Root working

One of the most common things you will encounter in your career as a rootworker is the need that people have to be spiritually clean. As a practitioner, it is important that you know how to make up or obtain the baths, scrubs, and washes these clients need, and how to put them to use. Folks use a lot of different terms for their sense that things are not right and that they want help. Depending on their cultural background, they may tell you that they have been jinxed, crossed, rooted, cursed,
or hexed. (The first three terms are AfricanAmerican, the other two are European American.) They may tell you they want to change their luck from bad to good or say that they want to be free of obstacles or blockages. Some of the people who seek
you out will know exactly who put roots on them; others will only have a vague understanding that since so-and-so and I had a falling out at work, everything has been going wrong for me and I haven’t had any luck.

Folks who are regular gamblers may complain that whereas they used to win steadily, nowadays they can’t even make a dollar on the slots. Tales of multiple broken appliances and vehicles, occurring with alarming frequency during the course of a year, are another commonly presented significator that a person is jinxed. The first thing you as a root doctor have to do (yes, before learning how to make a 3Ingredient Bath!) is to determine the severity of the client’s mental distress and physical difficulties, so you can diagnose any unstated problems that may need to be addressed before beginning your
work. I am very serious about this and want to impress upon you the fact that clients are not put on this earth for you to make money from. You are not setting out to be a phony telephone psychic or to scam them for bucks on the principle that
a bath won’t hurt them, even if it doesn’t help. They are people in need, generally from your own local community, and in some cases you are the FIRST person they have come to for help. So after you listen to their presentations of what ails
them spiritually, but before you prescribe a bath or spiritual house-cleaning, take a moment to ask questions that will help you get a good picture of their overall physical and mental health. For instance, in the African-American community, as
most of you know, we see a lot of people with high blood pressure and diabetes. Acquaint yourselves with the symptoms of these diseases (weight gain, excessive thirst, etc.) and make sure your clients are getting the medical treatment they
need. Another thing I often encounter in my rootwork practice is the telephone client who thinks he or she has been jinxed, but who is also (or perhaps only!) suffering from the mental I’ll ness called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

This disease, which sometimes appears in conjunction with clinical depression, can take the form of recursive feelings of being unclean. Usually those who have OCD interpret their feelings of uncleanliness (sometimes called contamination phobia) with respect to the physical world—for instance, as an unwarranted fear of dirt or germs. But it is not uncommon to meet with a client whose belief that he or she has been cursed or jinxed is the result of a mistaken sense of spiritual uncleanliness, with OCD at the root. Be aware that you won’t be able to cure the mental I’ll ness that underlies such a client’s persistent belief that he or she is being continually
hoodooed or rendered unclean. The key to diagnosing OCD is the recursive or repetitious nature of the complaint. The client will usually tell you how many root doctors, readers, and psychics he or she has already seen before you and may
comment that nothing worked. The fact that nothing worked is an OCD red flag, and you may want to weigh your moral responsibility to the client at this point, because it is not right to take advantage of such a client’s mental illness
simply to make money. What I do is treat the request for spiritual baths seriously, while explaining bluntly that a recurrent jinx is highly unusual and perhaps there
are personal problems present that go beyond crossed conditions. This is not to say that folks with OCD cannot be jinxed or crossed or that everything they are
experiencing is merely a symptom of their mental illness.

But in my experience, although they will benefit as much as anyone from a spiritual bath or housecleaning, if they are obsessing about jinxes, their relief will be short-lived and
they will quickly return to the intrusive and recursive thought-patterns in which they experience a sense of spiritual uncleanliness. They may start phoning on a daily (or hourly!) basis, asking the same questions over and over again, and
nothing you can do will relieve their distress. If relationships with clients develop definite OCD overtones, and if you feel up to it, I suggest that you tell them quietly and compassionately that they are displaying symptoms of the disease
and that there are medications available to help control their intrusive thoughts. Sometimes this will offend them—but sometimes they will seek psychiatric help and thank you for pointing them in the right direction. It’s up to you how you handle spiritual cleansing clients with OCD, but to remain silent about the problem and just take their money would be unethical, in my opinion. Okay, so now let’s assume that you have handled any subsidiary issues connected with your clients, and it is time to work with baths and washes. The use of salts and herbs in cleansing baths is as old as humanity, no doubt, and each region and culture has its own styles of preparing these baths. The sweat lodges of the Native Americans are well known outside their original culture, and so are hoodoo mineral salt baths, which have recently begun to cross over into general magical practice. What is not generally known, however, is that in their original forms, many of these African American
cleansing baths are made with three or three times three (9) ingredients. As you read about hoodoo practices and spells, be on the lookout for instances of the odd-numbered principle (mojo hands with three, five, seven, nine, or eleven
ingredients, spells to be repeated daily for an odd number of days, or items laid down in 3 three or five piles or sprinkled while making an odd number of steps). Not every hoodoo spell exemplifies the odd number principle for instance, rites adapted from Native Americans or European witchcraft may contain four ingredients but in general, it takes a minimum of three active ingredients to create a hand, an incense, a dressing oil, or a bottle spell, and three will be the number you encounter most often in making up combinations for baths, scrubs, and floor washes. There are so many different three ingredient spiritual bath and floor wash combinations passed down in African American families in the United States that one
could probably put out an entire booklet of them. Just as with the many variant recipes we see for common foods, the variations found in bath and floor wash recipes are both a matter of individual preference and a result of what’s handy to
use, but their basic structure follows a pattern, and this pattern is one that I believe is African in origin. I loosely call them three-ingredient baths, but of course, some have more ingredients, usually totalling an odd number. Here are some
of the recipe-building principles behind these cleansing baths and floor washes that will help you to recognize authentic hoodoo formulas and enable you to create your own combinations. There is usually at least one mineral, and some baths consist only of mineral salts. If there are liquids included, they will usually be sour, bitter, aromatic, volatile, and/or toxic unless diluted to safe levels

If there are herbs included, they will likely be hot, aromatic, and/or magically protective. First let’s look at the minerals. Among them you will find the following items:
o Salt in the form of table salt, pot salt, blessed salt, kosher
salt, ice cream salt, pickling salt, or rock salt.
o Epsom Salts.
o Saltpeter.
o Baking soda (rather uncommon, usually Washing Soda is specified)
o Potash from the ashes of specific burned items or Lye; the latter used only for floor washes, not baths.
o Pre-mixed salts, e.g. “Crystal Salts” or “Bath Crystals,” which are usually Salt and Epsom Salts mixed together and counted as one ingredient.
o Bluestone, a.k.a. blue vitriol or copperas, which is mentioned in old recipes but is far too toxic to use, and for which one must substitute
o Washing Soda dyed blue a.k.a. Laundry Blueing , 4 which can be had in the form of Blue Balls (Anil) or Reckitt’s Crown Blue squares, crushed to powder. Next we have the liquid ingredients. These are often added in small quantities, usually 9 drops for the more toxic liquids or a tablespoon per
bath or scrub bucket with the gentle ones:
o Urine, a.k.a. chamber lye, generally that of the client, and often specified as the first urination of the morning,
collected in complete silence.
o Ammonia, which I consider a “polite” substitute
for urine, especially when the practitioner is making up the floor wash or bath to sell and does not wish to have the client supply any urine.
o Vinegar, which can be either apple cider or red wine vinegar, or, in some cases, Four Thieves Vinegar, the latter a proprietary red wine vinegar compound.
o Essential oils of herbs, roots, or flowers.
o Dressing oils (compounds of essential oils)
o Brand name or generic colognes (a.k.a. toilet waters); the most commonly encountered names are Florida Water, Hoyt’s Cologne, Rose Water, Kananga Water, and Orange Blossom Water.
o Chinese Wash, a detergent compound not used in baths, but a standard ingredient in spiritual floor wash combinations.
o Turpentine, most common in recipes from regions where turpentine is produced from pine trees.
o Pine-Sol brand household cleanser, which I consider to be an urban substitution for turpentine and/or Pine Needles.

Finally, we have the herbs. There are too many of these to list them all, so for details, consult my book “Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic,” where you will find lists of cleansing, protective, lucky, love-drawing, and money-drawing herbs for
different aspects of life. Although any magical herbs can and have been used in spiritual baths and floor washes, a few of them stand out as much more commonly employed than the others. The most common of these bath and floor wash herbs are:
o Broom Straws for spiritual cleaning of a building.
o Cinnamon, to draw money to the self or the premises.
o Eucalyptus, to break jinxes and drive off evil people.
o Hyssop, to cleanse a person from sin.
o Lavender, for love-drawing.
o Lemon Grass, for spiritual cleaning of a building.

o Oak bark, for spiritual cleansing and health.
o Pine Needles, to remove mental negativity.
o Rose petals, for love-drawing.
o Red Pepper, to take off jinxes and for protection.
o Rue, for protection from envy and enemies.
o Sassafras, for money-drawing.
o Sugar, to draw in luck to the self or the premises.
o Wahoo root bark, for uncrossing and jinx-removal.
o Walnuts, to fall out of love or break a love-obsession.

Note that not all of the common bathing herbs listed above appear in three ingredient baths or floor washes. Some of them, like Hyssop, Wahoo, and Walnut, are most often brewed into a tea-bath and used all by themselves as a solitary bath ingredient. Others, like Lavender and Rose, are routinely combined with other herbs in purely herbal teabaths or they are added to prepared Bath Crystal mixtures, scented with dressing oils and employed for specific conditions but rarely do they appear in the oldest form of three ingredient baths for
uncrossing or luck drawing. I believe that this is because, although they are fragrant, they are not hot or spicy and thus their use is of European origin, rather than African, and they entered hoodoo at a later period in time. With these
recipe building principles in mind, let’s see how some actual formulas play out. I‘m only going to give a few, because the possibilities are endless. The salts are measured in cups or handfuls, the liquids by the tablespoon unless otherwise noted,
and the herbs are by the pinch if powdered or the handful if cut and sifted; they may also be brewed into tea before use.

New Orleans Protection Bath
Salt, 1/2 cup Ammonia, 1 tablespoon Vinegar, 1/2 cup

South East Coast Uncrossing Bath
Ice Cream Salt, 1 cup Vinegar, 1 cup Turpentine, 9 drops

Mary’s Protection and Victory Bath
Epsom Salts, 1/2 cup Ammonia, 1 tablespoon Red Pepper Powder, a pinch only

Spiritual Cleansing Mineral Bath #1
Salt, 1/2 cup Epsom Salts, 1/2 cup Saltpeter, 1 tablespoon

Spiritual Cleansing Mineral Bath #2
Salt, 1/2 cup Saltpeter, 1 tablespoon Laundry Blueing, crushed to powder, 1 tablespoon

Purification Bath and Floor Wash
Salt, 1/2 cup Epsom Salts, 1/2 cup Saltpeter, 1 tablespoon Blueing Ball, crushed to powder, 1 tablespoon Ammonia, 1 tablespoon

Cleansing House Scrub
Saltpeter, 1/2 cup Ammonia, 2 tablespoons Pine-Sol, 3 tablespoons

Jinx-Removing House Scrub
Kosher Salt, 1/4 cup Chinese Wash, 3 tablespoons Ammonia, 1 tablespoon Instead of water, use herb-tea, 1 gallon, made with any or all of the following: Rue, Lemon Grass, Agrimony, Eucalyptus, Pine Needles—or just add essential oil of Citronella
or Lemon Grass


Jinx-Reversing Bath
Bath Salts (Salt mixed with Epsom Salts), 1/2 cup
Cast Off Evil Oil, 9 drops Eucalyptus leaves, a handful

Nine Morning Protection Bath
Saltpeter, 1 tablespoon Ammonia, 1 tablespoon Cinnamon powder, a pinch

Business-Drawing Floor Wash
Urine, first of the day, collected in complete silence Money-Drawing Oil, 9 drops
Chinese Wash, 3 tablespoons

Business Floor and Sidewalk Wash
Urine, first of the day, or Ammonia in like quantity Sugar, 3 tablespoons Cinnamon powder, 3 tablespoons

Madame Collins’ Remedy to Restore Male Nature
Saltpeter, 3 tablespoons Baking Soda (Arm and Hammer brand), 3 tablespoons Yellow Mustard powder, 3 tablespoons Spiritual Bath (“Blue Bath”) Bath Salts (Salt mixed with Epsom Salts), 1/2 cup Reckitt’s Crown Blue, 1 square, crushed Florida Water Cologne, one 2 oz. bottle

Spiritual Worker’s Healing Bath
Bath Salts (Salt mixed with Epsom Salts), 1 handful Vinegar, 1/2 cup White Oak bark boiled to a strong brown tea, 1 quart

Spiritual Worker’s Room Scrub
Ammonia, 2 tablespoons Vinegar, 1/2 cup Pine Needles boiled to a strong tea, 1 quart

Gambler’s Lucky Bath
Bath Salts (Salt mixed with Epsom Salts), ½ cup Sugar and Powdered Cinnamon, mixed, a pinch Hoyt’s Cologne, a splash

This info is courtesy of CATHERINE YRONWODE

Interesting.

Helpful if you find that you are cursed and or jinxed by another.