The Hoodoo Tarot Workbook

INTRODUCTION
Why a Hoodoo Tarot Companion?

THE SOUL OF HOODOO

Hoodoo Philosophy

The Three Sacred Circles
The Medicine Wheel, the Kongo Cosmogram, and Eternal Love

Hoodoo’s Holy Spirit
Insights on Early Black American Christianity

GO DEEPER WITH
THE HOODOO TAROT

The Hoodoo Tarot Bible Quotes and Why They Were Chosen

Informed by the Land
The Influence of Nature and the American South

The Herbs, Plants, and Flowers of The Hoodoo Tarot

Suggested Rituals for Each of the Elders Cards

What Happens in the House, Stays in the House
Family Card Reflections and Exercises

Working with the Community Cards
Your Role, Responsibilities, and Manifestations in the World

An Interview with Your Hoodoo Tarot Deck

Hoodoo Rooms

DIVINATION METHODS,
DREAM AND OMEN INTERPRETATIONS,
AND NEW TAROT SPREADS

Bibliomancy 101

Augury 101

Judicial Astrology 101

Cleromancy 101

Cartomancy 102

Dreams and Omens
Neutralizing Negativity and Accentuating Positivity
Using The Hoodoo Tarot

Good- and Bad-Luck Omens and Behaviors

New Tarot Spreads

Sundown Spread

New Moon Spread

Full Moon Spread

Birthday Spread

Ritual Wrap-Up Spread

The Big House Healing Trauma Spread

Difficult Ancestry Spread

Lineage Spread

Career Advancement Spread

Cycle Breaker Spread

Post-Argument Spread

CONCLUSION
Polydimensionality and Rootwork in the Twenty-First Century

Bibliography

Index

Tayannah Lee McQuillar is a tarot reader and researcher of religion, esoterica, and mysticism. The author of several books and divination decks, including The Hoodoo Tarot and Astrology for Mystics, she lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

“With deep learnedness, wicked wit, gimlet eye for human frailties, and a vast, generous love for history and for the world, Tayannah has written a splendid manual for the deeply cosmopolitan, utterly American form of magic that is Hoodoo.” MOLLY CRABAPPLE, author of Drawing Blood

“I continue to be a great admirer of Tayannah Lee McQuillar’s scholarly and practical work The Hoodoo Tarot. This follow-up work, The Hoodoo Tarot Workbook, continues to engage the complicated history of Africans in North America and Indigenous communities of the American Southeast. McQuillar finds fruitful data in the interstices and intersections that gave rise to Black American culture, a term that she uses to avoid ascribing all things found in early and contemporary ‘African American’ culture to Africa. While not diminishing Africa, McQuillar’s work calls us to consider the significant Indigenous influences on Black American lifeways that show themselves in Hoodoo/Rootwork/ Conjure traditions and practices. The Hoodoo Tarot Workbook challenges readers to take a deeper look at the philosophy, flora, and fauna of the Hoodoo tradition, offering practical suggestions about preparations for rituals as well as directions that readers may choose to engage. This book is a great companion to The Hoodoo Tarot, but it is also of great value as a text in itself. Scholars, practitioners, enthusiastic learners, or those who embody all these will love this new text.” Stephen C. Finley, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Religious Studies and African American Studies, Louisiana State University

“Tayannah takes a step ahead on oracle reading with this book. Much more than only providing counsel or fortune advice, the exercises and meditations from The Hoodoo Tarot Workbook are powerful tools for self-knowledge and self-growth, no matter which faith the reader practices. She also brings light to the mysteries of leaves and charm magic as well as important lessons on how to create magic in daily life guided by the tarot cards and their wisdom messages. The historical chapters are a must-read, especially because they reveal and reinforce the non-Christian aspects of Hoodoo and its founder practitioners. The illustrated plant dictionary and descriptions of their magic uses are a highlight for all magic lovers, Rootworkers or not. Along with the guide to the plants, the Elder cards’ rituals are very interesting and show how Hoodoo and Black America folk magic relates with other diasporic traditions such as Brazilian Umbanda and Jurema.” Diego de Oxóssi, author of Traditional Brazilian Black Magic and Afro Brazilian Numerology

DIVINATION/TAROT

“With deep learnedness, wicked wit, gimlet eye for human frailties, and a vast, generous love for history and for the world, Tayannah has written a splendid manual for the deeply cosmopolitan, utterly American form of magic that is Hoodoo.”
–MOLLY CRABAPPLE, author of Drawing Blood

“The Hoodoo Tarot Workbook challenges readers to take a deeper look at the philosophy, flora, and fauna of the Hoodoo tradition, offering practical suggestions about preparations for rituals as well as directions that readers may choose to engage.”
–STEPHEN C. FINLEY, PH.D., associate professor, Department of Religious Studies and African American Studies, Louisiana State University

In this Hoodoo and divination workbook, Tayannah Lee McQuillar presents a deeper understanding of the concepts, themes, and symbology featured in her best-selling Hoodoo Tarot card deck, along with providing rituals, botanical knowledge, and advanced practices for working with the cards.

Exploring the philosophy behind Hoodoo as well as its historical and spiritual roots, the author looks at this tradition as a nature-based spiritual system, emphasizing the unique environmental features of the Deep South that have shaped what Hoodoo and Rootwork are today. She explores in depth the plants, herbs, and flowers of the Hoodoo tradition featured on the cards as well as the animals that play a totemic role in Root­working. She explains the three sacred circles of Hoodoo and the different groups whose spiritual traditions give this syncretic faith its complex heritage: early Black American Christianity, esoteric European traditions, and Indigenous American traditions.

Looking at the Elder cards (Major Arcana) of The Hoodoo Tarot, the author provides rituals to work with each of the cards and the plants, legendary figures, and the spiritual concepts they represent. She offers eleven new card spreads, such as the New Moon spread, the Big House Healing Trauma spread, and the Difficult Ancestry spread. She also looks closely at the Family card connections, explaining what particular cards reveal when they appear.

Presenting new ways to work with The Hoodoo Tarot, this book also provides a foundational introduction to the Rootworking tradition, allowing divination practitioners and spiritual seekers alike to expand their journeys of growth and understanding.

TAYANNAH LEE MCQUILLAR is a tarot reader and researcher of religion, esoterica, and mysticism. The author of several books and divination decks, including The Hoodoo Tarot and Astrology for Mystics, she lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.