What's That Mean?!

 

What’s That Mean?!

By Samantha Corfield

It occurred to me recently that every Southern family (and maybe elsewhere, too) has its own set of sayings regarding magick, witchcraft, spells, hexes, etc.   A favorite in my family, since my childhood, is “Shut up (or stop that or whatever we want you to do) or I’m gonna put a hoodoo on your ass.”  I am sure my nieces can attest to hearing my sister say this, probably repeatedly.

Are we referring to actual “hoodoo”?  In a sense, yes.  But not the homogenized, categorized, organized hoodoo of today’s books and articles. Hoodoo of this kind was never organized. Hoodoo was organic. Hoodoo was local in its meaning, depending on who was using it. It had no dogma written. It was less than specific in all ways.  Where it was being used and by whom could mean a completely different set of ideas.

In the Louisiana of my childhood,  it meant any act of spiritual manipulation of energy using natural ingredients -  roots, herbs, leaves, rocks, dirt, oil (including used motor oil, cooking oil, rancid oil), food, etc., with the intention of bringing about a certain action. Rather than thinking of it as practicing hoodoo, it became the thing itself – a hoodoo to be put, well, on you, or them.

In middle school I once got caught chewing gum in class. My math teacher’s punishment for chewing gum in class was to scrape gum off the hall floor with a putty knife. I know, gross. As abusive as my mom was, she thought scraping gum off the hall floor was a bridge too far. She came to the school and raised hell with this teacher. I ended up having detention as opposed to scraping up gum.  Last thing she said to him was “I’m gonna put a hoodoo on your ass. Just you wait and see.”  Keep in mind, this is Louisiana, and such a thing said was not uncommon. But he was from somewhere back east and just rolled his eyes at her.

Two weeks later, he sat down in class and his chair broke.  He fell backwards and hit his head on the wall, fell off the chair, and broke his pinky finger.  Aha! I was sure this was my mom’s doing.  It was an effective message, but basically not terribly harmful. He missed two days of school.  When he returned, his neck was in a brace, his arm was in a cast, and he was bruised all over.  He was met with a cacophony of young voices asking what happened to him. Did this happen when he fell out of the chair?  No, he went to the doctor to get his hand looked at.  When he was leaving the office, the elevator was out.  He took the stairs and fell down two flights of them. Whoops!  Was this the hoodoo that was put upon him? Coincidence? Clumsiness? All I know is I could not wait to get home to tell my mom. She smiled and said, “Well, that’s enough for him.”  Left to draw my own conclusions, I will always think it was the hoodoo she beset upon his ass.

This brings us to another point:  A hoodoo on your ass was rarely a threat of major harm. This was generally meant to be a magick of inconvenience for you. Was the math teacher pretty banged up? Yes.  Did he meet any mortal, long-lasting harm? No.  And just for the record, he never asked another student to scrape gum up in the hall. I like to think he knew the hoodoo had been placed and worked.

So if you ever hear someone say “I’m gonna put a hoodoo on your ass” just remember, you might just have to take your punishment for being a jerk. 😉