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

Before the Demiurge botched the material world, before Sophia made her catastrophic independent decision, before any of the cascading disasters that Gnostic myth uses to explain why existence is the way it is, there was Barbelo — the first emanation of the Invisible Spirit, the divine Mother-Father, the one whose existence preceded every other existence except the one at the top of the hierarchy that is too abstract to be called an existence at all. She is understood as the first self-revelation or ‘thought’ of the Invisible Spirit, which makes her simultaneously the first act of divine self-reflection and the origin of everything that followed, including all the trouble. She is also, depending on which Gnostic text you're reading, a cosmic power, a first principle, a triple-formed divinity who descends through the world three times in different guises, and a figure whose name turns up in magical papyri and on protective amulets. She appears in some of the most important survivi...

The angel on the modern candle label artwork — soft-focus, usually blonde, wearing flowing white, willowy figure, gazing serenely — has nothing to do with the angels of the texts these systems claim to draw from. When angels appear in scripture, the first thing they generally have to say is "do not be afraid" — which suggests the people they're appearing to are very afraid, and not without reason. This isn't a pedantic objection, the entire framework of modern "angel magic" — the pastel oracle cards, the channeled messages of unconditional love, the assumption that working with angels is the safe alternative to anything else — rests on a sanitized image that doesn't survive contact with the actual textual tradition. (The angel that wrestles Jacob in Genesis 32 dislocates his hip.) The historical practice of angel magic is one of the most thoroughly documented strands of Western esoteric work and it is also stranger, more demanding, and morally weirder th...

from Cuban Folk-Lore by L. Roy Terwilliger In Cuba as in all pro-Catholic countries the natives have a host of saints to whom they attribute various supernatural powers; they are held in greater or less esteem according to the miraculous cures they have achieved or the concessions they have granted their followers. Each family or individual has a special saint to whom they appeal in times of trouble or sickness. Sometimes however when a saint has repeatedly proved inefficient or has failed to grant the wishes of a devotee, it is cast aside or exchanged for one that has been recommended by a friend. It is no unusual thing to hear one lady advising another to try such and such a saint. “Rece á San José, él me ha concedido todo lo que yo le pedí”. Pray to San José he grants all I ask him. There are also a number of saints who are specially efficient in certain diseases or conditions. One always prays to San Blas to cure throat trouble, and young ladies know that San Nicolas with gladly a...

It is of note, as we begin, that Incubus Syndrome is currently a known medical term, and is “considered as a secondary type of erotomania,” according to Dr. D. Felex Maree Angelo; “This phenomenon is found to be more common in females. The male to female ratio based on existing literature is 1:5.” In modern day folklore, the incubus is usually associated with stories of sexy demons (or at least, sexually motivated demons). That's generally what people mean when they talk about an incubus now: “A demon assuming human physical dimensions, and sexually cohabiting with a woman,” as Bob Larsen the modern evangelist defines them. Sometimes folks talk about them just in a traditional mythology sense, but other times people insist they've experienced them in some form – Larsen himself claims to have dealt with “hundreds” of them, and one can find people on YouTube today recounting their experiences with them.  What is the actual history of the incubus? Like most mythology, it has vari...

 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...

There is a well-known ritual, often played by children, called Bloody Mary . The game is played thus: one or more players go into a darkened room with a mirror, and light a single candle. The main player then stands at the mirror and chants the name "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary" ad infinitum or until wishing to stop the game. It is said that the player will see his or her own reflection morph into that of Bloody Mary, who, if allowed to manifest in full, will then reach out of the mirror and kill the player. If one plays the game with the assistance of a second, it's the second's job to flip on the light switch if things get too scary -- turning the light back on will assuredly send away the spirit in the mirror. As I was taught, one can also summon other ghosts this same way, simply by chanting their name instead of Bloody Mary.  Now again, this was all taught to me as a kid in the context of being a game to play -- but of course, true believer...