(Non-Hoodoo) Discussions About World-Wide Folk Lore Religion and Magic

[RedWill0w]

Yesterday on network news, a San Antonio restaurant owner was reported
as having contacted the police, charging that someone has been using witchcraft
against him. Apparently someone's been laying down powders and peppers
around his business and in front of his door. It's happened three times now, he
says, and he insists the police investigate. He's also installed cameras to
monitor the outside of his restaurant. News anchors here in Dallas were politely
incredulous (an interesting response in itself, here in the Bible Belt), but
I found it interesting. I was doing ten things at once while watching the
broadcast, and so could be wrong on this, but I think they said that if caught,
the accused could be charged with malicious mischief, a misdemeanor.

Dara

(Very interesting. Did you catch the ethnicity of the restaurant owner? Just curious... Also you may want to check out a similar story from 1997, also about restaurant cursing that i archived at Lucky Mojo. The URL is
http://www.luckymojo.com/spells/black/s ... urses.html
--cat)

[RedWill0w]

> Yesterday on network news, a San Antonio restaurant owner was reported
> as having contacted the police, charging that someone has been using
> witchcraft against him. [...]
>
> (Very interesting. Did you catch the ethnicity of the restaurant owner? Just
> curious... Also you may want to check out a similar story from 1997, also
> about restaurant cursing that i archived at Lucky Mojo. The URL is
> http://www.luckymojo.com/spells/black/s ... urses.html
> --cat)

I saw the owner, but didn't catch his name. As it was a Mexican (or Tex-Mex)
restaurant, I presume he's Mexican or of Mexican descent.
Dara

(Hence the chili peppers and thrown powders in the curse, as opposed to the four pennies, oil, and rice in the Chinese restaurant witchcraft case. --cat)

[RedWill0w]

anklebells800cows@juno.com writes:

> > Dara wrote:
>
> > Yesterday on network news, a San Antonio restaurant
> > owner was reported as having contacted the police,
> > charging that someone has been using witchcraft
> > against him.

Carla,
I saw it on tv - took a look but didn't find it on the web as of yesterday.
Dara

(A search at news.google.com turned up a link to the story:

NEW: Restaurant owner believes competitors using witchcraft ...
San Antonio Express (subscription), TX - Jun 21, 2004
... Three times now someone has sprinkled a 'witchcraft concoction' around his restaurant on South Flores. Today they hit another Blanco ...

The site is by subscription, but i didn't sign up. The subscription is probably free -- i just didn't have the time to ckack it out. Note that South Flores is the same street that Papa Jim's botanica is located on. --cat)

[Tommyc]

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, we were fortunate enough to hear from "Quimbisero"
<eballard@sas.upenn.edu>:

> > Today I heard that an aquaintance of mine, a folklorist of the
> previous generation had died. Dr. Alan Dundes was an expert on a wide
> variety of topics including urban folklore, cockfighting, proverbs,
> jokes, North American Indian folktales, and fairy tales.

This is terrible news. Dundes was an overwhelming influence on the
folklore field, one of Berkeley's most popular professors, and just a
wonderful human being. The last time I saw him, he was speaking to a group
of alumni a couple of years ago, and was suffering from a flu or something
that left him unable to speak, so he showed the slides and a friend and
collaborator read his talk for him while they stood side-by-side.

I was fortunate enough to have taken a course from him in his heyday (and
possibly mine...) and he always filled Wheeler Auditorium, the largest
campus lecture hall. I can remember him asking, for example, how many
candles went on a birthday cake, and was surprised there were so many
different answers. Surprised to learn that some people had a family
whistle or call to assemble people, as when scattered at an amusement
park. It was one of the Awakening experiences in which, as a particularly
ignorant teenager, I learned that my parochial reality was not the only
one. USAnians as a whole still have not learned that lesson. And, oh, but
if only I had taken more classes from him, paid more attention in the one
I did. And worse, that's a lament I have made many times over the years
when I think of how obliviously I let time rush past and how little I
filled "the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run."

And no doubt in future, I will look at myself today and find I'm still as
asleep as ever I was then in the prime of youth.

Dundes was also, and worth repeating, an authority on office folklore.
We've all seen, no doubt, the picture of wildly hysterical people laughing
and the caption "You want it when?" But not everyone recognizes that as
folklore, and he went through some difficult times trying to get anyone to
publish a book of such foolishness because it was not academic, not "real"
folklore, etc. That such white collar folkways can reveal as much about
our assumptions, our inner life and undisclosed or unrecognized
motivations as such established realms as folktales, folksongs, and even
children's games (you do know that some games and rhymes have been traced
back centuries, right?) was not a notion academe embraced.

He was also a Freudian in his interpretations, and while most of Freud's
work is no longer accepted, at least such a detailed framework of analysis
allowed the creation of a context heavily laden with psychological jargon
suitable for formal analysis beyond a "merely" historical treatment of the
existence of the data, and so when he and his students (we all had to
participate) collected marching cadences or drinking games (two areas
where I applied myself in gathering data), proverbs or drug lore (banned
as a subject because the area was oversupplied with data at the time!) or
whatever, the material collected could be treated with the usual academic
formality and pomposity, the tools of analysis being applied to such
transient material as scrupulously as any other set of filters or
descriptions.

Well, well. Sad news. Thanks for telling me. If there was an obit in the
local papers here, I missed it. Will now go to sfgate.com to see what the
Bay Area papers had to say, and then maybe google a bit. If you can find
them, his urban lore volumes are a real giggle, and of course his heavier
stuff is a model of how to do it from one of those people who created the
discipline and made it respectable.

--
Life is what we make it. Always has been, always will be. - Grandma Moses

[Greta Growlo]

Hi Everyone,
I have been out of town so I have not been reading my
email. I did read in the newspaper that Alan Dundes
had died. I, too, remember him from U.C. Berkeley.
He was very popular and I am grateful that I was able
to have the experience of being in his presence.
Suzanne

[AnkleBells]

I connected with him through letter writing and e-mail
and was looking forward to meeting him someday and am
sorry I won't have that opportunity...Carla

[Quimbisero]

Not to go on too long with this thread, but to give some idea of just
how unusual Alan Dundes was, both in the greatness of spirit and the
way in which people responded to him, I'd like to mention an event
which occurred about four or five years ago.

A student who was obviously impressed by his experience of Dundes,
sent him an unsolicited check for $1 million dollars. Yes, this really
happened. Dundes used the funds to set up a professorship in Folklore
at Berkeley.

Now, that is something that just doesn't happen often. Dundes is the
sort of person who just doesn't come along often.

Eoghan

(Yes, i remember when that happened. It was mind-blowing. And the fact that Professor Dundes used the money to endow a teaching chair for the future rather than to aggrandize himself during his own life was characteristic of his spirit, too. All you students who have no idea who we are eulogizing or why -- do yourselves a favour and go to amazon.com and pick up a book by Alan Dundes -- you'll have a great reading experience and you'll also learn a lot. --cat)

[AnkleBells]

Not to go on too long with this thread, but to give some idea of just
how unusual Alan Dundes was, both in the greatness of spirit and the
way in which people responded to him, I'd like to mention an event
which occurred about four or five years ago.

A student who was obviously impressed by his experience of Dundes,
sent him an unsolicited check for $1 million dollars. Yes, this really
happened. Dundes used the funds to set up a professorship in Folklore
at Berkeley.

Now, that is something that just doesn't happen often. Dundes is the
sort of person who just doesn't come along often.

Eoghan


What is a "professorship"? Carla

[Quimbisero]

--- In hrcourse@yahoogroups.com, "anklebells800cows@j..."
<anklebells800cows@j...> wrote:

> > What is a "professorship"? Carla

It's the funding and structure behind having a permanent position for
a professor in a specific area of study in a university. Such things
need to have substantial funding.

Eoghan

[Quimbisero]

This topic is tangentally related to Hoodoo, in as much as the popular mythology of the Black
Gypsy is a part of 20th century Hoodoo tradition. Those more actively interested in this
aspect probably will note, "Oh, that again", but on the chance that it may be of interest to
someone out there, the Sacred Texts site has Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling by Charles
G. Leland [1891] online at http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/gsft/index.htm

Eoghan

[Zevenster]

In response to Eoghans messages about Lelands' Gypsy Sorcery:
I have had this book and the Aradia by his hand since about ten years.
They were among the first to get my on track with Stregheria,
Western/European magick etc.
I love them, allthough by time the real sorcery is rather hidden in the
mist of his eleborate way of writing.
I can advice anyone to read them, even if you later say it didn't bring
you any particulars, it is fun and somewhat anthropologicaly
interesting to read (take in regard the time and fashion in which they
were written and keep an open eye on that while reading)
7*

[Quimbisero]

I should clarify that Leland is a typical 19th century antiquarian, and represents neither
modern anthropology nor a reliable source for profound understandings of any tradition.

Most agree today, whether informed pagans or academics, that Aradia is most certainly pulp
fiction.

That being said, Leland is an entertaining read and there are worse introductions to the
subject. He represents a point of departure, and well, it's freely accessible on the internet.

Eoghan

(I'd like to add my two bits here: I think that some of Leland's materials are more non-fictional than others, and some are more deformed by a sense of "romance" than others, wih "Aradia" being both the most fictional and the most "romantic." In my opinion, Leland's hoodoo materials are spotty but fairly true to life, as he was an American and came from a family that had had African American servants (and perhaps slaves -- i'm not sure of the exact details), and so, unlike oh, say, his contemporary, Lafcadio Hearn, he did not interject Haitian materials into his hoodoo observation to "spice up" his accounts with falsely romantic views of African retentions, the way he interjected Classical references into his Etruscan materials to give them more ancient provenance. I speak here not as a researcher or scholar of Leland, just as someone who has read his works and put them through a mental sifter, so to speak, sifting out that which is fantastical and unique from that which is more prosaic and more often-obsevred by other reporters of his era, and hence more likely authentic. --cat)

[Inominandum]

Much of Leland's library and notes are in the stacks of the
Philadelphia Art Museum. I have not viewed it myself, but someone I
know who has claims that there are letters between him and
Magdelena.

Jason

(How interesting! I would love to know more about that. It is off-topic here, as Magdelena was not one of Leland's hoodoo informants or correspondents, but the existence of any of Leland's notes and papers causes me to wonder hopefully if some of his private correspondence with the Ameican amateur folklorist Mary Alicia Owen (who did write about hoodoo, and to whom Leland was a bit of a mentor) may survive as well. --cat)

[catherineyronwode]

See this New York Times article on Jesus Malverde:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/us/08 ... tml?ref=us

His cult is definitely on the rise, as witness the quantities of Jesus
Malverde oils, powders, incense, bath crystals, chromos, etc. we sell
at our shop.

cat yronwode

[Miss Bri]

On Feb 8, 2008 3:36 PM, catherine yronwode <cat@luckymojo.com> wrote:

> > See this New York Times article on Jesus Malverde:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/us/08 ... tml?ref=us
>
> His cult is definitely on the rise, as witness the quantities of Jesus
> Malverde oils, powders, incense, bath crystals, chromos, etc. we sell
> at our shop.
>
> cat yronwode

Wow cat! That is so funny, we were just
talking about him earlier this week!
Thanks for the link, fascinating article.

Briana Saussy #1154

(I know, Briana! He musta heard us talking about him! It's a sign!!! Time to rock out with Los Alegres de Tehran and Los Tucanes de Tijuana! --cat)

[docstrange]

Interesting.

In my visits to Southern California it seems that Santissima Muerte is also favored by drug dealers ( and prostitutes, and gender outlaws) supposedly because she is more or less the virgin who cares for the misfits.

And in Tijuana I visited the shrine of Juan Soldado, the saint of the unjustly accused (he was accused of rape and right after they killed him was found innocent).

One important thing to note, is that spiritual workers of certain traditions or religions become linked in the media with the criminal underworld, so that law enforcement and neighbors tend to assume the worst of them. I wonder if anyone has personal experiences about this to share.

Every few years there will be a spectacularly gruesome crime picked up by the news as a "voodoo murder" (like the 1989 Matamoros case where Constanzo kidnapped a college kid and cut off his head and popped it in a cauldron as part of a drug protection working).

There was another case in London a few years ago where they were making charms out of pieces of children, supposedly muti magic (spelling?).

We are probably overdue for another one of these things, so I would be interested in how cat and others would respond to this sort of thing if contacted by cops or journalists.

James Dotson 962G

(As the "Virgin Mary as a skeleton" she is the sister of the Virgin of Guadelupe, and around Mexico City, the locus of her old cult as an Aztec goddess, she is traditionally called upon in 7-knot fidelity spells to keep a man faithful unto death. Her use as a generalized "outlaw" saint outside of her local region is very recent, to my first-hand knowledge -- less than 10 years duration. --cat)

(Costanza and Aldrete were a male-female team of sociopathic serial killers and drug dealers who led a small cult, along the lines of the Manson gang. She had a background in the religion of Mexican folk Catholicism, with leanings toward (but no formal initiation in) Santeria. He had a background in the religion of Palo Cristiana. Some sociopathic serial killers use religious "decorations" on their serial killing, others do not. Costanza did, and because the Matamoros killings were done under Costanza's leadership, he gave the killings a Palo context. Strangely, however, the murders were labelled as "Santeria" murders in newspapers of the time period, with some even identifying Santeria as a form of Satanism (!). Later, when books were first published about the case, the murders were relabelled as Palo, with Palo being falsely described as "the dark side of Santeria", which, of course, it is not. I happen to know a bit about this case because i edited a series of True Crime Trading Cards in which it were featured, and i used as reference a book written by Gary Brodsky, an acquaintance of mine, in which he tried, but failed, to get the religious background correct. In those days, so little was known about African diasporic religions in the USA, that both the law enforcement officers and the religious studies folks that they consulted gave Brodsky erroneous information. This form of ignorance is slowly lifting. However, it must be repeated: the killings were actually drug-fueled sociopathic serial murders carried out in a cult setting; the fact that the cult's leader maintained a veneer of Palo "decor" did not make them Palo killings per se. --cat)

(To the best of my recollection, this was actually an authentic case of African sorcery in London. The killing of children for the making of charms is regularly reported in African newspapers. The perpetrators are sorcerors, that is, rogue or renegade spiritual practitioners. --cat)

(If the killings were sociopathic serial murders with religious "decor", i'd put on my most pedantic, slow-talking persona and conduct them through the history of whatever religion they are falsely linking with the killings, then through a brief catalogue of histrical serial killings which have been augmented with religious "decor" of various types, and finally lead them to the realization that such religious "decor" is a fetishistic by-product of the killer's sociopathology and not inherent in the religion itself. If they were dealing with African sorcery killings, i would explain for what they are, and the cultural traditions that distinguish sorcerors from other spiritual practitioners in Africa and other cultures. If they were dealing with Islamic "honor" killings, i would explain that this tradition, like Islamic cliterectomy, is a cultural phenomena associated with certain regional forms of Islam, but that not all Islamic cultures approve of such traditions, just as, for example, not all Latter Day Saints (Mormons) approve of polygamy, and not all Christians approve of the use of Nordic pagan Christmas trees. --cat)

[silverpony]

This is not related to Lucky Mojo directly, though LM does sell Our Lady of Guadalupe candles. I thought anyone who works with 7-day saint novena candles would get a kick out of this picture: an artist has turned something that looks like a silo attatched to the side of a building into a painting of a gigantic!! 7-day candle.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/13364

[wylde]

Wow......

[angelael]

News report from Austin, TX on how Law Enforcement gets a lesson in drug traffickers and patron saints:

http://www.twcnews.com/archives/tx/aust ... 2.old.html

Local law enforcement gets lesson in drug traffickers and patron saints
By Karina Kling
Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 10:47 PM EST

[jwmcclin]

Interesting find angelael.

[owlsfoot]

Definitely an interesting article, albeit somewhat disturbing. Perhaps I'm overly paranoid about the abuse of police power, but statements like this make me a little uneasy:

"Law said police have been seeing trinkets or religious medallions during traffic stops or raids for years, but that better education about what to look for can mean safer streets...'Street-level officers need this information. You never know what you're dealing with when you walk up to that car.'"

As someone who has been profiled and harassed by police in the past with no justifiable cause, and who has also experienced plenty of discrimination in various forms over the years because of my "non-normative" spiritual tendencies, the thought of police profiling based upon one's use of devotional and/or magical objects is unsettling.

[Joseph Magnuson]

This is the coolest thing I have ever seen. I had to re-animate this thread and let newer people check this out! Wow!

[aura]

That's AWESOME Thanks for bumping up the post Joseph!

[Joseph Magnuson]

No problem...I was very happy to see this post that I missed the first time around!

[whistler2]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22462181

Not exactly Hoodoo, but still an interesting read none the less.

[catherineyronwode]

Thank you very much for this news report!

[Mama Micki]

Not too surprising. Many do not understand why people petition Santa Muerte. It didn't make sense to me either; I thought at first that her devotees were all either criminals or women who were trying to keep their husbands from straying. I learned that she will grant favors of all kinds to people of all backgrounds. We all have a finite number of days on this earth. Make the most of it.

[Joseph Magnuson]

I have been keeping a close eye on this story. Her influence is certainly starting to spread to a much wider audience!

[Doctor Hob]

There does seem to be a lot of news popping up about her, lately...

[Mama Micki]

I have been keeping a close eye on this story. Her influence is certainly starting to spread to a much wider audience!

I sell Santa Muerte items at my eBay store, including Conjureman Ali's book and Lucky Mojo Santisima Muerte oil. I notice that many of the buyers of these items appear to be non-Latino (based on last names) and are in every part of the US. I can't keep the book in stock; it sells quickly because it is a practical guide in English.

I posted this in the Santa Muerte thread a while back, but it is worth thinking about:

In church today we sang the old hymn "All Creatures of Our God and King" with words by St. Francis of Assisi. One verse seemed pertinent to this topic:

And thou, most kind and gentle death,
waiting to hush our latest breath . . .
Thou leadest home the child of God,
and Christ our Lord the way hath trod.

[whistler2]

I think the reason for her presence in the news as of late is due to the intensity of the violence that has plagued Mexico for the last 5 years or so. It's really become quite the nightmare there. Plus with the advancement of the internet, people are able to focus in on the problem states. With everything being able to be put under a microscope like that, it's no wonder. Also, Santisima Muerte was shown in episodes of Breaking Bad with the bad guys crawling across a town square to an altar.

[catherineyronwode]

Mediterranean Folk Magic Part 1
Lucky Mojo Hoodoo Rootwork Hour 6/23/19
with co-hosts catherine yronwode and Mama E.,
special guest Miss Athena, and announcer Papa Newt.
https://youtu.be/2u_Vkj5Hb4Q

Co-hosts Miss Cat and Mama E, with special guest Miss Athena and announcer Papa Newt, have the first in a multi-part discussion about Mediterranean folk magic, and free readings, free spells, and conjure consultations, giving listeners an education in African-American folk magic.

Mediterranean Folk Magic Part 2:
https://youtu.be/yFz5GH_rqY8

Chat log and further discussion:
http://forum.luckymojo.com/Mediterranea ... 92562.html

The Lucky Mojo YouTube channel is here:
http://youtube.com/luckymojocurioco

DONATE A SMALL ONE-TIME AMOUNT TO SPEED OUR VIDEO UPLOADS
https://www.luckymojo.com/youtubedonation.html

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON AND WE'LL PUT YOUR NAME IN THE VIDEOS
http://patreon.com/catherineyronwode

[catherineyronwode]

Mediterranean Folk Magic Part 2
Lucky Mojo Hoodoo Rootwork Hour 4/5/20
with co-hosts catherine yronwode and ConjureMan,
special guest Miss Athena, and announcer Dr. Jeremy Weiss.
https://youtu.be/yFz5GH_rqY8

Co-hosts Miss Cat and ConjureMan, with special guest Miss Athena and announcer Dr. Jeremy Weiss, present a second show on Mediterranean folk magic and provide free readings, free spells, and conjure consultations, giving listeners an education in African-American folk magic.

Mediterranean Folk Magic Part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u_Vkj5Hb4Q

Chat log and further discussion:
post447749.html

The Lucky Mojo YouTube channel is here:
http://youtube.com/luckymojocurioco

DONATE A SMALL ONE-TIME AMOUNT TO SPEED OUR VIDEO UPLOADS
https://www.luckymojo.com/youtubedonation.html

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON AND WE'LL PUT YOUR NAME IN THE VIDEOS
http://patreon.com/catherineyronwode