Skip to main content

Magic Books by Talia Felix

On Goona Goona

Island dancing girl

 GOONA GOONA: Creates an atmosphere of trust and understanding when used in troubled situations. Apply to the body as a perfume to reduce tension when dealing with difficult people.
In the home, rub on table legs, arms of chairs, or bottoms of plates to create a calm and confident environment.

So says Anna Riva in Golden Secrets of Mystic Oils. This usage is echoed in other sources too, such as Supermarket Sorceress, and the Magickal Formulary. Okay, sure why not? Both Supermarket Sorceress and Magickal Formulary give recipes, which are respectively:

Recipe A.
Rose
Nutmeg
Vanilla
Cinnamon

Recipe B.
Orange (?) (Slater sometimes includes the dye color, but not always -- makes it hard to tell if he means orange dye or orange fruit.)
Nutmeg
Orris
Rose
Patchouli

Rose and nutmeg seem to be the common ingredients, as can be seen. Rose, okay -- but why nutmeg? Even when you go by the planetary association it doesn't make a lot of sense. Nutmeg is much more a money ingredient than a love ingredient. And there are no obvious ingredients in either recipe that seem they should especially create an air of "trust and understanding."

The fact is, having done some research on this matter, I am of the opinion that the description for Goona Goona's usage is wrong in all of these sources. Why? Well, let's start from the top.

Our story begins in 1929. Armand Denis, a sort of real-life Carl Denham, goes to Bali to film footage of exotic peoples and their topless women, and ties it together with a staged love story. The resulting film is titled Goona Goona, or; Love Powder (the name varied depending on the market.) The film did well -- "Goona Goona" became an industry term for trashy exploitation pictures, and it also entered the popular slang as a term for (more or less) "sex appeal." Take the following example, circa 1935:

Gypsy Rose Lee (pronounced: Goona Goona) is so wealthy she can retire.

The actual term goona goona appears to be the Balinese word for magic in general, and is sometimes used synonymously with voodoo in certain cases. Its popular meaning, however, was modeled on the famous movie and it took on a specific connotation relating to love and sex. We can assume Goona Goona powder first appeared on the US occult market around this period of the 1930s. But who, knowing the term from this slang or from this film, would buy such a powder with the expectation that it would "create a calm and confident environment"? Would anyone nowadays purchase a formula called "Sexy" thinking it should be used for trust and understanding?

Ah, no, my dear readers. Goona Goona is no soothing brew for tranquil love. This is a lust mixture! Its use would have been akin to Flame of Desire or Look Me Over formulas. The confusion seems to arise from practitioners back in the early/mid 20th century, when sex wasn't habitually discussed openly, employing euphemisms like "getting along" to mean sex. While I don't have any authentic 1930s recipes for Goona Goona, I can tell you this about approaching it as a lust formula: it explains that nutmeg. According to Egyptian Witchcraft, nutmeg is "used for all kinds of love alchemy, especially for potions and magic spells which elicit love and sexual desire." It's a spicy, passion-bringing ingredient. While personally I'd probably prefer cinnamon or cardamom in its place for a love powder, nutmeg makes even less sense as an ingredient to promote understanding and trust, unless that's supposed to be some kind of Victorian euphemism for 'fucking.' In fact, Alchemy Works reports an old Creole spell to make a woman "crazy with love" by sprinkling nutmeg in her shoe at midnight.

Assuming that Slater and Rosean both had some idea of what they were talking about when they reported their formulas (though I confess, I see potential that one may have been copying after the other's lead) its intention as a lust powder is certain. There are, admittedly, spells and formulas that evolve over time -- precipitado went from a mercury extract to a mixture of gunpowder and chile, Water of Notre Dame changed from arnica tincture to white rose water -- but, Goona Goona appears to have at least formulaically retained its original intent even if its descriptions are usually given inaccurately. Slater seems, as far as I can tell, to be the earliest person to report the "trust and understanding" usage. Since he's the same guy that says Yula oil is for death hexes and jalap powder is made out of galangal powder, we can safely consider him to be unreliable in this.

If your goal is trust and understanding, I'd propose an alternate formula -- perhaps some kind of lavender-plumeria blend. But if you're looking for a sexy time, use Goona Goona.
Labels:
Want professional spellcasting? Visit Hoodoo Online for services, or browse my books on Amazon.

Popular posts from this blog

Magical Hoodoo Baths - The Original Hoodoo and Voodoo Bath for Luck, Love and Success

One beginning in the tradition of hoodoo should know about the importance of baths. They are vital tools in hoodoo work and cannot be dispensed with.  Many people nowadays don't have bathtubs, and some adaptation can be achieved by way of showers. Other people use a large bowl or bucket of water to pour on themselves in place of a spiritual bath. In olden times, and also in some places today where water on tap isn't common, people will perform their spiritual baths in a river or pond outdoors.  A spiritual bath is similar to a regular bath, but with certain key differences. Spiritual baths are not meant primarily for physical cleansing and so washing items like soap might be taboo depending on the exact bath type. However there are some types of magical bath that do use the multitasking property of soap or other cleansers, and in those cases the cleaning aspect is appropriate to the work. There is some controversy around washing the hair in a spiritual bath. Many people don...
Read more

The Ultimate Hoodoo Herbal Incense Guide

 Myrrh The other day I made a bath recipe for myself using some artificial myrrh oil (real myrrh essential oil being quite expensive -- about $160 a half ounce as of this writing.) Sniffing it, it called to mind so many other spells that I've done that I realized -- this is THE smell of hoodoo. American hoodoo magic, with its blend of African, Indigenous, and European traditions, has a long history of utilizing various herbs, roots, and materials to create potent spells and rituals. One such ingredient that holds a significant place is myrrh. It is not a native plant to the Americas: commiphora myrrha is native to the Arabian penninsula and Africa. It appears often in the Bible, and because of this was adopted into European high magical traditions. As I mention in my book Conjuration , incense wasn't much used in American hoodoo till the early 20th century, when the "catalogue culture" of De Laurence and others brought to it more high magical tradition and incorpor...
Read more

Occult Mysteries of Candle Omens: The Surprising Truth About Spellcasting Success and Misleading Signs

One of my most consistently popular posts on this blog is the Candle Omens post, indicating many many people want to know about how to read omens for their spells through the augeries of wax or flames. When I perform spellcasts for clients , if the work I have done involved a candle spell, I will usually report on the condition of the flames, smoke or interesting activity with the wax.  And yet, how valid is this for determining spell outcome? In my own experience, I have had candles that burned badly result in brilliant successes, and candles that burned well lead to dud results.  The first thing to keep in mind about reading omens in candles it that it really shouldn't be done if you are inexperienced in candle burning, OR if you are using an unfamiliar brand of candles . In both cases, it can lead to falsely assuming a normal event is something abnormal or significant. For example, there is a particular type of pullout candle which I have to go out of my way to ...
Read more

Perfume, Cologne, and Its Use In Hoodoo

The original recipe for cologne was reputedly given to St. Elizabeth of Hungary by an angel -- the concoction was known as "Hungary Water" and was used primarily as a medicine, rather than just a mere fragrance. Charles Godfrey Leland remarked that it therefore was appropriate hoodoo practitioners would use such a substance for feeding their conjure bags and other talismans. The term cologne actually comes from a later preparation, Cologne Water (named for the German city.) The original Cologne Water is a spirit-citrus perfume launched in 1709 by Giovanni Maria Farina (1685–1766), an Italian perfume maker from Santa Maria Maggiore Valle Vigezzo, Italy. In 1708, Farina wrote to his brother Jean Baptiste: "I have found a fragrance that reminds me of an Italian spring morning, of mountain daffodils and orange blossoms after the rain". He named his fragrance Cologne Water, in honour of his new hometown. The Original Cologne Water composed by Farina was used on...
Read more

Sugar and Sweetener - Vital Ingredients for Traditional Hoodoo and Witchcraft Magic

Sugar spells are everywhere these days. People know you can “sweeten someone up,” and if you poke around online for five minutes, you’ll find love spells that ask you to write a name on a paper and put it in a jar with sugar, honey, syrup, or a piece of candy. It’s not just popular — it’s practically its own genre. But the real history of sugar in hoodoo is a little deeper, and as always, a little weirder. Traditionally, sugar was used to sweeten someone toward you — whether for love, kindness, better treatment, or even to grease a boss’s attitude at work. You’ll find older spells that use sugar to make a judge lenient or to keep someone from being angry. What’s rarely mentioned outside the tradition is that the type of sugar used could be significant. Yes, really. In older hoodoo practice, sweeteners were sometimes matched to the race or skin tone of the person being targeted. Molasses - thick and dark, was typically used if the person was Black. White sugar - for a white person. Hon...
Read more