Hoodoo Heals All Ills



Tracy McClendon, from Lucky Mojo.com

Want a magic potion to help get a job, save your house, your health, perk up your love life?
People from all over the country are turning to Hoodoo—an ancient belief system based on spells, potions, balms, and curses started by the slaves in the American Deep South.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Forness, a thirty-nine year old woman living in Connecticut was falling apart about a year ago.   Suddenly unemployed, her husband wanted a divorce, and she began developing health problems.   One night at her lowest point, she discovered a website selling products for hoodoo.  Since then, things have begun looking up.  She found part time work and her health has improved.

“There is reason we believe in this stuff,” she says.

Thousands of others have found also relief while slashing debt and preventing foreclosures.  Gee, and I used to listen to Suzie Orman.

But Hoodoo?

Over several hundred years the slaves invented these mixtures of roots and herbs, and when they were freed, they walked away from the fields into the cold hard world and found the health care system nonexistent.  All they had is what they knew, and they brought their old recipes into the cities, now searching for the rare ingredients needed to make their magic potions.
        

 White pharmacists in black neighborhoods during the early twentieth century were often bombarded with questions from black customers regarding these elements until they finally sent away for mail-order products.  It became an ongoing business until the seventies when blacks became embarrassed with the rituals, and hoodoo died off.

Until now.

With internet access and the economy tanking, hoodoo suddenly got hot once again.  And this time it’s mostly whites and blacks catering to whites.           

                                                                   

The biggest website is LuckyMoJo.com with 23,000 customers.  They hawk hundreds of products including “attraction powder” and “goofer dust.” (Goofer dust is made of dead spiders to keep your enemies away.   I got a few in case Sarah Palin shows up at my door).

“Business is good,” say Richard “Doc” Miller, owner of Miller’s Rexall, a homeopathic and hoodoo shop in downtown Atlanta.  Walk-in customers are steady but online sales have exploded.  Business has grown from $10,000 in 1994 to over a million today.



some things they promise



Many blacks are furious with the comeback, saying these new Hoodoo products are phony and basically corrupt the original intent.   

Is anyone surprised?   You know Americans.  We're in a hurry to get healthy, wealthy, fall in love....   Yet thousands swear that they work, and who am I to argue?

But just to make sure I ordered a little High John the Conqueror to restore my internal power and got a curved Khadja fire sword because I couldn’t find my other one, while picking up a book of bottle spells—can’t have too many of those.

All set to go.

Oops, forgot my roots. 

Just made an appointment with my hairdresser Saturday.   Those are the only roots I worry about.