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This online presentation of
Hoodoo in Theory and Practice by catherine yronwode
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JEWS AND JUDAISM IN HOODOO:
Jewish Suppliers to the African-American
Hoodoo and Conjure Community

The role played by American Jews in promoting, preserving, abetting, and also, to a certain extent, shaping the development of modern urban hoodoo is a subject that deserves scholarly study, preferably by those who will not approach the subject from the Scylla of racial prejudice or the Charybdis of identity politics. In lieu of fuller documentation, at the present time please accept this, my own modest contribution to the subject, offered in a spirit of friendship and solidarity.

The picture shown here is the tombstone of LeRue Marx, for many years the chief chemist of the Lucky Heart Company in Memphis, Tennessee. He was buried in the city's Orthodox Jewish cemetery by the side of his wife, Rebecca Epstein Marx. The little white pebbles on the headstone of their grave are significators of the ancient Jewish custom of placing a small stone on the tombstone each time one visits. I am gratefully indebted to LeRue Marx for his generous transmission of several old-school hoodoo and conjure oil formulas which i use to this day in my own Lucky Mojo Curio Company formulary.

To begin to understand this subject, you should perhaps read the short section of the Hoodoo in Theory and Practice page titled Hoodoo History: Admixtures: European, Spiritist, and Kabbalist Influences on Hoodoo

Further descriptions of the influence of Jews and Judaism in hoodoo are found on these pages

Lucky Brown and Valmor cosmetics: Morton G. Neumann
Lucky Heart: Joseph Menke and Morris Shapiro
Lucky Mongol: Break-Up of the Menke-Shapiro family partnership
Clover Horn Company: Marcus Menke
Hoyt's Cologne: LeRue Marx
Joe Spitalnick Kay, Lewis de Claremont, Henri Gamache, and the Enduring Mystery of Mr. Young
Mikhail Strabo: A Pseudonym of Sydney J. R. Steiner
Shimmush Tehellim, Secrets of the Psalms: Gottfried Seelig
Hoodoo Bible Magic by Miss Michaele and Professor Charles Porterfield

This material has caused a bit of controversy, which, in turn, has given rise to public correspondences in which i tried to quell anger, present the historical record accurately and without either apology or condemnation, and open the way for further friendly research and dialogue.

Writing from the perspective of 2010, i can safely say that the next portion of this page -- my usenet posts of 1996 -- reflects some early thinking on the subject which has certainly evolved since these first casual comments, but i feel that the information is of archival value at least, and since it points the way to the need for further research, i am content to preserve the lot of it on the web.

pookline

USENET POSTS, 1996

The following texts were published to usenet in 1996:

pookline

catherine yronwode
May 29 1996, 12:00 am

Newsgroups: alt.lucky.w, alt.religion.orisha, alt.fan.dr-bronner, soc.culture.jewish
Followup-To: alt.lucky.w, alt.religion.orisha, alt.fan.dr-bronner, soc.culture.jewish
From: catherine yronwode
Date: 1996/05/29
Subject: Jews as purveyors of hoodoo supplies

Hello,

My name is catherine yronwode and i maintain an illustrated web site (actually a book-in-progress) on lucky amulets and charms from around the world and from all cultures and eras. (The URL is in my sig line.)

Recently i have been begun e-mail correspondence with a woman named Carolyn Long, who is writing a book on African-American hoodoo from the perspective of the "religious supply companies" that provide practitioners with candles, incense, floor washes, anointing oils, and the like. We are sharing resources in the form of old catalogues from the 1940s and such.

In our discussion of this, Ms. Long mentioned that she had noticed that the 1930s-40s pioneers of the hoodoo and voodoo supply industry were white, not black. She then speculated that perhaps one reason these suppliers were (and are) so secretive about themselves is that "most of the pioneers in the business were white...they were also marketing hair straighteners, skin lighteners, and tonics... and they didn't particularly want it known that their money had been made from playing on the insecurities and folk beliefs of their black customers."

Here is how i responded to her -- and by publishing this to the net, i hope to open the topic up to discussion in general, seeking more information from anyone who can contribute to my research for the LUCKY W good luck amulet archives or Long's research on African-American hoodoo:

Dear Carolyn,

This is an interesting idea, but i do not agree with it entirely. That is, i agree that there were a lot of white people involved in the practice of hoodoo (since the mid-19th century, according to Jim Haskins' book "Voodoo and Hoodoo") as well as in the manufacturing, sales, and distribution end of things. But i do not agree that these pioneers of hoodoo supply were secretive due to their somehow being ashamed to have it known that they were preying on the superstitions of black folks. I think they were secretive because the chemistry industry is ALWAYS secretive when it comes to proprietary formulae.

Who were these white folks? Look at old ads and you will see that there is a strong, strong, strong Jewish connection -- always. For instance, Clover Horn [a Baltimore hoodoo supplier owned by the Menke family] in 1951 sold "Kosher Soap" and mezzuzahs as well as magical items and cosmetic supplies aimed at the African-American market. I have also seen menorahs for sale in hoodoo shops. And let us not forget the "6th and 7th books of Moses" and all the other Old Testament adjuncts to hoodooism sold by King, Standard O&B, and others since the 1930s.

Until Santeria entered the American picture in the 1970s, the supposedly Christian element in hoodoo was drawn almost exclusively from the Old Testament! Think of old brand names like King David Floor Wash -- who but a Jew would take the image of young David when he was a servant to cruel King Saul, and apply it in allegorical fashion to a floor wash designed to appeal to oppressed blacks whose chief employment was as domestics and who might yet hope to come into their kingship? Consciously or unconsciously, Jews brought a wealth of Old testament symbolism to hoodoo products.

Why Jews? Because soap-making, cosmetics-making, and other small chemistry enterprises were traditional Jewish occupations in German and Austria, and thus in America. This Jewish connection to household chemicals did not only extend into sales to the black community -- think of Dr. Bronner, "Essene Rabbi and soap-maker," an immigrant German-Jew who also markets a "spiritual" line of cleaning products and has done so since the 1940s; his sales are almost entirely to Jewish / white / hippie / New Age folks -- but my friend Fred Burke says that he buys *his* Dr. Bronner products at the Ashby BART Station Flea Market in Oakland, California -- from a black woman. (For more on Dr. Bronner and his "All-One-God" philosophy, see the usenet newsgroup news:alt.fan.dr-bronner or the Dr. Bronner home page at http://www.healnet.com/drbonr.html .)

By the way, i ought to explain that the Jewish connection to what i call the "household chemistry industry" (perfume, hair straighteners, skin lighteners, cosmetics, cleaning products, candles, incense) actually LEAPS OUT at me from the pages of hoodoo sales catalogues because i am myself culturally (not religiously) Jewish, from a German immigrant background. The Jewish connection is obvious (and rather touching, too) when i see menorah candles marketed as "altar candles" and kabbala symbols like "the tree of life" appearing on "Double Fast Luck Soap." Far from feeling that blacks were preyed upon by unscrupulous whites, i see in these old catalogues a bond (alas, now broken) between two ghetto-ized "outsider" cultures.

The same is true in the herb supply industry: Joseph Meyer, whose chatty and informative almanac-catalogues made him the chief source for bulk herbs in America through the 1930s-60s, was German-Jewish. Look at his catalogues or his book ("The Herbalist") and you will notice at once that in addition to the regular lists of materia medica, both are filled with accounts of "botanical curios," that is, herbs used as magical rather than medical supplies. He pays particular attention to "Southern customs" (i.e. African-American customs) and lists page after page of hoodoo herbal staples such as High John the Conqueror, Adam and Eve Root, and Lucky Hand or Salep Root. In one early 1950s almanac-catalogue i have, he recounts his trip to the Caribbean, where he bought voodoo artifacts and herbs for resale in the United States -- and he tells of the emotional effect some of these artifacts had on a "woman from Harlem" who recognized in them her African heritage. Jews are like that (i am like that): they are in a state of permanent diaspora and they work hard to maintain their archaic culture -- so they also take pleasure in helping other people in diaspora maintain *their* unique cultures.

Your comments are welcome ... please post rather than e-mail and please leave all follow-ups intact. (E-mail to me may be posted.)

catherine yronwode -------------------- mailto:yronw...@sonic.net
news:alt.lucky.w -- discussion of folkloric amulets and talismans
LUCKY W Amulet Archive: http://www.sonic.net/yronwode/LuckyW.html

pookline

Amanda Turner
Jun 3 1996, 12:00 am

Newsgroups: alt.lucky.w, alt.religion.orisha, alt.fan.dr-bronner, soc.culture.jewish
From: atur...@tibco.com (Amanda Turner)
Date: 1996/06/03
Subject: Re: Jews as purveyors of hoodoo supplies

> who but a Jew would take the
> image of young David when he was a servant to cruel King
> Saul, and apply it in allegorical fashion to a floor wash
> designed to appeal to oppressed blacks whose chief
> employment was as domestics and who might yet hope to come
> into their kingship?
Are you trying to be offensive? Maybe you meant that in a nice way since you speak of yourself as (culturally) Jewish, but it offends me for one.

It adds to the image of Jews as nothing more than stingy businessmen who would sell their mother for a buck, as well as perpetrating the "bloodsuckers" image by exploiting blacks.

So please explain more thoroughly if you would.

Thank you.

Amanda

pookline

catherine yronwode
Jun 3 1996, 12:00 am

Newsgroups: alt.lucky.w, alt.religion.orisha, alt.fan.dr-bronner, soc.culture.jewish
From: catherine yronwode
Date: 1996/06/03
Subject: Re: Jews as purveyors of hoodoo supplies

Amanda Turner wrote:

> [catherine yronwode wrote]
> > who but a Jew would take the
> > image of young David when he was a servant to cruel King
> > Saul, and apply it in allegorical fashion to a floor wash
> > designed to appeal to oppressed blacks whose chief
> > employment was as domestics and who might yet hope to come
> > into their kingship?
> Are you trying to be offensive? Maybe you meant that in a nice way since
> you speak of yourself as (culturally) Jewish, but it offends me for one.
I am amazed that you took what i said EXACTLY the opposite of the way it was intended. Let me try the "offensive" paragraph again, with some further explanation:
> > who but a Jew would take the
> > image of young David when he was a servant to cruel King
> > Saul,
[because who but Jews understand the Old testament so well?]
> > and apply it in allegorical fashion to a floor wash
> > designed to appeal to oppressed blacks whose chief
> > employment was as domestics and who might yet hope to come
> > into their kingship?
[because who but Jews could so identify with an oppressed people, having suffered oppression themselves?]

I recommend that you look farther than the arena of small-time chemists making household cleaning products. Let's stay in the same time period -- the early 1930s -- but let's consider the movie "Big Boy," starring Al Jolson [a Jewish singer and actor].

In it, Jolson -- in black face -- portrays a black jockey who wants to win the Kentucky Derby. (Historical aside: the movie's premise of a heroic black jockey was not far-fetched -- there was a strong subculture of popular and wealthy black jockeys in the South at the post Civil War time period in which the story is set, although it was extirpated after WW I -- however, a black man would not have been allowed to star in such a movie [for a major film company], hence Jolson made himself up in blackface).

In any case, part way through "Big Boy," Jolson breaks for a musical interlude with the Fisk Jubilee Singers -- a famed black choir. He, a Jew in black face, leads them in a moving, slow, rendition of "Let My People Go" against a backdrop of an old Southern plantation. It was not lost upon reviewers of the time -- or viewers today -- that although the song is considered to be a traditional black spiritual, the text begins, "When Moses was in Egypt land..." and that the song's African-American lyricist used the experience of Jews as a metaphor for his own experience. Thus there is a certain piquancy in Al Jolson, a Jew, singing about Moses with black people. One man's metaphor is another man's history.

Times were more innocent then, of course. People of one cultural or ethnic or racial group could identify with those of another and hope to help them instead of feeling tribalistically driven to separatism from them.

I have no doubt but that the Jewish chemist who named his floor wash formula "King David," and illustrated the label with an image of young David on his hands and knees scrubbing the floor, wanted to give blacks a positive image -- because the metaphor, by extension, implies that even from lowly beginnings, a man can rise to kingship.

How you managed to twist this into a slur on Jews i will never know.

> It adds to the image of Jews as nothing more than stingy businessmen who
> would sell their mother for a buck, as well as perpetrating the
> "bloodsuckers" image by exploiting blacks.
Where you came up with the notion that i had in ANY way implied that Jews were or are "stingy businessmen," is beyond me. I never mentioned such a thing at all. I said that the small household chemicals industry was a field in which a lot of immigrant Jews from Germany and Austria worked. I did not comment on their business practices at all. I happen to know about the Jewish link to the U. S. chemical industry because one of my great-uncles was a Jewish chemist from Germany who went into the textile business, working on formulae for rayon fiber.

Now it is my turn to question you:

Will you reread my original post and admit that at no point did i mention "stingy businessmen who would sell their mother for a buck" ? Will you admit that although you put the word "bloodsuckers" in quotes, as if you were quoting me ('...perpetrating the "bloodsuckers" image by exploiting blacks'), i never used such a word and you have fabricated the quote? And will you admit that far from accusing Jewish chemist of "exploiting blacks" (your term), i wrote that i felt this to not be the case.

Here are the relevant portions of the post

> > [...] Ms. Long mentioned that she had noticed
> > that the 1930s-40s pioneers of the hoodoo and voodoo supply
> > industry were white, not black. She then speculated that perhaps
> > one reason these suppliers were (and are) so secretive about
> > themselves is that "most of the pioneers in the business were
> > white...they were also marketing hair straighteners, skin
> > lighteners, and tonics... and they didn't particularly want it
> > known that their money had been made from playing on the
> > insecurities and folk beliefs of their black customers."
> >
> > Here is how i responded to her --
> >
> >             [...]
> >             This is an interesting idea, but i do not agree with it
> >             entirely. That is, i agree that there were a lot of white
> >             people involved in the practice of hoodoo (since the
> >             mid-19th century, according to Jim Haskins' book "Voodoo and
> >             Hoodoo") as well as in the manufacturing, sales, and distribution
> >             end of things. But i do not agree that these pioneers of hoodoo
> >             supply were secretive due to their somehow being ashamed to have
> >             it known that they were preying on the superstitions of black
> >             folks. I think they were secretive because the chemistry industry
> >             is ALWAYS secretive when it comes to proprietary formulae.
I hope we can continue this discussion on a fact-finding basis -- without delving into any further paranoid assumptions (systematized delusions of persecution) about what i said or meant.

I am looking for folks with first or second-hand knowledge of Jews who worked in the religious supply and/or household chemical industries in the United States from 1920-1970.

I think that should be obvious from what i wrote.

Thanks for your consideration.

catherine yronwode -------------------- mailto:yronw...@sonic.net
news:alt.lucky.w -- discussion of folkloric amulets and talismans
LUCKY W Amulet Archive: http://www.sonic.net/yronwode/LuckyW.html

pookline

USENET POSTS, 2000

Amanda Turner did not reply, and the subject lay more or less dormant in usenet, although i continued my research. After i published an article on the Jewish American Kaye / Spitalnik family to the web (under the title "The Enduring Occult Mystery of Lewis de Claremont, Louis de Clermont, Godfrey Spencer, Henri Gamache, Joe Kay, Joseph Spitalnik, Black Herman, Benjamin Rucker, and the elusive Mr. Young"), and a short summary linking the pseudonym of the well-known hoodoo book author Mikhail Strabo to his actual, Jewish, name Sydney J. R. Steiner, i received another comment, and published the following text to usenet in reply, in 2000:

pookline

catherine yronwode
May 29, 2000

From: catherine yronwode
Subject: Hoodoo and Kabbalah
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 18:12:09 GMT

Omogun@aol.com wrote:

> Greetings Cat:

> (smile) were you serious about it [the marketing of spiritual supplies
> to the black community in America] being a "Jew thing?". (smile)

Yes. That's just historical fact. It has roots in cultural issues that are no longer as strong as they once were, but which most elders will recall still. Before the racial separation and hostility engendered in the late 1960s and early 1970s when many African-Americans became Muslims and bought into the race-hating program of Elijah Muhammend and the Nation of Islam, there was a certain closeness between Jews and blacks that ... well, either you're old enough know what i'm talking about or you aren't.

If you don't know what i'm talking about, i can explain: A core belief of that era, now past, could be summed up in something one of my older internet customers told me over the phone recently: "Well, i always thought that Jews are some kind of Negro -- they just light enough to pass, that's all."

Obviously this belief worked both ways, with many Jews believing that black people were "some kind of Jew" -- witness the large number of Jews who marry black people, and who did so even in the past, at a time when racial intermarriage was illegal in some states.

In any case, there was a closeness between those two groups that resulted in mutual friendliness and cooperation. Also, i think that some Jews liked the idea of working with customers who were looking for magical, non-Christian articles -- Judaism has a long history of magical practice, obviously, and although it monotheistic, the large rankings of angels and demons found in older Jewish texts cause it to take on the operative qualities of a de facto polytheistic practice, more similar to African tribal religions than to the severe monotheism of most Protestants and many Catholics (exempting the Latin American Catholics who preserve vestiges of their own indigenous polytheistic religions, of course). .

> I read your biography and it's
> probably only a "1/2 Jew thing" (smile).
(smile) Well, the funny thing about Jews is that they only count your mother's lineage and there are no "halfway Jews." In other words, if your mother was a Jew, you're a Jew, no matter who your father was. But if your father was a Jew and your mother was not, you're not a Jew. It's just an old tradition, 3,000 years old or so. And by that rule, i am a Jew. Also, my father walked out on the family when i was 4 years old, so i had little exposure to my Sicilian family.
> Why this particular group,
> why not Catholic Germans or French Jews or Chinese
> Protestants, or some other religio-ethnic group?
Ah, that's easy to explain! In the 19th century, many if not most of the pharmacies and labs developing new drugs, chemicals, and beauty products were owned and operated by Germans. The state of chemistry in Germany at the time was the highest in the world. The invention of rayon, clear pohenol plastics, aniline dyes, and much more came out of German, Swiss and Austrian labs. Many big pharmaceutical companaies are still owned or heavily influenced by that era -- multi-national outfits like Bayer (aspirin), Hoffman (LSD), and Pfizer (Viagra) have roots in the German-Swiss-Austrian chemistry industry of the 1800s. In those days, when pharmacists did most of their own compounding of formulas, druggists were all trained as chemists, too, so the stereotype of the German-owned drug-store as a RELIABLE drug store was something with which all Americans of that time period were familiar.

Before World War Two, German Jews were very assimilated into German culture (my mom's family was, for instance) and that included being integrated into the German chemical industry as a profession. In my own family, my mom's uncle left Germany to work for the US branch of the company that developed rayon and my mom's cousin studied to be a chemist, an unusual occupation for a woman at that time

Jews were usually on the lower end of the German hierarchy, however, so when they came to America in that late 19th century, they were not usually wealthy enough to set up as pharmacists or chemists to the white elite, and set up in the black community instead. There they worked out formulas for specifically black beauty-care products -- and when asked to, they prepared spiritual supplies for their root-working customers. A few years ago i interviewed an 85 year old man named LeRue Marx whose German-Jewish father had kept a pharmacy in the black district of Memphis from the 1890s through the 1940s. LeRue Marx had in turn trained as a lab chemist and by the 1930s he had landed a job at the Lucky Heart company (owned by the Jewish Shapiro family) formulating and manufacturing skin bleaches, hair straighteners, dark-tone face powders -- and supervising the packing of curio boxes containing roots and herbs for the hoodoo trade.

When the Nazis got too strong in Germany during the 1930s, a second large wave of German Jewish chemists also entered the US.

For example, in addition to my mother's uncle being a chemist, my mother's cousin Liesel, also a chemist, came to New York City in the 1930s to escape from Hitler's regime, and went to work for a German (non-Jewish) pharmacist because although he was born in the US he could understand German and he helped to teach her English.

One of her first experiences in this pharmacy was making up "Lucky Floor Wash" for the black customers. She had never been exposed to this sort of product before and found it very strange indeed. This pharmacy also sold roots and special perfumes for luck, which she compounded.

When she acquired enough English to get along in a better job, she left the pharmacy and went back to work as a bench chemist in a lab.

Sorry if that was too much of a personal digression, but as i said, it's kind of funny that this stuff runs in my family.

> by the way I've been trying to get my hands on a copy of the
> "practical Kabballah", the spells and incantations/prayers of
> the old Jewish mystical tradition.
There are a number of different books that give various portions of this knowledge. Certainly
Selig's "Secrets of the Psalms" is a great place to start, as the Psalms are well known enough, but the Jewish magical system adds some special syllables (derived from gematric principles) to potentiate them, much in the way that Hindu prayers contain bija (seed) mantra syllables that encapsulate their essence.

Maybe someone else can recommend a few good books on kabbalistic magic.

I hope you don't mind that i posted this letter to usenet, where our conversation began -- these are subjects i'd like to see opened up for discussion, if any others have an interest, plus i don't handle too much email well. Okay?

cat yronwode

Hoodoo in Theory and Practice -- https://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html
Lucky W Amulet Archive --------- https://www.luckymojo.com/luckyw.html

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pookline

Eoghan Ballard
May 29, 2000
To: alt.religion.orisha,alt.magick.tyagi
From: eballard@sas.upenn.edu (Eoghan Ballard)
Subject: Re: Hoodoo and Kabbalah
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 21:50:03 -0500

Cat is right. You are either old enough to remember it, or not. Since the web seems perennially just outgrowing its diapers, I run up against this kind of unawareness often. It still surprises me. This is in part because this lack of knowledge of life a generation before one's birth was not a part of life when I was growing up. We heard and knew a lot about what life was like in quite a few decades before we were born. At least that was certainly the case in my family and among quite a few of my friends.

Anyway, I also wanted to note that Cat was also right about the connection between Jewish pharmacists and rootworking. Here in Philadelphia one of the old rootworking stores was "Harry's Occult". when I was growing up it was in the 1700 block of South Street. South Street was decimated by a decades long plan to build a crosstown expressway which never got built.

In the early '60s South Street was a thriving center of business. Near the Delaware River in the east of the City it was largely Jewish Merchants. From Broad Street and west to the Schuylkill River it largely served a black community. Many of the blacks at this time had come north only recently from the Carolinas as well as from the Georgia Sea Isles.

Harry's grandfather had started the business in the early years of the past century between the two world wars, as a pharmacy. Gradually, preparing rootworking materials took over from all other parts of the business. Harry was still in the business a few years ago, and I believe still is, although he has basically shifted over to selling new age magical and "Wiccan" supplies these days.

I don't recall Harry's last name although about a dozen years ago there was a fairly lengthy article on his store in the local paper. It is from my recollection of that article, as well as from my own memory - I have been familiar with Harry's since 1962 or 1963. If I can find a copy of that article, I will fill in any details, such as the surname, that I may have forgotten.

Eoghan

E. C. Ballard

Debajo del Laurel yo tengo mi confianza

pookline

From the official web page of Harry's Occult Shop,
retrieved from the internet in May, 2009:

"Harry's Occult Shop was started by Harry Seligman in 1917.
He was a registered pharmacist and the business started as a pharmacy..."
Seligman is a Jewish surname.

pookline

FURTHER COMMENTS REGARDING MY FAMILY, 2010:

In speaking of my Ashkenazy German-Jewish family in usenet in 1996 and 2000, i did not mention this, but it is a curious fact that i have in my possession five family trees or stammbaums of my own Jewish ancestral family, and that several of the surnames mentioned above, including Marx, Shapiro, Seligman, and Turner, appear in these records. Additionally, census records show that Morton Neumann, founder of the Valmor company, was related to a woman named Fannie Winkler, and there are people named Winkler and Neuman in my ancestry as well. LeRue Marx's wife was born Rebecca Epstein -- and there are Epsteins in my family tree.

It felt particularly odd to tussle with the unhappy Amanda Turner over what she wrongly perceived to be my prejudice against Jews, when it is possible that both she and i are descendants of Mordechai Josef Levi who changed his name to Marx Tuchmann in 1813 -- for it is a fact that some of the Tuchmann descendants changed their surname to Turner when they emigrated to America.

In other words, LeRue Marx, his wife Rebecca Epstein Marx, and the Morris Shapiro family of Memphis; Harry Seligman of Philadelphia; Morton Neumann and his cousin Fannie Winkler of Chicago; and the critical Ms. Turner of usenet may very well all be my 4th or 5th cousins.

Furthermore, all of these surnames occur only in one branch of my family, the Kohn-Tuchmann-Hopf branch, which also includes the surnames Mayer [the present owner of Indio Products is Martin Mayer], Stein [the name of a company that published pamphlets on magic that were distributed in the African-American community in the 1940s] and Steiner, which was the surname of the popular Jewish American author Sydney J. R. Steiner (03 Apr 1894 - Jul 1971), who wrote hoodoo and Spiritualist magic books under the pseudonym Mikhail Strabo.

Strange but true.

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LUCKY MOJO is a large domain that is organized into a number of
interlinked web sites, each with its own distinctive theme and look.
You are currently reading
HOODOO IN THEORY AND PRACTICE by cat yronwode
.

Here are some other LUCKY MOJO web sites you can visit:

OCCULTISM, MAGIC SPELLS, MYSTICISM, RELIGION, SYMBOLISM
Hoodoo in Theory and Practice by cat yronwode: an introduction to African-American rootwork
Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic by cat yronwode:a materia magica of African-American conjure
Lucky W Amulet Archive by cat yronwode: an online museum of worldwide talismans and charms
Sacred Sex: essays and articles on tantra yoga, neo-tantra, karezza, sex magic, and sex worship
Sacred Landscape: essays and articles on archaeoastronomy and sacred geometry
Freemasonry for Women by cat yronwode: a history of mixed-gender Freemasonic lodges
The Lucky Mojo Esoteric Archive: captured internet text files on occult and spiritual topics
Lucky Mojo Usenet FAQ Archive:FAQs and REFs for occult and magical usenet newsgroups
Aleister Crowley Text Archive: a multitude of texts by an early 20th century occultist
Lucky Mojo Magic Spells Archives: love spells, money spells, luck spells, protection spells, and more
      Free Love Spell Archive: love spells, attraction spells, sex magick, romance spells, and lust spells
      Free Money Spell Archive: money spells, prosperity spells, and wealth spells for job and business
      Free Protection Spell Archive: protection spells against witchcraft, jinxes, hexes, and the evil eye
      Free Gambling Luck Spell Archive: lucky gambling spells for the lottery, casinos, and races

POPULAR CULTURE
Hoodoo and Blues Lyrics: transcriptions of blues songs about African-American folk magic
EaRhEaD!'S Syd Barrett Lyrics Site: lyrics by the founder of the Pink Floyd Sound
The Lesser Book of the Vishanti: Dr. Strange Comics as a magical system, by cat yronwode
The Spirit Checklist: a 1940s newspaper comic book by Will Eisner, indexed by cat yronwode
Fit to Print: collected weekly columns about comics and pop culture by cat yronwode
Eclipse Comics Index: a list of all Eclipse comics, albums, and trading cards

EDUCATION AND OUTREACH
Hoodoo Rootwork Correspondence Course with cat yronwode: 52 weekly lessons in book form
Hoodoo Conjure Training Workshops: hands-on rootwork classes, lectures, and seminars
Apprentice with catherine yronwode: personal 3-week training for qualified HRCC graduates
Lucky Mojo Community Forum: an online message board for our occult spiritual shop customers
Lucky Mojo Hoodoo Rootwork Hour Radio Show: learn free magic spells via podcast download
Lucky Mojo Videos: see video tours of the Lucky Mojo shop and get a glimpse of the spirit train
Lucky Mojo Publishing: practical spell books on world-wide folk magic and divination
Lucky Mojo Newsletter Archive: subscribe and receive discount coupons and free magick spells
LMC Radio Network: magical news, information, education, and entertainment for all!
Follow Us on Facebook: get company news and product updates as a Lucky Mojo Facebook Fan

ONLINE SHOPPING
The Lucky Mojo Curio Co.: spiritual supplies for hoodoo, magick, witchcraft, and conjure
Herb Magic: complete line of Lucky Mojo Herbs, Minerals, and Zoological Curios, with sample spells
Mystic Tea Room Gift Shop: antique, vintage, and contemporary fortune telling tea cups

PERSONAL SITES
catherine yronwode: the eclectic and eccentric author of many of the above web pages
nagasiva yronwode: nigris (333), nocTifer, lorax666, boboroshi, Troll Towelhead, !
Garden of Joy Blues: former 80 acre hippie commune near Birch Tree in the Missouri Ozarks
Liselotte Erlanger Glozer: illustrated articles on collectible vintage postcards
Jackie Payne: Shades of Blues: a San Francisco Bay Area blues singer

ADMINISTRATIVE
Lucky Mojo Site Map: the home page for the whole Lucky Mojo electron-pile
All the Pages: descriptive named links to about 1,000 top-level Lucky Mojo web pages
How to Contact Us: we welcome feedback and suggestions regarding maintenance of this site
Make a Donation: please send us a small Paypal donation to keep us in bandwidth and macs!

OTHER SITES OF INTEREST
Arcane Archive: thousands of archived Usenet posts on religion, magic, spell-casting, mysticism, and spirituality
Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers: psychic reading, conjure, and hoodoo root doctor services
Candles and Curios: essays and articles on traditional African American conjure and folk magic, plus shopping
Crystal Silence League: a non-denominational site; post your prayers; pray for others; let others pray for you
Gospel of Satan: the story of Jesus and the angels, from the perspective of the God of this World
Hoodoo Psychics: connect online or call 1-888-4-HOODOO for instant readings now from a member of AIRR
Missionary Independent Spiritual Church: spirit-led, inter-faith; prayer-light services; Smallest Church in the World
Mystic Tea Room: tea leaf reading, teacup divination, and a museum of antique fortune telling cups
Satan Service: an archive presenting the theory, practice, and history of Satanism and Satanists
Southern Spirits: 19th and 20th century accounts of hoodoo, including ex-slave narratives & interviews
Spiritual Spells: lessons in folk magic and spell casting from an eclectic Wiccan perspective, plus shopping
Yronwode Home: personal pages of catherine yronwode and nagasiva yronwode, magical archivists
Yronwode Institution: the Yronwode Institution for the Preservation and Popularization of Indigenous Ethnomagicology


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