Hoodoo is a word that in a general colloquial context can refer to witchcraft or spells in general, for example, someone can refer to witchcraft like Hoodoo or say that someone who has been bewitched has been «Hoodooed».

However, in a more specific context, Hoodoo refers to the tradition of African -American popular magic that evolved from a mixture of the cultures of central and western Africa from which many natives were taken for the American slave trade and the European Christian tradition of their US masters to produce a tradition of popular magic exclusively African -American.

First: Culture and Semantics

A Hoodoo practitioner is not a sorcerer. Both witchcraft and hoodoo are magical and spiritual practices based on traditional folklore. They have similar practices, but their roots are different. The word «witch» and its roots in the African historical tradition mean something very different from what it means to European descendants. The Europeans looked at traditional African practices, called them witchcraft and called them evil and made it something shameful, which caused a cultural shock.

Users of European magic may want to claim the name of «witch» of their inheritance based on a perceived ancestral memory of wise women with power, but practitioners of African origin may be more inclined to reject the colonialist label.

There are many different titles that can be applied to workers of African and African -American popular magic. In general, Hoodoo practitioners are called roots or speakers workers. Some specific traditions or individuals may have their own titles. Some may even choose to self-identify like a witch and that is your choice. It never hurts to ask.

The word hoodoo is also used often as a synonym and incorrectly of voodoo. They are not the same, although their roots are closer to each other than witchcraft. Voodoo is a very coded religion (although there are regional variations) that combines Roman Catholic practices with practices of Western Africa. The Hoodoo is less coded, it is more Protestant and more Central African.

Hoodoo tradition

Many consider a religion, but some consider it a practice and claim it as a separate religion within the context of the Hoodoo (or vice versa) or as a separate practice.

However, voodoo works within a cosmology that recognizes a creative God, as the last voodoo doctor, identifies the Bible as its most important grimoorio and talisman and recognizes Moses as a hinge who took the Israelites from Egypt.

There are some voodoo spells that do not imply the recitation or registration of a Bible verse.

Hoodoo spells often involve the creation or use of physical objects, such as soil washing, incense, powders to sprinkle in the shoes or along the path of someone, food and drinks to consume, bathrooms and beauty products, bags to take or hide through the house, burning candles, etc. Made from the usual herbs, especially the natives of America, stones and body fluids, but also everyday objects and mass marketed products, such as dressing table (especially flower water), beauty products and cleaning products, especially those that carried significant images, such as the bleach of the Red Devil brand, as well as more exotic items, such as moss paper.

They are generally used in spells to increase or reduce someone’s fate and to attract love, money and things.

Hoodoo is a very syncretic tradition that takes what works and discards what not, and has grown and changed over the centuries.

As Christianity joined the Hoodoo, so did Jewish and Western mysticism. Occultism and, in turn, many Western traditions have adopted elements of the Hoodoo. I think that many of the magical uses of American native plants in modern witchcraft were absorbed through Hoodoo.

• For more information
• http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoohistory.html
• http://conjuredoctor.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=7
• http://www.readersandrootworkers.org/wiki/category:hoodoo_conjure_witchcraft_rootwork