Original Magic: The Rituals and Initiations of the Persian Magi - Michael M. Hughes 2018

Against the Enslavers
Witches and Occultists versus Kings and Nazis

The horrors of the slave era, in which millions of Africans were captured by Europeans and shipped to labor on plantations in the Americas, gave rise to some of the most gripping stories of magic resistance in the modern world. African magical and religious practices powered revolutions and uprisings, even as those traditions merged with European Christianity into the hybrid traditions of Vodou in Haiti and Hoodoo, Conjure, and Rootwork in the continental United States.

The life of an enslaved African in Haiti (then known as Hispaniola) was short, with most slaves dying within a few years of their arrival. According to Mambo Chita Tann in Haitian Vodou, by 1789 there were eight to ten Africans for every free man in the French-controlled western third of the island, known as Saint-Domingue.⁷ Some slaves managed to escape, hiding in the mountains and leading regular attacks on the white and mixed-race landowners.

Near the end of the eighteenth century, groups of slaves began meeting to coordinate an uprising. In Bwa Kayiman (Alligator Woods), a mambo (Vodou priestess) named Mayanèt and Boukman, a Jamaican former slave and houngan (Vodou priest), held a ceremony for the spirits in which they sacrificed a pig and drank its blood. Vodou, a syncretic magical tradition that mixed indigenous Taino beliefs, African religion, traces of Muslim practices, the Catholicism of the Europeans, and even elements of Freemasonry, had become the glue holding together the enslaved revolutionaries. That powerful new spiritual awakening fired their desire for freedom.

Within days, violent revolts erupted and began to spread, with slaves killing thousands of their enslavers and burning hundreds of plantations. As the uprising spread, the French, Spanish, and British—who each owned a chunk of the country—began to panic. For the next decade, squabbles and battles between the European countries resulted in the deaths of over fifty thousand French soldiers and over a hundred thousand African slaves. In 1804, after Napoleon was forced to give up his claim to the island nation, the enslaved Africans finally won. Haiti—united by Vodou, its homegrown spiritual practice—became the first independent nation in the Caribbean.

Throughout its tumultuous and often bloody history, Haitian leaders, the Vatican, and Protestants have all tried to criminalize and eradicate Vodou. All have failed. Vodou is part of life for the majority of Haitians and has spread around the world in our globalized age, as have other syncretic African American magical traditions, such as Santería, Lukumí, Ifá, Palo Mayombe, Quimbanda, Candomblé, and so on.

In North America, too, enslaved Africans who survived the horror of the Middle Passage found themselves in an alien country, cut off from their religious customs, magical practices, and their healing plants, animals, and stones. They were also indoctrinated by their captors into adopting (at least outwardly) Christianity and its rituals. Like their Haitian counterparts, they found similarities in the traditions of Christianity and incorporated them into the spiritual and magical practices they brought from Africa. The syncretic system of folk magic that emerged, variously called Hoodoo, Conjure, and Rootwork, was a mix of African polytheism, Christianity, Judaism, European folklore, Native American folkways and plant medicine, and later even Western occultism.

Enslaved Africans found a number of ways to continue magical practices, even under the brutal restrictions imposed upon them. The spiritual centers of their communities were known as praise houses, simple structures built away from prying eyes deep in plantation woods or swamps. Many slaveholders allowed the construction of praise houses to keep slaves from different plantations from mingling for worship (and slaves were rarely allowed in churches). This unknowingly gave their captives a place to not just practice their spiritual traditions but also to organize resistance. As Jason R. Young notes in Rituals of Resistance, “Every act of conjure from one slave to another represented a critical form of resistance, and … a blow against the system.” ⁸

In the praise houses the enslaved Africans found a place to dance the ring shout (an ecstatic, counterclockwise circular dance), sing, clap, drum, venerate their ancestors, and invite possession by African spirits. Those who died were often buried in cemeteries near the praise houses, enabling discreet ancestor communication and veneration. In these ritual spaces, the connections to their homeland, its spirits, and its magic were deepened and honored.

Those recognized with special healing or magical knowledge and abilities, often known as conjure doctors or root doctors, were accorded great power. W. E. B. Du Bois, in The Souls of Black Folk, noted that conjure doctors were “the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the Unknown, the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong, and the one who rudely but picturesquely expressed the longing, disappointment, and resentment of a stolen and oppressed people.” ⁹

These powerful magical men and women, of course, were seen as a threat to the slaveholder class. Hoodoo was a constant reminder of the enslaved people’s links to Africa, hence the practice itself was considered dangerous. Because slaveholders didn’t understand it, they feared its magic (and rightfully so, as it was frequently used against them).

And it was, in fact, dangerous; Hoodoo and conjure doctors were forces behind a number of slave rebellions and uprisings.

The story of Denmark Vesey, a freed slave and founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and enslaved rebel Gullah Jack illustrates the deep power and influence of conjure magic as a driver of resistance. Vesey was planning a massive uprising known as “the rising” and hired a renowned root doctor, Gullah Jack, to help him organize. Gullah Jack had managed to bring his conjure tools with him on the Middle Passage from Africa to South Carolina and was especially feared and respected. His amulets were highly prized and were said to make their wearers invulnerable, so they were distributed to the plotters.

Vesey planned to take over the city of Charleston, raid the armory, kill the white slaveholders, liberate thousands of slaves, and escape with his rebellious comrades to Haiti. While working undercover as a preacher, he organized secret meetings and managed to get the support of thousands of slaves and freed blacks. With such numbers, and Gullah Jack’s magic, they would be unstoppable.

Before he could begin the uprising, two men snitched, and the plot was foiled. A local militia swept through the city and surrounding plantations, and Vesey, Gullah Jack, and many of the other plotters were arrested.

At the trial, which was held in secret, Gullah Jack first played the fool. But as the trial progressed, his demeanor grew darker. He began to make magical motions and gestures with his hands, which terrified many in the courtroom.

The presiding judge, when pronouncing the sentence of death, said, “Your boasted Charms have not preserved yourself, and of course could not protect others. Your Altars and your Gods have sunk together in the dust.” ¹⁰

Gullah Jack was hanged, along with Vesey and thirty-four other men, in 1822 but is now considered an inspiring resistance hero and martyr among the people of the Gullah/Geechee nation.

Hoodoo, Conjure, and Rootwork continued to be tools for healing, justice, empowerment, and resistance among enslaved Africans and their descendants through the Jim Crow era and into the present. The practices were even taken up by many white people who recognized the power and utility of the distinctly African American tradition. Many contemporary African American activists have adopted these folk magic ways to honor the struggles of their enslaved ancestors and to reject the continuing patriarchal, sexist, and racist elements commonly found in mainstream Christian churches.

If you find yourself drawn to Hoodoo, Conjure, Rootwork, and other African American folk magic, see the resources list in the appendix.