For years, I grew up with the understanding that science was the antithesis to all things spiritual. When I began to question my Christian upbringing, I explored theories that attempted to disprove that we were created from a big man in the sky. For some folks, science disproves religion. For others, religion trumps science. But really, these two methods of understanding the world can and should co-exist.

Roman Johnson, known affectionately in the online spiritual community as the Freedom Doctor, answered a divine calling that required him to merge his expertise in public health with his spiritual life as a Hoodoo practitioner. We discuss how Hoodoo showed up for Johnson as a young child, the work spirit has called him to do throughout his life and why elders are important figures in his spiritual journey.

Can you talk a little bit about your earliest memories of Hoodoo?

My first memories of Hoodoo. So, when I was five, my aunt died of breast cancer. And that was impactful to me because that was my first time dealing with death. I’d never seen anybody die before that time. And when she died, she came to me in her pre-death form when I was five years old. I had a series of dreams where I was talking to her. In one particular dream, I remember, we were at her burial ground. I was at the edge of that burial ground, and I fell in and I had a couple of dreams that were that same dream. That was my first non-typical spiritual experience, a recurring dream of a deceased person.

When I was in middle school, I remember watching “Matilda” and just being interested in extrasensory perception, remote viewing and stuff like that. So, me being the little nerd that I am, I got my two of my brothers to read about this stuff with me and talk about it with me. And around that same time in my life, it became clear that my dreams were different. Often, to this day, people come to my dreams. I ain’t never seen them before. I can barely make out their faces. And I never talked to my dad about that or family because I grew up in a conservative Christian household and that was frowned upon.

I say all that to say, when I was in middle school, I used to play this game of guessing kids’ names or something about them. And one particular time I was playing the same game, not knowing I was tapping into my medium ability. I told someone I could guess his mother’s name. He didn’t tell me anything about his mother. And as clear as day, I heard his mother’s name and she told me to tell him, she was proud of him. That was my first spiritual experience, just knowing that there was something walking with me that was helping me hear Spirit.

I want to know more about the platform you created, the Freedom Doctor. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yes. So, the Freedom Doctor is my social media alias and it’s also my platform. My day job is as a public health scientist and the Freedom Doctor platform is about combining holistic healing, public health and Hoodoo together to talk about how all these things are related. It really came about because when I was a junior in high school, I heard Spirit tell me that a family member was sick. And I actually was riding with them one day and Spirit was like, your family member is sick and they need to go see the doctor. And then they learned they had cancer.

That experience really made me want to study public health because my family member was mistreated in a hospital environment and I was really interested in how women and Black people in particular are mistreated in the hospital space. I began to realize as I was doing my studies that our Hoodoo history and our history in public health are one in the same, and that we ought to understand Hoodoo as a science. And so, that’s really the beginning of the Freedom Doctor and how it got started.

You launched the New England Hoodoo Society, which I was really excited to see. What is the story behind that?

So, about a year ago, I had a dream where there was this huge snake in a New England neighborhood. And I knew it was New England because I could see the architecture of the houses. As I was seeing this snake, it was just golden and powerful and beautiful. I woke up and Spirit was like, you need to start a Hoodoo society in New England. As clear as day, and I resisted it because I had a lot going on in my life. And spirit kept tugging at me.

After that dream experience, I began to sit with myself and Spirit was telling me that there are people in New England who are Hoodoos. And even though Hoodoo and Black people have not been historically associated with New England, it’s still here. I felt like Spirit was telling me that it wanted me to unearth this knowledge and share with people from here so more people know about Hoodoo. And so, really the story of the New England Hoodoo Society started with a dream. I began looking for people in New England who were Hoodoos. And I found this amazing Black scholar, an expert in social justice, Danielle Cole, who’s known as Stillness is the Medicine on Instagram.

And I was really intrigued with Danielle’s work because she’s intuitive and I know she loves black people and Spirit was like, that’s the one, and it has been a really good match. My role has been more of a visionary. Danielle is an amazing strategist. She definitely helps me with structure and stuff. And because she’s from Massachusetts, being able to work with her has been important just because she has that connection to New England and her ancestry is there. And so what I hope New England Hoodoo Society becomes is this place of healing, this place of teaching about the Hoodoo heritage in New England in particular.

Any other final thoughts before we close or anything you want to share that we didn’t get a chance to discuss?

I wanted to share with people about Ms. Cornelia Walker Bailey. I’m telling you about Cornelia Walker Bailey because she’s an elder who’s now an ancestor and elders have always been close with me and people who have guided me when I was doing my Masters in African American Studies. Ms. Cornelia Walker Bailey was from Sapelo Island in Georgia. She was a Gullah Geechee woman and Sapelo Island is one of the homelands of the Gullah Geechee people. And one thing she told me about Hoodoo and herbalism, cause I did my work early on looking at Gullah Geechee herbal remedies for diabetes management. She said that herbs have multiple uses.

I’m sharing this because we have an online culture that’s really obsessed with formulas. You add a little bit of this, you add a little bit of that, and then you get this. Ms. Bailey taught me that you need to trust your spirit and listen to it and focus on the simple things before you try to get to the more complicated thing. There’s nothing wrong with building your Hoodoo practice. As a Hoodoo practitioner, I struggled with the validity of science and whether this spirituality stuff was real. And it’s been me spending time with my ancestors, doing simple things, just literally talking to them every day that really has changed my life. Hoodoo is one of the reasons why I’ve been able to give my family and people who have hurt me in ways grace and I’ve been able to give myself grace too. So, I hope that anyone who reads this interview knows that you can start simple and that will take you to many amazing places.