The Spellcaster's Source Hoodoo and Voodoo Witchcraft Blog of Talia Felix

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...

Having noticed that many people these days prefer audio content to reading, I am expermenting with a Hoodoo Online YouTube channel . Currently I am working on a podcast version of the Hoodoo 101 posts , reading them aloud so that people can have them to listen to in the car or while doing something that keeps their gaze too busy for reading to be an option.  The podcast page is at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5gq6toaL8t92yRijTEJAdU8Or6m_sr05  OR you can use the below video to get started.  No AI is used for these videos; however I do use iMovie editing options on the audio and images. 

 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...

Spirit contact is one of the oldest human practices, and working with ancestral spirits is often considered the safest entry point for beginners into occult work. Your own blood ancestors have a vested interest in your wellbeing -- you carry their legacy forward. Unlike random spirits or unknown entities, they're already connected to you and (presumably) wish you well. It is therefore a common recommendation that those interested in beginning spiritual work start by building an ancestral altar.  The home ancestor altar as we know it today draws from multiple streams: Catholic home shrines with their candles and holy cards, Chinese ancestor tablets with daily offerings, Mexican ofrendas with elaborate decorations, Spiritualist "memory corners" popular in the late 1800s, and various folk practices of keeping photographs and mementos of the deceased. What we see in modern spiritual practice is a synthesis of these traditions, adapted to contemporary life. Harry Middleton Hya...

  Wall to wall carpeting only became common in houses during the 20th century, when the technology to make it cheaply and also the technology to clean it relatively easily (vacuums) made it much more practical than it had been in former times. In the old days, you had to uproot the entire carpet and take it outside to be beaten or scrubbed, while the wood floors underneath were swept and washed. Routine cleaning of a carpet would have usually been done by servants while the family was away on vacation. Nowadays a lot of people have carpets, and in many cases they're seen as a cheaper type of flooring than bare wood or tile. However, when dealing with traditional magic spells and hoodoo rituals, this can become a bit of a special encumbrance: instructions for floor sweeps, floor washes, and the use of colored sachet powders becomes an issue on a carpeted floor, whilst it is not an issue on a wood or tile floor.  Most traditional hoodoo cleaning and drawing rituals were made for...

Color is one of the most powerful symbolic tools in magic, allowing practitioners to communicate intent and manipulate energies in a way that feels both natural and intuitive. In hoodoo, color symbolism is often utilized in spells of candle magic , mojo bags , and powders and oils . But hoodoo is far from the only tradition where color matters. Many magical systems, such as European folk magic, ceremonial magic, and even pop-culture new age witchcraft — draw on color associations to shape their workings. In old spells, colored objects were difficult to produce; recipes for making the colored cloths, candles etc. were frequently included as part of the magical instruction. Once artificial dyes became commonplace in the 19th century, the magical practice really brightened up and colors became common additions to spellwork.  Red In the oldest African-derived American hoodoo spells, the only commonly mentioned color of importance is  red ; it was used to add power to any spell, ...

Finding the right materials for spellwork can be a challenge, especially when one is in a situation where traditional ingredients are unavailable. Whether it’s due to limited access, tight budgets, or time constraints, many practitioners face the question of how to adapt their tools without compromising the spell's effectiveness. Fortunately, magic has always been a practice of ingenuity and resourcefulness! Hoodoo in particular was practically founded upon adapting traditions to new cultures and landscapes where the old herbs, tools and licenses were no longer possible to employ. Adaptation is absolutely possible in witchcraft of this type. Yet there are limits. It is considered perfectly good practice to substitute certain items with certain things, but not others. For example, if one were to perform the Return a Lost Lover Spell from Homemade Hoodoo , but one didn't have any access to lavender oil, what would one use instead to substitute for it? The thought might be to use ...

  Once was a time when I was known for my Hoodoo Review blog, where I reviewed products from various occult shops and botanicas. Eventually I got rid of the blog because I was experiencing too much trouble with inconsistency in products -- that is to say, an item I had loved the first time I bought might not be made the same way when I ordered from the same manufacturer a year later. Sometimes this was due to certain occult shops or practitioners not following a set "recipe" and instead making the formulas however they felt like making them on that occasion. Other times the problem would be a decline in quality (especially from larger makers) as the search for cheapness and easiness overrode the tradition or effectiveness of older more expensive formulas. One example was the Ar-Jax brand of incense, which originally had some herbal matter in the mixture, but over time came to be made with the same plain, colored incense mixture that everything sold by Wisdom Products uses. In...

Triple Action candles are those candles which are made with three colors -- typically you find them striped in either red, white and green or red, white and blue. The red-white-green candles are used for success, prosperity and luck. The red-white-blue candles are used for returning lovers, and for protection and legal work. Some people like to burn these candles in sections, burning through one color on the candle with each day of spellwork. Personally, I feel this defeats the point of using a triple action candle (if you will only burn through one color each day, I figure you might as well just burn 3 small single-color candles) and so I like to burn these three-color candles all in one go.  To use a triple-action candle, you can burn them plain or choose an appropriate dressing oil (or a mixture of several oils) for your magical purpose. Since these are candles used to attract positive influences, they should be dressed upward, or else in the half-up half-down...

In the realm of magical arts and spellcasting, the use of personal concerns takes on a profound significance. These tangible links, often referred to as Personal Concerns in hoodoo magic, serve as conduits connecting the practitioner's spell to a specific individual. In the world of forensic investigation, characters on shows like CSI would recognize these items as potential sources of DNA – strands of hair, saliva, or worn clothing. It's an intriguing intersection where the mystical and the scientific converge. A spellcaster, much like a forensic expert, requires a tangible connection to their target. A mere name possesses a certain potency, but many practitioners believe in the amplified power of personal items like photographs, hair, and even fingernail clippings. The historical roots of such practices stretch back to ancient times, underscoring the enduring belief in the magical efficacy of personal concerns. While theoretically, a skilled witch might cast a spell without...

Coffin nails aren’t props. They’re not there to make your spell feel scarier or cooler. They’re tools. If you need to shut something down, hold something in place, or push a bit of death and finality into your working, they’re the right tool. If you don’t need that, use something else. A coffin nail is exactly what it says it is: a nail that’s come from a coffin. That might mean one removed before burial, or after. In some cases, it just means a nail taken from a board used in a funeral or grave context. But either way, the name isn’t figurative. We’re not talking about something that “symbolizes” death. We’re talking about something involved with death. In hoodoo, that matters. There’s a long tradition of using items associated with the dead in spellwork, and coffin nails are one of the best-known — though not always best-understood — examples. They’re used in spells for cursing, revenge, protection, binding, spirit work, and yes, even the occasional healing when a curse has to be na...