Hoodoo (spirituality)

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Hoodoo
Type	Syncretic: African diaspora religions
Region	American South, United States: Carolina Lowcountry, Sea Islands,Gullah Geechee Corridor, Louisiana, North Carolina, Gulf Coast, Tidewater region (Maryland/Virginia), Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Affrilachia, East Texas, Mississippi
Language	English, Gullah Language, African American Vernacular English, Louisiana Creole, Tutnese
Members	African Americans
Other name(s)	Lowcountry Voodoo Gullah Voodoo Rootwork Conjure Hudu Juju

Hoodoo is an ethnoreligion that, in a broader context, functions as a set of spiritual observances, traditions, and beliefs—including magical and other ritual practices—developed by enslaved African Americans in the Southern United States from various traditional African spiritualities and elements of indigenous American botanical knowledge.^[1][2][3] Practitioners of Hoodoo are called rootworkers, conjure doctors, conjure men or conjure women, and root doctors. Regional synonyms for Hoodoo include roots, rootwork and conjure.^[4] As an autonomous spiritual system it has often been syncretized with beliefs from Islam brought over by enslaved West African Muslims, and Spiritualism.^[5][6] Scholars define Hoodoo as a folk religion.

Some practice Hoodoo as an autonomous religion, some practice as a syncretic religion between two or more cultural religions, in this case being African indigenous spirituality and Abrahamic religion.^[7][8]

Many Hoodoo traditions draw from the beliefs of the Bakongo people of Central Africa.^[9] Over the first century of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, an estimated 52% of all enslaved Africans transported to the Americas came from Central African countries that existed within the boundaries of modern-day Cameroon, the Congo, Angola, Central African Republic, and Gabon.^[10]