feb 28, 2022 - high noon
started an outlaw text today, an abridgement of hyatts HCWR
WHY AM I DOING THIS.
Trying to shape the hoodoo future
if I turn one of the foundational texts of hoodoology into
a readable text then my interp of classic hoodoology
will be definitive t(one hopes)
not exactly sure what im doing
or what it will look like when im done
juist do it, let it shape itself in the doing
about 30 years ago when it was still rare
(5 known copies) i asked the folkloric society
that owned the copyright if i could do an abridgment
they never got back to me (imma try again tomorrow)
ththy did not give me permisiion so im going outlawng here
and hope to get permission after the fact but even if
its an underground text it will have served my purposes
shaping the hoodoo future
not sure what to call it, its not an abridgement
cause ima be doing a lot of commentary on the
text
and big dollops of quotes when somebody like
dr yousee begin drop;ping knowledge
ima just do it and let it shape itself in the doing
spent a couple of hours reading thru this morning
the slush is mind numbing
but i feel like i did when i rewrote the brer rabbit
corpus, im taking our culture back
ROUGH OUTLINE:
- WHY AM I DOING THIS
- ME AND THE TEXT: A HISTORY
- BRINGING HOODOO INTO 21ST CENTURY
- HIGH MAGIC VS FOLK
- VALUE OF STUDYING THE TEXT
- EXTRACTING FOLK WISDOM, NOT FOLK MAGIC
- HYATT AND HARRIS, METHODOLOGY AND CUSTODIANSHIP
- ON ORAL HISTORIES AND FOLK WISDOM
- THE TEXT:
- 1ST VOL
- 2ND VOL
- 3RD VOL
- CLOSURE
WHY AM I DOING THIS.
Trying to shape the hoodoo future
if I turn one of the foundational texts of hoodoology
into a readable text then my interp of classic hoodoology
will be definitive t(one hopes)
not exactly sure what im doing
thy did not give me permisiion so im going outlaw here
and hope to get permission after the fact but even if
its an underground text it will have served my purposes
this been on my mind to do for decades
i figure niow is the time, i am no longer
the seekr i was when i 1st read it
i am now a teacher and hope to get more
from text than when i was a callow youth
whatever, the key to doing a challengin g text
is to just start it, lopng as its a im gonna its
not real but if you start it as i have just done
eventually you will fininish it
good lord willing and the creek dont rise
HISTORY WITH THE TEXT
I got a history with this text, 1st encountered it when I was a baby hoodoo
went to the schomberg to see what they had for research purposes
I was shocked when they came out with a yard of books
first ran across it at the schomberg, was doing hoodoo research there, when I dug into hoodoo I went there assuming they would have good research material and lord help me among the hoodoo books I found there was HRC&W,
I was astounded when they bought out a stack of book a yard high, literarily, 5 vol, the 1st 3 vols are the gold mine, 100s of hoodoo oral histories compiled by harry hyatt, a methodist preacher who traveled throughout the south 1930s recording hoodoo oral histories, the 1st 3 are all oral histories, the last two are hoodoo recipes, which interest me not, the 1st three are full of repetitive slush but amongst all that drivel there is hoodoo gold, I spent weeks breaking it down, every day all day, not only that insight into hoodoo lives, personalities and rough hewn folk philosophies, it was a folkloric language experience that I soaked up for my own literary voice, must have done a 100 dollars in copies, these are examples of notes have been translated from deep dialect, often its the turn of phrase Im looking for, these are beats you have seen or will see in my work, even as I write them down Im redoing them in my own words, triggering my own insights, dont know if these been fully processed or not, I don’t care, I claim they have
- my constant study is to know when you walk in my door better than you know yourself.
- if I cant get a clients mind I cant do nothing with them
- they got to believe in the tradition, believe in me, then I can help them,
- whole thing is what worries on your mind, everybody got something worry at them
- the spirit of my mind told me to
- you give it a spirit of imagination wonder
- a hoodoo is a fortuneteller, a seer, master of dreams and spirits, a foreknower, able to know what has happened, is happening and will happen in the totality of the moment
- didn't nobody teach me because Im gifted, that mean the knowledge is already in you, all you got to do is act
- difference between the sorceror and the fortuneteller is that the fortuneteller tells your fortune, the sorceror makes it
- they prevailed on me to go to someone that knowed a little more than I did
- you know you been fixed when you in bad luck, when you find yourself going contrary to your character
- charge a person according to what you think they can pay, I work in % of power, I charge less for less, 25%, 50%, 75% 100%, the best cost you $25, I guarantee it for 5 years – the 1st time you win send me 5 silver dollars, the next time you win send me the rest
- if you have a strong determination that you will win you will
- lot of people come to me say they hurt and they are not, they get a pain they think they been hoodooed but most often its not that, if you tell them that they will go pay somebody else to trick them
- I don't need no bible no spells long as I get you well and work for your happiness then thats all thats necessary
- I dont need no altar because my altar is myself, I was gifted w/that, the high altar
- a conjure will conquer all obstacles for you or teach you how
- aunt zippy tull lived in drummond town virginia, she didn't use no cards or nothing, just told it straight out
- dr yousee: you got to get a persons mind concentrated, you understand, on what you undertaking to do for him, you first gotta build up a confidence, understand, you see, between you and him where he believes in what you telling him and that he believes you can do just what you tell him, you see
- uncle tom williams, when asked if he could handle a case, said son, I can do most anything
I came out of that immersion operating on
an entirely different level of hoodoology
I have repeatedly been called a hoodoo theorist and it is not a compliment, the fundamentalists are appalled at my blanket dismissal of folk magic, but then hoodoo always been an eclectic system shaped to the practitioner, I remind myself of what hyatt called the hoodoo principle - anymethod anytime - the propensity of hoodoo to break the rules of magic with a patchwork quilt of procedure in search of what works, a refusal to be restricted by rules and traditions, a bastard tradition kinda like the african american culture that sustains it,
A GARAGE FULL OF THEM
so david earl jackson call me one day, say some midwest folklore society found a whole garage of hyatts hoodoo vols and selling them $20 a vol, $100 for a full set, I copped two sets, one for me, one for gifts but I didnt believe it until they showed up, and then told every hoodoo I knew, unfortunately I told cat yronwode who bought them all and then sold them at a substantial markup on her site and I realize everybody aint in this for the same reason, instead of sharing empowering knowledge she monetized it, her website is a great resource I must say, problem w/cat is she practice that archaic hoodoo she has researched so thoroughly,
bout a 100 years out of date
so I got both a full set of hyatt and an education, every once in a while I dig in, so happy I got a full set, well its not full any more, recently sent vol 4 to rod jackman, for all the drafts he had read, I had posted my collection on FB and he tried to buy a set but the price tag threw him, I sent him vol 4, and what the hell I sent sheree 5, just because, altar gift, it’s the 1st three Ima hold onto til james come for them when Im gone, whole set go for many thousands but I was never gon sell them so it does not matter, for me they are priceless,
WHY IM DOING THIS
ANYMETHOD ANYTIME
almost immediately I abandoned folk magic as a viable paradigm for the 21st century, folkmagic bores me the cutting edge of hoodoo doing high magic these days, according to me
playing with reality,
and the divine human mind / spirit
shaping generations, destinywork
enhancing the human condition, rootwork
aspiring to the prophetic
and oneness w/divinity
I have repeatedly been called a hoodoo theorist and it is not a compliment, the fundamentalists are appalled at my blanket dismissal of folk magic, but then hoodoo always been an eclectic system shaped to the practitioner, I remind myself of what hyatt called the hoodoo principle - anymethod anytime - the propensity of hoodoo to break the rules of magic with a patchwork quilt of procedure in search of what works, a refusal to be restricted by rules and traditions, a bastard tradition kinda like the african american culture that sustains it,
RADICALLY UNINTERESTED IN FOLK MMAGI
HIGH MAGIC VS FOLK
VALUE OF STUDYING THE TEXT
EXTRACTING FOLK WISDOM, NOT FOLK MAGIC
HYATT, HARRIS,METHODOLOGY AND CUSTODIANSHIP
ON THE NATURE OF ORAL HISTORIES
THE TEXT:
1ST VOL
2ND VOL
3RD VOL
CLOSURE
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