In this installment of "Where the Southern Cross the Yellow Dog," we view a difficult collection of hoodoo beliefs and practices from 1891, published by an amateur folklorist whose racism is obvious, but whose information is unique and therefore important in terms of what it offers to modern historians of African-American folk-magic. Sara M. Handy wrote this piece in 1891, and despite its ugliness and errors, it still offers us a good view of the conjure practices of Black Americans in Virgina halfway between the end of slavery in 1865 and America's entry into the First World War in 1917.
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This is the entire text of an article called "Negro Superstitions" by Sara M. Handy that originally appeared on pages 735-739 of Lippincott's Magazine Vol. 48, No. 12, published in 1891. Despite having the identical title, it is not to be confused with the article called "Negro Superstitions" by Thaddeus Norris that originally appeared on pages 90-95 of Lippincott's Magazine #6, published in 1870.
Sara M. Handy, the author of this article about the Black folklore of Virginia, proved difficult to locate in historical records, but i think i have found her. The Federal Census of 1890, taken one year before the publication of this article, was destroyed in a fire, but by going back ten years, to the Federal Census of 1880, i am certain that she was Sarah M. Handy, the wife of M. P. Handy, who was enumerated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sarah was 32 in 1880, having been born around 1848. Her husband, one year older than her, was a newspaper editor and was identified with the occupation of "Editor" in the census, In 1884 he was one of the founders of the Philadelphia (Evening) News and was its managing editor. By 1887 he was its sole owner and general editor.
Sarah had no listed occupation in 1880, but her husband's occupation places her in the position to be a writer or to have her work edited by her husband for publication eleven years later, when she was around 43 years old. Also telling is the fact that she was born in Virginia, where this folklore was collected -- as were all the other members of the Handy household, including her husband and the couple's 10 year son William M. Handy, 8 yer old daughter Rosetta P. Handy, 6 year old daughter Agnes G. Handy, and 3 year old daughter, Virginia C. Handy. The family's location in Philadelphia in 1880 is suggestive as well, because this article appeared in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, which was published in Philadelphia from 1868 to 1915.
At the time of the 1900 Federal Census, Sarah M. Handy was a 52 year old widow, living in Chicago with her 30 year old son William M. Handy, a newspaper editor, and her other children, 28 year old Rosetta Handy, 23 year old Virginia Handy, and 18 year old Cora Handy. Her daughter Agnes G. Handy, who would have been 26 years old, was either no longer in the home or had passed away.
This author's style was old-fashioned, she wrote passages in deliberately misspelled "dialect" that non-Americans may have difficulty deciphering, she used terms unfamiliar to modern readers, and she strung together long lists in unbroken paragraphs, so i have inserted rectified spelling when i think it is needed, added sub-heads to identify the topics covered, broken some of the paragraphs into shorter pieces, and added a few explanatory notes and comments [in brackets].
WARNING: The material on this page was written by a European-American who was describing African-American spirituality as an outsider. This author was racist or race-derogatory and the conclusions he or she drew while writing this eye-witness account are grossly offensive. However, the text is included in full because it accurately describes practices and customs of the African-American South during the 19th century (albeit not always with complete understanding) -- and it also serves as a political reminder of how far we have some in our struggle for race equality and respect in the ensuing years. Read with caution and compassion.
It was in the extreme south of Virginia, near the North Carolina line, that the train came to a sudden stop, in an "old field," away from water-tank or station. Half the men got off, and all the women next the windows craned their necks out to discover the cause of the sudden stoppage, -- the body of a negro man, which, lying around a sharp curve, had been seen too late by the engineer to save the poor creature's life. An empty "tickler," as the crackers of that region call their mammoth whiskey-flasks, lay at his side, preaching an eloquent temperance sermon, and around his neck was a dirty little bag, with a bit of bone and something that looked like lint inside. It was a Voudou charm, which, in spite of the wearer's faith in it, had failed him at the last.
[A "cracker" is a poor or rural White man; the "dirty little bag" is a mojo hand. Voudou, which is also spelled Voodoo in this article, is an African and Afro-Haitian religion; it is not the same as hoodoo, which is African-American folk-magic, most of whose practitioners are Christians. Calling the accidental death of a man who may have been drinking, "an eloquent temperance sermon" is just cold.]
It would be hard to guess how many of the Southern negroes wear these charms, since the first essential of their efficacy is secrecy. Let the wife of your bosom or the mother who bore you know that you wear one, and its virtue is gone were it prepared by the most skilful Voudou man or woman between the Potomac and the Rio Grande.
[Given the inconsistant spelling of Voudou and Voodoo, as well as the repeated use of the word Hoodoo as both a noun and a verb later in the article, it us my opinion that the words Voodoo and Voudou were the emendations of a Philadelphia magazine editor and that the Southern author's own chosen term was hoodoo.]
This superstition of the African is deep and wide-spread: civilization and Christianity find it a very Apollyon in fight, as hard to conquer as the prophets of old Israel found the witch-worship of their Canaanitish neighbours.
[Calling African-Americans "the African" is a way to "other" or distance them. It is a conceit that sits at the heart of the common racist rant, "Go back where you came from." In truth, enslaved Africans had been living in Virginia almost as long as White enslavers had, and their descendant had become full citizens of the United States 26 years before this article was written. Then, as if that were not enough, the author links "civilization" and "Christianity," throws out a random Jewish reference and speaks snarkily of Middle Eastern people.]
The Voudou man, or "conjurer," is regarded as accursed, given body and soul to the devil, who not infrequently comes in propria persona ("for one's self") to claim him, but he is feared and treated with great consideration, and rarely fails to make his trade profitable, although the dealing with him is a cardinal sin, punishable with excommunication by the church.
[Again, Voudou is a religion; conjure, often spelled cunjer, is another term for African-American folk-magic and also for those who practice it. Snarky comments that hoodoo is "profitable" are used to this day to cast practitioners in a mercenary rather than a spiritual light. The terms "cardinal sin" and "excommunication" seem to mark Mrs. Handy as a Roman Catholic. ]
A woman who was in my service for two or three years, who could read fairly and write a little, and who was of more than average intelligence, once came to me with a marvelous story of a woman who had been voudoued, -- "tricked," she called it.
[Tricking is indeed another word for hoodooing.]
The woman had been given over to die by the physicians, but she applied to a noted "conjur' doctor," who at once declared that she had been tricked. He gave her remedies internal and external, -- an ointment to be rubbed on her stomach, the seat of the greatest pain, and some drops to be taken internally. After a few doses she was seized with acute nausea, and ejected a number of curious-looking worms "jes' like caterpillars."
[This is an example of the vomiting cure for what some people call "live things in you."]
"Now," continued my informant, triumphantly, "how dem worrums git dar, ef somebody didn' put 'em dar?"
"M---," I asked, mildly, "do you believe that tale?"
"Well, ma'am," was the answer, "I cyarn't 'clar' ter it, 'cause I nuvver seen it myse'f; but the 'ooman that tole me is a member of my chu'ch, en I know she warn't gwine tell me no lie 'bout it.
['I can't declare to it because I never seen it myself, but the woman that told me is a member of my church and she wasn't going to tell no lie about it.']
The witch-doctor must not be confounded with the regular Voudou man. He is the antidote to the evil, and his business is to undo the harm done, not to work mischief. Still, it is always remembered that, although his is the white art, he can practise the black art if he will, and that in fighting the devil he is dangerously apt to come within his reach. For all this, however, he may keep his standing in the church, and be highly respected, if he uses his knowledge only for good.
[The term "witch-doctor" is usually used to refer to healers in Africa. The contrast between the "white art" of healing and the "black art" of evil is set into a foreign or African context. However, the author is correct -- many root doctors and hoodoo practitioners are church members.]
A prominent surgeon is a large Southern city, being called on to perform an operation for one of these doctors, and refusing a fee, jestingly recognizing him as a fellow-practitioner, was some time afterwards invited to be present at one of the "doctor's" powwows.
[This is a cozy trope of the era -- the supposed ridiculousness of a Black root doctor who considers himmself the equal of a White medical doctor.]
"He made all manner of mysterious passes, -- regular mesmeric business, in fact," said the surgeon, in describing the performance. "He scattered various vile-smelling powders on the bed, and burnt a villainous compound in the room. I began to think I should be suffocated, -- when he opened a window, to let the devil out, he said, and then, ripping open the pillows on which the sick man lay, took out several little balls of feathers which he said had done the mischief. These he wet with coal-oil, burned them, and buried the ashes. Then he announced that the patient would surely get well, -- which he actually did, -- such is the power of imagination. However, the fellow had a mild fever, and was much more frightened than sick, and I believe the fraud was giving him quinine all the time.
["Mesmeric passes" refer to hypnotism, the term "vile-smelling" is a stereotype of herbal medicine in general, coal-oil is kerosene or lamp oil, and quinine was an herbal anti-fever medicine of the time period. That leaves us with the "little balls of feathers which he said had done the mischief" -- and those are Anglo-American and Germanic omens of death. Sometimes called feather wreaths, feather crowns, or feather roosters, they are matted feathers which form circlets, spheres, of crescents in well-worn feather pillows. Their symbolism is not African in origin -- they come from Europe, the land of feather beds, feather comforters, feather ticks, and feather pillows, and they feature prominently in the folklore of rural White Americans of the South-Eastern states. If one is found in the pillow after a person has died, they are sometimes saved as memento mori.]
Some time since, the watchman on the historic Mayo's Bridge, at Richmond, Virginia, saw a colored woman at midnight steal out in the shadow to a point where the current was swift and strong, throw a bundle into the water, and dart back. She was promptly arrested and held on suspicion of infanticide. The bundle could not be recovered, but the circumstantial evidence was plain. At the preliminary hearing she explained that her daughter was subject to fits [epileptic seizures]. She had consulted a conjur' doctor, who had directed her to bake a pone of corn-bread with water in which the girl had washed, mixing in a powder which he gave her, composed of the parings of her finger- and toe-nails and a lock of her hair. This concoction was to be wrapped in some of her daughter's soiled clothing and thrown into the river at midnight on the dark of the moon. As the water bore the bundle away the disease would leave her daughter.
[A corn pone is a small round loaf of cornbread, the size of a biscuit, baked in a cast iron skillet. The word "pone" is Native American; it means "baked." The water in which a person has bathed, the powdered finger-nails and toe-nails, and the lock of hair are all personal concerns that mark the corn pone as an effigy of the daughter. Wrapping it in her soiled clothing makes it into a doll-baby. Throwing it into a running river takes the disease out of her and washes it away; doing the work on the dark of the Moon causes the disease to disapear. For more information on doll-babies, see my book "Hoodoo Dolls and Effigies" and for more on spells conducted at the dark of the Moon, see my book "Astrology for Rootworkers"]
Of course the flimsy defence was pooh-poohed, but investigation proved the story correct in every particular, and showed that the Voudou doctor had a thriving practice, owned the house in which he lived, and made a good income for a colored man.
[Again we learn of the money to be made by root doctoring, as if it were a scandal and a shame that people might accept money for affecting cures.]
If an ignorant negro is smitten with a disease which he does not understand, he at once imagines that he has been tricked, and his first impulse is to consult one of these charlatans.
[Just as the "prominent surgeon" called the effective rootworker-hypnotist a "fraud," the folklorist seems to despise that which she describes and refers to hoodoo practitioners as "charlatans."]
No one who has ever been much among the Southern negroes can doubt the power of mind over matter. Only convince one of them that he is "conjured," and, unless a counter-spell can be wrought, his death is certain, a slow wasting away until the patient dies from what modern science knows as heart-failure, -- sheer weakness.
[The folklorist is a skeptic. Death by slowly wasting away is a common outcome of being goofered or tricked and is described as such by hundreds of practitioners.]
There are no limits to the power of the charm. The waters of a spring, the fruit of a tree, may be hoodooed for one person alone, and a hoodoo buried under a door-step may paralyze the intended victim while every one else passes to and fro over it in perfect safety. I remember, when a child, being requested to pick up a queer conglomeration of feathers from beneath the door-sill of a cabin and put it into the fire. "'Twon't hurt you none, honey, but 'twill kill me ef I teches it." And the speaker spoke in good faith, believing fully what she said.
[The author was born in 1848 and lived among enslaved black people until their emancipation in 1865. It was common to refer to the houses of the enslaved as "cabins" and just as common for enslaved female servants to refer to white children as "honey." What is being described is an encounter between Handy and an enslaved woman who cared for her.]
An old man over eighty, on the same plantation, took up the idea that the waters of the well from which the household drew its supplies were tricked for him alone, and every day went half a mile and back to a stream of running water. When he grew too feeble for the journey he would trust the commission to no one but his young master, who, humoring the old fellow's whim, performed it faithfully. Yet on every other subject the old man's mind was clear to the last, and he died in possession of all his faculties except that of hearing.
[The placement of this incident "on the same plantation" as the previous incident dates both of these tales to the author's youth in the 1850s before the Civil War. The "young master" may have been a relative of hers.]
Only the other day a friend of the writer heard her chambermaid remonstrating with the nurse for having her picture taken. "I wouldn' do it for anything, 'thout 'twas a tin-type: I might risk that," she said, "But a photograph, -- oh, no! why, anybody could get one of 'em, and bring bad luck on you: all they need is a picture of you for the spell." Yet the girl in question claimed to have been through the grammar-school, and was a bright and shining light in a literary society which met weekly for purposes of "culchaw."
[It apparently goes without saying that the "friend of the writer" is white and her "chambermaid" and "nurse" are black. A tin-type is a photograph printed on metal. Referring to a black woman as a "girl" is typical of the casual racism of the time period and the word "culshaw" is an ugly mockery of the word "culture." The folklore is no doubt accurate, but the embedded premise is that education is wasted on black women because of their retention of ignorant spiritual beliefs.]
The knowledge which some of these conjurers possess of the properties of every herb and tree of the field and forest is positively uncanny. They have a tea or ointment for every ill that flesh is heir to, and some of them would make the fortune of any dealer in patent medicines. Their skill in poisons is something fearful, and baffles the most expert practitioner.
[Being unable to deny the efficacy of herbal medicines, the author again rings in the monetary angle, and then leaps from medicine to poison.]
"Poison each other? Of course they do," said a physician in a country neighborhood south of James River. "No one who has any dealings with them can doubt it. But how are you going to prove it? Take pounded glass, for instance, and administer it in food, as they so often do: how is any physician to tell the inflammation of the intestines which results from the ordinary disease? -- unless, of course, he makes an expensive and exhaustive post-mortem, for which not one country doctor in a hundred has the means, or, if he has, how is he to trace the crime to the criminal? Over at Cottontown, in the last year, I have had four patients die of slow paralysis, creeping gradually from one member to another, until stimulants fail to keep up the action of the heart. The negroes themselves think they are tricked, and I feel sure they are poisoned; but how in the world is any one to prove it? It is probably a vegetable poison, and they are much more difficult to trace than minerals. The first case was a man, -- a young Hercules who worked at the boat-landing. I thought he had injured his spine; but when his mother went the same way, that theory fell through. Now two more have gone in like manner, and the last remaining member of the family, whom I began to suspect, came to me yesterday in tears, with a palsied arm, and will probably die of fright, without waiting for the regular course of the disease."
Among the best-known fetiches in which the trick-doctors deal is the hare's foot, which Uncle Remus has made famous. To be truly efficacious, however, it must be prepared by a skilled Voudou and worn secretly.
The tip of a black cat's tail is more powerful to ward off evil and bring good luck: many Southern cats lack the tips of their tails.
The bone of a dead man's finger for a charm of which only the Hoodoo who works evil spells makes use.
Snake-fat is another of his properties; and this was probably the origin of the rattlesnake oil not unknown to commerce in the present day.
[There are no rattlenakes in Africa, but there are several species of them in North America. Native Americans of the South-East venerated them, made use of them as magical curios, and prepared an ointment from their fat to use against stiff and painful joints on the premise that as snakes are supple, so the person treated with rattlesnake fat ointment would regain mobility. The Black pharmacist and hoodoo doctor Dr. E. P. Read was one of a number of medical herbalists, both Black and White, who sold rattlesnake oil and ointment well into the 20th century.]
The method of divination by turning the sifter, which is extensively practiced by the negroes and poor whites of the South, is another African survival, the Hoodoo man of the tribe using a shield instead of the sifter. Two chairs are placed back to back in such wise that the sifter rests between, edge on edge, so lightly that a breath will serve to disturb its equilibrium. The diviner, who is no Hoodoo, but preferably a man of standing in the church, takes his place away from chairs and sifter, and, with lifted hand, chants slowly, --
"By Saint Peter, by Saint Paul,
By the Lord who made us all,
If John Doe did thus and so,
Turn, sifter, turn and fall."
If the person named is innocent, the sifter remains motionless; if he is an accomplice, it shakes without failing; and if he is guilty, it turns and drops with a clang.
The gift of sifter-turning is as rare as that of table-turning, to which it is probably akin. It must be remembered that no one is allowed to touch either chair or sifter, and that the only possible way open to cheating is to shake the chair with a quick motion of the foot. The negroes have great faith in the sifter ordeal, and have frequently have been known to confess theft rather than submit to it.
Substitute a raw-hide shield on two upright spears, and a Voodoo incantation for the Christianized chant, and you have the rite as it is practised to-day on the Guinea coast.
[The disproof of an African origin for sieve-turning
comes first from my own German-Jewish knowledge
of European folk-magic, then from my having edited the book
"Trolldom," by Johannes Bjorn Gardback, which describes
Scandinavian sieve-turning at length, and, finally, from
"Nachklange Germanischen Glaubens und Brauchs in Amerika"
("Echoes of Germanic Faith and Customs in America")
by Karl Knortz, first published in 1903, twelve years after this article.
Here is Knortz's text in my own English translation, and note that he cites Sara M. Handy's article as a source:
In East Prussia, Silesia, Bavaria, Bohemia and Tyrol, this means of information is still widely used today.
In the latter country it is known as "sifting."
In New England, people used to use the sieve oracle to discover witches. Two girls put open scissors
in a sieve and balanced it on their
fingertips; then, after St. Paul and St. Peter had been named, the names of the suspects
were called out, and as soon as that of the criminal resounded, the sieve turned.
This usage, which Butler commemorates in the "Hudibras" with the words: "Th' oracle of the sieve
and shears that turns as certain as the spheres," was transplanted to America by the English,
where it has not entirely died out to this day. The Negroes in particular use it with preference.
In "Lippincott's Magazine" of December 1891 we read the following:
"Two chairs are set back to each other and a sieve is placed on them; then the magician,
who is usually a man of good standing in his congregation, raises his hands in the air,
approaches the chair, and chants:
"By Saint Peter, by Saint Paul,
When the culprit is named, the sieve falls noisily to the ground.]
By the Lord who made us all,
If - - did so and so,
Turn, sifter, turn and fall."
The Southern negro has a sign and meaning for everything. You can scarcely move without running counter to some superstition.
Take up ashes after dark, you bring death into the house.
Sweep dirt out of a door after nightfall, you sweep out the wealth of the family with it.
Pour milk on the ground, the cows will go dry.
If after starting away from your house you have occasion to return, sit down, if only for a moment, before starting off again, otherwise your errand will be fruitless.
The cry of the screech-owl bodes death, as does also the notes of the whippoorwill, if heard near a dwelling-house: in the woods it is innocuous.
Kill a lizard, its mate will come to count your teeth and you will surely die.
[This is an old European belief, and as the British folk verse has it, "Whistling girls and crowing hens will always come to some bad ends." There is no propitiation to the Devil, rather, all "mannish" females are to be killed.]
If the eyes of a corpse refuse to shut, they are watching for some member of the family who will soon follow.
When a grave is dug, the spades, etc., used in the work must be left out overnight, or they will be needed soon for a similar service; and no fear need be entertained of their being stolen, since the thief would bring the doom on his own head.
To bring a hoe into a dwelling-house is "mighty bad luck," as any old maumer will tell you.
[An "old maumer" is an elderly African American woman who had child rearing responsibilities earlier in life; it derives from "mammy," meaning a Black wet-nurse or governess, and is related to words like "memaw" and "mawmaw," which refer to grandmothers in contemporary Southern English.]
A bird flying into the window or door is an unfailing messenger of woe.
If your hand itches rub it upon wood and put it in your pocket; it will bring you money or a gift.
Should your eyelid quiver, you will weep ere long.
If a snake cross your path, beware of harm from your enemies, which may be prevented if you pursue and kill the snake.
The small knuckle-bone of a ham carried in the pocket is a charm against the evil eye in general and rheumatism in particular.
If the birds use your hair in nest-building, you will have headache which will last until the young birds are fledged and the nest abandoned.
It is a common thing when a party of pickaninnies [a derogatory word for Black children] are playing together to see one of them give another a cut across the back with a switch and exclaim, triumphantly, "Dar, now, you gwine git a whuppin' 'fore night," while the recipient of the blow will beg as earnestly that the "cross" may be taken off by a second stroke from the same hand in the same spot as though he already felt the lash.
["Crossing" is a Black term for cursing; a person who has been cursed is said to be "crossed."]
To lock hands over the head is to pile up trouble.
To throw salt on the fire provokes a quarrel with your nearest and dearest.
In turning back in a path your superstitious negro makes a cross, thus, X, with his foot, and spits in it; otherwise, he believes, misfortune will surely overtake him the next time he passes that way.
[X crosses are Congolese in origin, they are not the same as Christian + crosses. They are sometimes made in the form of five dots, like the 5-spots on dice. Here the X is made with the foot and spat upon to undo any evil that might accompanu the act of turning back on the road.]
Rocking an empty cradle brings misfortune to the baby.
If a teething child is allowed to look at itself in the glass [mirror] it will cut teeth hard.
To step over an infant as it lies on the floor will render it puny and delicate, and if is beaten with a broom [or swept by a broom] it will be good for nothing all its life.
He who kills a cat may bid good-by to good fortune henceforth.
The unlucky breaker of a looking-glass has to expect seven years' troubles.
The negro believes abjectly in the moon, and conducts all the affairs of his life with regard to her phases. If he should kill his pig on the wane of the moon, the meat would shrink to nothing in the pot; and it is not an uncommon thing for a colored cook to explain an astonishing shrinkage in a joint with, "Dat meat mus' a' been killed on de decrease ob de moon.
[The word "abjectly" is just ugly here, as it means "grovelingly"; however, the belief that meat from hogs slaughtered during a waning Moon wil shrink over-much when cooked is common in Black folklore, For much more on Moon phases and signs in Black folk-magic of the early 20th century, see my book, "Astrology for Rootworkers: Spell-Casting with the Zodiac in Hoodoo and Conjure." (Lucky Mojo, 2023).]
Sara M. Handy.
UNDEFINED.
DEFINE your charm? As well define
The rare aroma of old wine,
Or pluck with cold botanic art
The leaves that form a rose's heart.
William H. Hayne.
This material is reprinted from
Lippincott's Monthly Magazine
Vol, 48, No. 12, Pages 735-739
December, 1891
[My sincere gratitude to nagasiva yronwode for helping with graphics.]
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Apprentice with catherine yronwode: personal 3-week training for qualified HRCC graduates
Lucky Mojo Community Forum: an online message board for our occult spiritual shop customers
Lucky Mojo Hoodoo Rootwork Hour Radio Show: learn free magic spells via podcast download
Lucky Mojo Videos: see video tours of the Lucky Mojo shop and get a glimpse of the spirit train
Lucky Mojo Publishing: practical spell books on world-wide folk magic and divination
Lucky Mojo Newsletter Archive: subscribe and receive discount coupons and free magick spells
LMC Radio Network: magical news, information, education, and entertainment for all!
Follow Us on Facebook: get company news and product updates as a Lucky Mojo Facebook FanONLINE SHOPPING
The Lucky Mojo Curio Co.: spiritual supplies for hoodoo, magick, witchcraft, and conjure
Herb Magic: complete line of Lucky Mojo Herbs, Minerals, and Zoological Curios, with sample spells
Mystic Tea Room Gift Shop: antique, vintage, and contemporary fortune telling tea cupsPERSONAL SITES
catherine yronwode: the eclectic and eccentric author of many of the above web pages
nagasiva yronwode: nigris (333), nocTifer, lorax666, boboroshi, Troll Towelhead, !
Garden of Joy Blues: former 80 acre hippie commune near Birch Tree in the Missouri Ozarks
Liselotte Erlanger Glozer: illustrated articles on collectible vintage postcards
Jackie Payne: Shades of Blues: a San Francisco Bay Area blues singerADMINISTRATIVE
Lucky Mojo Site Map: the home page for the whole Lucky Mojo electron-pile
All the Pages: descriptive named links to about 1,000 top-level Lucky Mojo web pages
How to Contact Us: we welcome feedback and suggestions regarding maintenance of this site
Make a Donation: please send us a small Paypal donation to keep us in bandwidth and macs!OTHER SITES OF INTEREST
Arcane Archive: thousands of archived Usenet posts on religion, magic, spell-casting, mysticism, and spirituality
Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers: psychic reading, conjure, and hoodoo root doctor services
Candles and Curios: essays and articles on traditional African American conjure and folk magic, plus shopping
Crystal Silence League: a non-denominational site; post your prayers; pray for others; let others pray for you
Gospel of Satan: the story of Jesus and the angels, from the perspective of the God of this World
Hoodoo Psychics: connect online or call 1-888-4-HOODOO for instant readings now from a member of AIRR
Missionary Independent Spiritual Church: spirit-led, inter-faith; prayer-light services; Smallest Church in the World
Mystic Tea Room: tea leaf reading, teacup divination, and a museum of antique fortune telling cups
Satan Service: an archive presenting the theory, practice, and history of Satanism and Satanists
Southern Spirits: 19th and 20th century accounts of hoodoo, including ex-slave narratives & interviews
Spiritual Spells: lessons in folk magic and spell casting from an eclectic Wiccan perspective, plus shopping
Yronwode Home: personal pages of catherine yronwode and nagasiva yronwode, magical archivists
Yronwode Institution: the Yronwode Institution for the Preservation and Popularization of Indigenous Ethnomagicology
