The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Motumbá Àse

I know that Hoodoo is not an ATR nor a ADR because, first of all it isn't religion at all, it's a practice, it's a tradition. But also, because it's not exclusively afro descendant. Most of it's concepts come from african traditions, but their herbalism comes mostly from Native Americans and most traditional spells are from the white people's Judeo-Christian traditions, or European Witchcraft (similar to what happened in south america and various afro cults). So, I don consider it sort of African American practice, it has a lot of it, BUT not exclusively black. I hate when people tend to "whitening" afro cults, but also I hate the "blackening" of things. I actually hate all the "---ening" (aborigening, asiaticaning, orientalisming... or so LOL) of things. I like things as they are.

SO, I share this text that I found and I do SHARE what it says. The ones related to Hoodoo or Folk Magic in North America, please give your opinion!

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The Hoodoo Truth: Harry Middleton Hyatt
I will plan to write a more thorough entry here on my blog for Harry Middleton Hyatt. This particular blog will simply address some things that are not being properly taught or communicated when it comes to his writings.

Harry Middleton Hyatt was an Anglican minister and folklorist who travelled much of the South in the latter 1930s and 1940s in an attempt to preserve hoodoo folklore and practices. Hyatt was a human being and as such he was flawed. However, Hyatt should be commended on his attempt and the work he was able the record. This said there are problems that are not being communicated to people when they come across his work. Those problems include:

1.) A focus primarily on the "black thread" of the tapestry that is hoodoo. In his volumes, "Hoodoo-Conjuration-Witchcraft-Rootwork", he seems to completely ignore any white or Native America influences. In fact he is told by some of his African-American informants that there are a good number of white workers and this seems to go right over Hyatt's head. This should have been a major hint to Hyatt that his belief in a "pure black" tradition was wrong. However, Hyatt only focused on the African-American practices and as such he missed the big-picture and was not able to see the "tapestry" that is hoodoo. I am firmly convinced that if Hyatt would have had that stoke of genius to be able to "see" hoodoo for what it truly is, a mix of African-American, Scott-Irish, and Native American practices it would have blown his mind and it would have taken his documentation and recording of the practice into a brand new direction. Unfortunately that didn't happen and Hyatt didn't have the genius to recognize what exactly hoodoo was and as such only focused on the "black thread" of the tapestry.

2.) Hyatt's black informants were of a mix of people who had good knowledge, people who had questionable knowledge, people who didn't know a thing, and people who lied and invented stories. Hyatt didn't separate or make distinctions between these different peoples. If you start reading his works then you will find some very amusing and entertaining stories that have no basis in reality. In fact, I was often left with the feeling that many of his black informants should have become writers because they told some really good fictional tales! I mean there are elaborate tales of "hoodoo initiation rites" (no such thing), hoodoo balls/parties (no such thing), hoodoo schools similar to our understanding of the Hogwarts of the Harry Potter fame (no such thing), hoodoo covens (no such thing), and the appearance of Lucifer at "hoodoo rituals" (never happened). I just hope readers who come across Hyatt's work have the intelligence to realize when one of the informants was being honest and when they were spinning tales.

3.) This is just my personal opinion and I have no evidence to back it up, but I am convinced from reading Hyatt's work that some of the informants deliberately lied, not just spun tales, but deliberately lied to Hyatt for whatever reason.

4.) Hyatt believed that the "golden age" of hoodoo had passed and believed that the marketers, the non-practicing white and Jewish manufacturers, had destroyed the tradition. He was wrong. The practice wasn't dead it just went underground and became more secretive. Also it needs to be stressed once again that Hyatt was only focusing on African-American practices and ignored the Scott-Irish and Native-American influences.

People today with no family history of hoodoo/rootwork/conjure are using Hyatt's work as if it is the "hoodoo bible" and most of what they know, or think they know, comes from Hyatt's work. Hyatt's work is good, however it is nowhere near strong enough to be used as a foundation for knowledge on hoodoo/rootwork/conjure.

So these are just some things to know about Hyatt. In the future I will expand on the topic.

--By Doc Conjure

The original website
http://thedemoniacal.blogspot.com.ar/20 ... hyatt.html
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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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There is also a large influence of dutch/german and danish traditional witchcraft in Louisiana hoodoo. Both the Long Lost Friend and Cyprianus was sold openly in stores around the turn of the century.

I've also heard about the Swedish sibylla being printed in Chicago 1905, but I don't own a copy of it, so I don't know how accurate that information is.

Here is a great picture from the Hindu Mysterious Store up in Harlem:

Image
Link in case img doesn't work:
https://www.icp.org/icpmedia/w/e/e/g/we ... aysize.jpg

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Owen Davis - Grimoires - a history of magic books

It has two chapters about American magic books and pulp fiction magic books. It covers both the black and hispanic market. There is a lot of information and over 50 pages of notes/bibliography on other books, some of them in spanish as well.

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Excellent short piece, and in many ways spot on.

I'd like to talk a bit about what the author describes in point 3, about sources who lied. It's common, and to a degree excusable, to get carried away when interviewed by a clearly gullible interviewer. I mean..... some people might as well get down on one knee and beg to be told a tall tale. I'm imagining an older person with a sense of humor being approached by a college student asking a stupid question. With a straight face they might say, "Well....that's not something people talk openly about....but....since you ask...." It's just too easy to get caught up in the moment.

I remember a story a friend of mine told me (that might even be true.) His family owned a restaurant with a bar near an America Indian reservation. Some grad students from the state university were looking for modern practitioners of traditional native practices. The fools went to the bar to talk to some of the cranky old bastards who drink mid day at a bar, who happened to be Indian. Those fools bought drinks, lots of drinks, and walked away thinking they had learned a lot. They got taken for a ride by bar room story tellers. (As an aside. My friend who was a pretty good observer of people, having grown up in a bar, said he thought that an older person with the group looked like he knew his students were being fooled. Perhaps that was pert of the education they got that day?) I can't help but think that a huge, huge amount of what is written about the occult is the same sort of thing.

When an occultist talks to a lay person, there is a likelihood that the occultist will be thought of as a nut. That's one good reason to not get into those conversations. If an academic is interviewing sources, there is a strong likelihood that an earnest conversation will be spun into a book or article that makes those sources look foolish. That creates a motive to trick them. "You want to make a fool of me, and of The Work? We will see who the fool is... Let me tell you about a voodoo party we had the night after we initiated a batch of new students.... we drank blood, sacrificed cats and had a grand orgy....."

It's petty, but tempting to indulge the desire to make a fool of one who thinks they are smarter than they are.

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Great post with many great points. I particularly like the end where you mention that it isn't very "practical" work to read. I agree, and Hyatt makes similar mistakes of all the other "anthrophologists" of the time, even if they meant well. It is a good source of a sort of lore and myth which can serve to answer deeper questions for people seriously practicing hoodoo.

I do agree with what you say about race, white people are very welcome and encouraged to learn/practice hoodoo, but just as hip hop emerged from the black youth of NY, hoodoo itself emerged from african-american baptist christians and to stress this simply means that any student would benefit from making an attempt to understand the system in this context. as hoodoo grew, it definitely adopted countless things from other American folk magic systems that were either native or evolving from an imported magical system. But what i do love about it is how "American" it is in a this sense (a growing, working mixture of diverse sources), and as alot of Americans come from many different backgrounds and have trouble finding their place in the spiritual sense, and mansy of them were also raised christian, they can benefit from the mindset of conjure

Thank you WDW again! As always!! Thanks Des for the books!
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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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fraterai wrote: but just as hip hop emerged from the black youth of NY, hoodoo itself emerged from african-american baptist christians
Weeeeeell, that is the common myth, but when you really start to look at it, a much more diverse picture emerges.
If you look at some of the founders of hiphop you have Jamaicans, Filipinos and Blacks. If you look at the population charts from 1970's Bronx you'll see that there was more Latinos than Blacks, Whites was still in majority, but immigrants from Puerto Rico was almost 10% of the population.

And if it wasn't for the gay club owner and the Jewish club owners, hip hop would never had been anything else than block parties. And then in an odd twist of faith, the one thing that really put hiphop on the map was a concert organized by a white blond female from England.

Now, with voodoo, it is a bit more segregated. Racial tensions between white and blacks in the south at the turn of the century was a "bit" more strain than in 1970's New York. And the Creole population really hated the African population so there was an internal hierarchy of segregation going on within the groups as well.
But what you do see is poverty and slavery as a binding factor. The 'Irish slave myth' have been popular on the internet lately but in reality there really was consigned labor coming from the British isles and Australia. The difference between slaves and forced labor is really just the duration. Slave was a lifetime sentence, consigned labor was usually just a 5 year period.
What we have seen in the last 20 years is that the transatlantic slave-trade was much more complicated than just African slaves. France and England might have had most of their colonies in Africa, but Spain and Italy did there best to exploit their resources in south america. And of course both Indian slaves and Indian slave owners has put a twist to the story.

There was also a lot of "volunteer" workers from China and India, that to be honest, was no higher up in the hierarchy than the South American slaves. And while both parts of China and India was technically British colonies. Most of them came to America on Portuguese ships. So exactly how many from the Philippines and Macau was on those ships are hard to know. It should probably be mentioned that Portugal pretty much owned brazil at that point and besides Angola, they had large territories in Africa as well.

Between 1860 and 1920 1.5 million Scandinavians fled to America and I think the german countries contributed with about the same numbers. Many of them ended up in the railways or in the mines. Many of them had no better life than the slaves they worked right next to.

There was something like 800.000 swedes that moved to America during the starvation years and a lot of those were families. Most of them farmers, many of them women. And one of the reason why I started looking into hoodoo was because so much Scandinavian folk magic and traditional witchcraft survived over in America while the church was doing it best to destroy it over here.

The civil rights movement in the 60's and 70's tried really hard to make the black community in America proud of their own heritage and there has been an attempt to look at jazz, voodoo, hiphop and other cultural phenomena as mainly black. And, it creates a false picture in some sense. I've heard a lot of people lately referring to white jazz musicians as "fake" or "thieves" and we are talking about people like Benny Goodman. I fail to see why a russian jew who started playing jazz in the 1920 is less "real" than Miles Davis just because Miles was black. Miles wasn't even born when Benny recorded his first record.

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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fraterai wrote:baptist christians
This is another important issue. Because we see a lot of catholic saints in voodoo and if it's one thing I've learned about Christians, it's that they do not mix. No self-respecting Baptist or Methodist is going to have anything to do with saints. Most of them seem to think that the catholic church is the devils playground.
I think it illustrates is just how diverse voodoo is.

I've seen so many discussions about what voodoo "is" and "isn't" and what the difference between voodoo and hoodoo is and so on. And in reality we need not look any further then this forum to see that almost nobody agrees on anything when it comes to magic. Different people are going to perform their magic differently. Sure, most of us might do some sort of meditation work, but when you go into details, everybody seems to do it differently.

I'm sure there was latino voodoo practitioners who worked with saints, jewish voodoo practitioners who worked with angels, people working with pagan gods, ancestors, Orisha and everything else.

The problem is when people look at it from the outside and think that diversity is a sign of integration.
There are so many different forms of voodoo in a place like Louisiana alone that I don't think us researchers will ever grasp it. And oddly enough, there is some really fucking weird integrations as well. I remember talking to somebody who thought orishas was aliens and had made a whole system around it...

I think Harry Middleton Hyatt is especially guilty of this attempt to make ALL voodoo appear as ONE voodoo. He really didn't see the trees for the forest. And was happy mixing genuine stories about voodoo with urban legends about voodoo, folklore, rumors, myth and pretty much anything he could find to describe this new "black" religion.
Not realizing that to many people it never was a new religion. Or even a religion at all.

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Wrote a huge response and it disappeared :(

tldlr: i agree with both of you, and was just emphasizing balance. If you are unwilling to accept/learn the system from the context of its origins then you have no business learning it (opinion). there is almost two "hoodoos" (when we talk about it), 1.the original and 2.today's hoodoo. If you are new you should do your best to learn what is tradition and what was added as time went on and then you are in a good position to use this and that. example: Saints are not a practice of 1.hoodoo, but most 2.hoodoo practitioners use or know how to work with saints, due to the close relationship between hoodoo and other religions. But prayer is an extremely important moving part of hoodoo which is why the baptist element is important to emphasize, if for no other reason. In 100 years we will probably just say saints are hoodoo, and all sweetening spells are called honey jars. why? cause hoodoo is about what works and stands the test of time will become "tradition" eventually

And as for hip hop, I think your examples show how hip hop was put on the map, a beautiful thing that was the result of many different cultures, but not really where/why it emerged, which is what i was emphasizing. Both stories help us understand two different things, though, one why certain youth of the 70s would start to create such music, the other that breaking out of the underground is hard, thats why they call it underground. Jewish shop owners helped hoodoo to break out and also acquire certain things along the way, just like hip hop.
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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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fraterai wrote:Wrote a huge response and it disappeared :(

tldlr: i agree with both of you, and was just emphasizing balance. If you are unwilling to accept/learn the system from the context of its origins then you have no business learning it (opinion). there is almost two "hoodoos" (when we talk about it), 1.the original and 2.today's hoodoo. If you are new you should do your best to learn what is tradition and what was added as time went on and then you are in a good position to use this and that. example: Saints are not a practice of 1.hoodoo, but most 2.hoodoo practitioners use or know how to work with saints, due to the close relationship between hoodoo and other religions. But prayer is an extremely important moving part of hoodoo which is why the baptist element is important to emphasize, if for no other reason. In 100 years we will probably just say saints are hoodoo, and all sweetening spells are called honey jars. why? cause hoodoo is about what works and stands the test of time will become "tradition" eventually

And as for hip hop, I think your examples show how hip hop was put on the map, a beautiful thing that was the result of many different cultures, but not really where/why it emerged, which is what i was emphasizing. Both stories help us understand two different things, though, one why certain youth of the 70s would start to create such music, the other that breaking out of the underground is hard, thats why they call it underground. Jewish shop owners helped hoodoo to break out and also acquire certain things along the way, just like hip hop.
Yeah this forum has some sort of automatic off-function, that kicks in after 15 minutes of "in-activity". ALWAYS copy and save before sending in case it gets lost.

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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fraterai wrote: I do agree with what you say about race, white people are very welcome and encouraged to learn/practice hoodoo, but just as hip hop emerged from the black youth of NY, hoodoo itself emerged from african-american ...
Motumbá Àse, Fraterai

I'm in no way trying to take "the black" of Hoodoo, actually I DO believe that the backround concepts of conjure, of rootwork, and the "old style Hoodoo" DOES come from african roots (congolese, bantú, fon, etc). What I firmly think is that as they had their magical and spiritual systems back in mother Africa, they "adjusted" to this new land and started to "take" what ever made sense to them and seem to be "like their own tradition". That's why old Hoodoo works A LOT with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit/Ghost, angels, saints AND ofcourse, the ancestors. About the "bapstist", I think they were plain christians, catholics.

I was listening to an interview to Starr Casas and I loved how she refered to african ancestors as "OUR ancestors", she being really white. That's because they're her CULTURAL ancestors. What I loved was that she recognised the african ancestry of rootwork, conjure, etc, but she alse talked about it as her own ancestry, because is her cultural backround. So Hoodoo, or "The Work", is a multiple racial practice and tradition, rooted in african, spiced with a lot of other traditions (european, aboriginal, etc). There are many afroamerican people saying that Hoodoo would be something like an ATR or ADR, and is NOT. It's just a tradition, it's folkloric, typical of a geographic area, and now spread wordly.

I guess that, keeping the proportions, saying that Hoodoo is just African-American is like saying Santeria is just Afro-cuban, when actually is practice and part of every cuban's culture, black and white. Of course it's root are african, but now is not a "black religion", is a cuban (latin american) religion with african roots. You know what I mean?


I do agree with Des, but don't quote it because is too long xD
fraterai wrote: tldlr: i agree with both of you, and was just emphasizing balance. If you are unwilling to accept/learn the system from the context of its origins then you have no business learning it (opinion). there is almost two "hoodoos" (when we talk about it), 1.the original and 2.today's hoodoo.
Totally agree. There "Ye Old style conjure" and therte's modern Hoodoo. Actually, the use of the word Hoodoo to describe the work is actually modern, according to Casas, Hoodoo was just a way to ask if you have been worked or layed a root on "hoodoo you?". Before was just Conjure, Rootwork, The Work. (I'm quoting Starr Casas A LOT, because she actually IS a real traditional worker. I'm getting to know her more, and I love what she does)
Saints are not a practice of 1.hoodoo, but most 2.hoodoo practitioners use or know how to work with saints, due to the close relationship between hoodoo and other religions.
I don't agree on that. Most traditional "hoodooists", workers, conjurers, do actually work with saints, and again, is not Baptism which is in play here, is Catholicism. And remember the african concept, God may act to help us, but mostly through spirits, these spirits are our ancestors and other spirits put by God to care of us (orisa, vodun, nkisi) and in white west world, would be the saints.

Baptism is very alike what here in South America call "Evangelicos" or "Evangelistas" (Evangelics-Evangelists), a very nosy kind of christian that bother EVERYONE who's not an evangelist guilt worshiper, they're are REALLY annoying people.

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"Kosi Ewe Kosi Orìṣà"
- Yoruba Tradition

"Water which is too pure has no fish"
- form the Ts'ai Ken T'an

"No enunciation of the Truth will ever be complete, no method of training will ever be suitable for all temperaments..."
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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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These are not arguments, these is open questions, because I honestly don't know the answer to it:

What is the oldest book/books about voodoo?

Is there any evidence that voodoo originally had African elements in it, or was it added later?

Is there any serious scholarly work about the origins that's clear between what's reality and what's myth?

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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The oldest written material I'm aware of is from the '20s. William Seabrook wrote some accounts from his time in Haiti. Written by an outsider looking in, but Seabrook was not unobservant and he was an occultist. There was a woman who travelled around the U.S. around that time seeking out the root workers of that time. I don't remember her name but I think her book was "Go Tell My Horse" or close to it.

I'm sure there's more.

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Desecrated wrote:These are not arguments, these is open questions, because I honestly don't know the answer to it:

What is the oldest book/books about voodoo?

Is there any evidence that voodoo originally had African elements in it, or was it added later?

Is there any serious scholarly work about the origins that's clear between what's reality and what's myth?

I'm sure you already know this, but let me try:
Academic ethnographic studies always make connection between African Vodun and at least 4 to 5 different types of Voodoo. Bronisław Kasper Malinowski is the most accepted authority among ethnography/anthropology academics. He spent a lot of time in Africa and many other places, but I don't know his work. The other name can be of some help could be Maya Deren (really can't say anything about her work). I'm just an architect who learned a lot about history of art and related things.
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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Procel wrote:The oldest written material I'm aware of is from the '20s. William Seabrook wrote some accounts from his time in Haiti. Written by an outsider looking in, but Seabrook was not unobservant and he was an occultist. There was a woman who travelled around the U.S. around that time seeking out the root workers of that time. I don't remember her name but I think her book was "Go Tell My Horse" or close to it.

I'm sure there's more.
Very interesting, I think you are talking about Maya Deren :)
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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Desecrated wrote:These are not arguments, these is open questions, because I honestly don't know the answer to it:

What is the oldest book/books about voodoo?

Is there any evidence that voodoo originally had African elements in it, or was it added later?

Is there any serious scholarly work about the origins that's clear between what's reality and what's myth?
Books? I don't know :/

Evidence? Voodoo IS african religious practice and spirituality. Voodoo is a popular north american way of write/pronounce Vodou. You have Voodoo that is southern ADR, New Orleans, Missisippi and such... It's a religious practice, BUT not like its haitian brother. American Voodoo has some sort of hierarchy but it's more liberal, free to practice, actually you may practice it without being initiated, it's more like a "religious practice" than a "religion". Haitian Vodou is highly hierarchical, as are most, if not all ATRs, you cannot practice it without initiation and without a godparent who teaches you, a priest Houngan or Mambo. Dominican Vudú is another thing all together. You have "3 official voodoos". Haitian, Dominican and American (USA). The "branches of voodoos" are american. Haitian Vodou is one, may vary a little peristyle to peristyle, sosyiete to sosyiete but is a very a one thing. Dominican Vudu is similar to Haitian Vodou, varies from house to house but in the bottom it's all the same. American Voodoo being more "free" in it's practice, it has all these different ways of doing it, from solitaire voodoo magics to initiation with a Mambo or Houngan, but it never is as much as hierarchical as haitian. Haitian Vodou, Dominican Vudu and American Voodoo (or Voodoos) come from a mixture of Fon Ewe, Congo, Yoruba, Igbo and others, in that order, being Fon Ewe and Congo the most influential, then yoruba and others. The original cult isn't called Vodou. Vodou comes from dahomeyian word Vodun which means spirit or deity. In Brazil, you have Candomblé Jejé, which whorships Vodun (spirits of the dahomeyian). And it seems like you are mistaking Voodoo with Hoodoo. Voodoo is a magical and religious practice, that may or may not be organized. And Hodoo is just a macgical practice, transmited oraly mostly by family tradition. Typical in South USA

For schoolarly texts you just need to look "origins of Vodou" and you'll get A LOT of stuff, it's easy to compare with historical facts to discard bullshit from the real shit :)
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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Des! Look for Pierre Fatumbi Verger. He doesn't speak about Haitian Vodou specifically, but he does touch the subject Vodun and the Fon people. He compares the Vodun and Orisa cults in Africa and Brazil. It might help you see more "common stuff" between african cults and african diaspora ;)
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- Yoruba Tradition

"Water which is too pure has no fish"
- form the Ts'ai Ken T'an

"No enunciation of the Truth will ever be complete, no method of training will ever be suitable for all temperaments..."
- Dion Fortune

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Well today there is an obvious connection between african religion and voodoo, but it would be interesting to see some actual historical fact about it.
We've all heard the myths and legends of slaves bringing their religion, but for all we know, that might have been added in the 1960's.

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Look in haitian history. I'm not very related to that, I more familiarized with afrobrazilian tradition, but I'm sure that you'll find what you're looking for if you look for it ;) The same with the southern tradition (USA)
"Kosi Ewe Kosi Orìṣà"
- Yoruba Tradition

"Water which is too pure has no fish"
- form the Ts'ai Ken T'an

"No enunciation of the Truth will ever be complete, no method of training will ever be suitable for all temperaments..."
- Dion Fortune

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Good to see you posting stuff on this Willow, interesting reads.

Off on a tanget.. Koetting though.. if you have seen his new video about what he plans to do we might get an influx of the seriously misinformed.

Warning, may induce an aneurysm.
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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Sypheara wrote:Good to see you posting stuff on this Willow, interesting reads.

Off on a tanget.. Koetting though.. if you have seen his new video about what he plans to do we might get an influx of the seriously misinformed.

Warning, may induce an aneurysm.
This is exactly why I want to find more accurate scholarly work about the occult. And especially pre-internet work from people who actually visited these places and looked at historical evidence.
When we don't have good source material any nutjob can claim pretty much anything.

I'm going to spend some time this week looking into the historical sources and hopefully this weekend I can present the forum with some good reading material.

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Desecrated wrote: This is exactly why I want to find more accurate scholarly work about the occult. And especially pre-internet work from people who actually visited these places and looked at historical evidence.
When we don't have good source material any nutjob can claim pretty much anything.

I'm going to spend some time this week looking into the historical sources and hopefully this weekend I can present the forum with some good reading material.
That would be awesome, Des! ;)
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"Water which is too pure has no fish"
- form the Ts'ai Ken T'an

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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Sypheara wrote:Good to see you posting stuff on this Willow, interesting reads.

Off on a tanget.. Koetting though.. if you have seen his new video about what he plans to do we might get an influx of the seriously misinformed.

Warning, may induce an aneurysm.
Motumbá Àse, Sypheara

Agh, that guy is such an asshole! So poser! I've seen videos about him breaking oaths and such, makes me laugh. If he really, REALLY was initiated, breaking an oath to his elders might end up in a lot of pain... But I doubt that he is in fact vodoussant or vodunssi (son of vodun).
"Kosi Ewe Kosi Orìṣà"
- Yoruba Tradition

"Water which is too pure has no fish"
- form the Ts'ai Ken T'an

"No enunciation of the Truth will ever be complete, no method of training will ever be suitable for all temperaments..."
- Dion Fortune

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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WillowDarkWytch wrote: Agh, that guy is such an asshole! So poser! I've seen videos about him breaking oaths and such, makes me laugh. If he really, REALLY was initiated, breaking an oath to his elders might end up in a lot of pain... But I doubt that he is in fact vodoussant or vodunssi (son of vodun).
The guy is a meth addict with a long record of crimes, fraud and disappointed customers.

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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I just watch this video, the one I saw before was the one with the "santeria initiate"... pffff What a joke!!!

What happens here is that Haitian Vodou has a thing with race, has a very violent history and they've had a hard time to shake off that racist mind, that may or may not be justified, but is part of their culture. There are some Mambo and Houngan, even Bokor that accept white people, but the white need to know their place. Vodou is NOT a magical system. It's a RELIGION with magcial-spiritual practices, for ADR and ATR "magic" (we don't call it that, for as what is Magic in western esoteric thought is just how spiritual world works).

The Afrobrazilian culture isn't THAT rejective with white people, that is because in Braziul you have black, white and aboriginal, so they are all well mixed, just like in Cuba, but Haiti is mainly black, so they don't have the multiracial interaction. I understand from where the racism comes, I don't justify it, just understnd it.

American Voodoo (Lousiana Voodoo and Southern traditions) are different. May be worked as magical system, and that guy comparing Voodoo with Haitian Vodou shows that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

AND relating or linking Vodou or any ATR or ADR with "left hand path" is just not accurate. LHP looks after individualization, empowering the self (ego), and ADR and ATR are about healing, empowering the self as in "Achieve one's destiny" (much more alike to RHP than to LHP) we work with our Alagbatori and Guiding spirits, we work for a Higher Will. That there's blood in it doesn't mean that is "left handed". Vodou is about healing the spirit, that's all.
"Kosi Ewe Kosi Orìṣà"
- Yoruba Tradition

"Water which is too pure has no fish"
- form the Ts'ai Ken T'an

"No enunciation of the Truth will ever be complete, no method of training will ever be suitable for all temperaments..."
- Dion Fortune

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Re: The Hoodoo Truth by Doc Conjure

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WillowDarkWytch wrote: AND relating or linking Vodou or any ATR or ADR with "left hand path" is just not accurate. LHP looks after individualization, empowering the self (ego), and ADR and ATR are about healing, empowering the self as in "Achieve one's destiny" (much more alike to RHP than to LHP) we work with our Alagbatori and Guiding spirits, we work for a Higher Will. That there's blood in it doesn't mean that is "left handed". Vodou is about healing the spirit, that's all.
[sarcasm] If it isn't christianity, it's clearly satanism. [/sarcasm]

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