Season 1, Episode 5
Rootwork and the Great Migration
The uniquely American origins of Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure.
November 21st, 2023
Hoodoo’s origin lies in resistance and survival. Developed by enslaved Black Americans during the antebellum South, Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure practitioners provided medical care and protection. These practices continued to evolve under the continued injustices of Jim Crow and moved North with Black Americans during the Great Migration. And they flourish to this day, foundational to many distinctly American practices, from mixing peace water to crafting spell candles.
FEATURING
Practitioner and author of Sticks, Stones, Roots and Bones: Hoodoo, Mojo and Conjuring with Herbs (2004)
Priestess Stephanie Rose Bird is the COVR award-winning best-selling author of Sticks, Stones, Roots, and Bones, The Healing Power of African American Spirituality, The Big Book of Soul, A Healing Grove, Light, Bright, Damn Near White, Four Seasons of Mojo, Mama Nature’s Spiritual Guide to Weight Loss, 365 Days of Hoodoo, African American Magick, and The Healing Tree. She writes for Llewellyn’s Spell-a-Day, Llewellyn’s Witches Companion, Llewellyn Magical Almanac, and Llewellyn Herbal Almanac. She is a columnist in Witches and Pagans magazine. Her peer-reviewed paper on African Aromatherapy is featured in several journals and online. Priestess Bird holds a BFA cum laude from Temple University, Tyler School of Art, and a MFA from the University of California at San Diego, where she was a San Diego Opportunity Fellow. A former Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she has been interviewed on PBS Madison WI, ABC-7 news, BBC London, Urban Gardener, Witch Wave with Pam Grossman, An Aromatic Life, That Witch Life Podcast, WNPR, WBEZ, in the Smithsonian, and many other venues. Priestess Bird is a Black magick maker and healer. Her writing brings to the fore her eclectic practices, combined with her passion for mythology, folklore, and fairytales from around the world, but especially of her ancestry - the African diaspora. She is an accomplished fine artist, with works in major collections. Priestess Bird has exhibited in numerous galleries, universities, libraries, institutions, and programs such as the Arts-in-the-Embassies program where she is being exhibited at the US Malaysian Embassy, Kuala Lumpur. A Fulbright Senior Scholar, Priestess Bird did her fieldwork in anthropology and art in Australia, studying in various Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in the Outback. She illustrated two of her published books and is the author and illustrator of Spirits in my Bones (2024, Llewellyn Worldwide) and Motherland Herbal (2024/HarperCollins)
Professor of Black Studies and Religion, Swarthmore College
Yvonne Chireau is a Professor in the Department of Religion at Swarthmore College, where she teaches courses on African American religions. She is the author of Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (2003) and the co-editor of Black Zion: African American Religions and Judaism (1999). Her recent work focuses on magic and religion at the intersection of Africana cultures. Her current project, an online engagement of Voodoo memes, can be found at The Academic Hoodoo.
Practitioner and author
Tayannah Lee McQuillar is a tarot reader and researcher of religion, esoterica, and mysticism. The author of several books and divination decks, including The Hoodoo Tarot and The Sibyls Oraculum, she lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. You can follow her on Instagram at @tayannahleemcquillar.
Credits
Host: Heather Freeman; Producer: Amber Walker; Editor: Lucy Perkins; Associate Producer: Noor Gill; Sound Design: Jennie Cataldo; Fact Checker: Dania Suleman; Executive Producer for PRX Productions: Jocelyn Gonzales; Music: APM Music and Epidemic Sound; The Project Managers: Edwin Ochoa and Morgan Church; Advisors: Helen Berger, Danielle Boaz, Yvonne Chireau, Abel Gomez, and Meg Whalen; Guests: Stephanie Rose Bird, Yvonne Chireau, and Tayannah Lee McQuillar; Funding and Support: The National Endowment for the Humanities and The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
TRANSCRIPT
LEARN MORE
Chireau, Y. P. (2003). Black magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition. University of California Press.
Hazzard-Donald, K. (2012). Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System. University of Illinois Press.
McQuillar, T. L. (2020). The Hoodoo Tarot: 78-Card Deck and Book for Rootworkers. Destiny Books.
McQuillar, T. L. (2024). The Hoodoo Tarot Workbook: Rootwork, Rituals, and Divination. Destiny Books.
Raboteau, A. J. (2004). Slave religion: The" invisible institution" in the antebellum South. Oxford University Press.
Hoodoo and Voodoo: What’s the difference? (YouTube Video)
Black Magic Matters: Hoodoo as Ancestral Religion (Video and transcript)