A Skill, not a Religion Admittedly, before and even in my first few hours of researching for this week’s topic I didn’t really appreciate the difference between Hoodoo and Voodoo/Voudun. One or two people had explained it to me in the past and Shannon gave me a very succinct but accurate description of the difference however it wasn’t until I got into the nitty gritty of things that the most pertinent difference really started to stand out. Much as Shannon, and subsequently much of my research, told me – the essential difference between Hoodoo and Voodoo/Voudun is that the former is a skill set while the latter is a religion (that happens to come with a skill set). What made the issue initially foggy for me was that my initial reaction to hearing the distinction explained was that Hoodoo is to Voodoo/Voudun, what witchcraft is to Wicca; in both cases the former is a skill set where the worker may happen to also have a religion, while the latter is a religion with an accompanying and or internal skill set that comes with it – and I am all too aware that there are many who would disagree with such a comparison, however the devil is in the detail. As they say. While it is gradually becoming less and less the case, Witchcraft still seems to have issues achieving the same kind of employment status that Hoodoo has in that there are many, many people for whom Hoodoo is their livelihood and only their livelihood. On the other hand, Witchcraft seems to struggle to distinguish itself as a skill set that is distinct from the religion of the worker – however much the two may be intertwined. Something that comes part and parcel with this partitioning is the freedom to become entangled in needing to make a living and wanting to hold to whichever religious guidelines apply; whether we like it or not there will always be certain things a majority of people want when they come to pay for magic and oftentimes this creates problems for Witchcraft practitioners (at least in my experience and observation) that seem rather absent from Hoodoo folk. While this is not to say that Hoodoo workers are without guiding principles, they have both their own ethics and guidelines that stem from Hoodoo itself; there is a more stringent application of ‘these are the things I am ok with doing, after that it is their choice and their responsibility’. As my sole proper reference for this article quite succinctly sums up: “The dividing line here is between organized religion [Voodoo/Voudun] and organized magic [Hoodoo].” – Prof. Yvonne Chireau, Ph.D, Swathmore College, Pennsylvania Source: academichoodoo
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 10:00:01 +0000
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