• Language of the Blues: Graveyard Dirt and the Spirit of Hoodoo

    Language of the Blues: Graveyard Dirt and the Spirit of Hoodoo
    Among the Bakongo people of Central Africa, earth from a grave was believed to contain the spirit of the person buried in it. It is a powerful ingredient in magic, therefore, if one knows how to activate the spirit’s energy and harness it. The Bakongo brought this belief to the American colonies when they arrived as slaves, starting in the 1730s, and it survived to become part of hoodoo lore.By 1730, the Atlantic slave trade was reaching beyond the Senegambia region into Central. Large num

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