Everything Don't Need A Spell

If they're not working, you may be causing more harm than good.

photo by Shan Wallace

I came across this piece in my writings folder from some months ago, and found it an always relevant message around spells, workings, and how sometimes we cause more harm than good by doing them.

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I had an ancestral reading this evening with a client that was overall pretty good. She was young, smart, and quite accomplished for her young age. Of course she had the many woes of most 20 somethings but for the most part, she was good.

She asked about a boy, a job, starting a new career- the usual stuff, but had a very important question surrounding if she was “allowed to practice Hoodoo”..

Black American Hoodoo is the healing, harming, and cultural preservation practice of Black Americans. It’s how we knew which herbs to grow here, what root worked best with this, what concoction cured this, and what spell works with that. It’s the fabric of Black American ritualizing, praying, and being. And there was a time in my journey where I may have thought that asking this kind of question as a Black American person was silly at best, but utterly disgraceful at worst because of course you can engage in your birthright??? Why are you asking me (really your ancestors) what you’re allowed to do as it relates to your belief system?? But I must say at this current juncture in my professional work as a Hoodoo and full time practitioner, it is a damn good and valid question.

Everybody, Black American or not, does not need to actively be Hoodoo’in, in my opinion. Here, I’m referring to the art and practice of the spiritual aspects of Hoodoo like spells and works and what not. Rootin’ people, love spells, banishing and binding and all that kind of stuff. I’d actually go out on a limb and suggest that most people resort to this kind of work more than necessary, and it’s less about if you have the right to do it but more so if it is even needed. Although many of our ancestors in the US were familiar with Hoodoo Conjure as a system, spell work was not done by just any old body, and in many cases it wasn’t a (publicly) acceptable answer to issues depending on what you believed and where you lived. Because of this, works and rituals are not always necessary or even the primary answer to our qualms, as appealing as it might be, particularly from an ancestral perspective.

So back to my client, I ask her ancestors if they supported her doing spell work to which they replied a firm no, so I relayed the answer to her question free of judgment and proceeded to move on. Yet as the reading ended, my client wanted to return to this question. She let me know that she had done a few spells already, and she wanted to be transparent about that, which I always appreciate.

She opened up and said she’s done some honey work on an ex boyfriend, she got niggas in her shoes, and a few other things…

Now she was never supposed to be doing any of this, but I suppose asking for forgiveness instead of permission is the slick way to go. I ain’t mad girl, same.

I looked to her ancestors for support and felt them shaking their heads as if to say…”we don’t know why she doing all that, she knows it’s not working”. They then said to me “ask about the banishing stuff too” to which I did and my sweet client let me know that she had two banishing spells floating down the closest river and one was under the very couch she sat on as we spoke.

Whew, okay

Needless to say her ancestors shared an intricate banishing of the banishing ritual to rid her, her home, and spiritual framework of all the juju she put down. As I’m relaying the message “throw this out immediately”, “this goes in the toilet” “get a brown bag for that one” “talk to the river about this” it got me to thinking how sometimes we really don’t need to do the spell or the work to get what we want. In the case of my client and many others, sometimes the work that we think we are doing to help the situation is actually what is causing the increase of blockages and confusion. Sometimes, we may be trying to move the lesson on too quickly, or it simply ain’t our place to do it that way. Then we end up with a bunch of jars and still no boy or job or a banished landlord.

When doing workings, I always recommend getting a second opinion, whether that be from your ancestors, spirit team or trusted reader. Spells are amazing because they can help us channel our intentions and when done correctly, do work… but there are strong possibilities of the work being unnecessary or flat out wrong. It’s also important to note that every action has a reaction and a consequence. Spells on facebook may not be our best choice, and sometimes we need to hire a professional to do the spell for us.

For me, sometimes the power of that good juju working is the cathartic aspect that enlivens your own personal power. To have a dream or a desire and chant it over and over while staring into a flame, or a body of water… To yell and scream into the tongue of a cow, a rage that’ been sitting in your chest for weeks….to anoint sweet and tender curios into a cloth of silk considering your lover… it feels so good when the works can be a vault for those emotions, but remember your emotion and that curio together create a spirit thing and you must be prepared to maintain, tend to, or live with the spirit of that thing as you decide if a certain spell is right for you or not. I personally think you can never go wrong with a candle and a prayer to start and see how that fares, but that’s probably the former Catholic girl in me popping out as she does.

Practice does make perfect but patience and time is sometimes the only spell you need. And if that’s not true in your case, know what you’re doing and make sure you’ve got a spirit or trusted practitioner on your team to help you out. Give it some time to work of course, but don’t be collecting bottles, jars, and ting with no results. It may just be time to sit back, snuff the works out, and wait. Maybe the work is patience. Maybe the work is time. Maybe the work is making a different choice.

Like, do you seriously want to bind HIM?

Juju Bae is Osun Priestess, ancestral healer, writer, and self proclaimed bad bitch witch from Baltimore. She is the author of The Book of Juju: Africana Spirituality for Healing Liberation and Self-Discovery and host of award winning show A Little Juju Podcast. Her interests include deciphering ancestral wisdoms, Black spiritual tradition, and the mundane magic in the everyday . Her mystical musings can be found in Vogue, Allure, and Teen Vogue.