Voodoo Blog

When the horse gets in front of the cart, Voodoo becomes Hoodoo. Originally, Voodoo entered our vocabulary via the Franco-African culture of south Louisiana. And, like most French words, Americans are inclined to mispronounce them. When Anglo-African Americans recognized Voodoo as the same practice they knew as conjure or root work, they synchronized the concept, and the word, as Hoodoo.

Today, a newer set of definitions is used. Voodoo, (originally called Vodoun in Africa), is used to define the spiritual practice in which the magic that is effected through the gris-gris objects and invocations, is solely the work of spirits.  Hoodoo, meanwhile, has come to be the practice of superstition in which the gris-gris magic is invested in the object (a doll, a potion, a candle etc.) or invocation alone, without the force or even the knowledge of the spirits. Therefore, Voodoo is the spiritual practice that uses gris-gris, while Hoodoo is a superstition in the gris-gris alone.