Everything you ever wanted to know about Hoodoo, Rootwork, or the Occult! The internet’s longest running occult blog, established 2004
Hey everyone,
Some of my weekend and most of my Monday was taken over by a family issue. I apologize for any late replies. While I do think I have responded to everyone, please kindly LET ME KNOW if I didn't get to your reply yet by re-sending any email you don't have a reply to. I really appreciate it!
~Cat
Hey everyone,
Well, reworking the site is coming along, which is great, but it's a lot of work for a few days. My emails should be working, and forms are coming up bit by bit. If you can't find the right form, temporarily, please use any hyperlinked form for your need.
OK, so I'm really, really, really sick of quarantine. Are you sick of quarantine? I HATE IT. The only highlight of my time in quarantine is working, and many people have limited resources right now, so that's been kind of slow…which means I watched ALL of Netflix. This means I feel very uninspired lately, because as cheeseball as it sounds, my clients are so much of my inspiration for my written work, because they bring me situations I would never have experienced to work on.
I miss you guys. And I miss writing. I miss long term work with people (remember when we used to beat the $%#* out of your ex til he or she came back, and I threw everything and the kitchen sink at them, and then that person followed you about for years!? Good times!) I miss it all. 
And what's worse is so many of you are dealing with quarantine situations that make you miserable too. Maybe your partner and you are arguing (try a sweet jar!), maybe you can't see your intended as you would like to because quarantine is interfering (love and lust drawing works are great here, though it might still not help if they are literally over a closed border – in that case, do some roadopening, too!), or maybe you're just broke and worried about your rent (money drawing and money blessing!)
There are so many ways that magic can help us during this time. I don't have to do the work for you (I mean, I have a veritable fortress of supplies right now, and having my own mini castle is pretty cool,) which means you can save money and do it yourself. I will try to post a few spells for the stuff I've mentioned above.
But if you don't have any spell needs, but you miss me too, feel free to email me. I miss having a full day talking to all of you!
❤
~Cat
Hey there, everyone,
I know that quarantine has a lot of people down. It's not easy for many of us, and if my inbox is any indication, a good portion of people are at odds with their partners, mostly because they are taking their panic, frustration, and/or anger out on who they are living with. So, here is a little suggestion for you all, because honestly, many of you clearly need it.
When something annoys you, getting angry is a natural enough reaction. So, if you keep trying to make something on your phone work, for example, and it continually gives you an error message, you would normally become frustrated and angry. BUT, did you know that if you say things to yourself like "Why does this phone suck so much!?" or "Why can't this stupid thing ever work" (and this is aloud or to yourself,) that you're reinforcing to yourself that you should get angry? You're actually making yourself angrier. Again, I'm not saying it's an unnatural reaction to be annoyed, or frustrated, or angry, – not at all – but you are AMPLIFYING the situation when you tell yourself (out loud or silently,) that something "sucks," or is in some way antagonizing you.
This normally isn't going to be a big deal. You can go out and take a walk. You can get away from what is frustrating you or upsetting you for a minute and calm down. You can distract yourself. HOWEVER, with quarantine, this isn't as easy as it once was. If your partner is annoying you, you can't find an excuse to leave your home to have a break from them. If your kids are making a ton of noise and you need quiet to work from home, you have no choice but to endure the noise, or take up "precious time" to find something to distract those kids and quiet them down (thus annoying many of you more.) All the little freedoms that help many of us avoid becoming mega assholes are no longer available to many of us.
So what do you do? Well, this is a very obvious "trick" I use, and it's not infallible, but believe me, I have 2 pet birds (which are very very annoying pets – they scream and won't stop singing at the worst possible moments, AND they like to poop on things just as a fun surprise sometimes,) so I know it can work for me. So, something annoys you, and your brain goes "Man, I hate x thing!" or "This stupid thing won't stop" etc…shut that little voice up and count your blessings. So for example, if I'm like "Man I just spent a half an hour setting up this altar, and stupid Mr NinjaCat let the stupid bird in the room because he doesn't effing think, and that damn bird messed up my whole freaking altar before I could start!" I should take a breath, and be happy that I have a home, that I have food, that I love my pets (and most of the time I love Mr NinjaCat, too, haha,) and that I have work when other people don't. Instead of engaging in negative thinking and reinforcing my negative mood, I remember the good things that I do have. I shut up that inner voice, and instead I engage in thankfulness. It means my anger won't snowball into being furious and petty and mean and rude to those around me.
I suggest this because I see people work themselves into these huge angry clouds, seething with the injustice they feel they are experiencing and often over relatively trivial events. I've seen full meltdowns because someone didn't get a reply from someone else after texting that person 10 minutes previously. :S While I realize many problems aren't so trivial, it works to redirect your thinking to something positive with both large and small problems. And if you do this, not only will you deal with your issues better, those around you will be thankful that you're not getting so angry all of the time.
Just a suggestion, and hopefully it helps!
~Cat
Hey Occulties,
Today, I’m going to look at a phenomenon which happens from time to time, and surprisingly came up as a topic during 4 of my last 7 calls (and in an email,) which tells me that the universe is giving me a big old hint to write an article about it.
As I’m sure the title tells you, sometimes a target may have a reaction you might find unexpected-, or in opposition to what you’d been working toward. Fear not, your old friend Cat is here to explain the caveats of certain spells.
Let’s begin with an old story. Many years ago when these were the norm, I ran a chat group for a short time. A young lady who had been with her boyfriend for several years at that point had been waiting and hoping for an engagement, but the fellow was clearly phobic of marriage, and I mean incredibly terrified of the prospect. She decided to do a spell to force a proposal. The young man ended up flipping out and landing in a mental hospital, but not before telling her he was so sorry as she deserved to have gotten that coveted ring long ago. What happened? You can’t make someone face their biggest fear on a whim….this guy was acutely phobic of marriage, – something she knew well, – and by trying to make him propose she basically put him in such a terror that he had a break down. Now I can see more than one of you thinking, well but that’s a pretty isolated case, right?
Yes and no. Remember, the target will react according to his or her nature, their mindset. This is why domestic violence situations are difficult at best. The more the violent partner loves the other, the more possessive and mean they can get. The violence is, unfortunately often a twisted expression of love. So, a petitioner with a violent partner may wonder why love spells make the violent partner more angry and possessive, when this is, unfortunately, how this person expresses themselves when they feel strong pangs of love.
So, why are these people reacting as they do above? It is their nature. Normally, you won’t have any problem because these problems arise in relatively few targets, as they generally are, without wanting to be unkind, abnormal reactions due to the target having become warped from personality disorders, massive phobias, mental illness, and so on. There are many people with all of the above who are perfectly functional adults (or enough so that you don't notice their personality disorder or mental illness to the degree that you realize it as being nearly as problematic as it could be,) so I am not suggesting many of us have love targets who are deeply handicapped by severe mental illness. What you need to keep in mind is that an irregular response to a love spell is far, far more likely in someone you know to be, for example, a sufferer of bipolar depression. Or, if someone is suffering from severe borderline personality disorder, they may not react to the work in the same way as someone who does not have this personality disorder. I do want to stress that seemingly normal people (and they are, for the most part quite normal,) can have issues that will cause some contradictory behaviors when hit with spellwork, not just people who suffer from the most severe problems.
I've long said that I believe that commitmentphobia is a kind of personality disorder, for example. Now, if you were working a job alongside someone who has commitmentphobia (of the romantic kind,) I'm reasonably sure you'd not think to yourself "Damn, this person is beset with mental illness!" Heck, if you dated them for a brief period, you'd probably also not realize that they have commitmentphobia – you'd just think things didn't work out. 😛 Yet, if you work on them using spellwork, you might actually notice that most of them follow a distinct pattern of reaction to love spellwork, (one which I see about 1/4 to 1/3 of the time in my cases,) where they "come in like the tide," meaning, they will take 2 steps towards the desired goal of the spellwork, one back, two forward, one back, etc. So, for example, with a client trying a reconciliation, they will notice the target being warm and interested for a week or so, and then suddenly cold and distant for a few days (or even a few weeks, if you're really unlucky,) then even more warm and interested and communicative, followed by a more brief "shut down" time, etc. This is often very upsetting and exasperating to the petitioner, who generally just hopes for an unbroken line of increasingly loving behavior. But why is the target doing this? Commitmentphobia is usually less of a fear of commitment, and more of a fear of being hurt and/or being constrained by love. It is actually hurtful to the person suffering commitmentphobia as they often are quite lonely as they have no one very close to them. So, the magic is encouraging their loving feelings, but as they begin to feel strong love towards the petitioner, they get frightened, and have to back off until they are comfortable with how they are feeling. The magic is constant (and the energy should be kept at a consistent level by the petitioner/spellcaster), but the reaction in the target is them trying to resist because they are afraid of love, then giving in to said emotions more and more. It can be tedious, but if you're really invested in having this person, it can be necessary as well. 🙂
Someone had made the rather astute observation to me in the last week that perhaps sometimes love spells bring out the "worst" in people, because that is who they really are. I can agree with that. If someone is being bossy or rude right after you use spellwork on them, they are probably bossy and rude to their partners. Surprisingly, some of the people who make marvelous friends make absolutely lousy partners. That said, sometimes if you use obsession work, you can make a target who is not naturally insecure and possessive become insecure and possessive, despite the fact that they are normally relatively laid back partners.
The key to working on anyone as successfully as possible is KNOWING WHO YOU ARE WORKING ON. This is why when a new client comes to me, I ask several questions regarding the case that they are presenting me with, as well as the people involved in their situation. For example, let's go back up to the story of the young woman trying to force a proposal – knowing that her partner was terrified of marriage (not even of commitment, as I recall, just of being actually married,) meant she was being terribly unwise to force this person to face his fear with such force. It ended with the fellow taking a stay at a mental hospital, which is certainly nothing she ever wanted or expected. Keep in mind, just like some people are allergic to- or have bad reactions to certain medications, so to can people have bad reactions to spellwork. And usually it's easier to identify who would have a bad reaction to a spell than it would be to identify who might react poorly to a medication. 😛 And again, this is likely more rare than the senders of the myriad of emails I'm about to receive after posting this will believe.
The most common problems I see are…
Using controlling magic on someone who is very very hyper sensitive to being "bossed around" or told what to do in the mundane can lead to the person doing the very action the controlling spell is set for them to do, but they are incredibly rude, defensive, and short tempered about it (and towards others.) Binding spells can also make this type defensive.
People who are TERRIFIED of commitment (and I don't mean the garden-variety commitmentphobic,) react very poorly to binding spells, or spells to compel them to become engaged. I suggest using less coercive methods, and love-drawing, and perhaps accepting that they will never get married (but might be more or less married, just not because the state or church said so) if their partner is marriage-phobic. 😉
Commitmentphobic people also tend to react to love magic with 2 steps forward, one step back, 2 steps forward, one back, etc., until they reach the petitioner's desired goal with them.
Someone who is a bossy, over-critical partner (which you may not have known had you never dated them seriously before,) will often show this side. People who are overly jealous and insecure in their love lives also can become jealous and insecure (which again, you may not have seen this side of them previously.)
Violent and abusive people can become more prone to violence and abuse when love work is used as this is their (very sick and demented) reaction to feeling love towards another person.
Some people with bipolar or schizoid problems actually will begin to vilify the person closest to them (this is not magic, it is the mental illness,) and using spellwork to make them more loving can intensify this delusion that their loved one is "after them." I strongly suggest working healing magic and helping your partner get medical attention to adjust their medication if this is happening.
I realize I'm just hitting the tip of the iceberg. If you're concerned your love work is not manifesting as it should be, by all means, feel free to contact me to see if we can't suss out the problem. :)
I apologize for the scattered-ness of this article. Mr NinjaCat is home due to quarantine, and while he stays away when I'm spellcasting, generally also when I'm on a business call, he legitimately just does not get that me writing means don't interrupt. ;)
~Cat
Hey everyone,
No I’m neither sick nor dead. Yes, I need to write you a fun article. Yes, I’m available for spells and for readings. If you want a half hour or hour, the cost will be old prices for a bit – $60 for the half hour, and $110 for the hour.
Sorry for the delay on posts, and I will have something interesting up soon. Stay safe and healthy! ❤️
~Cat
Hey everyone,
So everyone is coming down with COVID-19, eh? If you’re bored and quarantined, contact me for a reading… I may even offer a discount, because it sucks being home bound, but in some cases it also means…you’re not earning money (because not all countries mandate paid sick leave.) I can imagine why you might want a discount.
in the meanwhile, enjoy some funny pictures to keep you smiling! 😊
Hey there occulties,
Today I’d like to have a brief discussion that was brought to mind by a recent request where someone was relatively ignorant about magic, and that is the existence of “evil” ingredients.
While I would go so far as to agree that particular ingredients to particular spells, or that particular actions taken in particular spells are at best morbid and at worst shocking and cruel, I feel I do not present either on this blog. Many of the shocking and cruel ingredients/actions (such as the infamous black cat spell,) come from historical sources which most practitioners would never use today, and in more than one case, much more humane and reasonable methods to gain these items (which do not involve torture or untimely death,) have since been discovered. For example, with the black cat spell, I have heard that using the bone from a black cat who has died of old age and been buried a certain length of time thereafter works just as well… of course it requires one to know where such a cat is buried, and if it is a friend’s deceased pet, permission to obtain said bones. This is a pretty grim ingredient, and I’m quite understanding when people find bones (of any animal or being,) objectionable to some degree. Using a beloved pet or a type animal one is quite fond of is likely to cause distress. I’ve known a fair share of people who would gladly use a chicken foot, but would rather die than use a cat bone (even if the chicken was slaughtered and the cat met a natural end by old age.)
Does this make it evil to use bones in spellwork? I think how one obtains the bone is important, and if it is obtained without horrifying cruelty, then, no, not really, it isn’t evil. If you had to torture a poor animal to death to get it, then it is immoral, and animal cruelty is evil, at least by my standards. That said, if you’ve eaten a chicken or turkey and tossed the remaining carcass into the trash, you have all sorts of bones there. The vegans in my audience no doubt think you evil for consuming that animal flesh, (I am omnivorous, personally,) and factory farming is a horror in more than one case, but if you are the basic consumer (at least here in the USA,) using those bones of the animal in your magic shouldn’t make you feel squeamish. The animal was (one assumes,) humanely culled. Heck, if your outdoor kitty left you a present (a dead chipmunk, let’s say,) while that animal likely met a hard end, you could use its bone as well. If your kitty kills everything, I might recommend a pull off collar to prevent the decimation of your woodland creatures, however. So, no, bones aren’t evil. It is best to responsibly obtain them, but the item itself us not evil.
Now eggs are interesting. I’ve had many a vegan bemoan the use of an egg. Let me tell you something…many hens (so lady birds,) if not all hens will lay an egg or several when her hormones tell her it is time to lay an egg. Much like a human woman ovulates whether or not there is someone to fertilize her, so does this lady bird make an egg. She will lay this and even sit on it awhile, even if it is infertile as she didn’t have a male bird to fertilize it. So, eggs are being made, even if no baby birdie can ever come from the egg. Is that evil? I mean, fuck you, nature! How dare you make female animals ovulate and make fucking eggs!? Fuck you if no baby animals burst forth because of fucking sexual reproduction and shit! Yeah so, eggs? Might as well eat them and use them in magic. I assure you, eggs are coming out of that bird’s cloaca whether or not they were fertilized, and if they were not fertilized your choices are let it go to waste and rot (because no baby will ever come of it,) or put it to good use. Eggs are not evil.* Spells that use eggs are often even blessing or unhexing spells, actually.
Blood offering is one thing I can understand frightens people. While I will only quickly touch on this, as I can’t think of any spell I would teach using animal sacrifice, I will say that in ATRs which use live animals, the animal is humanely killed in a manner as one would kill an animal for kosher or halal use. The problem here is more to do with the modern person not killing their own meat, and less to do with cruelty. If you had to kill your own food, you would roll your eyes at the histrionics. See where I grew up, it wasn’t odd to have neighbors and friends raise hogs for meat, and to see that hog strung up in the fall. They were harvesting the meat. So, with cultures and traditions which use blood, the difference is that they offer blood and or meat to their spirits. The animal is not tortured. Is it evil? Again that depends on you. I eat meat, so I say if it is humanely done, no. You might not eat meat, so if an animal dies, – even humanely – you might say yes. I don’t teach spells which require you to use this sort of offering, so we need not really speak a lot on this. That said, the aims of systems which use blood offering can be for good, and to bless, so that doesn’t mean the aim is negative because the offering is what it us.
Found blood (like a used band aid,) menstrual blood, semen, sexual secretions, hairs, finger- and toenails, spit, etc – evil or no? Again, it depends why you are using these things. If you were cursed and I asked for a hair on your head, and then used that hair to remove the curse, is that evil? I’m not the morality police, so unless you go about stabbing people to get blood or raping them for sexual secretions, I don’t find this evil. I don’t find the use of images or witness samples evil.
What may surprise you is that I need none of the above to curse the fucking fuck out of you. I don’t need graveyard dirt even. This ridiculous idea that ingredients make a spell evil needs to go. Yes, we can agree that cruelty to animals is disgusting and therefore should not be used for spellwork or any other reason. Outside of that, “evil” is an intention, not an ingredient. Rare is it that people come to me asking for something malicious because they just want to be an asshole. Even cursing is often done out of self-defense when all other avenues to stop the assault by the would-be target have failed.
So, without wanting to ruffle any feathers of those in other traditions, in my experience, “evil” is a subjective term, and in Hoodoo, this tradition does not try to moralize. What is “evil” is the motives of who is doing the work, not the ingredients used. It is far more complex than simple black or white.
~Cat
*Anyone spouting lectures regarding the evils of factory farming will be ignored. I lived most of my life in farm country, and responsibly sourced meat and eggs taste better, guarantee quality of life for the animals, and are better for you. That you are unwilling or undesiring of locating responsibly sourced meat/eggs is on you.
Hey kids,
I know I've answered this question before, but since I see this line of hooey all too many places, let's get it answered again.
Q: Does the spell-target I'm working on have to know about the spell I'm casting, and/or believe in magic for the spell to affect them?
A: Hell. No. I actually quite enjoy atheistic targets. They are, generally speaking, far more helpless against many influences. I would STRONGLY discourage you from mentioning you're working on a target to the target, regardless of their beliefs. People – even those lacking any belief in the supernatural or magical, don't tend to react well to such news, and if they do believe in magic, then they are very likely to attempt to remove your work or work against your work.
The idea is to keep silent about what you do, or at least mind your audience when you do speak about it. I personally suggest telling as few people as possible until you've manifested the desired result, as telling people about an active spell can actually "scatter" the energy, even if they don't know the spell target you're working on.
The idea that one must have a belief in spellwork for a spell to work on them is a false premise that says it's merely a psychological reaction from the target. This gives comfort to people who are antitheist types (you know the kind – they are so contemptuous of anything that isn't perfectly explained by science, and they constantly berate others in an attempt to convert everyone to their anti-theist stance,) as this makes spellwork explainable in a way comfortable to them, despite it being false. As someone who's worked spells for ages, I can assure you that I've seen enough chains of all too convenient and unlikely coincidences (as well as a few just outright supernaturally crazy things,) to believe that current science can explain everything.
So, NO, spells do not work only because the target is aware of them. If anything, it's far, far, far better for the target to know nothing at all. 🙂
~Cat
Hey everyone,
I've now had 3 people tell me I'm very delayed in replying to them, and the thing is, I replied to all three DAYS AGO when they sent their emails…ugh. If you have something which I am tardy in reply on, can you please re-send it? It looks like Merc Retrograde is not my pal (again, lol.) Thanks, I really appreciate it!
~Cat
Hey kids,
So as many of you know (and some of you don't,) I don't practice St Valentine's Day (despite it being an actual saint day, and myself being Catholic,) and this isn't for spiritual reasons, – it's because every few years, (throughout my life) I have had a really really really really bad February 13th. By the time the 14th comes, I'm drained and miserable. I'm just not up for it. If anything, the candy hearts and the decorations remind me of the badness that is February 13th, and because some are scarred for life type memories, I find myself having like a mild form of PTSD. And, interestingly enough, since I started not celebrating it some time in my early 20's, every man I've been with during a Valentine's Day was overjoyed that he had to do NOTHING. I didn't want him to do anything. If anything, I was going to be more upset than happy if he reminded me of the date.
However, my job is nearly always about love, and without fail, a number of my clients find themselves very disturbed if their desired one isn't there to spoil them and give them candies and etc. So while I'm in some perpetually-frozen-in-time PTSD from the evil that is February 13 (which is also, amusingly, a jackass ex of mine's birthday, even though I only dated him for about a year, lol,) I am also placed in a position where I have to put that aside, and talk a few people off of a proverbial ledge.
Now, I would admit that perhaps I draw badness to myself on the 13th of February, thanks to my dread and the law of attraction, but the weird thing about me is, I'm not one to notice dates. That doesn't mean I wouldn't subconsciously be aware of a date, but it also would be a bit odd that I didn't really notice the pattern until it had happened several times. It is what it is. I don't like the 13th of February. It's the anniversary of some bad stuff for me (really.)
HOWEVER, it's been a huge relief to not celebrate the holiday. There is no "I feel so alone" day. Heck, if I'm being fair, February 14 does stand out as one of the sweeter moments in my life with a friend who was trying to cheer me up after the death of a close friend, so I can't even say I "hate it," it's just better to ignore it the vast majority of the time.
But if the holiday is getting you down because you miss "someone special," please take my advice… I imagine that many of you did not care very much either way about this day (or so speaking with people over the years has given me this insight,) when you were partnered up with someone. If this is true, the reason you're getting anxious and upset is mostly coming from everyone's own worst enemy, and our worst enemy often is ourselves. Realize that most exes are not likely to reach out to you on VD. They feel to do so is going to feel canned or weird or too hopeful. Seeing as the hardest part of reconciling an ex is the first contact, this means it's unlikely that they will want to use this day. It doesn't mean you're all alone or that the world is trying to emphasize that to you. But breaking up can be hard. It can cause a real grieving process and the worst part is that the one you want isn't dead, so it feels even harder to justify that loss. Your heart is hurt and looking for reasons to point out to you that it's hurt. It believes if it can just express that feeling, it would help it heal. I recommend avoiding the holiday entirely if it gets you down or upset. While my reasons are not romantic in nature regarding this day, please realize as a person who attaches stigma to the day, the avoidance (as much as I can) of the holiday has actually given me far more peace than anything else. I am sure the same can happen for you.
This might not hold true for people who miss a person who always made a big deal out of the day. I would still give similar advice but it might be less astute.
But realize, Saint Valentine would be disturbed and disgusted by how you "celebrate" his day. He's a saint, and with some of the racier gifts people give, no doubt he's just mortified that it has turned into what it is. Imagine if someone celebrated a remembrance holiday for you with something (or many somethings) you'd find incredibly detestable. So, the upside is that you're not ticking off Saint Valentine either, if that is a thing that matters to you. ;)
Lastly, yes…I am generally harder to reach on 13-14 February than any other time of the year, excluding maybe my birthday. I would not go into the various HORRIBLE things that have happened to me on February 13, other than to say they are not even related to each other, and many of them still make me crawl with dread to think about, while others serve as sort of a "that's yet another time someone fucked me over" or "look at life kicking my ass again" moments, where, while I should not be feeling sorry for myself (as self pity is generally just a waste of energy), the pattern just burns it into my brain. I had, at one time, thought to myself if I just made the 13th super positive by trying to make only good things happen on that day, that it would erase the bad luck element, but then for the next 3 February 13ths unstoppable badness happened. I stopped trying to make it good, and if I can manage to ignore it (and even sometimes if I can't,) it generally passes by without a hiccup. Every 2-3 years or so, though, it still gives me at least a little slap…and if I'm really (un)lucky, it becomes a mega shitstorm event, but normally it's just a smack.
Don't worry, though, it just seems to be focused on me. This isn't to say someone or more than one someones I am very close to hasn't been impacted by what's going on with me, but it does mean that I have yet to see my "bad luck anniversary" affect any client of mine as of yet. It's more like life might hand me a giant shit sandwich, but you don't need to eat it with me or kiss me after, so you're safe. 😉 The largest problem it has ever given any of my clients is that I might (should it be a dreadful 13th,) have to deal with whatever happened, which means I'll have less time for correspondence during that time, or that if you come to me feeling morose about VD coming and you not sharing in it, you might pick up that I am not really warmly engaged in that conversation on the 14th. 😦 It isn't you on that day…it's me. :{
~Cat
Cat’s Rants: Confessions of an Occult Mastermind 