The use of Tobacco as a purification herb is found in hoodoo due to the overwhelming influence of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, and other South-East tribes of Native Americans who befriended runaway slaves, married with them, and even kept slaves themselves during the pre-Emancipation era.
Most African American root doctors of the American South and also in the Northern cities used to smoke pipes until the rise of popularity of cigarettes during the 1920s. Now most who smoke use cigarettes, and some use roll-your-own, which is why many mojo bags used to be made in Bull Durham Tobacco sacks. Snuff (not chaw, but powder snuff) is also a popular form of Tobacco for use in mojo hands and sachet powders.
The use of cigars is Afro-Caribbean and probably derives from the cigar industry of Cuba. It has nothing to do with what we teach here, although some people in Florida have picked it up -- but most of those who have done so have also left behind their old Christian religion and adopted an Afro-Caribbean religion (like Santeria, Palo, or Voodoo). As such, they are outliers to this tradition, like former Christians who are now Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, or Wiccans.
The book "Hoodoo Mysteries" is a load of bollocks. The author has read a few books on Afro-Caribbean religio-magical practices and then fabricated the information that this is the same form of practice found among African American folk magicians in the USA. He is not the first to do this, but he ought to have known better, because everyone who has done it in the past has been exposed as a dreadful fraud, and now he is being exposed as one too.
"Don't start me to talkin,
I'll tell everything I know.
I'm gonna break up this signifyin,
Somebody's got to go."
--
Sonny Boy Williamson II (Alex "Rice" Miller) (Thread moved to the Herbs, Roots, and Minerals section.)
HER-TOB-LEAF
Tobacco, Black Candle
$3.50

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