hello world, got a little taste of the blues
havent heard from ellen about my novel,
is industry still telling me no, oh well
focus rick, keep your eye upon the
sparrow, clocking pages, tick tock
everyday a llittle more challenged physically
trying to outrun the hammer of age, i am so
afraid of losing my chops and not realizing it
lost my progression on the hoodoo way
stumbled on wisdom week, started reading
that wisdom text, realized i had a whole
stack of books on wisdom, sufis, stoics etc
that i had put aside for just this phase
so im dug in on fucking research
tho its the kind of research i enjoy -
wisdomwork - its still fuckin research
i will be wiser, more evolved after doing
this text, thats alll i ask of any text - but
i can see it taking the entire summer
(bummer, stone cold bummer, 4
months lord, 4 piddling months)
so i got to just get back into saddle
while maintaining full research load
i want a draft before i get on that
plane to lisbon in 10 fuckiing days
(impossible, what about having worked the
extractions into text so im back on - okay
still wanting a draft before i get on that bird)
gon have to do some superhuman
disciplined nay obsessed writer grind
okay also had an interview w/roman
for his medicine mondays podcast
on my view of hoodoo so i was like
let me lay it out instead of going up
in there going uh uuh and did this
which i am now going to use as
the nucleus of a creative nonfic
piece, tho likely it will be dead on
arrival for industry / obsidian
this just the rough cut, i wont
be putting polished up
i never put polished work on the
net, might as well give it away
interestin, appears that this phase of
my life is going to be built around
positioning the hoodoo way as i see it
i got to go
so many pages
so little time / life
tick tock tick tock
i got to go
![[2021] Social Media Templates (83)[55] [2021] Social Media Templates (83)[55]](https://rootsblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834520e4069e202a308d1f06f200c-500wi)
---------------
my favorite epigraph, by ras hui i:
“thats what love, cooperation and unity are in a society, a comforter, Im a comforter
for my people, so I have great dominion and power, glory and authority, but I use
my discretion and my people love I, because I heal their afflictions”
I love this epigraph because I thought I was the only one felt like this. This
epigraph validates me . it soo encapsulates my vision of the hoodoo future
OLDSCHOOL AND NEW
mostly when folk hear hoodoo they thinking slaverytime
hoodoo, spirits, spells, hells and blackcat bones. Folk magic hoodoo.
Hoodoo today is still primarily a folk magic system, part of a family of
afrospiritual traditions, congo, ifa, vodou, obeah, et all, the bulk of which are
religious systems, fusions of Catholicism and various ATR traditions.
I propose an retooling hoodoo as a magic system over folk. I propose an
evolution of hoodoology, what I call high hoodoo, custodial hoodoo,
hoodoo that takes responsibility for the well being of a chosen community.
Hoodoo that operates as tribal mediiicinefolk in a contemporary frame,
tending to the cultural / tribal soul thru cultural
products designed to work and heal the culture
FOLKMAGIC AND HIGH,
Early in my practice I abandoned folk magic as a viable paradigm and
started retooling hoodoo to be a viable indigenous spiritual system
The cutting edge of hoodoo doing high magic these days, according to rdoc
- conjurework: playing with reality / mind / spirit
- soulwork: souleasery, working troubled souls
- rootwork: enhancing the human condition
- destinywork: shaping generations into who we would have them be
- centerwork: prophetic attunement w/divinity
MGANGA MAUA: ON SPIRITDOCTORS AND MEDICINE FOLK
I enjoy doing hoodoo performance work in Africa cause they think afroams have
lost their afrospiritual chops and I sshow them no, we just doing something diff
with them. After one performance in east africa, folk started calling me mganga
muau, witchdoctor flowers, they said, I translated that as medicine man flowers
ever since I have called myself operating as a contemporary tribal
medicine man, the tribal healer in a contemporary context.
THE GREAT GRIOT MASTER OF BROOKLYN:
My vision of the hoodoo future and custodial hoodoo is
shaped in part by my time studying with babajohn Killens
the great griot master of brooklyn
who taught us not only how to write but how to be writers, how to be
visionaries, what he called being a long distance runner
what I call the longgame, shaping generations thru cultural projects
LIVING TRADITIONS
Also this come from my own trajectory as a literary hoodoo and the
early abandonment of folk magic as a viable 21st century paradigm.
I don’t understand why folk want to stay in that rural folk magic paradigm. Its so limited
talking to mama whodun, closest thing I know to a hoodoo queen, she
say the appropriators (you know who you are) they doing the hoodoo
they have read about, but by the time its been written down we’ve
moved on, this a living tradition, she say
RETOOLING HOODOO
so, early in my practice I begin retooling hoodooology for a 21st century
sensibility, trying to transform it into a spiritual tradition, a wisdom tradition.,
For instance, Webster says to hoodoo somebody is to hurt or harm them.
According to Rickydoc to hoodoo somebody is to bless or heal them.
Now this is counter to reality but whenever has that ever stopped a
conjuror. Whose very skill is making real into the world that which was not.
HIGH MAGIC AND FOLK
Tho I have abandoned folk magic practice pretty much every other hoodoo
on the planet is deeply invested in the folk magic paradigm, many of them
making a living marketing hoodoo folk magic supplys in bodegas.
It’s the only hoodoo they know, a sllaverytime model a good 100 years out of
date, because sio many of my friends and colleagues are deeply invested in folk
magic paradigms I wont cem out for it, I will just say it doesn’t work for me.
But then according to Hyatt the hoodoo principle is any method anytime.
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,
Every hoodoo I know practice different and what I hope to do is
provide a new model of hoodoology for the hoodoo to come.
I have pretty much given up on convincing folk in my lifetime, Tell hoodoos
there is more to life than folk magic and they go fundamentalist on me.
My dialogue is with the genrations of the future thru what I hope will be sacred texts
LITERARY HOODOO AND THE TRIBAL SOUL
I was trained as a cultural organizer by the babajohn. He trained
his legions to shape generations thru cultural products.
My understanding is that one cares for the tribal soul by monitoring it
through its cultural products, contributing what it needs to balance out
its weaknesses and emphasize its strengths, minimizing the dysfunctional
and emphasizing the transformational, accentuating the positive,
eliminating the negative and not fucking with the in between,
HIGH HOODOO SKILZ
on the search for wisdom
soul easery as individual guidance
conjuration as cultural / generational guidance
the high magician maneuvers to influence those strategic points
in the life of an individual or a society when the shape of
the future hangs in the balance – working at the crossroads
turning the key in the hoodoo lock,
the true magician strives to stay on the cutting edge of knowledge about the
nature of the world, above and below, taking it a step further,experimenting with
the further reaches of the potentially divine human mind, a conjunctive state of
mind, will and way that enables the aspiring magician to utilize timeproven
magical and ideological technology to shape the destiny of humanity, to shape
the fabric of reality, to conjure, if you will, master of time, space & being -
or you can spend your life learning how to make love potions and hot foot
powder - or living off markting same to folk desperate for spiritual guidance
ON THE CARE OF THE TRIBAL SOUL
healing and empowering afroam culture, our immediate responsibility as
tribal medicine folk but we also looking at the immensity of the human condition
which is basically humanitys quest to be better, to be greater than we are
the criteria for a viable indigenous tradition is what quality of life
do its believers live,
based on the bottomfeeder status of blackfolk all over the globe
and every quality of life indicator we clearly have work to do
taking the african way of god to its next stage, whatever that is
basically saying if vodou was doing its job haiti wouldn’t be in the shape
its in, same thing could be said about hoodoo and afroam culture
ON VIABLE INDIGENOUS SPIRITUAL SYSTEM
The hoodoo premise, according to my boy rickydoc, is you ensure the health
of the tribal soul and everything benefits, when the tribal soul is healthy, its
people live healthy, vigorous lives, their culture produces works that enlighten
the entire human race and become part of the worldspirit,
FUNDAMENTALISM AND THE HOODOO FUTURE
fundamentalist resistance to hoodoo evolution
used to bother me but I now see it as process
POSITIONING HOODOO AS PROPHETIC
I call myself positioning hoodoo as the prophetic sytem in the ATR family
one because that hoodoo will always be on the cutting edge of spiritual and
cultural evolution and it means I / hoodoo will not subjugated to the authority
of the ATR traditions. I man wish toi remain a mystical tradition not a religious
one festooned with rigid mythologies.
I see the hoodoo relationship to ATR akin to the sufi and islam, in it but not of it
UNIVERSALIZATION AND THE GREAT WAYS
not only that but I want to position hoodoo as one of the worlds great ways
I believe the question which will define the globalizing 21st century is which
cultures will make the cosmic cut and shape the generations of the future,
which will die out - I want afroam to be one of the worlds significant cultures,
the magical negro wrote large, I have to make afroam culture so strong, so
illuminated that others admire, emulate and adopt it, refine and finesse it
THE ILLUMINATED CHILDREN OF THE SUN
I want blackfolk to be so strong in spirit, so powerful a people that no matter
where in the cosmos we find ourselves in the foreseeable and unforeseeable
future, that blackfolk not only survive and prosper as a race and culture but
that they are illuminated and empowered unto eternity. . .
the illuminated children of the sun
MYTHWORK: THE HIGH HOODOO OF MEMPHIS
boblaw asking me how does it feel being part of the mythopoetic
tradition of the delta
bluesman by julio finn from which I extracted phrase
‘hoodoo lords of the delta’ which eventually became
‘the high hoodoo of memphis’ mythwork
mythworking memphis and the delta as afroamm holyground
and the root space of hoodoology
CLOSURE: BLESSINGS ON US ALL
demoja
Recent Comments