Excerpt #1 from Mojo Rising: Confessions of a 21st Century Conjureman
I am Flowers of the Delta Clan Flowers and the Line of O Killens.
A Babagriot of the Hoodoo Way. A Lord of the Delta.
And I would you my people be
the great and glorious people you were
meant to be.
The Illuminated Children of the Sun.
Humanities Living Ancestors and
Gods True Chosen.
Lisen o ye Firstborn to the Geas of Rickydoc
and I will give you a mission greater
than your adversity.
I am a Conjureman. This is the Text.
Been most interesting trying to be true hoodoo in these contemporary times. Most folks arent certain hoodoo really exist. If they are conscious of the hoodoo tradition, they generally thinking slaverytime hoodoo - spells, hells and black cat bones. But as African Americans have evolved as a people so too has their indigenous spiritual tradition. Comparing contemporary hoodoo to slaverytime hoodoo is kinda like comparing the space shuttle to an oxdrawn cart.
My understanding is that the word Hoodoo is a linguistic riff on Voodoo, itself a riff on Vodou, a Fon word meaning spirit or deity. Hoodoo is often confused with Voodoo. They are, though, two different systems. Voodoo, like most afrospiritual systems in the Americas, is a conventional religious system (based in Haiti) whose primary concern, in spite of Western sensationalizement, is interface with the Divine, whereas Hoodoo has traditionally been a magical system based in the African American communities of the South.
My understanding is that the word Hoodoo came into being when the Vodou of Haiti was imported into French Louisiana by planters and slaves fleeing the Haitian revolution. When Voodoo was proscribed in New Orleans as "insurrectionary," it went underground and mythopoetic figures such as Dr. John and Marie Laveau shaped its American manifestation. It became Hoodoo when it dispersed out of New Orleans into the southern black experience and became the term for a variety of African magical/religious practices that had survived among assimilated slaves.
Around about the turn of the 20th century mystically inclined African American writers began to use Hoodoo as literary ground. It was Zora Neale Hurston facilitated Hoodoos transformation from the folkloric to the literary and Ishmael Reed its transformation from a magical to an afrospiritual ideological system.
Today Hoodoo is an eclectic system shaped to the personality of the practitioner from the classic rural magicworker to the sophisticated ideological orchestrators of literary hoodoo. Hoodoo today, as is the Afroamerican community for which it speaks, in a state of flux and transition. A blank slate to be shaped as we see fit. The cutting edge of Contemporary Hoodoo aspires to be a respected contribution to the Worldspirit - the global spiritual Work composed of the best of the national traditions. Where the essence of religions meet. The Holyground.
Concerning itself then not only with its classic tribal roles of afrospiritual guide and guard but with the wellbeing of all peoples and all Jah creatures great and small. Guide and Guardian still.
Consequently the human condition, evolutionary illumination, community empowerment, divine and destinic guidance have become prime hoodoo concerns. At least according to Rickydoc. Thats me.
I have tried in Mojo Rising to explore my evolution as a contemporary hoodooman and get further understanding of questions I have struggled with to get to where I am now - the Crossroad Decisions I have had to make. I hope with this work to contribute to the ongoing evolution of the hoodoo way and make it pertinent to the 21st Century mind and condition. I hope with this work to establish a claim for hoodoo as one of the world's respected spiritual traditions and to make of it an effective instrument of spiritual and political redemption.
Gon speculate then in Mojo Rising on two primary hoodoo skills - Conjuration and Consultation: Consultation as the classic hoodoo role of Individual Guidance - helping folk to address the challenges of life and be greater than they are.
Souleasery.
Conjuration as Destinic Guidance - destinic orchestrations conjuring reality into being and shaping the future of humanity. Making real that which was not. Turning the key in the hoodoo lock.
In my youth I was a sorceror.
I have struggled for some 25 years now to manifest as a contemporary hoodooman. I have for the last 10 or so struggled to understand just what it means to be a 21st Century conjureman. A true 21st Century afrospiritual force. A holyman if I may be so bold.
In spite of all evidence to the contrary, I like to think I got my mojo working and I plan to take the trick off black souls. This spell is then designed to define the hoodoo way as the prophetic tradition of the blackworld and shape the hoodoos of the future as spiritual and strategic advisors - masters of the longgame.
I have tried to approach this quest with the humility it demands and can only hope that in the journey I have found something worthwhile. My record is spotty and most of my understanding has come from failure. I hope in this work to find my own redemption.
I further hope with this work to influence the destinic dynamics of my times. To give my people a vision greater than their adversity. I hope with this Work to conjure.
Come then o traveler. I claim for hoodoo the prophets way.
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