#rootdoctor

Interview with Jake Green—Ruby Pickens Tartt, Livingston, Alabama

Discuss all of your new ideas about hoodoo in private ! As this tradition is fully going back into the hands of our people be mindful of the information you put out that will fall into the hands of colonizers who love to appropriate and make a profit off of your sacred practice.

Christianity & Hoodoo: One is a religion, the other is not

Hoodoo has a long history from its inception of being intertwined with Christianity (and some Judaism), so many practices within rootwork are Christian, Jewish, or influenced by both. Hoodoo originally derived from ATRs (African traditional religions), and during its development over the last several centuries, many other religions have also influenced it such as Native American traditions, Buddhism, and Hinduism. However, hoodoo is a magic practice not a religion, so you can absolutely be of any religion(s) and a rootworker.

I was born Jewish and honor those roots in many ways including within hoodoo, but I’m very uncomfortable with Christianity so I choose not to engage with those sides for personal reasons. If you are Christian and want to practice hoodoo, there’s a lot of great opportunities there, but it’s definitely not necessary and there are plenty of non-Christian rootworkers out there like me. 

The main things that are necessary for rootwork are having black ancestry, ancestor work, learning hoodoo traditions but also making your own intuitive innovations, working with the energies/spirits of the land and your ingredients.

Witchcraft & Hoodoo: Not the same thing, but very compatible!

Just so you know, witchcraft and hoodoo/rootwork are different practices. 

There are absolutely plenty of hoodoo witches, who are practitioners combining witchcraft and hoodoo together in their own craft and/or incorporating hoodoo into their witchcraft. This is something you can legitimately do since hoodoo is very flexible and adaptable! Most rootworkers on Tumblr are also witches.

However, there are also many, many rootworkers who aren’t witches. From my understanding, it’s very likely that the majority in the US today are not and historically have not been. “Root doctor” and “witch doctor,” meaning someone who heals and protects people from witchcraft, are some of the many synonyms for rootworker. Personally, I am a rootworker and not a witch though there are lots and lots of hoodoo witches I greatly admire and respect!!

So basically, the two are fundamentally different but it’s very common to combine and blend them together. 

Green Magic, Green Witchcraft: What is Hoodoo?

Can you practice green witchcraft and rootwork together? Absolutely you can! Although maybe what you meant by “green witchcraft” isn’t necessarily “witchcraft” specifically? That term is commonly used to refer to the magic practices of using herbs, working with plants and trees, and making nature is the foundation of your craft. Personally (if that’s what you really meant), I’d call these practices green magic as a more general umbrella term that encompasses green witchcraft and other traditions like hoodoo that aren’t inherently a form of witchcraft.

Those practices of green magic that I named are already are very integral to the practice of hoodoo. In this sense, rootwork is a type of green magic that has a lot in common with green witchcraft and the two would overlap immensely.

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.