Voodoo – Malcolm's Round Table

I was amused at the semantic chaos a character in a recent novel fell into while trying to explain the various pagan groups to an individual who (a) was a born-again Christian with Baptist-oriented beliefs, and (b) thought anything labelled “pagan” or “witchcraft” was pure and simple “devil worship.”

I blame both the Catholic Church and Hollywood for creating and sustaining the ignorant idea that pagans and/or witches and/or Wiccans and/or hoodoo practitioners all worship the devil. Many of those “charged” with worshipping the devil don’t believe in the devil. The devil is more or less a Christian notion.

I call my series of conjure novels “folk magic” which, in many ways, is like conventional witchcraft. The terms get muddled because many Wiccans call themselves witches while others mix up Voodoo and hoodoo.

Wicca, like Voodoo, is a religion. Hoodoo and conventional witchcraft are practices usually with a strong link to nature and spells drawn on what is observed in the natural world. Those who practice hoodoo, with its origins in Africa, are often very strong Christians and see no conlflict between the two belief systems.

I find it easy to write stories about conventional witchcraft and hoodoo because they seem to me to be very natural to those who notice the ways and means of the seasons and the natural world. Both allow the practioner to worship the gods and goddesses of their choice, Christian or otherwise.

The Wicca Academy website states that, “Wicca is a contemporary, nature-based, pagan religion. It refers to the entire system of practices and beliefs that comprise the modern pagan witchcraft spectrum. Although people often think that the terms Witchcraft and Wicca mean the same thing, that is not the case. All Wiccans are witches, but not all witches are Wiccans.”

The Green Man website states that “Drawing Witches into a cohesive identifiable group of any sort is truly like herding cats! And Traditional Witchcraft is no exception! So to cover my ass I think it best to state that all I can share is my own perspective based on my own practices, beliefs and understandings. These I have gleaned over more than 4 decades as a Traditional Witch and over two decades of leading a Coven and Tradition as well as teaching and presenting Trad Craft to the general public. All that said, there are many others with valid experiences and credentials who, coming from other Traditional foundations, would present Traditional Witchcraft in quite a different manner. As with all such explorations, look for multiple, diverse sources and find what speaks to you personally. That is in fact an approach that would be perfectly in accord with Traditional Witchcraft practices, as I present it. As Traditional Witchcraft is rooted in one’s personal senses or rather extra-sensory abilities, built upon one’s intuition, we call it “The Sight” aka “The Gifts”. Informed through direct communion with the many forms and expressions of Spirit, a Traditional Witch is then guided by their own sense of right and wrong employing what one might call one’s Ethical Compass. It is this personal and direct communion relationship a Traditional Witch has with Spirit that sets them as a Heretic: meaning outside of all forms of organized religion and circumventing any priesthood authority mediating Spirit or imposing a codified “One and True practice” or belief with regards all things related to Spirit. ”

In general, I like the practices better than the religions because I don’t really trust systems in which others tell me what I can do or what I must believe. Truth, I think, comes in following what we believe rather than what a hierarchy of leaders and rules say we must believe.

My two cents as a solitary.

–Malcolm

What do you do when it’s time to downsize your personal library? I suppose you can sell some of the books on eBay or Amazon, but most buyers at these outlets won’t pay more than a few pennies over shipping costs. That’s certainly not the fate most of us want for the older editions of niche books and classics.

**Click on the graphic to see a newer edition on Amazon**

A Facebook friend of mine used her intuition plus a healthy dose of reality based on the subjects I’ve discussed on my blogs about the research I’d been doing for two folk magic novels. She sent me a message telling me she was thinning out her library and thought she had a book that needed to be in mine. Would I take it in. It was an adoption, I thought even though I’d have to wait and see what it was.

Of course, when it comes to adopting pets, we seldom say we’ll adopt a pet without knowing what it is; nobody wants to be contemplating a regal cat or a playful puppy and have a tiger snake or an alligator show up. But, knowing S___, I didn’t think I’d end up with anything like those living books in the Harry Potter series that have teeth and are always angry when the wrong person tries to read them.

Her intuition was spot on. She sent me the 1938 original edition of Zora Neale Hurston’s Tell My Horse, an anthropological study of Voodoo in Haiti and Jamaica blurbed by Carl Sandburg, no less, with words like “bold,” “beautiful,” “priceless,” and “unforgettable.” The New York Times said of it, “Strikingly dramatic, yet simple and unrestrained…an unusual and intensely interesting book richly packed with strange information.”

I’ve read a lot of Hurston’s work from her novel Their Eyes We Watching God to her news coverage of the unfairly conducted 1952 Florida murder trial of Ruby McCollum to stories and books like Mules and Men collected while she was gathering hoodoo and other Florida folklore for the Works Progress Administration’s (1935-1943) Federal Writers Project. But Tell My Horse wasn’t in my library until yesterday afternoon at 4 p.m. when the mail arrived.

I know little about Voodoo (a religion), having mostly researched hoodoo (folk magic) except when I’ve stumbled across accounts out of New Orleans about notables such as Marie Laveau. So, I will enjoy reading this study about a related subject from one of my favorite authors; I’ll treasure the book and my highly intuitive Facebook friend who gifted it to me. I don’t know how long she had the book. When I told her Tell My Horse arrived, she said, “I knew you’d give it a good home. It languished with a friend of mine who was an antiquarian bookseller, until I found it in a dusty corner. I came to her through the experimental film of Maya Daren who was allowed to film and participate in voodoo rituals as Hurston did in her medium. It is a great relief to find her a place to thrive.”

S___, the book won’t languish in a dusty corner and, if you happen to stumble across this blog, I love you for your spirit of adventure, your kindness and your wonderful gift.

Now I know a good way to send my old books off into the world before they take over the house (my wife says they already have). Like Tell My Horse, many of my books are older than I am and will need loving homes rather than moldy basements and dusty attics.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of two, Florida folk magic novels “Conjure Woman’s Cat” and “Eulalie and Washerwoman.”

Malcolm's Round Table

Tag: Voodoo

That old pagan muddle of terminology

Gifting a book to a good home