What Does It Mean to Work With Spirits in Hoodoo?

Animism, ancestral knowledge, and our relationship with this land.

What if your relationship with the spiritual world began long before you ever knew you were practicing spirituality? Before you purchased your first root, learned the meaning of a particular herb, or even had the language to describe what you were experiencing?

I think one of the most fascinating aspects of Hoodoo is how much of the tradition is connected to this land and the relationships we've developed with the natural world. When we talk about working with spirits, most people immediately think about ancestors, the deceased, or particular spiritual entities, but there's another aspect of these relationships that deserves our attention, and that's animism.

Animism is essentially the understanding that elements of the natural world can possess spirit or spiritual agency. We're talking about the trees, roots, rivers, plants, and the land itself. Within many traditional folk practices, these elements are approached as something we can establish relationships with, and that understanding influences how people interact with their surroundings and incorporate natural materials into their spiritual practices.

Hoodoo is an American folk tradition rooted in this land, shaped by generations of ancestral knowledge, regional customs, and the environments in which these practices developed. Particularly throughout the South, generations of farmers, sharecroppers, herbalists, and families cultivated an intimate familiarity with their surroundings through agriculture, gathering plants, preparing remedies, and observing the changing seasons. Much of that knowledge was passed down through everyday experiences, becoming part of the customs and traditions preserved within their communities.

I come from a family of farmers and nomads, with roots extending across different regions of this country. I grew up on land, surrounded by elders who taught me everything from farming and spirituality to understanding who I was. There was never any mystery about my identity because the people around me made sure I knew who I was from a very young age. I've always felt naturally connected to the trees, rivers, lakes, and the different environments around me. My relationship with spirits and the natural world developed long before I had the language to describe animism, and those experiences continue to influence my practice today.

And I know I'm not the only person who grew up with experiences like these. Perhaps your family has a history of farming or sharecropping, or you remember relatives who knew how to cultivate their own food, identify plants, or prepare household remedies. These experiences may seem ordinary, but they can tell us quite a bit about the knowledge our families carried and the environments that shaped them.

Even if you've moved away from the place you grew up, there's something valuable about becoming familiar with the land you're living on now. Every region has its own plant life, history, and customs, and developing that familiarity can give you a greater understanding of the natural materials associated with different traditions. Some of the roots and herbs incorporated into Hoodoo are native to particular regions of America, while others were introduced and eventually became part of local practices.

And this is where our understanding of animism becomes particularly interesting. Within Hoodoo, certain roots are approached as possessing spirit, and practitioners may speak to them, pray over them, or tend them according to the customs surrounding their use. High John the Conqueror root, for example, has long been associated with strength, resilience, luck, and overcoming adversity, and some practitioners maintain an ongoing relationship with the root rather than treating it as an ordinary ingredient.

There's also a great deal we can learn by becoming more familiar with the lives our ancestors actually lived. Their occupations, communities, and environments offer valuable insight into the traditions they maintained, and for those who incorporate ancestor veneration into their practice, that knowledge can bring another dimension to the relationships they're developing.

I believe there's so much more to Hoodoo than memorizing spiritual correspondences or following instructions for a particular working. Understanding the relationships between the practitioner, the spirits, and this land opens up an entirely different conversation about the knowledge we've inherited and how we continue to engage with it today.

And we're only scratching the surface. In our next entry of The Hood Grimoire, we're getting into The Art of the Working, where I'll be discussing how to build and layer your spiritual workings, why preparation matters, and how to become more intentional about what you're calling into your life.

But before we get into all of that, I want to leave you guys with a question: Have you ever stopped to think about how much of your spiritual practice may have been shaped by the land you grew up on, long before you even recognized it as spirituality?

Everything is a ritual.