These responses or outcomes are not always as grandiose as prophecy, many times it may include something as trivial as re-growing hair for balding men, being able to get a love interest to take notice or some extra luck at the local gambling establishment. Moreover, it is a belief system that is practiced in the home, where people (particularly women) use specific items (animal bones, human hair, bottles, crucifixes, and certain metals) combined with distinctive words and gestures for a desired response or outcome. However, conjure as a spiritual system encompasses much more than a folksy superstition and can be traced to a variety of belief systems indigenous to the continent of Africa. Popular understandings of conjure focus almost exclusively on the practice of Voodoo in New Orleans and/or Haiti. In other words, conjure is an African method of spiritual agency. Further, conjure can be employed as a pharmacopoeic agent as well as a mode of prophecy to help predict or control future events. Theophus Smith argues that conjure is a metaphor for the “ritual, figural and therapeutic transformations of culture” or more simply, conjure is a method of communication, using symbols and symbolic phenomena to interpret, understand and shape the physical and spiritual world. Instead, conjure has been known to encompass everything from the practice of Voodoo, to Spiritual Churches and includes innocuous day-to-day individual efforts to control and manipulate the immediate environment. The word conjure is not limited to any particular religious belief. However, since Africans were forcefully brought to the shores of the Americas, it is clear they had a firm grip and keen understanding of their culture and the power of their spiritual belief through the phenomenon known as conjure. The spirituality allowed the survival of African-Americans as a distinctive cultural entity in New Europe.” This sentiment is in stark contrast to the belief that Africans were tabula rasa (a blank slate) when encountered by Europeans and therefore needed to be taught culture and were in effect not quite human. Marimba Ani (formerly Dona Richards) in the article “The Implications of African-American Spirituality”, proclaims, “I shall maintain that Africa survived the middle passage, the slave experience and other trials in America because of the depth and strength of African spirituality and humanism. The processes and methods of a culture’s ability to survive in a hostile environment is the essence of an African centered analysis.
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