#afromagic

[jeneka]

"Florida", acrylic on paper, 29,7 x 42 cm

Inspire by Florida water and its old advertising.

[spiritroots]

I’m so excited to finally share with yall what I’ve been up to! I’ve had a bunch of requests for access to my new site while I was still working on it, and now it’s finally ready and open for yall to check out at SpiritRoots.co

Yes, I’m joining the exodus from Tumblr (well, kinda) and moving my main hub over to WordPress. While pulling several all-nighters during Kwanzaa and the first few days of 2019, I’ve been writing and researching to create lots of brand new content about hoodoo and African traditional religions. Check it out...

New Content, Posts, & Tutorials

HOODOO BASICS - An overview of what hoodoo/rootwork is, where it came from, who can practice it, and guides for avoiding any cultural appropriation of this closed tradition.

THE HOODOO LIBRARY - A growing collection of tutorials, recipes, directories, and databases of information on everything from traditional Southern black belt hoodoo to modern urban rootwork. All content within the Library is created by and for black rootworkers, and it is passcode protected for only people of African descent to have access.

ATR GUIDE - Tutorials and articles about African and Afro-diasporic spiritual and religious traditions including book recommendations, information about different ATRs, and how to get started with Orisha traditions.

New Year, New Goals

I’d like to share some of my new year’s resolutions, which really embody the direction I’m planning to take going forward...

>> New home base. I’ll be publishing all my original content at SpiritRoots.co (WordPress). This Tumblr blog will remain open for now as an archive and a platform for answering questions and providing free readings, but otherwise, I want to really make the shift over to WordPress as much as possible.

>> Protecting traditions. I will try my absolute best to avoid posting content with enough specificity that might enable anyone to appropriate traditions that are closed to them. The Hoodoo Library is passcode protected for this reason.

In the past, I’ve been an advocate of publishing tutorials with appropriation warnings, but I’ve come to realize that’s not enough. I have been deleting my old hoodoo tutorial posts from Tumblr, and I am actually really glad that most of the links from my old Hoodoo Masterpost are no longer working.

>> Vetting sources. I have always tried to be careful and mindful of who I reblog and cite, but I had no idea until recently just how many appropriative and racist sources were slipping through my own filters. I will work even harder going forward not to source information about Africana traditions from nonblack practitioners and/or racist and bigotted practitioners.

Please let me know if you have thoughts, suggestions, or questions! Though it’s a bit belated, Joyous Kwanzaa and Happy New Year to yall (:

[bathtub-mercury]

tbh, I think white people are not even able to practice hoodoo in a technical sense.

hoodoo is liberation magick carried in the DNA of African Descended people

you can do the recipes, you can learn from books or teachers, but unless you got that diaspora blood flowin, you’re just doing folk magick (tho you can appropriate recipes that are directly associated with hoodoo)

this isn’t anything I’ve been told, this is just what I keep feeling in my bones when I meet with my ancestors, when I think of recipes, when I recall my genetic memory. I’m not the definitive expert, but I’ve been learning a lot from my ancestors, from sensations I get when I work recipes or talk to the wind. Hoodoo has European & Indigenous influences, it has variances all over the regions & families in which it’s been practiced, but what makes it hoodoo and not some other form of folk magick, is the African Ancestral link. As a biracial black person, I was led to hoodoo after years of feeling out of place in pagan (European centric) magick practices. I was extremely uncertain of my ability to practice it, being the child of one white parent, but during the time of uncertainty, my connection to my black ancestors strengthened. They started talking to me louder and louder. I feel these experiences to be my truth.

It was born out of the need for liberation. The magick in the DNA of the diaspora kept us alive. It’s strong.

[daddylittlejojo]

“50 told me go ‘head switch the style up and if they hate then let’em hate and watch the money pile up ,good life “

[dreabknowin]

Creativity & Strength Candle Spell w/ focus on Solar Plexus and positive intent.

Flame began with a high level then split into 2 about 10 times before settling.

Candle dressed with herbs like Rosemary, Chamomile, Bay, Sea Salt, Pink Himalayan salt, Nutmeg and Mace. A sprinkle of peppermint and mugwort.

[jeneka]

 🌿 🍍 💲 Thanks to him 🌿 🍍 💲

[spiritroots]

Eurocentric Standards & Racist Criticisms of Magic

Alright yall. So I know it’s not just me, we’ve all seen a lot of back and forth on our dashes lately about a number of different topics such as...

What “counts” as real witchcraft, spells, magick, or magic vs. “wishing” or beginner nonsense?

How do we personally define multidimensional terms like “religion,” “intent,” and “witchcraft”?

How do these and other terms pertain to what we do as witches, chaotes, and/or magic(k) practitioners?

Who can use which terms and in what ways such as “sigils” and “spells” for certain activities?

There’s a lot of conflicting answers to those questions in our community. It’s important because the answers can have very big implications for how we view and treat each other. People are entitled to their own opinions and personal beliefs about definitions, techniques, and methodology, but I want to address the specifically racist, Eurocentric bullshit that underlies some of what I’ve seen in discussions about these topics.

Telling us that you look down on our forms of traditional and indigenous magic (or don’t even consider it to be magic at all) just because our methodologies and our practices don’t conform to Eurocentric standards is racist.

It is racist to try to judge the magic methodology and practices of non-Eurocentric magic traditions by Eurocentric standards. And if you’re not part of and well studied in a magic tradition, I’m not sure what right you have to judge it even by its own standards either. In other words...

If you aren’t an initiated bruja, don’t presume to judge the methodology or technique quality of an initiated bruja.

If you aren’t a rootworker or hoodoo doctor, don’t be comparing what we do to chaos magick or any other tradition in terms of standards or effectiveness.

These are just concrete examples, but this goes for any non-Eurocentric magic tradition and honestly, probably also for any magic tradition in general because

if you don’t practice it and you aren’t well versed in it, how do you expect to make a reasonable critique of it?

On a more personal note, I do not study or practice traditional European or American witchcraft, chaos magick, ceremonial magic, or any other Western magic tradition. I don’t practice witchcraft either, which is not inherently “European” necessarily - I understand that people from all different cultures and backgrounds refer to their craft as witchcraft and I support that. In the way that witchcraft is a very diverse and inclusive term, it has become a global concept and at all not one that refers only to European traditions. 

But it’s true that “witch” and “witchcraft” are English words, not the indigenous terms for what I do, and they are terms that don’t feel to me personally like they represent or embody anything in my craft, especially given their connotations in the cultural context of Africana traditions.

So it does not make sense to judge or scrutinize any of my techniques or what I do by the standards of chaos magick, witchcraft, or any other tradition that I do not practice or study at all.

I am a rootworker and Iyami Aje, and I don’t conform to Eurocentric standards of magick on purpose.

[spiritroots]

i’m black and i wanted to get into rootwork, and practice hoodoo. i’ve been doing research for a couple of weeks now but i haven’t found anything authentic on how i can get started practicing, do you have any advice on how i could start doing that?

Well, to begin with, there’s the Hoodoo Masterpost if you haven’t seen that yet!

Putting out authentic resources for black rootworkers is one of my biggest goals with this blog. I know several other black rootworkers on Tumblr who either actively write a lot of hoodoo content or who have written a lot in the past even if they aren’t super active anymore.

So I recommend looking through the posts on my resources page and going through my tags, then doing the same for the following hoodoo blogs:

@afrocentric-divination @witch-vomit @bitchcraftandfashion @lady-of-flowers  @helpfulblackwitch @woodlandangel @ohthewitchery @themixedwitch @hoodooyousee @unfriendlyblackwitch @thevoodoomama @afrosandathames

If you actively write about hoodoo/rootwork - either with original tutorials of your own or by boosting useful and reliable content - and you’re black, please feel free to reblog this for anon so they know they can follow you and use your blog as a resource also!! Sorry if we’re mutuals and I forgot to tag you <3

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