Beloved Readers,
Welcome to another year of the Hoodoo Almanac! As always, we return committed to truth over spectacle, history over propaganda, and magick over the mundane. We seek to make cultural literacy fun and exciting! Hoodoo has, after all, survived commercialization, appropriation, caricature, and misunderstanding since it first came under outside scrutiny. You will find none of that here, nor will you find exaggeration or fearmongering. Instead, you will encounter stories pulled from newspapers a century old, offering a direct view of how Hoodoo was written about then as opposed to now. How have public perceptions shifted? What echoes remain?
You will notice familiar features alongside new additions, including the intentional crafting of this book as a living divinatory tool. Throughout, we trace cultural through-lines without collapsing distinctions, honoring the African, Indigenous, and Creole foundations that shape the legacy of Hoodoo. It is as present in kitchens, crossroads, gardens, porches, and city streets today as it was two-hundred years ago. The Hoodoo Almanac is here to help you witness that continuity—and to participate in it with clarity and deeper understanding. May these pages serve as guide, companion, and sourcebook for the year ahead. Thank you for returning, for reading, and for keeping the fire lit. The Ancestors await, and the oracle stands ready to speak when you turn the page.
—Denise Alvarado
Editor-in-Chief, Hoodoo Almanac
