Sherry Shone - Hoodoo for Everyone: Modern Approaches to Magic, Conjure, Rootwork, and Liberation

Copyright 2022 by Sherry Shone. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by

North Atlantic Books
Huichin, unceded Ohlone land
aka Berkeley, California
Cover art Vodoleyka via Shutterstock
Cover design by Jess Morphew
Book design by Happenstance Type--O--Rama

Hoodoo for Everyone: Modern Approaches to Magic, Conjure, Rootwork, and Liberation is sponsored and published by North Atlantic Books, an educational nonprofit based in the unceded Ohlone land Huichin (aka Berkeley, CA), that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are distributed to the US trade and internationally by Penguin Random House Publisher Services. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Shone, Sherry, 1971 author.
Title: Hoodoo for everyone : modern approaches to magic, conjure, rootwork,
and liberation / Sherry Shone aka That Hoodoo Lady.
Description: Huichin, unceded Ohlone land aka Berkeley, California : North
Atlantic Books, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
| Summary: A beginners guide to an inclusive Hoodoo practicehistory,
spellwork, folklore, and herbsProvided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021054432 (print) | LCCN 2021054433 (ebook) | ISBN
9781623177089 (paperback) | ISBN 9781623177096 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Hoodoo (Cult) | Magic.
Classification: LCC BL2490 .S56 2022 (print) | LCC BL2490 (ebook) | DDC
133.4dc23/eng20220228
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054432
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021054433

This book is an eloquent approach to hoodoo. Sherry makes this craft, this art form, tangible for all seekers. Within the first few paragraphs, the reader is immediately engaged and practicing. I have known Sherry for years now, and she is a ball of sunshine who speaks the truth in such a grounded way that you just want to sit back and soak it all in.

With her background and awareness, Sherry is able to bridge a gap between one of the most widely recognized religions in the USA, Christianity, with the ideal of the ancestors who knew other ways prior to being indoctrinated into the Christian faith. This is a gap that is not always gracefully addressed. Sherry does not turn her back on the Bible, even as a practitioner of the craft. In fact, she embraces it more and helps us to shift our thinking with regard to a doctrine we were taught as children from a pastor in church. If you are looking for a book that will go there with you this is your book. This book is truly liberating!

From the beginning, she addresses ethics and responsibilities! Whenever we engage in any type of working, ethics will guide us safely to our goals for everyone involved. A step-by-step guide to discovering self-respect and respect for the other (be it another individual, an ancestor, a guide, a divine relationship).

More than a book on hoodoo, Sherry helps the reader take a minute and take a look inside: Who are you? I love this as self-knowledge is the key to a healthy individual. We read about what hoodoo is, the experiences that it can provide, and the magic that it can accomplish.

This book is the second one out of a series. Her first book, The Hoodoo Guide to the Bible, starts us off. If you are picking this one up first, that works just fine; however, I would encourage the reader who enjoys this book to find the other one as well. The book in your hands will introduce us to historical places, people, and events that hoodoo practitioners can discoveras well as how to practice hoodoo.

But wait; there is more. Prepare yourself for a wonderful storyteller. Getting wrapped up in the stories with Sherry can make you, the reader, feel as though you are there with her. Experience a beautiful perspective of the phenomenathe world around you.

So wash your hands, make a cup of tea, and walk with Sherry through the pages of this book. It is an honest, exciting journey. I truly love my encounters with her, and I expect that you will too.

Granddaughter Crow

Welcome to Hoodoo for Everyone, where I will do my best to introduce you to this beautiful folklore magic of hoodoo! Hoodoo is the African American folklore tradition created right in the Southern United States by enslaved Africans. In that tradition enslaved Africans needed, and I mean really needed, freedom, liberation, and in my words, deliverance. Before there were honey jars, red brick dust, goopher dust, and many other things you may have read are hoodoo, there was the need to be free. A serious freedom that meant life or death.

Hoodoo workers originated from healers that resided on the plantations. Some of them were folk doctors, rootworkers (called so because of the roots they dug up from the ground to use in their practice), medicine women, and midwives (those that cared for the pregnant or lactating enslaved Africans and their infants) who could work in the house and came from Africa with an understanding of these traditions. They would make salves out of animal fats, teas out of plants and tree bark, and pain remedies from animal parts (like horse hooves). They used boneset to ensure broken bones were healing and onions and garlic to cure colds and flu, among other thingsanything to get enslaved Africans back to work in the fields.

Hoodoo workers were sought after, revered, and feared. An interviewee from the book African American Slave Medicine by Herbert Covey tells us that hoodoo and conjure workers were the most feared and held power of the slaves in those days. They would hold a secret meeting place where you could get charms to harm your enemies. The conjure worker would be working when it was dark by the light of the moon and wave their arms and hands and speak to the moon. In a kettle they would put snakes and things (no one ever knew everything) and they would all join dancing around the fire and beating the drums faster and faster. They would chant and pray until they fell into a heap.

Doesnt sound like light and love to me. Does it to you? This is my belief of hoodoo. It is for those that require swift urgency when you can go to no one else. When your mortgage is late, when an illness isnt going away, when your spouse or partner is leaving, when you are being evicted, when your community is being shot at, when your lives are at stake. This is what hoodoo is forits not pretty. It isnt meant to be. So you will not read what you normally hear about hoodoo in this book. I will give you my own experience in hoodoo through my story and the stories of the updated hoodoo people, places, and objects. This is not the hoodoo you may have read about or have seen on social media. This is hoodoo that I have created for those of us who have been hurt, abandoned, misunderstood, or cast aside because we are not traditional or conforming. These are updated hoodoo foundations.

One thing that hoodoo workers, plantation owners, and overseers could agree upon is keeping the body clean. In the enslaved Africans quarters there was soap, and there were quarantine areas where the newly enslaved could be isolated from the existing ones to ensure disease prevention. They would use castor oil, vinegar, whiskey, rum, and animal fat to ward off infections, diseases, and illnesses. This, of course, wasnt because they truly cared about their workers but because they needed to protect their human investments. In ritual work this is mirrored in the cleansing of objects, tools, altars, and most importantly, us as spiritual containers. Before we begin any hoodoo or conjure practice, we are askedand really requiredto be clean. If you didnt have soap, then you could wash with salt or lye or vinegar. If you didnt have that, then you would go to a running creek (never stagnant water) and bathe (never where the animals drank or relieved themselves if it could be avoided). I cannot imagine the cold of having to bathe in a creek in the Southern wintersthe thought of it makes my bones ache. Our shared ancestors endured this just to be clean.