The True Queen's Root - Hoodoo's Lost Secret to Female Power and Spiritual Domination

old fashioned hoodoo conjure queen's root

The Queen Elizabeth Root used in hoodoo is usually nowadays an orris root. In older hoodoo it was taken from a plant called stillingia, or Queen's Root. I cannot find the exact point at which the new name was acquired, but it appears that the name "Queen Elizabeth" came to use coincidental with the time that it was being replaced in curio catalogues with orris root. In this instance, it was probably to evade accusations of fraud or mislabeling for selling queen's root from a different plant.

A similar thing happened with John the Conqueror root, where the easier to acquire jalap replaced the more traditional root, usually identified as either Solomon's Seal root or a Jack in the Pulpit root.

In hoodoo tradition, the John the Conqueror root is the symbol of masculinity; it's even (rarely) called "man root." Its properties include the ability to draw money, success, wit, virility, love, crossing, uncrossing, and luck.
The female root is the Queen Elizabeth Root, more commonly called Orris Root. It's good for having babies.

The bizarrity of the fact that babies is one of the few things the original Queen Elizabeth I never did seems rarely to dawn on anyone. No one uses the roots for power, no one uses them for money, no one uses them to take down the Spanish Armada. Nope, these roots are only used for fertility, and things that lead to fertility (love and sex.)

Add the fact that the John the Conqueror root is considered so masculine and manly, that many people even insist that formulas which contain it are "For Men Only" and label their products so.

What is there for the modern woman who aspires to something besides "babies" and "control man"? Well, here's what I've been told: girls can happily use Conqueror roots too. Just as lodestones come in male and female, so do these. A male Conqueror is longer and usually more pointy. A female one is rounded. All a woman needs to do to use the John the Conqueror root to whatever gain she wants without upsetting any spiritual gender balance, is to choose a rounded one.

With your female Conqueror root, you can go out and do all the stuff a Queen Elizabeth root ought to do but doesn't. Maybe we can call it a King Christina root.

Paper-in-Shoe Spells

A popular and very traditional hoodoo spell, often used for any situation where you need to control someone with magic , is the namepaper-in-shoe spell. It's very easy: you write the target's name 3, 7, or 9 times on a paper (depending on intent and who's giving instruction) then fold it up, sometimes after dressing it with oils or powders, then put it in your shoe. This "keeps the person underfoot" or "stomps out the trouble" or any other number of metaphors. I had this work several times over the years. In one instance, I was working for a very unpleasant boss, on a short-term job. It was the last day, and I only had about 3 hours of work left on the project; and I wanted him to up my pay for the day since it almost wasn't worth the trip across town for the amount he was paying me, for only 3 hours. He was very reluctant. So I wrote his name 3 times on a 5-dollar bill he'd given me, and dusted it with Bend Over powder. He paid me what I ...

Ammonia - A Spiritual Cleansing Agent for Magick

Ammonia is a strong cleansing agent in hoodoo magick, both physically and spiritually. In Edwardian times it was advised as an old home remedy for a nerve tonic (see recipe below.) "Household ammonia" or "ammonium hydroxide" is a solution of NH3 in water. Household ammonia ranges in concentration from 5 to 10 weight percent ammonia. The Romans called the ammonium chloride deposits they collected from near the Temple of Amun (Greek Ἄμμων Ammon) in ancient Libya 'sal ammoniacus' (salt of Amun) because of proximity to the nearby temple of Amun, the chief god of ancient Thebes. Salts of ammonia have been known from very early times; thus the term Hammoniacus sal appears in the writings of Pliny, although it is not known whether the term is identical with the more modern sal-ammoniac (ammonium chloride). In the form of sal-ammoniac (nushadir) ammonia was important to the Muslim alchemists as early as the 8th century, first mentioned by the arab chemist...

Spiritual Use of Turpentine in Hoodoo and Witchcraft

I have posted in the past about the use of giving one's bedding a spiritual cleansing from time to time. I recently was laundering my pillows in the same load of laundry as some turpentine-soaked rags, with the result that the pillows emerged from the wash reeking of turpentine. From a magical perspective, this may not be a bad thing. Turpentine is used in old-time hoodoo rituals for purposes such as uncrossing, protection and sometimes as a feed for mojo bags. Its solvent powers and strong odor do indeed suggest a powerful spiritual cleansing agent, and it is still used in some modern day cleaning products on a purely practical level for these same reasons. Old time medicines sometimes included turpentine as a thing to drink, in small doses. A book from the 1850s, The Domestic Medicine Chest , recommends giving it to children in a dose of one teaspoon for killing tapeworm. Relatedly, in old time hoodoo cures for "live things" turpentine might be made into a tea...

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

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