“I’ve always been inclined to magic because deep down, I’ve always been a scientist and magic has made sense,” Hess Love, co-founder of the Chesapeake Conjure Society, tells me during our conversation about Hoodoo and the ways it has shown up in their life. Magic. Science. Oxymorons, but according to Love, go hand in hand when it comes to the Hoodoo tradition. Love shows up in their community as a Hoodoo, archivist, environmental scientist and storyteller. Much of their work would not be possible without their dedication to the study of Hoodoo.

“I took it upon myself to start particularly studying Hoodoo in the Chesapeake region, and then when you study Hoodoo, if you’re researching the right way, you gain a lot of incidental knowledge because you always have to contextualize what you’re learning.”

That incidental knowledge led to Love becoming a heritage preservationist and citizen scientist. It was their study and deep engagement with not just the tradition, but with history and the natural world that opened doors for them. That includes forming bonds with elders in the community. Elders, especially in the Black community, are often the keepers of cultural memory and sacred spiritual knowledge.

“Being in a room full of elders who may or may not call themselves Hoodoo, even though they do Hoodoo. Being in a room full of spiritual leaders who are my grandparents age and not only my grandparents age, but who literally know my family. It has expanded my bravery as a hoodoo. I enter every single one of these spaces as a quote unquote out hoodoo. And so I say that in my work, I say it everywhere. I bring it with me. And I think it’s expanded my practice.”

As a spiritual tradition that has been demonized within and outside of the community, bringing one’s identity as a Hoodoo into public spaces is not easy. Because formerly enslaved folks in the Southern United States used it as a means of resisting the violent regime they were held hostage under, white supremacy effectively created narratives regarding it as evil and demonic. On the flip side, as Black folks began to reclaim Hoodoo, we’ve also had to contend with the same people who demonized it, now acting as capitalist appropriators of the tradition. This is why, no matter how messy it gets, defining Hoodoo matters.

“Look at how many centuries we’re trying to cover. For centuries, white people got to define Hoodoo and did not get as large of a collective pushback as they are right now.”

You might be wondering when and where the magic and science happens in all this. In defining Hoodoo, in the practice of it, in the preservation of it and in experiencing the wonders of the natural world—that is where we can bear witness to the convergence of what some call supernatural with scientific knowledge. Hoodoo and all the work that it encompasses cannot be defined through a western lens. During our nearly hour-long conversation, Love’s experiences prove just that.

I want to know more about your archaeological work or if you’re still doing that work because it seems really connected to your Hoodoo practice.

I’ve done environmental archaeology and still do. I’m like an appointed volunteer with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. [There was this] one situation, they believed that the oldest African and Black bones that they have found so far in the state of Maryland was recently dug up in St. Mary’s City. And because I do work as a commissioner with Historic St. Mary’s City, I was invited to tour the space. I saw the original site of where the bones were once buried and it was wild. Cause it’s like right on the river. It was a very hoodoo experience for me. So afterwards we went to the lab where the bones were and I thought I was just going to see them like in the glass case. But the bones were displayed out, but it was like the whole room is essentially vacuum sealed, super hygienic. And so they were like, just get your mask and gloves. We’ll give you the room to yourself.

So, when they left the room, I just sat and I just held them. And I just prayed. I just talked to them. It was surreal. It was a surreal experience, and it was like, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe this just happened. But also, [I made] a promise to them, we’re going to learn as much of your story as we possibly can. We’re going to make sure people remember you, know who you are, and we’re going to try to make sure that you are reinterred in a way that gives you order for your whole self. And that whole moment really shaped how I think about ancestors.

It made me think about we really do have to find ways to humanize our ancestors and not apply the magical Negro trope to them. They are magical. They are powerful. They are wonderful. But that whole experience made me realize how much of a colonial and dehumanizing thinking we can have towards our ancestors, even when we feel it’s benevolent. That kind of gravitational pulling experience, I wish so many people could have it, because it really shifted so much about how I try to engage with the ancestors and what I think about them and their human lives too.

You recently wrote a social media post about Hoodoo being a sensuous tradition and about feelings. Can you speak more to this idea of the sensuality of Hoodoo and what that might look like in our daily lives?

I really do feel as Black folks, and I say Black folks as Black Hoodoos, Black folks across the world, it’s a global thing. . . we’ve always acknowledged more than the typical five senses. As black folks. I really do believe that we have. And so now in the field of sensorial studies, it’s now a thing. There are more than five senses. And if you ask a black person, we kind of always knew this. That there’s intuition, there’s balance, or you feel an energetic shift. It’s taking a note of how you process things differently than other people around you and how you’ll share something with Black folks and it’s a sense you feel. We cannot explain what it is, or the sense.

It makes me think about Florida water. Part of the reason why Florida water works is because the smell activates something in you. And so when I say Hoodoo is a sensorial tradition, I really mean it. We use oils for a reason. It’s slick, it’s smoothing, it might smell like something, it might not. But you’re touching, you’re feeling the texture of your condition change in one way or another, we use Florida water for a reason. It’s typically the smell. It’s the astringent of it. The astringent of it activates your nose in a certain way where you pick up the sense of the spices, the orange, the floral notes in there, too.

And so with sensorial things, we have our cultural stories that we hear and that’s passed on through the oral or we see it written. But then we smell it and we automatically think, this is the smell of cleansing. This is the smell of protection. Something is cleansed. Something is changing. That’s what I’m talking about with sensorial. It’s really noticing how your body is picking up different things and not overthinking it, just taking a note of it. So when it comes to your own personal magic, you can see what things you need to activate best to make things work for you.

Do you have any recommendations for people who might want to learn and get more into rootwork or doing that work in their own communities?

A lot of times, this is largely an oral tradition. They intentionally snuffed out written stuff as much as they could. So many of our things are going to be in our storytelling, in our fiction, in our oral stories, so, look to those stories. Also, you do not have to go to church to find communities. There are so many elders. Black elders who are preserving Black history in your local city that people are not paying attention to, you can literally work with them. You can find community, but you have to let go of the idea of, I want to find a coven because sometimes the medicine you need is going with an elder to help them preserve the community center where people used to gather 75 years ago. And that’s when you’ll find that spiritual shift. I think the third thing is to think long term. Don’t be so caught up in social media validation. Think about when people are looking at Hoodoo a hundred years from now and they’re looking for things. What are they going to see from you?