In the News
Continuing the folk magic tradition of hoodoo
Thursday, August 9, 2007
By SACHI FUJIMORI
HERALD NEWS
A day before signing the closing papers on her new Bloomfield home two years ago, Thiemba Ferguson performed an important ritual, a safe blessing she picked up from her Louisiana relatives.
Carrying a glass mason jar filled with dirt from her Grandma Phebo's gravesite, Ferguson sprinkled the brown powder along the perimeter of the three-story Victorian home.
Making her way to the front porch, she uttered a spell, asking her grandmother "to protect the home and family in it, and anyone with ill will to stay outside," she said.
At the top step, she bumped into the real estate agent, who asked her, "What are you doing?" Ferguson recalled.
Not wanting to break the magic spell, Ferguson continued on, ignoring the agent.
"If you explain what you're doing, it can lessen the spell," Ferguson, 32, recently explained.
Belief in the spiritual power and protection of her grandmother is central to Ferguson's practice of hoodoo, a form of black folk magic using herbs, spells and recipes, like her grandma's peanut brittle or black-eyed peas.
Part natural healing remedies, part belief in the supernatural, hoodoo is not to be confused with voodoo, a religion exported by the African diaspora around the world, most notably to Haiti and New Orleans.
Hoodoo traces its origins to Central Africa. When African slaves continued practicing it in the United States, it melded with influences from native American and Jewish Kabala traditions.
Researching hoodoo across generations, Jeffrey Anderson, author of "Conjure in African American Society" (Louisiana State University Press, 2005), called it a source of empowerment. Historical records show that slaves sometimes used deadly herbs -- which they believed held magic powers -- to poison their masters, said Anderson in a phone interview.
But hoodoo also was a form of self-protection. One of the most famous examples: Frederick Douglass carried a root, called John the Conqueror, in his pocket, believing it protected him from whippings by slave masters, said Anderson. Runaway slaves rubbed a powder, made of graveyard dust and ground-up lizards, on the soles of their feet, believing that it shielded them from search dogs.
Hoodoo continues to thrive today as a form of cultural power in the black community, as a way of embracing their African ancestors' traditions.
With the rise of the New Age movement in the last 10 years, it has gained popularity outside the black community as well, said Anderson. Internet sites hawk herbal magic powders and items like black hen feathers and snake skins for do-it-yourself spells.
Ferguson's Louisiana relatives, onetime sugarcane sharecroppers, culled their hoodoo supplies from the land they lived on. Cloves relieved toothaches. Drinking quinine dissolved in water soothed aching muscles. Tree moss plugged open wounds.
'Last resort'
Practitioners of hoodoo are called rootworkers or conjurers. Ferguson, a sous chef in Manhattan by day, makes house calls at $25 a spell. Most clients call her as "a last resort," she says, wishing to rid their homes of hexes, ward off stalkers and -- her specialty -- conjure love spells. Most clients are from Newark and find her by word of mouth. Others solicit her services through a pagan networking Web site called witchesvox .com.
When she decided recently to teach a class on hoodoo, she proceeded cautiously.
"It's private," she said. But "it's now time to share a little piece of myself." A moment later she wondered aloud: "How much do you share?"
With a "closed" sign flipped to the sidewalk at Montclair's Mystic Spirit Metaphysical Shoppe, a group of six self-described pagans, Wiccans and spiritually curious settled onto folding chairs and window cushions to learn about hoodoo.
Selling candles, incense, oils, charms and New Age religious books, the shop is a sanctuary for those interested in mystical religions, who sometimes feel misunderstood by the outside world. Classes are offered in tarot card reading, magic and Wicca.
Ferguson's hoodoo course meets at the shop on Tuesday nights for six weeks until the end of August, at $30 a class.
Though newcomers to hoodoo, some in the group already knew Ferguson from a monthly full-moon spiritual gathering hosted by the shop's owners, a young Wiccan couple.
Among the evening's lessons was an introduction to mojos, bags that are blessed with spells and thought to be lucky.
The first thing you need to know about mojos, Ferguson explained, is never to show anyone what's inside. Then she spilled the contents of hers, a red-velvet pouch, onto a low table.
Created a year before she married her husband, to "strengthen our relationship," it's kept in a private place and not opened for six years, until now, to teach the class.
Each ingredient, said Ferguson, has a personal meaning: a peanut-sized cowry shell; bits of candle wax; two shiny stones, a pale-rose one and a white one; apple seeds; a red-and-green ribbon; and, most important, reddish-brown dust collected from her grandmother's Louisiana gravesite.
"What's going to happen to yours, now that you showed it?" asked Donna Brodell, a self-described pagan from Sussex.
Ferguson smiled, her brown complexion glowed.
Silence.
Then: "The reason I'm not saying anything is, if you show somebody. ... You need to have a backup plan."
And talk of her mojo ended there.
Wrapping up the lesson at the shop that evening, Ferguson offered to give students privacy to create their own mojo bags, using jars of herbs she brought and a porcelain mortar and pestle to grind them together.
"What amount of herbs do we put in the bag?" asked one student.
"With a mojo, there's no recipe card," replied Ferguson. "There's no rhyme or reason."
Natalie Leiras, a soft-spoken mother of two from Harrison, asked Ferguson for help making a mojo to bring happiness.
"I'm very stressed these days," she said.
Sitting with her on a window seat, Ferguson recommended ingredients to use: her grandmother's grave dust for protection, a capful of rosewater for romance, lemongrass for happiness.
While mixing the ingredients, she offered soothing advice. "Live good for yourself. By the way you live, you can be an example to your daughters of who you want them to be."
As a final step, Ferguson told Leiras to spit into the bowl to add some of her own "stuff." Fingernail clippings and hair could be used, as well, she said.
Pouring the ingredients into a green cotton bag cinched with a drawstring, Ferguson told her to carry the mojo "on her person" at all times. Then Ferguson stood up, leaving Leiras alone to find a safe spot in her overstuffed handbag to carry it.
After the evening class, Ferguson buried her exposed mojo in her yard and created a new one, which she will not talk about.
Reach Sachi Fujimori at 973-569-7154 or fujimori@northjersey.com.