Black Christian Hoodoo
Black Christianity is a bunch of Hoodoo, y’all — for realz!
In hot pursuit of magick, I been reading on Hoodoo, Ifa, Lucumi, Santeria and Vodu (AKA Voodoo). I been trying to get my paws on Zora Neale Hurston’s book documenting the year she spent initiating as a priestess. Yes, that Zora Neale Hurston. What’s shaken the hell outta me is what I’m learning about garden variety Protestant religion as practiced by Black folx in the New World.
The New World introduced major challenges to the mostly West Africans from Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Mali, Senegal, and other countries. Slavery wasn’t new to Africans. In Africa, you’d get enslaved by a rival group, and just get absorbed into that group, ‘cause the culture wouldn’t be that different from your own. It was accepted that the God of the new group was superior ‘cause they’d won the battle.
Transitioning as a slave in the New World wasn’t possible in the same way. First, you had crossed an ocean which removed the possibility of ever getting “home.” There was the language challenge. Chattel slavery (or humans being treated as property in perpetuity) was unheard of. Lastly, Western religion was boring AF. It wasn't that Africans didn’t want to comply, the shit just didn’t make sense. People just sat around. There was no ritual. There was no magick.
The religions that did catch on, likely did 'cause Africans could slather on the ritual and the magick. Baptism, for example, caught on because it looked like worship of lower water deities. Catholicism mirrored the hierarchy of African belief systems with the praying to the saints. In some cases things splintered off to become their own religions, like the ones mention before.
I guess what I’m saying here is, investigation is showing me that things ain’t always what they seem. The stuff I think is important ain’t always what’s important, and the Devil is in the ma’ fuggin’ details. That Christianity you practice might be more African than you think!
