Casas Starr - Old style conjure: hoodoo, rootwork, and folk magic

PRAISE FOR OLD STYLE CONJURE

At last... a book that answers every question you had about Conjure but were afraid to ask! Written in the folksy style that belongs to Starr Casas alone and jam-packed with easy to understand explanations, simple working instructions, and fascinating historical tidbitsOld Style Conjure is an absolute treasure. It's a must-read for every practitioner of the ancient artsand a must-have for every magical library!

DOROTHY MORRISON, author of Everyday Magic, The Craft, and Utterly Wicked

This is Starr Casas's best work yet, revealing the secrets of Conjure that anyone can use to enrich their lives. Everything you need to know is fully explained. This is a handbook created to be used and cherished and passed on down from generation to generation.

ROSEMARY ELLEN GUILEY, author of Guide to Psychic Power

Mamma Starr is the real deal and her works and words speak that truth. This down to earth, practical guide to Conjure is a book you will want to keep forever. Whenever I learn from Starr Casas, she transports me to a place where I see, feel, and hear what needs to be done to get it right. Old Style Conjure is a gift to the folk magic community.

JACKI SMITH, founder of Coventry Creations and author of Coventry Magic with Candles, Oils, and Herbs

Starr Casas is a true national treasure. She is an authentic hereditary practitioner of Conjure, among the most potent forms of traditional American folk magic. A vast repository and staunch defender of rapidly vanishing American folk traditions, Starr Casas is the real deal and Old Style Conjure is her best, most complete and comprehensive work yet. This is a practical book, chockful of Starr's own formulas, rituals, and works. Read it and learn how to effectively use time-tested techniques of Conjure to better your life and achieve your goals. Starr also presents and explains the history and philosophy of Conjure. This knowledge will help you become a better, more effective practitioner of Conjure, but it will also teach you much about the history of the United States. To learn from Starr is to learn from the source. Anyone seeking to comprehend Conjure and benefit from its powerful magic would do well to read Old Style Conjure.

JUDIKA ILLES, author of Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, Encyclopedia of Spirits, The Big Book of Practical Spells, and other books of magic.

Old Style Conjure is written in Starr Casas's uniquely heartfelt and down-home conversational style that reads like you're getting advice from your best friend. With her lifetime of conjure work, Starr guides you through the roots, recipes, and rites of this powerful practice that is the legacy of those first Africans to come over on the slave shipsancestors that conjure workers uplift and honor for both their sacrifice and their magic. With these tools, you will learn the ways of Southern magic that have been used by both black and white practitioners for centuriessteeped in African wisdom, the spirits of the natural world, and the strength of the Bibleitself a most powerful spell book in the hands of the true Southern Conjurer. If you want to learn the old ways of Southern Conjure from a true expert who has lived it her entire life, then look no further than Starr Casas!

CHRISTIAN DAY, author of The Witches' Book of the Dead and co-owner of Hex: Old World Witchery.

Written by one of the most authentic practitioners of our time, Old Style Conjure by Starr Casas is incredibly rooted in the power of the Old Ways, while at the same time bringing a great deal of relevance and instruction for modern people. This book is a must have for those who want to learn more about the inner practices of Conjure.

RAVEN GRIMASSI, author of Old World Witchcraft and Grimoire of the Thorn-Blooded Witch

Respect, Responsibility, and Family... these three words resonate when I reflect on Starr Casas and the gift her knowledge and integrity are to our modern magickal culture. I love Old Style Conjure: it's fascinating, insightful, practical, and powerful, just like Starr.

FIONA HORNE, author of Pop! Goes the Witch: The Disinformation Guide to 21st Century Witchcraft

This edition first published in 2017 by Weiser Books, an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2017 by Starr Casas

Foreword copyright 2017 by Orion Foxwood

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-622-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

Cover design by Jim Warner

Cover photograph Rooster with basket-like comb (Gallus gallinaceus crista in calathi modum efformata), colour etching by Lorenzo Lorenzi and Violante Vanni, from Natural History of Birds by Saverio Manetti (1723-1784), Florence, 1767-1776

Interior by Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Typeset in Goudy Old Style and Windlass

Printed in Canada

MAR

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To all the ancestors who suffered and survived and whose blood, sweat, and tears made this work possible! I honor you with every word I write.

Magic Remains

An ancient voice within our blood beckons, come to life!
It speaks of freedom to create and banish blight and strife.
When hope and law and prayers fail to thwart the haters harm,
It's magic that will set it right with candle, smoke, and charms.
When the money bird has left our nest and lack assumes its throne,
The door of magic opens wide when first we read the bones.
Roots and conjure, spirits and flame, the magic wears so many names.
From old world to new world to worlds far beyond,
Freedom from tyranny remains as our bond.
By crossroads and candle and cauldron and flame,
The spirit of magic shall always remain!

THE PRACTICE OF MAGIC and the use of divination to inform it are central and respected traditions in all ancient civilizations worldwide, and archaeological research will show that. This suggests that these practices have been important to hundreds of cultures over thousands of years of time and are more than mere superstitions or belief systems. They are a core component of the human experience at its very foundations. That alone should suggest to contemporary humanity that they are valid, helpful (even crucial), and sacred considerations based on the distilled wisdom of countless generations of experience. Yet their value and impact have also inspired a less-approving response in later generations, but specifically in religious and governance bodies who declared and executed what could be viewed as a war on magic! Proscribed as heresy and often scourged under the banner of witchcraft, it seems that magic was an enemy to convention, compliance, and conversion, and these tyrannical forces mounted severe attacks on its workers that lasted for hundreds of years. Yet, regardless of the looming threat of horrific sanctions, exiles, and the mass death sentences of the so-called holy inquisitions;