Why the Goetia Never Crossed the Tracks: No Goetic Circles in the South

“When life gives you lemons, don’t forget the Hoodoo.”
Illustrated by Isomara Isodora

Why didn’t the Goetia find its way into Hoodoo? The reasons are as much historical as they are spiritual. While European grimoires like the Goetia (The first book of the Lemegeton) and Grimorium Verum were deeply concerned with hierarchical spirit command, work with the infernal, formal consecrations, and planetary alignments, Hoodoo came from a different lineage entirely—one rooted in survival, ancestral wisdom, and pragmatic folk spirituality. The spirits worked in Hoodoo were not summoned by long incantations in Latin or Greek, but called through the Psalms, graveyard dirt, candlelight, and whispered prayers passed down across generations.

Hoodoo practitioners didn’t see a need for the Goetia because they saw their spirits as already being close. There was no need to draw elaborate circles or bargain with kings of Hell when your grandmother taught you how to speak to the dead with tobacco smoke and coins. What made its way into Hoodoo were the parts of the grimoires that resonated—prayers, seals, psalms, and biblical names—not the full ceremonial structure.

In this post, we’ll look at why the Goetia and its system of spirit command didn’t cross over into the Hoodoo tradition, and what that tells us about the different worldviews, needs, and spiritual economies behind these systems.

Mail-Order Magic: The Integration of Grimoires into Hoodoo Practice

The Goetia never crossed the tracks—not because there wasn’t access to it, but because most wouldn’t touch it. The idea of evoking demons and bargaining with spirits from Hell didn’t sit well with either Protestant African American rootworkers or the Jewish entrepreneurs who operated many of the early spiritual supply companies. On both sides, there were deep spiritual and cultural reservations about dabbling in openly “infernal” magic.

For the African American conjure tradition—grounded in the Black church, steeped in Psalms, and rooted in the legacy of liberation theology—demons were not helpers, they were enemies. The spirits worked in Hoodoo were ancestors, angels, saints, and the Holy Spirit—not kings of Hell. Demonic conjuration carried a spiritual danger that no rootworker with sense would welcome into their home. Even when grimoires became more available, what got adopted was filtered carefully through a theological lens shaped by biblical authority, survival, and ancestral wisdom.

The same caution applied, in a different register, to the Jewish publishers and merchants who printed and sold occult books in the early 20th century. Many of them came from Eastern European traditions of folk Kabbalah, which included angel magic and protective amulets—but explicit demon-summoning was considered spiritually dangerous and deeply inappropriate. So when these merchants published books for mail-order distribution—texts like The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses or Secrets of the Psalms—they steered away from the Goetia and its infernal hierarchy.

What they did offer found fertile ground. These books were marketed as biblical books of power, full of divine names, spirit seals, and magical prayers said to have been handed down from Moses himself. They promised prosperity, protection, victory, and healing—not pacts with demons. To the Black rootworker who already saw Moses as a spiritual liberator and miracle-worker, the so-called lost books of Moses felt less like imported occultism and more like hidden scripture.

Grimoires that emphasized angelic forces, holy names, and practical results were welcomed and reinterpreted. Seals were drawn into spellwork, divine names were spoken over candles, and Psalms were woven into rituals for justice, healing, and victory. The ceremonial systems were stripped down, their European frameworks deconstructed and rebuilt through Black vernacular Christianity and ancestral folk knowledge. Rootworkers didn’t need magic circles or Latin invocations—they had tobacco, honey, red brick dust, and the Word.

So while the Goetia stayed mostly within ceremonial and European magical circles, select elements from other grimoires crossed over—not as whole systems, but as living fragments. Adapted, reworked, and spoken in new tongues, they became tools of conjure, not occult scholarship. In Hoodoo, you don’t summon spirits you don’t know. And you certainly don’t need to conjure demons when you’re armed with the power of the Holy Spirit—power was important, but in Hoodoo power had boundaries defined by a Protestant worldview of biblical authority.

From the Page to the Porch:  Oral Tradition and the Life of Grimoires in Hoodoo

When grimoires like The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses arrived in Black communities—tucked inside brown paper packages from Chicago or Memphis—they didn’t simply sit on shelves. They were read, yes—but more often, they were heard, felt, practiced, and passed on. In Hoodoo, the real magic was never just in the book. It lived in the mouth, the memory, and the hands of those who knew how to work.

For all their elaborate seals and long-winded instructions, these books became starting points, not final authorities. Rootworkers might copy a seal onto brown paper and anoint it with oil, but they’d do so while praying in the words of their grandmother. If they used a divine name, it would be spoken with the same conviction they gave to a Psalm. Even among those who could read, the books were less doctrine and more reference, like a cook might use a recipe as inspiration rather than a script.

That’s because Hoodoo is, and has always been, a community-based, orally transmitted tradition. Learning magic wasn’t about mastering a text—it was about listening to the right elder, standing in the kitchen while the candle burns, or watching your aunt fold a mojo hand while humming under her breath. You didn’t “study” conjure—you inherited it. You absorbed it through apprenticeship, correction, and care.

If a grimoire seal worked, it stayed. If it didn’t, it was reworked or thrown out. What mattered was whether it moved spirits, healed the sick, or kept the law away—not whether it matched praxis from a European manuscript. The community shaped the spell, refined it, gave it rhythm. A seal from a German grimoire might get folded into a red flannel bag with devil’s shoe string and silver dimes, then fixed with a prayer taught three generations back, and spoken in a dialect the original author could never have imagined.

And this oral culture didn’t just adapt magic—it protected it. Knowledge was guarded, shared only with trusted kin or apprentices. Books could be bought by anyone, but knowing how to use them—that took lineage, experience, and permission. The page might show you a spirit’s name, but only your mentor could tell you how to call it safely, or whether you should call it at all. These practices often differed from one community to the next or even family to family.

In this way, the grimoires that crossed over into Hoodoo didn’t remain foreign texts—they became part of the living memory of Black folk practice. The seals were no longer just “Moses’ signs,” they were Grandma’s seals. The divine names weren’t just Hebrew words—they were names spoken over babies and graves, whispered into lamp oil and wash water. The books were only ever half the story. The rest came from the front porch and the kitchen table.

So while the Goetia demanded circles and tools and languages from another world, the grimoires that found life in Hoodoo did so because they spoke to a people who already knew how to listen—not just to spirits, but to each other.  This story is important because it emphasizes not only magickal praxis, but the values of a community that found strength through each other and those that came before them. This story matters because it is not only about magical praxis, but about a community shaped by survival, resistance, and resilience. The African-descended people who inherited and shaped Hoodoo brought with them traditions from West and Central Africa, forged anew under the brutal conditions of enslavement and systemic oppression in the American South.

Adaptability was not optional—it was a lifeline. Rootwork became a spiritual technology of the oppressed: practical, powerful, and grounded in daily life.

In this way, the grimoires that resonated with the community were perceived as reflecting the values they aligned: practicality, spiritual immediacy, community continuity, and the quiet, enduring power of faith in that face of dehumanizing circumstances.

Anointed and Rooted: Hoodoo as the Applied Theology of the Black South

For the African American communities that developed Hoodoo, spiritual work was not framed as “sorcery” in the pejorative, European sense. It was instead an applied theology—a way of living and acting in the world that made divine power accessible, responsive, and immediate. Rootwork was not something opposed to the Bible (As most modern Protestants would believe); it was a way of interpreting and activating the Bible. The Psalms were not just read devotionally—they were worked as spells. The Book of Exodus was not merely history—it was a spiritual blueprint for deliverance. And figures like Moses, Elijah, and Jesus were not abstract holy men—they were archetypal conjurers, miracle-workers, and righteous defenders of the oppressed. The Black community had their own biblical hermeneutic shaped by their communal story.

This theological framework explains why texts such as the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses found such resonance in Hoodoo and the Goetia and other infernally labeled texts did not.  The accepted grimoires, especially the Sixth and Seventh Book of Moses, were not viewed as illicit grimoires, but as hidden or apocryphal scripture—books that revealed the operative mechanics of divine intervention and the practicality of the use of Scripture by prayerful ritual and intent.

Hoodoo, due to this applied theological application was never secular. It was theology in motion—spiritual knowledge applied in lived contexts. This applied theology was shaped by the brutal realities of enslavement, Jim Crow, and systemic marginalization. The adaptability, ingenuity, and intuitive structure of Hoodoo reflect the deep cultural memory of African spiritual systems, reconfigured through the lens of biblical authority, ancestral reverence, and experiential faith. Conjure work depended on relationship: with God, with the spirits, with the ancestors, and with the community.

This is why infernal evocation, such as that found in the Goetia or Grimorium Verum, largely failed to enter the tradition. Not only was it theologically incompatible with the Protestant Christian framework in which most Hoodoo operated, but it was, as noted above, culturally alien.

In this way, Hoodoo can be understood not as a derivative form of European occultism, but as an independent and coherent system of spiritual practice—one grounded in lived theology, shaped by the African diasporic experience, and carried forward by oral tradition, spiritual discipline, and cultural memory.  It wasn’t “sorcery” as this was something outsiders did that was self-serving in intention.  Hoodoo was a righteous work. Hoodoo workers believed their power came directly from God, the Holy Spirit, or the ancestors. Their work was prayerful, intentional, and morally grounded. They believed in divine reciprocity—that God hears the cries of the oppressed, and the rootworker is often the mouthpiece of that cry.  What others might call “magic,” Hoodoo practitioners often called knowing how to pray right, walking with the Spirit, or using what God gave you. 

Conclusion: Why the Goetia Wasn't Welcome

As the above demonstrates, Hoodoo stood in fundamental contrast to the evocatory methods of the Goetia and other grimoires centered on infernal spirits. The African American communities that developed and sustained Hoodoo—shaped by a deep theological framework, ancestral memory, and survival under oppression—found little resonance with systems that required working with demons.  For Jewish publishers, often rooted in protective folk Kabbalah, the idea of marketing infernal conjuration was spiritually and culturally problematic. Whether out of reverence, theology, or practicality, the Goetia remained on the other side of the tracks—passed over not from ignorance, but from discernment influenced by the zeitgeist of the times. Hoodoo saw itself as revealing the deeper spiritual mechanics of the Word of God—real faith with its sleeves rolled up.

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co-authored by:
Frater Henosis
Isomara Isodora

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