Gullah Geechee people in the Sea Islands of Georgia.[313][314] The conjure practices of the Gullah Geechee were influenced by Bakongo and other West African ethnic groups when a slave ship, Wanderer, illegally imported 409 enslaved Africans to Jekyll Island, Georgia, in 1858.[315]

Bottle tree See also: Haint blue

Bottle Tree in Central Holmes Cemetery (Yazoo County, Mississippi) Hoodoo is linked to a popular tradition of bottle trees in the United States. According to gardener and glass bottle researcher Felder Rushing, the use of bottle trees came to the Old South from Africa with the slave trade. The use of blue bottles is linked to the "haint blue" spirit specifically. Glass bottle trees have become a popular garden decoration throughout the South and Southwest.[316] According to academic research, bottle trees originated in the Kongo region of Central Africa. African-descended people in the African Diaspora decorated trees with bottles, plates, pieces of broken pots, and other items to drive away evil. This practice was brought to the United States during the transatlantic slave trade. The purpose of bottle trees is to protect a home or a location from evil spirits by trapping them inside the bottles.[317] The spirits are said to be attracted to the sunlight that flickers inside the bottle. As the sunlight passes through it, the spirit is trapped in the bottle and banished with the sunlight. Sometimes, items such as stones or graveyard dirt are placed inside the bottle to attract the spirit further.[318]

Personal concerns In Hoodoo, personal concerns such as hair, nail clippings, bones, blood, and other bodily fluids are mixed with ingredients for either a positive or a negative effect. The items are placed inside conjure bags or jars and mixed with roots, herbs, and animal parts, sometimes ground into a powder or with graveyard dirt from a murdered victim's grave. The cursed items are buried under a person's porch steps to cause misfortune. To prevent being "fixed" (cursed), it is considered a good idea to burn loose hairs, combed or fallen from the head, so a conjurer cannot make a cursing powder from a person's hair. Placing personal concerns in containers and burying them to cause harm was practiced in West African countries such as Nigeria and Benin.[319][320]

Offerings The West-Central African practice of leaving food offerings for deceased relatives and feeding and petitioning other spirits by giving them offerings of food, water, or rum (whiskey) continues in the practice of Hoodoo. Providing spirits offerings of libation empowers the spirits and honors them by acknowledging their existence. These offerings of food, liquids, or poured libations are left at gravesites or a tree. This custom is still practiced in the Central African country of Gabon and other parts of Africa and was brought to the United States during the period of the transatlantic slave trade.[321][322][323]

Commonly used items Conjure can be made using many things or nothing at all. There are certain items commonly used in Hoodoo if needed. "Fast Luck" and "Red Fast Luck" are herbal scrubs that bring luck into stores or a person's life. "Essence of Van Van" and "Fast Scrubbing Essence" are mixtures of one to thirteen oils containing herbs such as cinnamon, wintergreen, and lavender.[324] Colors are also important in Hoodoo to conjure different results the person is looking for. For example, "Red, for victory. Pink, for love (some say for drawing success). Green, to drive off (some say for success), Blue, for success and protection (for causing death also), Yellow, for money, Brown, for drawing money and people."[325] Brick powder is commonly used in Hoodoo to remove and protect from evil by placing red brick dust at the entrance of a home