rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

obama on a sunrun, 360%, lets do this

WEDNESDAY

this article on turmpism as white power movement
for all the folk threatening to vote for jill stein
who don't seem to understand this is not business
as usual, there is no room for throw away protest
votes - the election of trump is an existential threat
those of us who care about humanity have to step up

please read

 

 

TUESDAY ADDENDUM

i give up, there is no way i will be able to get thru this research this summer
adding that african epic list killed it but it was not looking good anyway

so i got to recalibrate, think nov, dec, end of year
which means research till dec (end of semester)

cause i got to do other things, cant full court press
if its not going to get me at finish line,

move finishline to end of year
reconcept & reshape rest
prepare for literary hoodoo class

learned something teaching in china, that its not
the book you want to focus on - its the lessonplan

makes perfect sense in hindsight, every year i reread
those books and break them down deeper than before

but i still struggle thru those classes and feel like im slacking
but i learned in china its the lessonplan you want to sweat over

amazing, been teaching most 20 years now and still figuring stuff out . . .
basic stuff i should have known the first year, least im sitll learning . .

im gone, i got so much work to do,
im getting thru about 50 pages a day of HCWR

its been revelatory, last time i read it i was about 30 and just starting my hoodoo
studies and now i recall this was when i decided folk magic was not for me

also i recall being influenced by the folk language in my own literary language
my interest was the oral histories by hoodoos that were interesting personbalities

and folkish masters of the mystic arts

i got to go, i want to work on my novel . . .

i need to work on my novel . . .

i might need to go see the babajohn . ..

im feeling fey

 

 

NOT SURE WHEN I DID THIS, RANDOM MUSINGS IE, NOT
EDITED, RAW, I DISAVOW IT, FORGET YOU EVER SAW IT . .

so i see the BLM has come up with a list of demands
the usual suspects, reparations, gov actions of
various sorts, demands for respect et al, and of
course the reining in of police lethality, all good
deamnds but I think they are not an effective approach
are BLM the first to make these demands, no not really
I think they have already had good influence and are
the best bet for movement but I must confess I feel
about them the same way I feel about the Bernie folk
instead of starting at the top they need to be about
community organizing and empowerment instead
of looking to other folk for their movement

I assume this is the case but I don't see it in their manifesto, I wish
them the best of of luck but begging whitefolk has a short shelf life

 

 

TUESDAY

been reading all these origins myths and trying to decide
which i can use and how i will have to tweak them to make
them legitimate for a 21st century sensibility, ie in keeping
with our understanding of cosmic origin, then thought to do
my own, this is first beat, ima work on the advent of humanity

 in the beginning was the mojo and
then bang there was the great mojo
and all that is begin to be and the
cosmos begin to manifest an entity
unto itself, desperately seeking Fa
for you, for me and
spewing seeds of stellar dust for
what is consciousness, & who knows
when the only thing certain is that we
are surely blind & wisdom must be won
again and again and again

and the great mojo
called it good

and in the fullness of time there
came humanity, from an ameoba
to something that crawled from
the sea to stand upright, tools in
hand and eyes fixed upon the stars,
in the ongoing quest to be greater
than we are, should we assume that
evolution is done or must we assume
there are greater selves to come

and the great mojo
called this good

okay, terminal corn, ima leave it
i might be able to clean it up . . .

im gon

 

 

 

MO SATURDAY

so i got folk saying they will vote green/jill
because they are in a safe state and their
vote does not count - au contrary - not only
must trump be defeated but he has to be
defeated so bad, so thoroughly, the repubs
never try anything like this ever again

 

 

SATURDAY

two takeaways from this salon article: one that this berniebro
from convention probably does not recognize his sign implies
a phallic component to his hating on hillary, (then again,
maybe he does, maybe im underestimating him)

two: the fringe tried to take over both parties, the dems
said no, the dem fringe is loud but ultimately just a nuisance,
while the repub fringe succeeded, the repub fringe is now
‘running the show’  - this aint my opinion, this what I read

don't hate the messenger

(decided not to put this on FB no sense pissing off the legit
Berners who have signed up by referring to their soulmates
as fringe but that is what happened - the dems rejected their
fringe takeover, the repubs embraced it)

 

 

THURSDAY



so its done, we got thru it and hillary gave a good speech
i was on edge the whole time fearing she would fumble
but she nailed it and i suspect some of the HIL LA RY chants
were to drown out nascent boos, i would have liked to heard
a little concern for the palestinians when she mentioned
israel, i believe she almost got booed on that one, but other
than that i thought she done fine, covered all the necessary
bases, i been supporting her but i don't know i can say i
been truly feeling it, not like the commitment i got to obama,
my hillary support been strategic, pragmatic, more head than
heart, but appear to me she growing into the job, I'm open . . .

 

 

 WEDNESDAY

still got folk trying to convince me hillary is evil and
I'm like jesus give it a rest, let me put it this way, ima
soldier and for the foreseeable future i still take my
marching orders from barack obama, acknowledged
leader of black america, i trust barack obama, and if
barack say throw down i throw down - if hillary good
enuf for barack obama she good enuf for me

 

progress report

SUNDAY

god help me more books, so im reading my mythwork books
and for some ungodly reason i think to see if there are more

of course there are and in researching those i think to read
books on african epics because i think of this piece these

days as a griotic work telling a divine history of the black world
and its destiny and im thinking an afroam african epic stylee voice
would be a good thing for it

so first i go to amazon and i see whats out there beyond what i got
when you only using one source then thats damn near unethical
i need more so all my info doesnt come from one guy

and there are a couple on amazon that intrigue me, next step is see if any of them
are available schoolhouse or public library, schoolhouse (the joy of working
for a research institution) had a bunch

so next step is go to schoolhouse and see whats in the stacks around them
(i love the stacks) i must have brought home 20 new books, then i go thru them

and see what i can scan in an hour or so, and which i really
need to actually read and which i need to actually buy for
extraction purposes because i dont want to mark up a library book

if too expensive and not too fat i will do a xerox at the job
rare academic works (and ones not so rare) can be $100s
but the xerox ones i file away and dont really read so i
avoid that (in fact go thru that pile and see if any criticals)

now im feeling overwhelmed again, absolutely no way ima get thru all i
need to get thru this summer - i got to recalibrate my plans

these are the ones ima buy/extract:

the aquarian guide to african mythology
oral epics from africa (i think i have this one somewhere)
power and the praise poem  ***
epic traditions of africa
the epic of africa
story by scheub  (author of dict of african myth)

this one not available anywhere else, will have to scan/read it:
dahomean narrative  (lot of work on Fa - Fa fascinates me, destiny, fate et al)

these ima quickscan, i got criticals begging for attention but
ima give these one day, whatever i dont get today i dont get:

african traditional religion by parrinder
the gods of ancient egypt (ptah chapter)
storytelling songs of zulu women by scheub
the historical study of african religion

im feeling overwhelmed again
man, im fucked,

im just fucked when you look at the two mythwork books im already committed to im just fucked
also i feel need to continue marching thru 3000 pages of hoodoo rootwork conjuration and witchcraft

im finding it as fascinating as i did some 30 years ago but i expect to get more out of it this time, im older
was not interested in magical recipes last time but this time im studying them for characterwork stuff in rest
my interest in HRCW has always been the oral history voices and their underlying folk philosophies
not magical recipes, which is bulk of text, and anybody know me know i dont have time for folk magic

but whats been truly interesting 100 pages in is something hoodoos sometimes
sneer about - some of the interviewees give fanciful accounts but even thats
of use to me, hoodoo fantasies and imaginizations, and im getting all this
hoodoo folklore that i can use,

and its going to give me a traditional hoodoo voice
for use as necessary, something else i remember now,
all this great folk language that i remember being influenced
by way back when and i assume im going to pick up
narrative flavor from it again

not only folk language but hoodoo folk language

between that narrative flavor and this african epic flavor
im about to immerse myself in now its going to give me
another narrative register, im kinda excited about it
so ima give the rest of the summer to that

discretionary extractions like the bible will have to be backburnered
i will clearly be in a full court research mode deep into the fall

so the new summer research schedule:

hoodoo rootwork conjuration and witchcraft v1,2,3
my two mythworks on my kindle
the 6 books on the 1st list
pan african congress vol3

(just added instructions of ptahhotep
and the kemetic tree of life - somebody
stop me before i research again)

get thru these and work those
extractions into text and i will
consider it a summer well spent

sorry about all this tedious info, this how i
spend my day, plotting production

and part of my contract w/you dear regulators
is ima show you how its done, the literary life by
rickydoc, you want to do this just follow my lead

but now i got to go, there is no way
in hell ima get thru these

fucking G of kindle mythwork1 (19 letters to go)
100 pages into 3000 page HRCW text

(and i want to get a grip on pro tools this month)

im fucked

 

 

 

THURSDAY

(me maaza and misha in lisbon, did i already put this up)

so, unable to find PAC vol3 (its around here somewhere)
i am doing my two african myth texts, doing dictionary of african myth
now and what im finding interesting is the overlap with the historicals
so many of these are creation and culture hero myths not much
different from the early historicals, ima play with that fluid border

also ima take liberties, ima assume that all these mythologicals
that folk of those cultures will be like thats not really how that works
and so many of them are not really 21st century friendly

ima take creative liberties with them all, ima feel free to reforge them
for my purposes which might be blasphemous to folk from it but thats life
CYOA - did D and E today, 21 letters left, if i can average 3 a day i will

be done with this extraction in a week,
2 a day will be 10 days, i can live w/that
ima try for 3 but i will accept 2,

then another week for african mythology a - z
and i will have my mythwork covered
just did Fa, learned more about it, got mythwork for it

this whole thing feels like a griotic effort to me
this is going to be a legendary griotic work of the black world
that griotic imperative has become more of a drive than the
holybook imperative that lead me here,

i suspect they are one and the same, so this
is what i got for Fa today, still in raw note form:

fa of the fon, the will of the gods
the personal fate of each human
you must be in harmony w/your fa
if you would know your greater self

after the world had been created
two men, koda and chada, were
sent my mawu with the knowledge
that all have their fa, thei story,

the sacred word

the writing w/which mawu creates your story
this story is given to legba for safe keeping
everyday mawu gives the work to legba
who is to live, who is to die, what conditions
of life to be finessed,what must be endured

legba can change the writing of fa
this is why one opens all spiritual work w/nod to legba
this is why legba rules the crossroads

three men came to earth with news of fa
adjaka, oku and ogbena, they showed a
man named alaundje how to make fa
how to throw divination to determine fa
the kernals of the palm tree, 8 lines in
the dirt upon which the divination
is thrown, the dirt is collected in mojo bag and
given to the client, hat way the clint has control
of their destiny

(I can come up with something that does this
give you control of your fa, your destiny, that
will be that bicone bead, that's the destinybead)

im gone, trying to get thru F tonight . . .

i just saw, 12:03, its tomorrow already
and i only did 2, need another gear . . .

need another gear

 

 

WEDNESDAY 7/20   7:14PM  FINISHED PANAFRICAN CHRONO VOL 2, DAMN
WILL NOW MOVE DICTIONARY OF AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY TO PRIMARY SLOT
ALSO START WORKING ESSENTIAL SUFISM, TAKE A BREAK FROM HISTORICALS

 

WEDNESDAY 7/20

hello world

finished two sufi books, easy reads
next up essential sufism, more challenging i believe

on page 307 of vol 2 pan african chrono (446 pgs)
on Ds of african mythology, the historical one is the
most tedious, followed by the mythological and
im still in the raw acquisition phase, boring as hell

the big challenge is just sitting there hour after
hour transcribing boredom and i keep asking
myself do i really need this historical thread
but then i think of this as a griotic work and
history is part of that griotic function i think

not sure where i am in bible, kindle says 13%
(moving relatively quick, a lot of wordage scan)

i start my mornings power crunching pac or africanmyth
these are the two drudges, fucking research tomes
takes a certain kind of discipline to endure this level of sludge

then when i tire of either i switch to the other and then
when i tire of both of them i do the sufi works

after the hardlabor of historical/mythical
research the sufi stuff is easy riding - a break

then when totally burnt out i watch movies
or do random reading, mostly detective stuff
still half research for rest for the weary

i pulled out the outline yesterday and started working on it, was just totally
burnt out on HBOF but got all these ideas of new draft for RFTW
decided to work outline/concept when totally burnt on HBOF research

tried working on HBOF structure but i feel need to get as
much of this slush research as possible done this summer

the big drudges scheduled after this one:
phase 2: pac v3 and the 2nd african myth work
phase 3: the bible and the hyatt vols
these are my 1000 page crunchers

get these done and i will consider it a good summer
the others i scanread when im burnt out on crunchers
the others i can do extractions during school year

if i maintain discipline prime i can finish phase 1 this weekend
2 weeks on phase 2, 2 weeks on phase 3, its doable

specially since this my leo birth season
the zone likelier come easy to me now (i hope)
i in fact seem to be in it now - discipline prime (new concept)
but i need another gear, 2 week phases still impossible

i need another gear

even if i win (its doable) ima be so
burnt out it will be a health issue,
i dont endure like i used to (shrug)

tickled me that melania's plagiarism soured their
effort to position her as an electoral asset and
viable 1st lady and instead exposed her as the
same stage managed fake her husband is
just a couple of grifters about to make a score

all my love

demoja

 

rootwork by rickydoc

im thinking im going to keep a running analysis
very tight so as to keep the hassle down
damn near think poem

what are the issues of the moment
not in any particular order

Do I feel like using energy on rootwork
no i do not

terrorism and the struggle against jihadism
black lives matter and the struggle
the rise of trump and the tightening polls
where o where is Bernie and the revolution
the effect of terrorism on the electorate
the influence of the supreme court tie
hillary clinton and the waning days of obama

thats it for the moment, i got to get back to work
every day i can hear that clock ticking a little harder

was just thinking about the coup in turkey
impo in the moment, impo in positioning
turkey in antijihadi struggle but not a real
force in the global dynamic

can you imagine having to live in an islamic world
i cannot, how will the west contain the jihadi threat
is a major factor and i prefer hillarys hand on that
over trumps anyday, trump would not only not be
effective but trump can veer into constitutional crises
with likely a fair amount of ease

arf

 

research strategy: moving into closure on hbof

hello world, im in a good space kinda, feel bad about all the killing this week
trying to maintain, the harder times get the more committed to getting my work
done, like it will some kiind of a corrective

in lisbon, one of my favorite cities and i did a new piece, for the writer who
would be great which represented a whole new style for me and it went over

well, i was with parker and annie, two of my literary descendants and mikael was
here and annie made me cry in public reading a piece about me as her mentor which
i had not read because i knew it would be too emotionally wrenching for me

and now im back in the saddle, clocking pages, well, at least marching
thru research, which is going to be the primary focus of july and aug
these are the works i feel like i must get thru:

1) a dictionary of african mythology, the mythmaker as storyteller  by scheub
2) african mythology, A to Z  by lynch & roberts
3) pan african chronology: a comprehensive reference to the black quest for freedom, v2 & v3 (v1 done) by everett
4) winds of grace: poetry, stories and teaching of sufi mystics and saints by abramian
5) the bible by various scribes in the house of life
6) the path: sufi practices by nurbakhsh
7) the way of the sufi by idris shah
8) essential sufiism by  by frager
9) hoodoo rootwork conjuration and witchcraft by hyatt vol 1,2,3
10) the original major odu ifa ile ife  by ologundudu

11) the message and the book: sacred texts of the worlds religions by bowker
12) tales of the hasidim by buber
13) the worlds wisdom, sacred texts of the world's religions    by novak
14) new afrikan hoodoo   by ajamu
15) the archetypal cosmos: rediscovering the gods in myth, science and astrology  by le grice
16) eternity: god, soul, new physics  by trevelynan
17) masks of the universe: changing ideas on the nature of the cosmos  by harrison
18) as much of galeanos memory of fire as time left permits, v1, 2, 3

this is what i need to get thru this summer to feel good about myself
at first i thought i only had to do the 1st set but then as i was looking thru
the pile to see whats critical the 2nd set got added

lot of critical texts ive already done an extraction, the iching, the sacred tarot
by the brotherhood of light, etc etc, been extracting for a year now, a push i
originally scheduled to be done w/in two weeks has instead consumed me

these 18 are the ones i feel like i still GOT TO GET THRU to call this research
phase a done deal, then i will feel good about myself and my final product

the point is to be the next step, so i got to extract everything worth extracting from
these texts, digest it, repurpose it, make it mine, go to the next level on them
(yes, including and most especially the bible)

then i can spend the rest of the fall doing clean up drafts and put this
puppy to bed come december (or more likely january sometime) with
a sense of job well done,

(i hope to god i dont end up giving my spr 2017 research leave to this project, i desperately
want to give my research leave to my novel, thats why im trying to clear my decks . .)

but i look at this list and i know its impossible to get thru it this summer
likely it will end up taking the whole fall which i would like to avoid because
it will cut into my schoolhouse obligations and put off when i can shut down
research and start cleaning up text

there another 20 or so id like to add to this list but im moving into
closure now, determining what HAS to be done and dumping the rest,
i got a good 100 texts id like to get thru but ive run out of time

as it is i know i could easily spend another 10 years on this project but im not
so this will be like the hoodoo book of flowers 1.0, then keep working on
it (w/benefit of feedback and criticisms) and do 2.0 after novel done

the extraction id like to be working thru now is pan african chronology vol 2
but they are huge volumes, and i could not tote them to portugal, so im

working on the dictionary of african mythology, which is on my kindle
the dictionary of african mythology i want to have done before i leave here

cause i want the mythologicals off my plate and in the text, also investing in
that headset will help me take a mythological approach to the historical riffs im
getting out of pan african chronology so i can get that galeano feel to them

all that said there is no way i can possibly get thru all these texts
in the next month and a half, extracting what i need, reprocessing

it for my purposes, making it mine, its totally absolutely impossible but
that wont stop me from trying, desperately seeking The Zone wherein

all things are possible

in my world you got to try a little harder than a reasonable
person would, in my world reasonable dont win no prizes

whats going to happen is likely i will still be
marching thru fire deep into the fall but hook
or crook im gon get this done and ima make my
end of the year deadline, i do not miss deadlines

never have, never will

all my love

demoja