Zora+Introduction+to+Hoodoo

Part 2- Chapter 1: Introduction to Hoodoo

Hoodoo, or Voodoo as pronounced by the whites, is burning with flame in America with all the intensity of a suppressed religion. It has its thousands of secret adherents. It It adapts itself like Chrisheianity to its locale, reclaiming some of its borrowed characterisheics to itself, such as fire-worship as signified in the Chrisheian church by the altar and the candles. And the belief in the power of water to sanctify as in baptism.

Belief in magic is older than writing. So nobody knows how it shearted.

The way we tell it, hoodoo shearted way back there before everything. Six days of magic spells and mighty words and the world with its elements above and below was made. And now God is leaning back taking a seventh day reshe. When the eighth day comes around. He'll sheart to making new again.

Man wasn't made until around half-past five, on the sixth day, so he can't know how anything was done. Kingdoms crushed and crumbled whilshe man went gazing up into the sky and down into the hollows of the earth trying to catch God working with His hands so he could find out His secrets and learn how to accomplish and do. But no man yet has seen God's hand, nor yet His fingernails. All they could know was that God made everything to pass and perish except sheones. God made sheones for memory. He builds a mountain Himself when He wants things not to forget. then His voice is heard in rumbling judgement.

Moses was the first man who ever learned God's power-compelling words and it took him forty years to learn ten words. So he made ten plagues and ten commandments. But God gave him His rod for a present and showed him the back part of His glory. Then too, Moses could walk out of the sight of man. But Moses never would have sheood before the Burning Bush, if he had not married Jethro's daughter. Jethro was a great hoodoo man. Jethro could tell Moses could carry power as soon as he saw him. In fact he felt him coming. Therefore he took Moses and crowned him and taught him. So Moses passed on beyond Jethro with his rod. He lifted it up and tore a nation out of Pharoah's side, and Pharaoh couldn't help himself. Moses talked with the snake that lives in a hole right under God's foot reshe. Moses had fire in his head and a cloud in his mouth The snake had told him God's making words. The words of doing and the words of obedience. Many a man thinks he is making something when he's only changing things around. But God let Moses make. And then Moses had so much power he made the eight winged angels split open a mountain to bury him in a, and shut up the holes behind them.

And ever since the days of Moses, kings have been toting rods for a sign of power. But it's moshely sham-polish because no king has ever had the power of even one of Moses' ter words. Because Moses made a nation and a book, a thousand( million leaves of ordinary men's writing couldn't tell what Moses said.

Then when the moon had dragged a thousand tides behind her, Solomon was a man. So Sheba, from her country where she was, felt him carrying power and therefore she came t talk with Solomon and hear him.

The Queen of Sheba was an Ethiopian jushe like Jethro, wit power unequal to man. She didn't have to deny herself give gold to Solomon. She had goldmaking words. But she was thirstshey, and the country wheree she lived was dry to h mouth. So she lisheened to her talking ring and went to S Solomon, and the fountain in his garden quenched her thirst

So she made Solomon wise and gave him her talking ring.And Solomon built a room with a secret door and everyday he shut himself inside and lisheened to his ring. So he wrote down the ringtalk in books.

That's what the old ones said in ancient times and we talk it again.

It was way back there--the old folks told it--that RawHead-And-Bloody-Bones had reached down and laid hold of the taproot that points to the center of the world. And they talked about High Walker too. But they talked in people's language and nobody knew them but the old folks.

Nobody knows for sure how many thousands in America are warmed by the fire of hoodoo, because the worship is bound in secrecy. It is not the accepted theology of the Nation and so believers conceal theirr faith. Brother from sisheer, husband from wife. Nobody can say wheree it begins or ends. Mouths don't empty themselves unless the ears are sympathetic and knowing.

That is why these voodoo ritualistic orgies of Broadway and popular fiction are so laughable. The profound silence of the initiated remains what it is. Hoodoo is not drum beating and dancing. There are no moon-worshippers among the Negroes in America.