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

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...

  This simple spell to keep away the police comes from Zora Neale Hurston's collection of 1920s magic spells.  You need: 3 large John the Conqueror roots Talk to the roots and tell them you need them to keep away the police and the law. Then bury them at your gate or whatever entry would be used to access your property. 

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...

Recently was seeking a good aid for some of my difficulties in sales, and found a spell from the Black and White Magic of Marie Laveau which recommended a particular mojo to be anointed with Master and Has No Hanna oils. Has No Hanna is another of the formulas that's been standardized to near-ruin by the works of Slater. His recipes are: HAS NO HANNA OIL Orange Rose Gardenia open safety pin iron filings HAS NO HANNA INCENSE Tangerine base Most recipes you will find for sale are variants on these citrus-based formulas. Unfortunately, this falls in a similar vein to "High John" oils that contain no actual John the Conqueror root. It's missing the key ingredient. Admittedly, it's hard to blame people for some of this confusion, as the item at work seems to be itself based on a bit of botanical confusion. Like Van Van from  vervain , the name is a corruption -- possibly deliberately done for purposes of branding by the original manufacturer who s...

Baptized candles have a tendency to display either current or to-be behaviors of their subjects. Skull candles, which are used for the purpose of magically controlling a person's thoughts, seem to "weep" with a certain frequency. Some of this is just due to the shape of the candle -- the eyes being one of the shallowest points, therefore make it likely that the liquid wax will pour out of that spot -- and one must be cautious with candle readings to comprehend what is normal burn behavior for a style of candle. Nonetheless, a weeping skull candle can indicate many things. I might suggest he subject is upset or will become upset by thing thing you're requesting, or it might indicate that he or she is already unhappy. If you get a sobby little skull candle as part of your work, consider whether your demands on the person might be too emotionally damaging to them!  Domination and control work requires careful judgment about how hard to push—this is one area where...

Most folks have a deck of cards lying around somewhere -- in a kitchen drawer, on a shelf gathering dust, maybe left over from the last family poker night. What many don't know is that before tarot became the go-to divination deck for modern practitioners, regular playing cards were the fortune-telling tool of choice for root doctors, conjure workers, and everyday people seeking answers. They were what Carmen used to see she was fated to die. Playing card divination has deep roots in hoodoo tradition. It was accessible, inconspicuous, and didn't require special ordering (tarot cards were a specialty item until about the 1970s.) A root doctor could carry a deck anywhere without raising eyebrows -- after all, plenty of folks played cards for entertainment. But in the right hands, that same deck could reveal secrets, predict outcomes, and divine the best course of action for love, money, or protection work. Here is a simple system for card reading where everything makes intuitive ...

Every now and then someone will tell me they’re a traditional witch — not hoodoo, not ceremonial, not chaos magic or folk practice or anything like that. No, they’ll say, they follow the old ways . And what they mean by that is Wicca. Which is kind of like saying you practice ancient medicine, and then pulling out a bottle of Tylenol. Wicca is not ancient. Not in any historical sense. It is a 20th-century religion that incorporates a few bits of older lore and a lot of Victorian fantasy, welded together with some Margaret Murray and Aleister Crowley, seasoned with folklore-sounding verbiage, and packaged as if it were The Old Religion™. But in truth? It dates to the late 1930s. That’s after cornflakes, after jazz, after the invention of television. This doesn’t mean Wicca is bad. It just means it’s not old. We’re absolutely allowed to like and to practice new things.  There’s also the other small matter of using "Wicca" as a synonym for witchcraft. Because of how language w...