Hoodoo and Pow Wow.

Posted by Coyote Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at 7:44 PM

As you may have read down below earthwomyn06 and I were talking a lil bit about hoodoo and Judaism she asked me "But isn't 'Secrets of the Psalms', 'The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses', and such ... more Pow Wow than Hoodoo?".

Well ya'll know what a big trap I got so I just had to answer and here it is... I have to take a moment and say right here that great thanks goes out to that amazing font of knowledge and insight cat yronwode, without whom what lil this Ol' Devil knows would come to squat. Thank you cat.

Oh yes ya'll can also thank earthwomyn06 for pretty much keepin' this journal updated... thanks earthwomyn06 for givin me grist for my ever turnin' mill. -

As to your question, “But isn't “Secrets of the Psalms”, "The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses", and such ... more Pow Wow than Hoodoo?”

Yes, No, and Maybe.

Let me explain that:

The “Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses” and “The Secrets of the Psalms” are but two of the many Jewish Kabalistic texts that have been adopted by Pennsylvania Dutch hexmeisters –and- African-American root workers.

There has been quite a bit of cultural crossover between German, Jewish, and African sources in American folk magic. As an example, John George Hohman's “Pow-wows or the Long Lost Friend” is one of the decisive texts, not forgetting the Bible itself, in the pow-wow, hex, or speilwerk of the Pennsylvania Dutch. ‘Pow-wows’ was first published in German for Pennsylvania Dutch hexmeisters, then later in 1846 an English translation had great influence among the Anglo-Saxon folk magicians of the Appalachians, and finally it found favor with, and is still used by, many root workers and practitioners of hoodoo.

The “Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses” and “The Secrets of the Psalms” also brings us back to those chemists and pharmacists from the earlier post. These chemists and pharmacists who were manufacturing products for the African American community in the early 20th century started to branch out into the hoodoo market, as we talked about earlier, by adding magical perfumes, candles, incenses, and hoodoo curios to their storefront and mail order businesses. Now because these sorts of ‘magical’ goods sold well, theses sellers, many, if not most, of whom were of German-Jewish decent or origin, soon began introducing Jewish and German folk magic and religious goods into their sales. Very quickly the African American folk magicians, root workers, and practitioners of hoodoo began to add items like menorahs, altar candles, kosher soap, and mezuzahs into their work, and along with that many religio-magical texts already popular with German and Pennsylvania Dutch folk magicians, pow-wowists, and hexmeisters. The result being that hoodoo, like other African diaspora religions in other nations, was influenced and altered by contact with the cultures that surrounded it. In the end, where other African diaspora groups created syncretic religions out of this contact, American hoodoo doctors, conjures, and root workers augmented the body of their magical knowledge through the use of texts like “Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses" and John George Hohman's "Pow-wows or the Long Lost Friend".

So my answer is:

Yes – these texts are used and have had great influence on and in Pennsylvania Dutch pow-wow.

No – these texts aren’t really ‘more’ of pow-wow than hoodoo because they receive regular use and have been completely absorbed into hoodoo, becoming a central part of that practice.

And Maybe- my knowledge is very fragmented and limited to anecdotal personal experience. I don’t claim to be any sort of legitimate scholar; I just talk a lot. *winks*

by Charles Porterfield a.k.a. Grandpaw Coyote
from The Devil's Hoodoo Diary