Directory of Hoodoo, Rootwork, Conjure, Obeah Resources

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Hoodoo, also known as rootwork or conjure, is a system of African-American folk-magical belief and practice derived from Congo and West African sources, with an admixture of Native American and European-American herb-lore. It is not a hierarchically-organized religion per se, but even though most practitioners are Christians, the true spiritual basis of hoodoo is found in the African Traditional Religions.

Resources in This Category

• Drums and Shadows by Mary Granger and the Georgia Writer's Project

  http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/das/index.htm
  Oral folklore from coastal Georgia, collected from African Americans during the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration; much of the material concerns hoodoo practices.

• Hoodoo in Theory and Practice

  http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html
  An online book by Catherine Yronwode. Included are descriptions of how to burn candles and incense, sprinkle powders, make mojo bags, prepare spiritual baths and floor washes, perform spells and take off jinxes.

• Index of 19th Century Southern Texts

  http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/riedy/texts.html
  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.

• Luck-Balls; Hoodoo History

  http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/riedy/luckb.html
  A 19th century account of the making of hoodoo luck balls by Mary Alicia Owen.

• Obeah: Afro-Shamanistik Witchcraft

  http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/obeah.html
  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.

• Psychic Phenomena of Jamaica by Joseph J. Williams (1934)

  http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/ppj/
  An account of spiritual practices and Obeah from the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest who first visited Jamaica in 1906.

• Rootwork: a cyberhoodoo website

  http://www.rootwork.com/
  Arthur Flowers' poetic exploration of contemporary hoodoo.

• Southern Spirits Archive of African American Spirituality

  http://southern-spirits.com/
  Annotated collection of 19th and 20th century primary documents describing hoodoo, conjure, and spirituality in African American society.

• Superstitions & Folklore of the South by Charles W. Chesnutt

  http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/riedy/chesnutt.html
  This 1901 account of hoodoo in North Carolina is among the earliest that was written by an African American author rather than a white folklorist.

Related Categories

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