Brother Yona Glickman on Hoodoo in Sinners, PART 1

We sit with Brother Yona to map Hoodoo’s true lineage, from Congolese roots to Bible Belt syncretism, and why representation in Sinners feels rare and right. The talk blends history, ethics, and lived practice with stories that carry power across generations. Follow Brother Yona on Instagram @propheticsoulguideinc and visit Professor Porterfield at http://www.professorporterfield.com/

• Hoodoo as African American folk magic built from survival and admixture
• jazz, hip hop, and gumbo analogies that explain practice and form
• regionalism, family lines, and Protestant and Catholic overlay
• Bible magic, Psalms, hyssop, and church syncretism
• migration-era stigma and hidden-in-plain-sight practices
• who gets to practice, good guest ethics, and reciprocity
• media tropes versus authentic portrayal in Sinners
• High John folklore, mojo bags, and documented histories including Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman 

Thank you so much for joining us. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok, and watch us on YouTube at A Most Interesting Monster

Follow Manny at @dialoguesbydesign on Instagram

Follow Jezmina at @jezmina.vonthiele on Instagram

Hosted by Manny and Jezmina Von Thiele

Edited by Manny

Music by Dia Luna

Transcript

Setup, Guest Intro, And Announcements

SPEAKER_02 0:49

Hello, a most interesting monster listeners. This week's episode. Oops, scratch that. This episode. Sorry, I'm gonna start over. Hello, a most interesting monster listeners. This episode with Brother Yona is so deep and so detailed that we actually had to split it into two. In this section, we will be talking about Hoodoo and its representation, what it is and what it isn't with our guest Brother Yona. And then part two, we will be diving more into the representation of Hodoo specifically in Sinners. Also, we are going to take a hiatus and reconvene when we can have a more consistent production schedule. So we really appreciate you listening to a most interesting monster thus far. And we will be back with more gifts for you later when it makes sense for us to return. So thanks, and we hope you enjoy. And please follow Brother Yona everywhere he does things.

Who Is Brother Yona

SPEAKER_05 2:06

Welcome everyone. Welcome back to a most interesting monster, our weird and wonderful world of all things terrifying. And our opportunity today to chat with you all, and then to chat with an amazingly special guest is something I'm just bursting out the scenes. Uh, I cannot wait to have this conversation. I certainly hope that you all can't wait as well. Again, I'm Imani, and I am joined by the wonderful Jez Mina. What's going on, Jez?

SPEAKER_02 2:36

I'm so happy to be here with you today, and our very special guest, our first guest, which is I can't be more excited, honestly. First guest.

SPEAKER_05 2:45

This is uh another addition to our ongoing Sinners conversation, uh, the 2025 Ryan Cog Ryan Kugler film that has changed my life uh and and and got all of us really, really talking about so many issues that we don't usually. Um, and one of the things that uh Jez and I have talked quite a bit about, obviously, is the ways in which magic and in particular the the hoodoo practitioner that Annie is in the film and how some of the elements of that world interact with the movie, interact with us and the culture. And that we cannot wait to share with you the amazing guest that we have today, specifically as it relates to that. So, brother Yona, please feel free to introduce yourself a little bit about yourself, where you're from, what you do, uh, and then of course, uh Jez and I can get started.

Defining Hoodoo And Its Roots

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Well, first of all, thank you guys for having. I appreciate it so much, and I'm excited. I feel the excitement, I can feel the energy, I love it so much. So, my name is Yona. I go by Brother Yona, and even just the title, Brother Yona, is an ode to my hoodoo work, my root work that I that I'm a part of that relates to the church or the Christian overlay that is a part of hoodoo, which is something that we see in centers that there is a Christian Bible overlay to what hoodoo is. I'm a root worker, I'm a hoodoo, right? Because hoodoo is not only the name of the practice, but that's how we would refer to the people that do this kind of work as hoodoos, right? Uh, it's also a verb, right? Like who hoodoo the hoodoo, right? There are songs about that, blue songs, right? I've been a longtime student of hoodoo. My mother, I grew up uh with a Jamaican mother, black Jamaican mother, and she has long been a part of different folk traditions within Jamaica, also with a Christian overlay, a little bit different because uh in the Caribbean, there's like a deeper kind of um, or at least in Jamaica, I'll speak for Jamaica in the sense of uh uh the practice of obia and the things that came from Africa were strictly illegal and forbidden, and they tried to really snuff it out. So when she came to America, her and and the ways that she had coming from Jamaica, she dove into hoodoo, and we realized that hoodoo is our American southern distant cousin or our pretty close cousin to the Caribbean magic that we have. So I have a hoodoo background, I'm a card reader, cardomaster, um, spiritual worker. I teach classes on this, and I'm also not only a teacher of hoodoo and a worker, but I'm forever a student of hoodoo. I'm still learning, I'm still somewhere in between master and student. And so for that, I'm always grateful. I'm a student of Professor Charles Porterfield, who is a renowned hoodoo worker and author. He's written many good books on the topic, uh, Deck of Spells about Cardomancy, Hoodoo Bible Magic, uh, a book that I love and I would love to talk about a little bit here called From the Streets to the Sheets, right? The sporting life. All about those that lived in the underground of society and needed hoodoo to survive. And so, you know, I come with not only some book knowledge, but a lot of it comes from experience. You know, living with my mother, learning from her, living in the experience, living in the lifestyle that is hoodoo because it is a lifestyle. I'm also, once again, uh a student, you know, I'm still learning from Porterfield and from these different sources. I've had different mentors from different areas, one from Macon, Georgia, uh, with uh Porterfield being from Denton, Texas. I have a little bit of some of the other southern states kind of understanding. And so I come here really excited to just talk about all of what Hulu is and how centers really represented us well. You know, I would say it really did good for us, you know.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

I love that. I mean, I remember Amani and I were saying, like, it I feel like they did a really good job. I don't know, I'm not an expert, I'm not qualified to say it. But to me, it looks good, and I want to talk to someone who really knows about this. And I was so excited to be seated next to you at the Salem Witch Fest and start up the conversation. And what a what a delightful special connection. And I'm just glad that you're here uh talking to us now. That was such a fun event.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

So if you had to give a definition of hoodoo, like a favorite definition, what would you say to someone who had no idea what it was?

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Well, I'm glad you asked because I have a spiel that I give in every one of my classes about it. So I'll I'll present that here. Hoodoo is an African-American experience. It is not an African traditional religion, it is not African traditional sorcery, it is the African-American experience and spirituality, right? It's the spirituality of and the folk magic, therefore, the magic of the folk, the people here that were transported or rather stolen from their motherland in Africa, from the ancestors that were brought here from Africa, brought their different spiritualities. It's mainly a Congolese influence. So the main admixture from the African point of view within Hudu is uh Congolese, but it's a mixture, right? And so, what it is, it's the African spirituality that was then brought here to America by those ancestors, then it began to mix with some of the botanical knowledge and folklore of the indigenous native people here. It then started to mix with the European folk magic of the quote slave masters, right? And then over time it got other admixtures, it has a great Christian overlay because of those slave masters forcing Christianity onto the African ancestors, and then over time, as different groups of people start to come to America, we get a little sprinkle of Islamic magic, we get a little sprinkle of uh Jewish folk magic, Chinese Indian folk magic, and that's the assimilation of those different uh groups of people mixing with the African American ancestors, but at its core, like hip-hop, like jazz music, it is an African-American way, right? And I like to liken it to two things to really paint the picture. Hoodoo is jazz music. Jazz is the African rhythm being played with these European instruments. Hoodoo is the African spirituality being expressed by these new world instruments with those other admixtures we talked about, right?

SPEAKER_05 9:43

It is my mind is blowing. It's my mind is blowing right now. I'm gonna that's such a fantastic analogy. I have goosebumps. I'm sorry, as I'm a former pianist, so I played a lot of jazz. So you breaking it down from like a musical standpoint is blowing my mind. Thank you.

Jazz And Gumbo Analogies

Regional And Religious Overlays

SPEAKER_00 10:00

I also have a musical background, you know. Uh, being a music producer and engineer, music is in my blood. That was what I did my whole life before doing this professionally, right? So it's like the music thing, also is what helped me to kind of like uh understand it from that point of view, right? That's why I use that analogy. So, so with the African rhythms being played with the European instruments, we express the African spirituality through the New World instruments, but hoodoo is also like gumbo, right? Something that that comes from the southern United States, but gumbo is a mixture of three things. We have the okra that was brought here by the African ancestors, it has roo, the roux is European or French, but it but European in background, and then it has the sassafras, which is native. So when you mix the sassafras, which is the native influence, with the okra that's African, with the roux that's European, there's hoodoo. You understand? So that's the admixture. So if I had to explain it, and that's in short form, it gets a little more complicated. I mean, I'm oversimplifying hundreds of years of tradition in a sentence, but this is to paint the picture, and I will say just one thing about it too. Hoodoo is extremely regional, and that's the reason why, back to the music reference, I say it's more like hip-hop. You see, southern hip-hop doesn't sound like West Coast, West Coast doesn't sound like East Coast, East Coast doesn't sound like Midwest, but there's an umbrella that makes it all the genre of hip-hop. So there are very regional differences based off of what the ancestors had available to them that creates what hoodoo is in each individual part. You might ask 10 different workers how to do a piece of work, and they might tell you 10 different ways of going about it, 10 different herbs or ingredients they'll use, and none of them will be wrong. You understand? And so, one of the main things here to also think about, hoodoo is mainly Protestant Christian because most of it took place in that Bible belt under the Mason-Dixon line. Most of it was in that part of the south where we had what's called the Anglo quarters of slavery. So the Anglo quarters of slavery, just like in the Caribbean, much of the Caribbean, like uh the English-speaking Caribbean, we had the Dutch, the German, the Irish, and the British. They brought Protestant Christianity to the ancestors. Then there is the Latin quarters of the United States slavery, which mainly was in Louisiana as it was owned by the French. So the Latin quarters was the French, the Portuguese, and the Spanish, where they brought Catholicism. So that's where you'll see something like New Orleans voodoo, which is actually more likened to a form of hoodoo. It's actually more hoodoo than it is voodoo. There's a little misunderstanding in lingo, but we have a Catholic overlay to what we see within the Latin quarters of Hudu. And so within the Latin quarters, mainly in Louisiana, like I mentioned, you'll see that there's more the use of saints, there's kind of an emphasis on the New Testament, therefore, they allow the enslaved, not slaves, they weren't slaves, they were enslaved. There's a difference, okay, they're in the language, right? They allowed the enslaved ancestors in the Latin quarters to still meet as long as they were Catholic. So, what you had happen was the ancestors would take the knowledge that they have of different deities and different things related to their old African ways, and they would hide it under Catholicism. They would still meet, they would still be able to kind of uh convene. Whereas in the Anglo Accorders, you had what's called chattel slavery, which was particularly extra brutal. They treated us like property, like cattle, not humans at all. They tore families apart, they raped, they destroyed families, they beat Christianity into the ancestors, and there there was a more emphasis on the Old Testament Christianity, right? Within the Anglo Accords, because that's the kind of style that Protestant Christianity brought to that neck of the woods. So, what you have there are a lot of those really southern religious black folk from the south, and they weren't allowed to meet, weren't allowed to speak to each other. So there was an extra effort to hide their spirituality. So Hudu is actually a story of adaptation of the ancestors, showing resilience. And so the the foundation of what hoodoo is is that it was built on fighting oppression, balancing the scales from the immense pressure and oppression of the ancestors, and using that as a tool to remain hopeful, to remain blessed, and to help the ancestors during this difficult time. And so the fact that hoodoo is even a thing is amazing because that is the resilience of our ancestors holding on to what they had. You understand, and adapting it. So hoodoo is a living, breathing, evolving practice that is still alive. It's not like, for example, ancient Norse magic that's having a resurgence, this thing that died away, people are bringing it back. Hoodoo has ever been living and evolving in a part of the culture, and a part of the practice, even when the word hoodoo became taboo, people were still doing the work. That's hoodoo in a nutshell, that's hoodoo, and what it is for us. There are some schools of thought where people will say hoodoo is a closed practice, it is only for black folks because it is the black culture, the black struggle that created it, right? The black ancestors, there is blood on the soil, right, that creates the foundation of this thing. I don't argue with those people because there's a part of me that understands where they're coming from, and because hoodoo is so regional, it's not only regional as in Georgia Magic will be a little more similar to itself, Texas hoodoo will be a little more similar, but it's so familial, also. Like I liken that to grandma's cookies, right? They might all be bacon chocolate chip, but maybe your grandma, you know, put some rum raisins in it since you're from the Caribbean, right? Maybe my grandma put a little extra whipping cream in her, but it's all chocolate chip cookies, right? So, with that being said, each family could tell their their loved ones, their family, the people they're teaching about hoodoo in their lineage, keep this closed, and that's why I don't disagree with them. However, I was taught by my black elders that there is a space for other ethnicities to be able to work with hoodoo, but it's not a free-for-all. We're not saying it's a buffet. Hey, come take what you want. No, what we're saying is if you can be a good guest in the house of Hudu, what makes you a good guest? You bring something to the table. You go to a friend's house, bring that bottle of wine, you bring something, a dish to the table, you bring something to the table more than what you're taking, you respect the culture and the ancestors, and see this is a key one. People don't talk about it enough. Don't just respect the ancestors, respect and have love and compassion, empathy and sympathy for living black people. If you don't have sympathy or empathy for living black folk, not just the ones in the book, because they were beautiful, we stand on the shoulders of giants, i.e., the the ones that came before us. But if you don't have that sympathy or love for black people today, find another practice, it won't miss you because Hudu doesn't need you. You are coming to Hudu, therefore you be a good guest. If you can be a good guest, if you can stand for what's right and you have empathy for the black struggle for black culture, not just on paper, by the way, either like, oh well, my neighbor's black, and I think maybe he's a swell guy. I mean, I don't clutch my purse every time I see him, right? Do you understand what I'm saying? Absolutely, right? But some of that will come with the school of thought, where there are some black folks doing hoodoo that will say you don't belong, and so that might be something that you have to deal with, right? It's not something that I was taught, but it's something that I can understand that point of view as well. But the way I was taught is that there is space for other ethnicities and those that respect the culture. Now, the way I liken that back to the music reference, and I hope this isn't convoluted, but when I think about someone like so hip-hop is African American, it's not African. There might be some African rhythm, some admixture, some Caribbean admixture, but it was made on the soil from the struggle, from the lifestyle of African Americans, just like Hoodoo, right? But we've had some great white rappers. When I think about Eminem and all of what he's done for the game, the music he's made, he's a good example of being a good guest because he took his platform, opened up the path for other black artists, like 50 Cent, people, you know, Kendrick Lamar was signed his label at one point, I believe. Like certain people that come from the culture, he's open, he's used his platform and brought more to it than he's taken from it. I would say for that reason, he was a good guest. And if you do that for Hulu, then I feel like you can be welcome. It's not a free-for-all, but there is some space for outsiders to be able to sit at the table.

SPEAKER_05 19:34

First and foremost, thank you for laying that out the way that you did. So knowing how there's an interesting confluence of cultures that are that make it up, but it's still a very specifically African American uh tradition, it then makes the sinners itself there's another layer there, you know. The whole fact that there's all these different people coming to the juke joint, the fact that you have uh people of different backgrounds. Like it's obviously a black club. It's the juke joint, you know what I mean? In in Clarksdale, Mississippi. I felt like, like, again, Ryan doesn't put stuff in his films willy-nilly. There's there's a there are some really specific things there. So why hoodoo? Of all things, of all, let's say, um, black indigenous religious cultures, he could have highlighted in his film. Why hoodoo? And it and and just hearing from what you've explained, it kind of touches on everything else in the movie. I mean, again, that scene of Preacher Boy playing in the juke joint, and then we're seeing music in the future, music in the past. We see, you know, Chinese music from the past and in the in the future. We're seeing Native Americans, you know, like that whole scene.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Those were the admixtures that made Hulu and the things that were shown in the future, like that uh that dude that was playing that funk, that funk, and and the hip-hop and the yo-yo, right? The the DJ, those were the things that made Hudu, and then those are the things that shot off, branched off from what Hulu was. That's what you were seeing. So in the music, you were seeing the power that music had to connect us to the to what hoodoo is, what it created, what it came from, and then what became of what the African-American culture was. You understand?

SPEAKER_05 21:18

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Um, I want to kind of get a little bit into your own lived experiences as a hoodoo practitioner and as a South Florida-based. I I I whether or not we said this already for our audience, where you where are you from, brother, Yona?

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Well, I'm from Miami specifically, right? And so there's like a little joke when people will say, Oh, so you're from Florida, and you're like, No, no, no. I'm not from Florida, I'm from Miami. Miami is not Florida, and I like right, and the difference is Miami is the Caribbean and Latin American capital of the United States. So, unlike every other city, maybe except New York City, right? I would say, and unlike any other part of the South, Miami is actually more closer to the admixture of the Latin cultures, the Caribbean cultures, than it is of the southern culture. So, me doing voodoo here actually makes me like a needle in a haystack. It's not common. Hoodoo is not the common thing here. We have santeria that comes from the Cuban Dominican advocate.

SPEAKER_05 22:26

A lot about santeria, very much so 100%, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Because it's one of the main admixtures from the people that make the culture. We have more of voodoo voodoo, Haitian voodoo, Dominican voodoo. So we have more of the Caribbean, and those are other diasporic practices, other African diasporic practices that were also brought by the enslaved ancestors, but we're looking at different admixtures with the French in Haiti. That's Latin quarters. So the voodoo that came from Benin and Togo started to blend with the saints of the French, and now we have Haitian Voodoo. Same thing with Santeria, where we have the Yoruban people from Nigeria that were brought and enslaved down there. We have the culture of Ifa, the religion that is the higher religion that is Ifa, the Yoruban people's religion, which I am also a part of. I mean, I I will say with respect that I'm still building on that part of it. I'm a beginner in that aspect, but hoodoo is what I grew up with. That's more my expertise. But you start seeing the admixture of different things. So when they say, like the Gulagie people, are you familiar? So the Gulagie people were a group of enslaved ancestors that were brought as north as North Carolina, but mainly in Charleston, South Carolina, right? The coastal area, and it goes as low down as Savannah, Georgia, all down the coast, all the way down to about central northern Florida. Those Geechee people have one of the strongest, most potent kinds of Hulu because they pretty much remained untouched by outsiders because they lived on the coast, right? And so there's an accent that's kind of a remnant of the old African language. Their language has still has remnants of that old African languages that were blended together. But Florida is kind of different when it's separated by that line. So in South Florida, being a hoodoo, I actually stand out. It's very different, it's not the same as what's around me.

SPEAKER_05 24:23

So, like, what has your experience been as someone who grew up in this particular kind of tradition? Um, what's been your experience with the rest of the community down here? Because I get the impression it might be a little similar to what happened to Annie in Cinners. Like Annie is they loved Annie and they didn't like Annie, they were suspicious of Annie, and they were also like when the stuff went down and there were vampires and stuff, and suddenly she threw that garlic juice and it burned people. They were like, Oh shit, Annie might actually know what she's talking about. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. But before that, it was she's a witch. Uh, you know, what are you listening to where that witch has to tell you? You know, all that kind of stuff. So talk a talk about a little bit like that from your experience.

Ethics, Access, And Being A Good Guest

SPEAKER_00 25:06

So it's very similar, right? I mean, there's actually a phrase that my my uh teacher says where he says, first they laugh at you, then they fear you, then they need you. That's the order. So that's that's been my experience, right? A lot of people don't know about hoodoo here. So at first it'll be like, oh man, keep that, keep that witch shit away from you, bruh. Keep that that uh they just say keep that voodoo shit away, that woo. You know, South Florida, we use the word woo. Like, we don't do that woo shit, like keep that, keep that shit away from me. Then the third thing is I get those secret texts. Hey, um, you think you could uh uh pull some of them little cards for me, or or you what was that little oil you were talking about about that, you know, keeping the police away, that law keeper shit? Like, or what was that little uh you said there was something about a bath, some herbs and some water? Like, what are you saying, brother? Like about and and so you get a combination in that I've had a lot of problems with neighbors where I live calling the police on me, trying to create trouble, judging me. Like, why is he outside barefoot staring at the moon again? Like, what's a what's this guy, right? And and so I get a lot of that judgment. I mean, there are neighbors of mine that walk by and will just do the sign of the cross, and yeah, and so and I love well, listen, I'm a I'm a half black, half Jew Jamaican hoodoo worker in South Florida, like you know what I'm saying? At this point, it's like I done heard it all, seen it all, as far as the judgment. So to me, it rolls off me like a water on on a on on a duck, I mean, uh, uh where I'm from, who I am, who I've become, where you know you understand? Like, I'm proud of every step that has led me to this point, you know. So, why is it that when you understand my spiritual work or my power that it holds, what makes you feel like I'm just gonna turn the gun that is hoodoo onto you? What what is it that what's really in your heart? What are you saying about me when I'm not around? For you to fear those, right?

SPEAKER_05 27:00

I I'm so curious about magical traditions in general because it's something I did not have. It's not something I grew up with at all. In fact, and I and and Jez, I told you about this. How like my women in my family have been seers for generations? My mother will have feelings and then call someone and then find out something just happened to them. I was in a car accident about five years ago. My brother and I were both in a car accident. 30 seconds after we're in an accident, my mother is calling us. You know, I just had a feeling. Uh what's going on? Are you all okay and stuff like that? Now, when when when my brother and I will ask mom, like, where do you think this power or whatever you have comes from? Now, my mother being the deeply Christian woman she is, she's like, Oh, well, it comes from God. Duh. Um, you know, it comes from Jesus. So, you know, and so if I'm at any point going to suggest that there might be other forces at work that may contribute to her, you know, her seeing and stuff like that, um, that's not the conversation to have, you know? And so I'm always interested in learning. Um, and I'm always learning at the altar of Jasmina, and now I'm learning at the altar of Brother Yona. Um, but uh I'm just a really, really appreciative of these perspectives because they're so different from my lived experience, and yet I'm seeing now representations of these different voices in my media, in in in centers, you know, it it like there's so much more of a conversation about these different practices than I think we've ever had before. And I find it very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

And you know what's actually even more interesting about that is that because of the Christian admixture in hoodoo, hoodoo's and root work, which is the other name for it, we call it Hudu, Root Work, Southern Conjure is one of the other names. These are all some people will say they're synonymous, some people will say that they're different facets of what hoodoo is, right? But the church, the Bible, that's the centerpiece of hoodoo. If there's one magic grimoire, one spell book that every hoodoo will say is our grimoire and spell book, it's the Bible, so it's not separate from that idea of I had a feeling, I had a dream. We use Bible scriptures in hoodoo to empower our works. There's a scripture for every purpose. That's why I say my my mentor, Charles Porterfield, has written a book called Hulu Bible Magic, where every scripture has a meaning, and the meanings can be different from person to person. I've gotten some spiritual meanings from my mentor in Macon, Georgia, the Red Hills of Georgia, as he would put it, right? He's a reverend and Baptist minister, but a prophet as well, which he also ordained me as a minister and as a prophet. So I'm actually an ordained minister and a prophet via the Christian concept that is within Hudu, they're not that separate. The black church is Hudu, right? And certain things within the church that we'll see, like people catching the Holy Spirit and falling out. Well, if you watch some of the traditional dances in Africa where they're dancing and drumming to get mounted by spirits until they fall out and are possessed by a spirit to bring messages, that's the same thing in the black church.

SPEAKER_05 30:20

No different from speaking tongues. Speaking tongues, it's like you know, I grew up seeing people speaking tongues all the time, every weekend, and yet the same people would freak out at the very idea of half the things that you've just talked about. So it's like there's this dichotomy, you know?

Community Reactions And Stigma

SPEAKER_00 30:35

It's the language that freaks people out, it's not the concept. Because if you lay out the concept of catching a spirit and then falling out, we do that in the black church, but it's also something that comes from that has the African retention to it. You understand what I'm saying? Same thing with certain baptisms, they would do that at the river in Africa, right? At the Oshun River, let's say in Nigeria, or right, you know, where the water is is renewal. They call that the Kalunga line, right? Within the Congolese admixture that's in Hudu, the Kalunga is the watery divide where the ancestors and the spirit of God is. Within the Bible, you see what happened was the syncretism. Hudu is very much syncretic with Christianity, and so there were many things that were seen within the Old Testament, within the Bible, that they're like, Oh, back in Africa, it was like this, and maybe in generations that came, some of the original African core began to wash away. That's what happens in generations of not knowing where you come from, right? But in some of the things that were learned in the Bible, people would see those things and and recognize that they're in common. You'll see they talk about many herbs, and some of the hoodoo workers will do a 13-herb bath. My mom has a very famous 13-herb bath that she uses. All 13 herbs are found in the Bible. Psalm 51 purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Right? What happened was in about the 1970s, there was a church reform movement within the black community where the word hoodoo and root work became so taboo that people stopped using it. They used the word hoodoo, like even if you Google the term hoodoo, it says anything that represents bad luck, right? Wow, and so it became so synonymous with misfortune, bad luck, black magic that people didn't use the words, but some of the practices stayed alive. On a Saturday, when Big Mama would take the pine saw to cleanse the house, Saturday was the cleansing day. Pine saw was used by the ancestors because we knew they had real pine oil that brought in money that cleansed away evil spirits. Why is she still doing it? She might not even know. Her mama did it, her big mama did it. You understand? But you might go to somebody in this generation and be like, hey, what do you know about hoodoo? Grandma's, oh, we don't do that hoodoo stuff in this house, and then proceed to you know take some oil, draw the cross on your forehead, read the scripture when you're sick, tell you why don't you take that VIX vapor herb that actually has five different healing ingredients, like eucalyptus, camphor oil, nutmeg oil, right? All things that we know as healing herbs in hoodoo, and and anoint you with that. You understand? There was even a video, if you've seen it recently, of like a black mother reading scripture over her black son as he's dressed in his clothes to go to the prom and get get ready to graduate. And she's so happy, and she draws crosses on his shoe, and draws crosses on his forehead about praise. That's some hoodoo work. That's classic hoodoo work. Reannoint the feet and the shoes as they guide us to our path to success, right? So these are things that are in the culture, and that's why I say hoodoo has never gone away. You understand, and it's still evolving, right? And so that's the kind of concept where it's like some people might have put a fear base on it as they became more Christianized. But I'll show you one thing to kind of highlight the understanding that happened starting in those 1970s. As the great migration to the the north and the west happened, a lot of the southern blacks left behind their old southern ways. We're not cooking soul food on Sunday, we're not going to Big Mama's house, we ain't doing that hoodoo, we ain't taking a spiritual bath when we sick. We got medicine, we have uh technology, we have religion, we have education, and you have to understand where the black community came from. All the years of oppression, all the years of being told that our thing is evil and ignorant, and we're country and we're uneducated. People wanted to break that stigma, and so that's where you get the separation where you might talk to a lot of black folks and be like, oh, oh, hoodoo, oh, oh, we don't do that. We right because they no longer have a connection to it. And there's one movie, Shaft, you know, Shaft, right? The famous there was a part in that movie that highlights the whole thinking of that era where he's talking to a white cop, right? Like a counterpart or something like that, and he says, My people don't do that country shit no more. Like, we don't got rabbits' feet no more, because rabbits' feet is a symbol of luck. And that was the whole mentality of black folks, literally saying, We don't do that hoodoo shit no more, we don't do that southern country shit no more. We are educated now. That was the mentality that shifted it, and so that's why you get that separation, but it was not separate. You can't separate the Bible and the Holy Trinity from Hudu. Because everything we do, as I anoint my candles, as I awaken the spirit of herbs to work with them, as I make my baths, as I make my mojo bags, just like Amy made. You heard her. I make my bags in a similar way. We pray, we breathe our essence into it, and we say, In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, we anoint this thing, we baptize in the name of this person. We right, so the lingo, the language, the concept is the same, but the fear base and wanting to kind of separate ourselves from this Jim Crow painted era, you know, like the that they gave us. Oh, we're just a bunch of lazy country bumpkins, no shoes on, you know, overalls eating watermelon.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

I am so fascinated in what you're sharing about how people's attitudes change, which makes a lot of sense. I see similar things in the Romani community, um Roma shunning fortune teller fortune telling me because I think it makes us look backwards. And I love that you brought up the shaft because I feel like what I most often see uh depicted in the media around Hudu is either a rejection of or a demonization of um Do you have anything you want to share about how you see Hudu represented in media and why this shift is important? Or like what do you like about sinners shift if because it seems like that's a good example of that shift.

Bible Magic And Church Syncretism

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, look, I'll I'll talk about the media portrayal generally, and then I'll also talk about the portrayal in sinners, also, right, and what that does for Hulu and for the culture. There is a demonization of it. I mean, but you have to understand the demonization first came when the enslaved uh ancestors were brought here, and the slave masters felt like they had all the power, but they started to realize there's something about this magic that they're doing. You know, how is it that some of these slave masters are are are dying unexpectedly or being poisoned? You see, they called magic or anything that was related to who do poison. They would literally arrest and kill ancestors, saying they poisoned their master, even if they caught them just doing prayer work, right? So, of course, it's fear-based. I mean, when you're afraid of something, you do everything you can to remove it from the minds of people, to separate, to make you feel powerless, to make you feel like, oh, that's demonic. In hoodoo, we look at Moses as the great first conjurman because he was the conjurer that split the Red Sea. We look at Jesus as one of the great hoodoos because he was healing people, he was taking demons out of people, putting them in animals, sacrificing those animals, healing people with herbs and prayer and scripture and faith. So that is hoodoo, right? But they tried to give us the portrayal that it's all ignorant, it's antiquated, it's demonic, it goes against God, it goes against Christ, and that's because people were free, specifically the people in charge of media, i.e. you know, the the slave masters, their descendants, those people, because they knew it had power. I mean, for example, Mama Moses, okay, Harriet Tubman. If you read her autobiography, just like your mother, you and my mother and myself alike, and many ancestors, she had what we call in hoodoo true dreaming. She would dream things that would be messages of things to do. She would claim that she knew when to go get people and when to stop and when to pause because her spirit would guide her. That that was a hoodoo worker. We have someone like uh Frederick Douglass in his autobiography, it's a part of history, it's been stamped, that talked about how he was viciously beaten by his overseer one day. The overseer were the enforcers, they were more vicious than the masters because they were the brutes, right? And so he was viciously beaten one day by his overseer. They sent him to a hoodoo working sorcerer that lived on the plantation. Late in the night, they went out to get an a root, what we believe to be Hij John the Conqueror root, which is the quintessential hoodoo root, right? And I can explain there's folklore behind that. And he went, got this root, put it in the bag. And this worker whose name is Sally, right? I believe they named him Sally, if I'm not mistaken. You know, I want to try to give him his full credit, but it's in the autobiography. You can Google this. He got this bag and he said, as long as you keep this mojo bag, just like the one in Sinners, close to you, touching your skin, no one will be able to hurt you again, and you will always have the power to overcome that oppression. He had that mojo bag close. The very next time his overseer went to attack him, he overpowered his overseer. This is documented, threw him to the ground in front of all the other enslaved ancestors, and he was so embarrassed that his overseer never fought him, talked to him, touched him, and stayed on the other side of the plantation all the way until he became a free man. This is in his autobiography. Do you think they taught that part of it in school? That he used his hoodoo magic and a mojo bag with High John the Conqueror, one of the most powerful routes we use in hoodoo to have the power and strength over oppression. Of course, they don't talk about it.

SPEAKER_05 41:07

Wow.

unknown 41:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 41:09

I literally wrote a paper on Frederick Douglass in when we were in school together, Jez. We I wrote a paper on Frederick Douglass. Um, and it's so wild. Well, here's here's here's the crazy thing. The the the I remember, you know what? I'm not gonna name names because some of our profess some of those professors are still alive. Uh just as many as I don't like, but there was a particular professor who told me, um, I talked about that. I touched I I touched on it just a little bit. And interestingly, I was writing about both that and the violence of Frederick Douglass. Because you remember, Frederick Douglass said it was the day he overpowered his his slave master, is the day he became a man. So I was writing about masculinity, I was writing about black masculinity, and I mentioned I mentioned that part where he had the mojo bag. And the professor that I was turning in that paper for told me to remove that part and keep the violence. And I that's that's uh we we could obviously have a thousand other conversations about that alone. It was a white professor, and when she was like, remove that that that stuff, but keep the violent part. And I've always thought that very strange. And you bringing that, I haven't thought about that since 2010.

Survival, Migration, And Hidden Practices

SPEAKER_00 42:23

And here you and you brought that back, it's it's fantastic, and and that's a part of the portrayal we see in the media, it's antiquated, it's evil, it needs to be hidden, it's nonsensical, but it was the power to overcome oppression and even or balance the scales for the ancestors. So that's a part of the portrayal in the past, and that's why sinners is one of the best and worst things that has happened to Hudu in recent times. Oh, please tell us, Brother Yona. I I I I love to hear this. Well, it's one of the best because it was authentic Hudu. I mean, I even made a little list, I rewatched it last night so that I could like have it fresh on my mind and took notes. Those weren't zombies, they were hints, and she said it, but I'll explain that in a second. But the reason why it was one of the best things to happen is because it took a tradition that has long been steeped in fear and enigma, just a lot of evil, right? This is what they put on it. This is black magic, and this is demon work, and it showed its true colors within who within the movie. What I love about it is that Ryan Kugler went and sat, and that and some of the actors and actresses sat with a real elder of Hulu that brought real Hulu. That's why it was so authentic. They didn't just say, Oh, we're just gonna do a movie and Google some stuff. They sat with a person, an elder, who literally was like, Yes, this is what we did, this is what we have, this is what's going on. All of it was so real. It was based on a real Mississippi town that was an affluent, affluent black town. It had real elements of the mentality, both mentalities. You had the person like Amy, who was selling the stuff. You see, the little girl goes, and what did she buy? A pinch of High John the Conqueror route, the route that I'm telling you about that that Frederick Douglass. Totally missed that, right? Totally missed that. And she's like, Don't you be don't you be losing that now? Your mama's gonna kill me, right? Because she that was the real high John route. That's the that was the that's the quintessential root in hoodoo. And I'll explain why also in a second, because there's an interesting folklore behind that, right? But it had the real deal, holy feel, and that's what made it really dope. And what to me even made it doper is that it's a blockbuster movie, it was just a good ass movie, but it had the real element, even because I've been going back and forth living in in Buenos Aires, in Argentina, and like even when I was in Argentina, they had that movie playing in theaters. Wow, and so when I'm in Argentina, I'm the first person doing authentic Southern hoodoo in Argentina, by the way. When I'm there, I'm doing uh spiritual cleanses for people, I'm doing my readings, I'm teaching people there. I'm the first to bring our tradition to that the other side of the equator, by the way. I and I mean that, right? Because that word has never been uttered in the in the atmosphere in Argentina, right? Um, but to see that movie where I'm like, hey, all that shit that I've been telling you, I'm telling my friends like in Spanish, I'm learning Spanish, telling them you gotta come watch this movie with me. And I'm nudging them, I'm like, you see that? That that's the mojo bag thing I'm telling you about. You see that that right there? I'm telling that's the thing that I'm telling you that I do back in America, uh, right? And the excitement that I'm like, this is a worldwide phenomenon. You brought this to the world stage. The bad part, the damaging part of what it does to Hudu is that you get this representation, you'll start to get a lot of people come out of the woodworks wanting a piece of that. People who are inauthentic, people who are appropriating, not appreciating, you understand? People who want to say, Oh, well, I'm a hoodoo, also, and like yeah, and it's oh, where are your family from? Oh, yeah, you know, we're from Ireland, but you know, and not to knock any particular but right, but they're not but not connected to the to the actual culture of what it is, and so that's the bad part, is that it puts it on the center stage to give it a highlight of what it is, but it also highlights it so much that people are now fascinated by it, and that's where you start getting inauthentic workers, marketeers, and people who are just some of them are just downright like shit. I see some money, like let me go ahead and get to that money, right? A lot of hoodoo, hoodoo over here selling hoodoo, like right. You understand? There's a market for hoodoo now because of because of sinners.

SPEAKER_05 46:52

There's an actual capitalist market for hoodoo.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

There has been that since about the early 90s. There have been marketers. I mean, there have been marketeers since the early 1920s when when people would buy their herbs and their candles and their products from old catalogs. They were marketeers where, for example, high John, the folklore behind him is that he was an African prince and spiritual worker, taken from Africa, brought to America. But because he was a spiritual worker, he always had the wits and the strength to outsmart all of his slave masters, right? And so he outsmarted them, he escaped freely, and he said, This is the folklore of Hijon the Conqueror. That's what it's called. Hij John the Conqueror, and the root is named Hydron the Conqueror, named after him, or more correctly, Hijon the Conqueror, right? Is how it was pronounced, right? And Hidron, as he escaped using his wits and his strength away from the slave masters, the folklore goes that he put his spirit into a root, what we call the jalap root. Jallop root is is what is Hydron the Conqueror. That's the proper name for it. And when he put his soul or his spirit into the root, he said that every black person or every oppressed person that's important that uses this route, I will give them the power of luck, strength, and victory and empowerment over enemies and obstacles, hence what Frederick Douglass went through.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

Thank you so much for joining us. And please join us next time for part two with Brother Yona, where we are going to get even deeper into the representation of Hudu in Sinners. Thank you so much, and see you soon. Thank you so much for joining us. Visit the most interestingmonster.com and follow us on Instagram and TikTok.

SPEAKER_04 48:55

Watch us on YouTube at the most interesting monster. Follow Manny at Dialogue by Design on Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Follow Jasmina at Jasmina Funtime on Instagram.

SPEAKER_04 49:08

Posted by Manny and Jasmina Funtial.