I am often asked -- especially by people who have grown up outside the cultural traditions of hoodoo -- how to find an authentic reader, conjure doctor, or root worker. In addition, many people tell me that they hope to locate such a person through the internet.
Finding a good reader or root worker can be a hit-or-miss proposition on the net. One reason for this is that ads for fraudulent psychic tarot readers appear everywehere and it's difficult to decide who is honest and who is not just by looking at their web sites. Another rerason is that at the present time some of the best workers are older people in rural areas who are not online. But no matter how you locate a prospective root worker or reader, there are a few questions you need answered in order to separate authentic conjure doctors from the economic predators posing as root workers:
It is not necessary for a root doctor to be a psychic reader, but the better ones usually are. So the first thing to ask is:
Is the conjure doctor also a reader -- and if so, what kind?
There are several kinds of readers in the African-American community:
"Gifted" readers -- usually those born with a veil or caul -- just read you. They may ask to touch your hand first or hold an item of yours in their hands, but on the whole, they do not use any tools to aid their prescience. In the early 20th century, female readers of this type were also known as "fortune telling women" -- and many of them were also members of the Spiritual Church movement. One of the most famous of the old time fortune telling women was Aunt Caroline Dye.
Reading the bones was once common in Hoodoo, but i have found few who do it these days. I know of two styles.
The first style uses chicken bones, and each bones has a special meaning -- the wing bone for travel, the breast bone for love, and so forth. The bones are thrown on a table and they are read much as tea-leaves are, by the pattern made and by the directions they point.
A second way of reading the bones uses possum bones -- but this i have never seen done, only heard it described by an African-American woman born in Tennessee whose grandfather did it, circa 1945-50, when he was very old and she was young. She told me that he would only read the bones outdoors in the yard, sitting on the dirt and throwing them into a circle drawn in the dirt. She phoned me to see if i knew enough about reading possum bones to refresh her childhood memories of her grandfather's method, but alas, i did not; however, according to Eoghan Ballard of the University of Pennsylvania, this woman's grandfather was throwing the bones according to a system used by Bantu people throughout Southern Africa; the bones are usually knuckle bones, marked with dots and crosses. The reading of knuckle bones led, quite naturally, to the use of dice in divination, and in America dice reading, especially when performed according to one of the popular 19th century French methods, has more or less replaced reading the bones among African-Americans.
Card readers come in two types: card cutters, who cut the cards and read the results, and regular card readers, who do layouts to obtain their divinations.
Card cutters are considered a little old-fashioned these days, although some readers still like to start a reading by having their clients cut the deck and thus give them strong first impressions. Card cutting itself usually involves having the client cut a card deck three times, using the left hand (the hand that is closest to the heart)). The top card on each stack is then turned and the cards are read as "Past," "Present," and "Future" on the query.
Card readers usually employ regular playing cards and work according to one of the 19th century French or German methods of symbolism (such as Le Normand's system of cartomancy), but the use of tarot is growing rapidly among African-Americans. Hoodoo card readers should not be confused with so-called Free Psychic Tarot Readers, who may or may not be authentic.
Some African-American readers get their divinatory impressions through tea leaves, coffee grounds, palm reading, scrying mirrors, or the crystal ball. These methods are found among European-American readers as well.
Seemingly unique to African-American reading is the employment of naturally marked rocks. These may be some sort of conglomerate stone, a flowered obsidian, or a matrix containing multiple small fossil inclusions -- anything marked with dark and light areas in which images can be seen. They are used much like a scrying mirror or crystal ball.
Astrology and numerology have never been very popular among black readers, but they continue to gain acceptance among black clients, who may seek out white readers for these services.
Gifted readers who are also two-headed doctors are the ones most likely to give a new client a free reading. If the reading is free, is it accurate or is it a canned cold reading? (For more on canned cold readings and the Gypsy fortune telling scam, see below.)
Prices range from 25 to 45 dollars for a half-hour reading, depending on the region of the country and the reputation of the reader. (For more on canned cold readings and the Gypsy fortune telling scam, see below.)
What kind of job will be performed?
Generally speaking, there are three types of work that a conjure doctor will perform on behalf of a client: setting lights (burning candles), making up a mojo bag , and laying tricks (performing spell-work). Some workers do only one or two of these things, others do all three.
Of those people who do spell-work on behalf of clients, some will only perform certain types of jobs, while others will be able to handle almost any situation.
The ways in which hoodoo doctors chose to limit their practice are idiosyncratic, to say the least.
Many root workers flatly refuse to do "bad work" or destructive spells against the client's enemies. They will only perform positive and helpful spells, such as love drawing, enhancing gambling luck, or bringing about a client's personal success. One hoodoo i know limits his practice to uncrossing, healing, and blessing, but -- perhaps because he has so much sympathy for men -- he won't work on behalf of women who want to dominate their husbands or charm them into remaining sexually faithful. Such workers are sometimes called "lady hearted," because of their morality.
Even those conjure doctors who "work both sides" (good and evil) may only take jobs that relate to certain areas of human life. For instance, they may specialize in love and sex spells of all kinds, from bringing about reconciliations and helping clients find quick sex, to granting women domination over their men and working on a client's behalf to destroy love through a messy break up -- but they will not make mojo hands for gambling. Other root doctors, equally proficient, may specialize in money-drawing and business prosperity spells and also offer lucky charms for gambling -- but steer clear of working love and sex spells. Such self-imposed limits to any given doctor's repertoire are partially a matter of what the individual worker is gifted for and partially a matter of what he or she feels most comfortable providing to clients.
In short, finding the right conjure doctor for you is not only a matter of locating someone who is honest and fair, but also a matter of matching your needs to the doctor's specialties.
How much is the cost and how is it determined?
I know workers who set lights for prices ranging from the cost of candles and dressing oil (free service) on up to 10 dollars per dressed 7-day vigil candle -- anything more would strike me as high.
Many good root workers will set lights as a free service, just for their cost of supplies, but they will charge for spell work. -- and this is especially true of those who are Spiritualists. In fact, some Spiritual workers keep an altar with lights set up at all times and charge nothing -- not even the cost of a candle -- to add your name and petition to the prayers they are making.
Beware Gypsy fortune tellers who start you off with a 10 dollar candle and then tell you it didn't work and you will need a "special" 50 dollar candle.
For more on canned cold readings and the Gypsy fortune telling scam, see below.
How will it be made and how fair is the cost?
If you meet face-to-face with the root worker who is going to make you a mojo or conjure hand, you will probably be asked for something personal of yours or to write something on paper. If you are not asked for such items, it is possible that the root worker is simply selling pre-made mojos purchased in bulk from a supplier.
If you do not meet face-to-face with the root worker who is going to make you a mojo or conjure hand, you should receive full instructions on what personal items and written-upon papers to place in the bag as you fix it up at home.
Mojo hands generally come in two degrees of power -- regular and triple strength. Average prices around the country run from 10 to 25 dollars for regular and 25 to 50 dollars for triple strength. Anything higher than that ought to justified on the basis of containing rare ingredients -- but could run up to 200 dollars.
How will it be done and how fair is the cost?
The conventional way in which root doctors create a magical link between the client and the job to be done -- either when they meet face-to-face or when the client lives in a distant place -- is to ask for the client's (or the target's) personal concerns, name papers, and/or petitions. Next, it is customary to give or send the client some spiritual supplies (such as crystal salts to bathe in or a floor wash for the house or an herbal tea to drink) with instructions for their use. While the client uses these things, the actual job is being done. Finally, the worker reports back to the client on how the job went and when results can be expected. This sort of long-distance hoodoo is not new; i have catalogues from the 1920s in which such services are offered through the mail. Clients often say of such long-distance work, "He had me to start the job and he did the balance."
If a conjure doctor asks nothing personal from you or sends nothing to you to work with, i would openly question how -- and whether -- the job is actually being done.
Prices for root work can range from 100 to 1,000 dollars or more per job, depending on how complex or difficult the job is or how long-standing the condition is. An average range is 150 to 300 dollars.
In asking you to pose the above questions, i am NOT trying to reduce finding a conjure to a matter of cost guidelines, but merely hoping to remove some of the mystery and confusion surrounding having hoodoo work done by a practitioner in another region, someone you do not know and more or less have to trust.
Those who work the "Gypsy fortune telling scam" are not always ethnically Romany (Gypsy) people, although many of them are. Rather, the word "Gypsy" here refers to the profession of being a "Gypsy fortune teller," a career that is mostly practiced by women and which mostly preys upon female clients. Other terms for people who work the Gypsy fortune teller scam are psychic fraud, fake reader, and 900-number psychic line con artist. If the person claims to contact the dead on your behalf, he or she is called a fraudulent medium. If the person promises to cast magic spells, he or she is a fraudulent root doctor, fraudulent witch, or fraudulent witch doctor.
There are two parts to the Gypsy fortune telling scam -- the canned cold reading and the candle scam. In addition, a confidence game may be worked, as described below.
The Canned Cold Reading
The canned cold reading is called "cold" because the person being read for is a "cold" prospect or a stranger. It is called "canned" because it follows a predetermined script -- a particular piece of patter that consists of generalizations that will be true for most people, or which most people will agree are true about themselves.
The Gypsy reader may use cards, a crystal ball, or palmistry as a prop, but these are only added for their decorative and "authentic" appearance. The reading may be conducted in person or over the telephone. In either case, the reading itself is canned and could just as well be spoken by a robot, regardless of what is revealed in the cards, the ball, or the client's hands.
Among the phrases you will hear in a canned cold reading are the following:
"You are a good, kind person, always helping others -- but you never seem to get any help in return"
"I sense that you are searching for true love but you have not yet found that special person."
"You have always tried to do what is right -- and sometimes that has gotten you into trouble."
"You have had financial ups and downs in your life and you could use more money now. But don't worry -- there will be a change in your financial situation within a year, and it will be for the better"
Most important to the canned cold reading is the phrase "There is a dark spirit hovering over you..." or "there is a dark cloud over your left shoulder..." Some, but not all, African-American Gypsies (Black Gypsies) modify this phrase and mention "crossed conditions," just like a real root worker would. European-style Gypsy readers may instead say that you are "cursed" or "bewitched." In any case, the negative suggestion of the "dark spirit" or "dark cloud" or "enemy" is introduced during a client's first cold reading in an attempt to select out repeat customers for the candle scam.
The Candle Scam
Once you have been introduced to the "dark spirit" that threatens your happiness, the Gypsy offers to burn a blessed candle on your behalf to relieve the condition. The charge is typically 10 dollars per candle, paid in advance. Generally, no other forms of conjure will be offered at the first reading, but the Gypsy will make an appointment for you to return for a report on how the candle-burning went.
When you return, you will be told that the condition was worse than anticipated and that four (or more) candles were burned. You will be presented with a corresponding bill. Sometimes a burned-out glass-encased candle will be doctored to make it sooty and this will be shown to you as "proof" of the bad situation.
At this point in the scam, you can either walk out -- or you can pay the extra fee. If you pay the additional charges, the Gypsy will promise to do more candle burning for you -- and this will continue until you run out of patience or money, or both. A full program can cost from 40 to 900 dollars before the Gypsy turns you loose. And, needless to say, you have only the Gypsy's word for it that ANY candles were burned on your behalf at all.
The Confidence Game
If a client is perceived as unintelligent and the Gypsy is a serious criminal, the candle scam can lead to true confidence game work, such as a special Gypsy variant of the pigeon drop, in which the client is told to close out her bank account and bring the cash money in to be "blessed" or to have "the curse removed." As with the regular pigeon drop, the envelopes are switched, leaving the client with a wad of cut-up newspaper.
"I Reunite Lost Lovers -- Guaranteed"
Some Gypsy scam artists pose as spiritual doctors, spell casters, root workers, hexenmeisters, witch doctors, wizards, magicians, or witches. Those who follow this trade tend to advertise that they specialize in "reuniting lost lovers" and may claim they can "bring back your lover in 24 hours." They may even say that their spells are "absolutely guaranteed."
However, if you engage their services, you will notice that all they will offer to do is burn a candle for you. They do not ask you meaningful questions that a real root worker or conjure doctor would ask, such as, "Do you have anything personal of your lost lover, such as a hair, that i can use as a link in casting a spell?" They don't ask this because they really have no intention of casting a magic spell -- and they may not even be planning to actually burn a candle on your behalf.
Typically, fake root doctors who promise to reunite lovers with a candle spell will soon tell the client that the loved one has another lover and that a simple candle won't work after all. At this point they substitute the more costly goal of promising to drive off the other lover's influences. They can claim that this will take time, and in this way they can string out clients who have suffered a love or marriage break-up for between $400.00 and $900.00 in candle-burning charges.
The Online Frauds
I wish i did not have to warn folks about this, but there are quite a few fraudulent web sites advertising the services of psychics, astrologers, card readers and / or root doctors, spell-casters, witches, sorcerors, and Santeria or Voodoo priests or priestesses that exist for no purpose other than to rip off guillible clients. Keeping track of these scam sites is next to impossible, as they change their domain names regularly to avoid prosecution.
Be on the look-out for sites which require payment via Paypal only, which give no street address or telephone number for contact, which show no pictures of a shop or reading room. They usually show no picture of the person you are conacting, either, and if the owners claim to be initiates in an African diasporic tradition, they do not present their lineage or the name of their house, the way legitimate prietsts and priestses in these services do. Some of these fraud sites do not even give you an email address for contact purposes -- you can only reach them via a blind form-mail online.
The sites themselves may contain "free spells" or "free powerful love spells" as a come-on, but upon investigation, many of those spells will be illegal plagiarisms stolen from reputable sites. (One reason the fraud sites get shut down so often is that plagiarism on this scale is a copyright violation and as such it is both against the law and against the terms of service of most internet providers.)
Beware: Scam sites like these are little more than black holes down which you can pour your money.
Educate Yourself About Psychic Fraud
Believe it or not, there ARE real, sincere, and honest root workers in the world. Few, if any, promise "guaranteed results," though, and most will offer to do a lot more than merely burn candles on your behalf. In order to learn to recognize the cold readers, the psychic line fakes, and the candle scam Gypsies from the genuine spiritual workers, you may wish to study a little more deeply.
Some good material has been published on the Gypsy reader phenomenon, e.g. "The 'Gypsy' Fortune-Telling Scam" by Nelson and Anne White and "The Gypsy Fortune Teller and the Sucker" by Frank Armstrong. I suggest, though, that if this subject interests you, then rather than seeking out published sources, you simply learn Gypsy fortune telling -- or at least the entire 30-minute cold-reading patter -- by investing a few bucks in a small tape recorder and the cost of a series of readings.
For the past 30 years, i have paid to see the Gypsy fortune telling routine "performed" in New York City. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and smaller cities throughout the nation, by actual Gypsies as well as by Latinos and African-Americans -- and the wording of the patter has been remarkably uniform regardless of era or place. My investment in this piece of personal research so far has been less than 100 dollars all told, because i go in for the introductory reading when it is on a half-priced special, i never ask for a love-reunion, and i bail before the candle-burning kicks in.
Black Gypsies -- people of either mixed Romany and African ethnicity or African Americans dressing as Gypsies -- were known in America from before the time of the Civil War. Many of them were gifted workers. An eye-witness account of such an ante-bellum practitioner who was called a "Voodoo Woman" but was described as a "light mulatress" and dressed in what seems to have been Middle Eastern or Romany style costume, can be found in Sallie M. Parks' article "Voodooism in Tennessee," originally published in 1889.
During the 1920s, the entire Gypsy cold-reading patter, including the "dark spirit hovering over you" portion (the introduction to the candle scam proper), was transmitted verbatim to urban African-Americans by contact with Gypsy fortune tellers. Hoodoo workers who adopted this routine -- in those days at least -- also tended to dress themselves in some of the then-typical Gypsy garb, such as hoop earrings and head scarves. They called themselves "Black Gypsies."
Acoustic rural blues songs from the period prior to the Second World War often contain references to hoodoo that shed light on how it was practiced in earlier times. In "Black Gypsy Blues" by Walter "Furry" Lewis, recorded at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, on September 22, 1929, the singer compares his difficult but seemingly omniscient lover to a Black Gypsy reader (and also manages to include two once-popular dances -- the Eagle Rock and the Sally Long -- and a railroad line -- the New York Central -- in his grab-bag of imagery). It is interesting to note that Furry Lewis' use of the negative term "Black Gypsy" for his soon-to-be-ex-lover is almost exactly contemporaneous with Will Shade's use of the highly positive term "fortune telling woman" in The Memphis Jug Band's 1930 recording of a blues about the well-respected Spiritualist reader Aunt Caroline Dye.
BLACK GYPSY BLUESAnother song called "Black Gipsy Blues" was recorded by Curtis Jones in 1938. Although lyrically more coherent than the earlier song, it too concerns a jealous female lover who seems to have clairvoyant knowledge of the singer's doings, and is thus compared to a Black Gypsy.
by Furry LewisMy woman must be a Black Gypsy, she knows every place i go
Woman must be a Black Gypsy, she knows every place i go
She met me this mornin' with a brand new .44When you used to my Gypsy, done just so and so
When you used to my Gypsy, you done just so and so
Now i got another baby, can't use you no mo'Eagle Rock me, Baby, Sally Long me too
Eagle Rock me, Mama, Sally Long me too
Ain't nobody in town can Eagle Rock like youMy woman got a mouth like a lighthouse in the sea
Woman got a mouth like a lighthouse in the sea
Every time she smiles, she shine her light on meHad the blues all of '28, started again in '29
Had the blues all of '28, and started in '29
They tell me, "New York Central's the Nickel Plated Line"Lord, i asked for cabbage, she brought me turnip greens
Lord, i asked for cabbage, she brought me turnip greens
I asked her for water and she brought me gasoline
An entirely different "Black Gypsy Blues" was
recorded by Merline
Johnson in Chicago on May 2nd, 1940, for Vocalion Records. Johnson's
Black Gypsy boasts of her powers, uses
the slightly exotic name "Rosa Lee,"
and subtly hints that she engages in
prostitution as a sideline, her clients
being "all the men in town" who are "lonesome."
Merline Johnson was a more sophisticated and polished
performer than Furry Lewis, and her
"Black Gypsy Blues" reflects a comparatively greater
familiarity with the urban Black Gypsy phenomenon.
I'm the Black Gypsy, don't you want your fortune told?
When you get lonesome, and begin to feelin' blue,
I'm the Black Gypsy, and they call me Rosa Lee,
All the men in town, comes to see poor me,
Yes, I'm the Black Gypsy, and all my work's by trade,
BLACK GYPSY BLUES
by Merline Johnson
I'm the Black Gypsy, don't you want your fortune told?
I will start from the first, and end up on your soul.
When you get lonesome, and begin to feelin' blue,
Go to see a Black Gypsy, she will tell you what to do.
I'm the Black Gypsy, and they call me Rosa Lee,
When you get lonesome, call around to see me.
All the men in town, comes to see poor me,
Because I know what to do, to ease your misery.
Yes, I'm the Black Gypsy, and all my work's by trade,
And the man I can't ease his misery, has never been made.
While Gypsy fortune telling is not a terribly common scam among African-American practitioners, i have run across it in urban areas where Gypsy palm readers have passed their techniques along to unscrupulous African-American readers. Basically, if a reader calls herself a "gifted Southern hoodoo worker" but spouts the Gypsy fortune telling patter at your first reading, she is a "Black Gypsy" and not a real root doctor.
Sadly, to the extent that African-American conjures pick up the Gypsy fortune-telling patter and become Black Gypsies, they also tend to lose their contact with traditional African-diaspora root doctoring skills. Like all the Caucasian, Romany, and Latino Gypsies, they usually cannot make a mojo or perform actual hoodoo root work. They will not perform actual love spells or money spells; all they will do it burn candles -- if that. Today, among my Southern clients, there is a tacit understanding that "readers" come in two types -- "readers who work for you" and "readers who just take your money for candles."
Let the client beware.
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to Eoghan Ballard (eballard@sas.upenn.edu)
for the information on Bantu bone-reading.
Thanks to John Irving (john.i@mediaone.net) and Eliot
Williams (williams@medicine.wisc.edu) for helping
me to locate a picture of Furry Lewis and pin down
the discographical data on his recording. Thanks to Chris
Smith (chris@skerries.demon.co.uk) for the transcription
and discographical information on the Merline
Johnson song. Thanks also to Claudio Caponi
(ccaponi@bluewin.ch) for the lyrics of the 1938
Curtis Jones song "Black Gipsy Blues."
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