{"id":2256,"date":"2011-01-04T12:44:13","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T19:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2256"},"modified":"2023-07-22T16:41:33","modified_gmt":"2023-07-22T22:41:33","slug":"hard-times-not-for-hoodoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2256","title":{"rendered":"Hard Times? Not for Hoodoo"},"content":{"rendered":"

People enter hoodoo through the door of suffering, to borrow a phrase from the Umbandistas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal <\/em>reports an uptick in the magic sector: “Need a Job? Losing your House? Who Says Hoodoo Can’t Help<\/a>?”<\/p>\n

In the early 20th century, white pharmacists in black neighborhoods began marketing hoodoo items through mail order after noticing they were fielding a lot of questions from their black customers about roots, herbs and potions. Their shops fell on hard times in the 1970s, in part because many African-Americans began to view hoodoo, also known as rootwork or conjure, as backward, say scholars who study the practice. “As African-Americans came more in the mainstream and more affluent, they were embarrassed by this stuff,” says Carolyn Morrow Long, author of\u00a0 Spiritual Merchants<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0 a book about hoodoo stores.<\/p>\n

Today’s hoodoo revival is again being driven primarily by white retailers, and that has some blacks criticizing the commercialization of ancient rituals for a quick profit. “Hoodoo is not just oh-help-me-bring-my-baby-back, help-me-get-my-man-back stuff,” says Katrina Hazzard-Donald<\/a>, a Rutgers University sociology professor who is black and was taught hoodoo as a child. She says hoodoo stores are corrupting the spiritual belief system by selling inferior, nonsacred products and focusing on alleged quick fixes to problems. “What is so pathetic about it is they don’t even know the origins of all this stuff,” Ms. Hazzard-Donald says of online hoodoo vendors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Among the businesses featured is the Forestville, Calif.-based Lucky Mojo Curio Co<\/a>., which also figured in a recent journalistic book on magic in America<\/a>. “I listened to your grandmother when you didn’t,” owner Catherine Yronwode tells her black customers\u2014and, I suspect, Prof. Hazzard-Donald.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People enter hoodoo through the door of suffering, to borrow a phrase from the Umbandistas. The Wall Street Journal reports an uptick in the magic sector: “Need a Job? Losing your House? Who Says Hoodoo Can’t Help?” In the early 20th century, white pharmacists in black neighborhoods began marketing hoodoo items through mail order after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-2256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hoodoo"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-Ao","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6406,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6406","url_meta":{"origin":2256,"position":0},"title":"Who Ruined Hoodoo?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Katrina Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013) 248 pp., photos, index, $85 (cloth), $28 (paper), ebook available. \u00a0 Hazzard-Donald teaches anthropology and sociology at Rutgers University-Camden. She is herself an initiate into the Orisha religion, but this is not a work\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Africa\"","block_context":{"text":"Africa","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=africa"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.press.uillinois.edu\/books\/images\/9780252078767.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1253,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1253","url_meta":{"origin":2256,"position":1},"title":"This Should Work for Freelancers, Too","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"From the Motor City Hoodoo line by Coventry Creations of Ferndale, Michigan.","rel":"","context":"In \"Hoodoo\"","block_context":{"text":"Hoodoo","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=hoodoo"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":602,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=602","url_meta":{"origin":2256,"position":2},"title":"The Shock of It All – 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 21, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier post here I did finish Christine Wicker's Not in Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America. To be honest, the subtitle should read, \"How magic is transforming Christine Wicker.\" The book maps closely to Susan Roberts' 1974 book Witches U.S.A.. The author, a middle-aged female\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":568,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=568","url_meta":{"origin":2256,"position":3},"title":"Hoodoo and the Lost City","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 30, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I watched The Skeleton Key, a middling thriller starring Kate Hudson. It's the usual \"Don't go up those stairs! Don't open that door!\" sort of plot, but what gives it its twist--more than the conjured Hoodoo atmosphere that the movie tries to evoke and the echoes of Mia\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"New Orleans\"","block_context":{"text":"New Orleans","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-orleans"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2853,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2853","url_meta":{"origin":2256,"position":4},"title":"Hoodoo You Read?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Hoodoo & Conjure Quarterly is a new journal on Southern magic and folklore, and you can buy it on Amazon.com (follow link above). Contents of the first issue: Denise Alvarado: \"The Origin of the Root,\" \"Dirt Dauber Nests,\" \"Conjure Artist profile: The Georgia Mojo Man,\" \"A Goetic Ritual: Magickal Doll\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/hoodoo-241x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3525,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3525","url_meta":{"origin":2256,"position":5},"title":"Mojo & Materiality: Lucky Mojo Curio Co.","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"When the AAR met in Montreal in 2009, we not only had our first session on idolatry\/materiality from a Pagan perspective, but also the Magical Mercantile Tour of Pagan and occult-related shops and meeting places. This year's tour revisited the concept under a slightly different name, a tribute to our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/DeskSetMojo-279x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2256"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13431,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256\/revisions\/13431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}