HOODOO LOVE BINDING WORK— A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
One of the most common reasons people turn to rootworking and conjure in the Hoodoo tradition is love binding work. The practice of love binding work raises eyebrows with many folks, who consider it an unethical endeavor with selfish motivations. While this may or may not be true, it would help to understand the history of how such things came about. Let’s take a look at the history and evolution of love binding work within the Hoodoo tradition.
During slavery, separation of Afrikan families was one of the cruelest things whites did to inflict torment and pain upon the enslaved, harsher than any physical beating or other form of corporeal punishment for many of our Ancestors. Besides it breaking so many of our Ancestors’ hearts, it also contributed to the breaking up their traditions. Here in the United States, particularly among the Cotton Belt, transmission of oral history and tradition was interrupted due to the constant breaking up of families and slave communities, contributing to losses of culture, language and identity that Afrikan slaves in other regions, and especially among the Diaspora, were able to reasonably maintain.
To counter such losses, enslaved Afrikans worked different forms of binding tricks to keep their loved ones close. Utilizing personal taglocks such as hair, teeth, nail clippings, cloth and foot track dirt with other things like urine, blood (including menses), semen, sweat and tears, our Ancestors utilized their knowledge from the Motherland to work against the threat of forced separation. Additionally, certain works were done to protect loved ones from sexual assault by whites. Mothers utilized their first urine and/or menstrual blood to make items that would shield their husbands, sons and daughters from the sexual advances of both white men and women on plantations.
During the Post-Emancipation and Jim Crow periods, life for many Black people was harsher than it was on plantations. Our Ancestors have spoken on this in some of the WPA Ex-Slave Narratives, saying that plantation life afforded them regular meals, a roof over their heads and more safety than they’d experience in freedom.
Opportunities to earn a living were few, and many resorted to share-cropping for this reason. Others saw this practice too close to slavery and tried their odds out into the world only to be met with the brutality of racism, dire poverty, the rise of the KKK and its terrorism along with the regular formations of white lynching mobs who kidnapped, tortured and murdered Black people with abandon and impunity. In small enclaves of Black folks, opportunities to earn money were few and far in-between and women, especially women with children, were often on their own due to their men and older sons being kidnapped and murdered by white terrorists, and without their men, were often victims of rape and assault. As a result, Black women who lived alone would resort to some of the same tricks they’d seen or learned about on the plantations that would attract Black men to them and bind them— for self-preservation purposes. Sometimes these men would already be settled down with women and work would be done to break up those unions and bind the men to them. Again, for self-preservation and protection rather than romantic inclination.
Due to the scarcity of work near the home, women also did love binding and protection workings on their men, should they have to travel far distances to earn money to support their families. The practice of burying a man’s drawers in the yard, or preparing food and/or drink with small amounts of their urine or menstrual blood were just some of the ways women could make sure their men would not succumb to the advances (or love juju) of other women while in other towns and counties for work, and would return home to them and their families safely. This was especially important for Black men who would have to navigate spaces shared with white women, since false accusations of rape or flirtations by white women against innocent Black men were often used to incite white rage, resulting in Black death. The Black man, having been covered by his woman’s love binding work, would be rendered virtually invisible to all other women, white or Black.
As opportunities for Black people would increase over time, these practices would become less about safety and self-preservation, and more about the affairs of the heart. Regardless of one’s reasons to resort to love binding work, it is important that we consider the utilization of these types of works both historically, and *ancestrally*.
kianamaiart
romaincrisis
janainaart
turnnoffyourmind
vaporwave
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
