HRCC: Hoodoo Rootwork Correspondence Course Questions and Answers

[catherineyronwode]

What a wonderful surprise -- and we look forward to seeing you.

[ChiChi 22]

Hi! I have been contemplating this move for quite some time now. I literally have so many books already listed on the list. I plan to get the remaining few that I didn’t get from the luckymojo website as soon as I am able. I literally ordered all of what I have from Amazon, EBay, and Etsy before I realized that I could connect with the actual luckymojo site.

I honestly didn’t think that I was going to be able to connect to and interact real live people.who were willing to not only teach but accept me, encourage me, and just be down to earth about it with no ego or title promotion. I have the red and black folders I’m ashamed to now say from EBay forgive me lol I honestly didn’t know I could connect to the site.

I absolutely love the material I have and I sincerely hate that I never knew about the festivals before now. I just purchased one of Conjure Man’s virtual lessons last week. (He is awesome by the way.) He literally put the seal in the empty spaces for a lot of the information I knew already. I wanted to physically absorb the lesson from the video as well as the folder where I got most of the info. I guess you can say polished the rough.

This is definitely the direction I am led to go. LOTS AND LOTS OF PRAYER for guidance in my decision. A LOT of negativity as well, I’ve noticed an incredible amount of disharmony, hatred, and down right mean people in the spiritual community. I have trust issues with a lot now because of my experience so far. I’m still literally in defense mode from a lot of the people I came in contact with during that time. I am just trying to find my place and the right fit. I’m really serious about my journey going forward. I feel extremely comfortable here and there is a HUGE amount of knowledge I am in love with. I woke my husband up late night laughing at one of the stories on the reading list. Just a little snippet, it was the story with the over powder on the bed. LOL!! It’s like a library without the need for a card here.

I recently started reading the Hyatt’s Vol 1-5 via online source.. I am absorbing a lot and feeling really close to my own lineage. My childhood makes A LOT more sense to me now. We weren’t just country. This is not a power move for me. I really want to use what God gave me to the best of my ability to glorify him to really help people.

I tried to access my account for purchase but I can’t remember the password so I can’t get in. I sent a request to update password but it doesn’t send me the link to update it.

I have a list of books that I would like to get to complete my collection along with some items I saw in the store. Is there another way to reset my account? Or should I just create another one? Please let me know what I need to do. I sincerely want to move forward with this no matter what it takes. Now that I know what to expect I won’t lock my card again.. Lol!

Sorry for my book. Thanks in advance for the time taken to read this.

[catherineyronwode]

Hi, ChiChi 22 --

I am so glad you finally found us. This forum is vast, there are more than ten thousand illustrated pages on hoodoo and other forms of folk magic to read at Lucky Mojo, Herb Magic, Southern Spirits, The Mystic Tea Room, Your Wate and Fate, the Association of Readers and Rootworkers, Hoodoo Psychics, The Yronwode Institution, and, of course (LOL) Porcelain Madness -- and all of them are free.

My thought is if you lost your old account number, just make a new one and in the message area, write that you are the same person as (whatever name you used before) and olease merge my accounts. Or something like that. We have folks in our client list who have had four or five accounts. We can merge them!

You sound like a person who would enjoy the course i teach, and i am sure i would enjoy teaching you as well. When you place your next order, just write "Mark me as a prospective student" and attach a photo of the books you bought elsewhere online so you can be credited as having them as prerequisites for the course. We will then keep track of all your purchases and let you know when you have all of the reqired items needed to be enrolled. After that we will set up an interview, go over the program, and get you into the private student forum, which is hidden within this forum.

In the meantime, do post here and we will answer any questions you have.

Oh, and by the way, if you are reading Harry Hyatt's books, you might enjoy these two web pages of mine:

https://luckymojo.com/hyatt.html

https://luckymojo.com/hyattinformants.html

[ChiChi 22]

I already started these. That is exactly how I started reading all of the actual volumes I found online. Lol
https://luckymojo.com/hyatt.html
https://luckymojo.com/hyattinformants.html
I am enjoying all of it. Thank you so much for everything you do and your kindness.

[Halfcocked Jack]

Hi, Ms. Cat and company!

I have been messing around with hoodoo, off and on, for some 40 years now, but most of the stuff I do is informed by candomblé and quimbanda, as I live in Rio de Janeiro.

Anyhow, I have started getting back into hoodoo after having a series of dreams — including one very powerful one — and also after having reread Zora Neale Hurston prepatory to teanching here. I’m interested in doing works around my home and workspace and also in exploring in historical and cultural terms the common Atlantic churn that has given us hoodoo, voodoo, quimbanda and candomblé. I’ve been maintaining altars for almost four decades now and doing a bit of rootwork and stuff here and there.

When I saw Ms. Cat was giving a course, my jaw dropped! I didn’t know she did hoodoo! I am a big, huge fan of her comix work and, that alone, would have made me interested in studying with her. Also, I know enough about hoodoo — and about spiritual grifters — that what Lucky Mojo sells seems to me to be on the up and up, as far as such things go!

My only blocks to taking the course are three:

1) Sourcing things from the States is difficult, but I think I can get the oils and other products in July when I visit family up there.

2) Books… Is there a package deal in which I can buy the whole set? Preferably eletronic?

3) I am a university professor myself, so I will proceed through the course in fits and starts, as time permits.

4) I plan on putting a Lucky Mojo purchase together ASAP, then go after the books. After that, one pays the 104 dollar tuition fee and has a meeting with class staff, correct?

Is this the right way to start?

[catherineyronwode]

Halfcocked Jack --

Hello and welcome to the Lucky Mojo Forum. I am always happy to meet people who remember me from comics (or from even earlier when i was a hippie crafts-person). I have actually been a writer on folk magic and a metaphysical shop-keeper for longer now than i was a comic book editor back then.

1) We usually ask people to buy the required products over time, to make sure they are genuinely interested, but if you purchase the books first and come visit us in the USA, we can do a one-time purchase deal for you on the curios and products. We have done this for other foreign visitors.

2) We have quite a few discounted package deals on books. The packages may include books by me not relevant to the course, but you might find them of use. Compare the course-requirement books ith out discount deal line-ups at http://luckymojo.com/publishing.html -- but note, all of our books are printed on paper. We do not make electronic books. You may appreciate the fact that i am still using the same printing company that Eclipse Comics printed our beautiful white-paper comics on. Same people, going back to the 1980s. Old school.

3) The ourse is designed in 52 lessons of 8 pages each, so many people take it for a year. But you can also complete it in 3 months, over the summer, for instance. There is no time limit.

4) Another alternative is to buy the books from Amazon and send us cell phone pictures of your purchases. The books won't be signed by me, but that my be a convenient way to obtain them The products and curios, however, can only come from my shop. After the purchases have been made, we will arrange a one-hour orientation interview, to get you into the course and into the private portion of this Forum, which only course students can see. Then you can order the course book.

I look forward to connecting further if that is your interest.

Cheers from the old days,

cat

[Halfcocked Jack]

Dear Ms. Cat,

My first serious job, back in the day, was working for Devir Livraria Limitada out of São Paulo, Brazil’s only comic book importer. I read the Comic Journal religiously and was really into the American alternative comix scene, so your name was all over that!

I plan to buy the hardcover deluxe edition of the herbwork book as that looks just amazing. A lot of the other books I am going to have to get electronically, however, because shipping to Brazil is enormously expensive and I make about 25,000 USD a year. But here’s a deal I want to offer you for the books I can get electronically: Instead of killing trees and spending gas to get the to me, I will download them from public sources. In exchange, I will pay Lucky Mojo half their cover value, OR…. I will donate the full cover value in dollars to Casa Nem, our street level trans sex worker safe house here in Rio. My partner and I are sex work researcher activists and friends and colleagues of Indianare Siqueira, the substitute city council woman who runs the squat. Indi’s the real deal and I can get a receipt from her showing the donation.

Would that be acceptable?

I am going to have to buy the red and black folders, the course book, and the hardcover from y’all, regardless, plus all the oils, insenses and what-all.

I should be up in the U.S. for a family wedding in August, Trump permitting, which is when I’ll be able to get what material I cannot source here.

I can make these purchases pretty much immediately and get going with the course book (there’s an electronic version in the internet archives), But I will only be able to pick up the curios and missing physical books in August.

One other question on Assignment Two. I have plenty of black family, but not black American family. I can easily ask some Black American friends and colleagues, but my primary connection these days is to Black Brazilian culture. This is not “latino” or what have you: it is primarily central west African, both the more Dahomean traditions and the Congolese traditions. I have gotten some flack by American hoodoo practicioners that this is not hoodoo, and yeah, it isn’t. But to say hoodoo and quimbanda are somehow alien to each other is a bit like saying Irish Catholicism has nothing at all to do with Spanish Catholicism. It justnisn’t true.

So while I respect the American hoodoo tradition, I have little patience for those who want to make it into a black version of white identity Christianity. I see these traditions as constsntly mixing, even today, and it bothers me no end that people will claim hoodoo as a closed national tradition even as they have no qualms at all about touring the Bahian temples and incorporatimg Brazilian practices into their works. That’s just where I’m coming from. I thought you should know.

I will check out Harry Hyatt’s stuff and also start listening to your podcast!

[catherineyronwode]

Hi, Halfcocked Jack --

Thanks for the trip down memory lane and the wonderful comics community of yore.

Regarding your query about Black Brazilian culture as a way to study hoodoo in my course: This course is not about skin colour or DNA lineages -- it is about the LIVING folklore and folk magic practices of African-American hoodoo. Therefore the homework instruction is to befriend and interview someone from that culture -- not an African and not a Caribbean or Brazilian person.

I am trying to teach the non-Black course student to connect with the culture that created and sustains hoodoo by connecting with African-American people. For a starter, check out my sub-site "Blues Lyrics and Hoodoo" -- look at the images and play the mp3s -- this is purely experiential documentation of hoodoo spells in the Black community, unmediated by any academic theories or occultistic opinions.

Blues Lyrics and Hoodoo, a collection by cat yronwode:
http://luckymojo.com/blues.html

Here is a sample song, with full lyrics, label shots, photos, 2 mp3s (one acoustic from 1973 and the other electric from 1974), a bio of the composer/singer K.C. Douglas, some history about the Black settlement of Vallejo, California, during World War Two, and a bunch of background information on the actual hoodoo topic -- a Black Cat Bone -- with links to other songs on the subject for comparison, and a hub page on the topic itself:

Black Cat Bone by K.C. Douglas
https://luckymojo.com/bluesblackcatbonedouglas.html

I hope this makes my lesson-plan clearer.

[Halfcocked Jack]

Dear Cat,

I’m ready to make one big purchase for delivery to Wisconsin at the end of July. Is that OK? It’s the only time I will be in the States this year and if I were to buy everything in four installments, it would double the price for me.

I have been reading Harry Hyatt and you can quiz me if you like as a measure of my seriousness. Also, I can send you my bonafides. I’m a 57 year old anthropologist. I can assure you I will be a dedicated student.

Anyhow, I am sending the order in today via e-mail, so y’all can check it and see if anything is missing!

Abraços,
Jack

[catherineyronwode]

Yes, Jack i do allow foreign students to order everything at once -- the shipping is a bit too much otherwise. One we fill your order and you receive it you should schedule a Zoom interview with me and we will get to know one another and you will be admitted to the private student forum.

Be sure you read http://luckymojo.com/mojocourse before getting too involved -- there is information there.

[Halfcocked Jack]

Thanks! Looking forward to it!

[catherineyronwode]

Be sure you read http://luckymojo.com/mojocourse before getting too involved -- there is information there.

[Theredqueen911]

Dear Miss. Cat,

I believe I just ordered tonight the last items to complete the necessary purchases before being considered for your correspondence course. If not could someone email me the last bits I need to purchase...but I've combed over the list and Im pretty sure I got everything.

Also, could you please refriend request me on Facebook. And what are the next steps?

Sincerely,
The Red Queen 911

[catherineyronwode]

The Red Queen 911 --

Please call the shop at 707-887-1521 and ask for Colleen to go over the purchases with you and set up an interview with me. You have been marked as a "Prospective Student" so she should have do difficulty bringing your list up to date.

To connect with me as a Facebook Friend, you can just send me a friend request -- and if i do not accept you immediately, please also contact nagasiva (he is Nagasiva Yronwode at Facebook) and he will get us set up.

I look forward to setting you up in the course.

[Theredqueen911]

Catherine Yronwode,
No problem. I will call the shop tomorrow for sure. And I sent you a friend request and dmed you on Facebook. Super stoked.
Sincerely,
The Red Queen 911

[ELTURC0]

Merry Sun's day to Miss Cat, the Lucky Mojo crew and all the magical people on these forums!
After a long long break, I want to resume my Correspondence Course. I think I am in a better place and so much has happened between the last time I posted on these forums and now. I am happy to be back!
Miss Cat, what do I need to do to officially resume my course?
I finally want to get that noble certificate signed by you once I finish my course
Much love and respect
Turco.

[JayDee]

ELTURC0,

Miss Cat is accepting the student work and graduating students up until her departure. You can jump back in and complete the work and continue to be an active participant in the course and the forum. Welcome back and we look forward to see your name changed from student to practitioner!

JayDee

[ELTURC0]

Hi JayDee,
Thank you very much! I look forward to it as well
So here we go!

[Silverfox1369]

Regarding the purchasing of the required materials, if on my next order (I just placed an order, so it'll have to wait for the next one), I wrote in the message area "Please mark me as a prospective student," would only my purchases going forward be tracked, or would previous orders also be included?

I want to take this class with all my heart, and want to make sure I do everything correctly.

Thank you for your time!

[catherineyronwode]

Hi, Siverfox1360 --

Thanks for joining the Forum.

Once you ask to be marked as a prospective student, ALL of your orders, going back to 1996 will be logged toward the course requirements. The reason we ask you to announce your prospective student status is that our customer database is not programmed to distinguish which products or how many of them qualify for requirement purchases, so that work is done by hand (by a human!) on a separate little database tab, and it only done when the customer requests it. At that point you can also request an email showing what you have purchased and what more is requited. The woman who does this customer service is Colleen. Colleen is your friend. Later, she will schedule your interview with me. Show Colleen some love, folks!