Hoodoo Memory

why is Hoodoo important? Let's talk about it.

I was recently interviewed about Hoodoo by SENSUAL TERRORS along with five other Black spiritualists. I love any opportunity to speak about the tradition and religion I love so much.

I wanted to highlight a portion of that interview where I spoke about Hoodoo memory.

Check it out.

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Why is it important for Black people to carry this heritage with them? ✢

Black Indigenous religions and traditions restore what has been otherwise destroyed and stolen. Sure, we can apply that to the world at large but zooming in a bit, Hoodoo heals the individual: the body, the mind, the emotions, the spirit. It can heal and mend families.

This happens through ritual and connection with the ancestors and you! You are needed for Hoodoo to have motion in your life. Being in right relationship with your ancestors doesn’t work without being in right relationship with yourself–this is not a linear process, by the way. Healing one relationship directly affects the strength and health of the other.

So while the young Hoodoo can tend to the spirits and the land and the world… This must not supersede or replace the work of tending to herself and herselves: every version that existed, exists, and will exist.

Hoodoo is the birthright of the descendants of enslaved Africans forced to leave their people, their homes and their lands and their languages and their cultures, forced to shrink their godness to become the capital of white supremacist terrorists.

Those same African people, brimming with spirit and ancestors, came to this land with their rhythm and rituals and adapted it to rebel against their enslavers, giving it a new name: Hoodoo.

We carry it on with pride and with honor. We must always remember who we are and we do this by remembering who we’ve been and who came before us and who came before them.

Hoodoo is memory. They have never been able to take that from us and they never will.

Hoodoo is Memory

Hoodoo reminds the Black American what whiteness, racial capitalism, and Christian supremacy desperately seeks to snuff out—that there is power in our bones and it connects us back to our trafficked ancestors on the plantations and further back to the ancestors who remained on the continent and further back still.

I have so much more to say about this, which is why I’m DELIGHTED that Ancestral Voices has invited me to discuss Hoodoo & Ancient Memory on November 29th, 2025.

I’ll be joined by Phillip Loken, my brother in the tradition, as well as the incredible photographer who captured an event I co-led with my partner, Xolani (together we are called the Twin Hoodoo Muthas), known as The Calling: A Hoodoo Homecoming.

It’s going to be a riveting conversation! There’s so much to learn & unpack, ​especially if you find yourself (recently or ready to be!) outside the Christian church.​ And if you know me... I’m getting into alladat! I invite you to buy your ticket and join us virtually on the 29th.

See you there?

With Hoodoo Might,

Jeida