All Saints Day, The Hoodoo Way
The Chesapeake Conjure Society popularized All Saints’ Day as a national Hoodoo holiday, In lineage of the syncretized All Saints’ Day traditions of Black folks in Louisiana and Annapolis, Maryland.
All Saints Day, The Hoodoo Way with CCS is the longest-running, unapologetically Hoodoo All Saints celebration around. We’ve been keeping it true to the spirit, all the way Hoodoo, all the way ours. All Saints Day, The Hoodoo Way guide that has inspired others to start this tradition in their area, this inspires us to keep going!
All Saints’ Day is a time for work, and nourishment.
Register here (required).
All Saints’ Day (the Hoodoo way) is not about putting on a show or creating a spectacle. It is real work. Real important, real honest work. It may look beautiful when you see it from the right perspective, but it is also about rolling up your sleeves and putting your heart into it.
From the mundane acts of cleaning the cemetery, to the moments of giving offerings, dancing, and communing, it takes genuine effort and dedication.
Part of the journey of Hoodoo is helping people unlearn the fear they’ve been taught, not just of their own tradition, but of their ability to participate in it fully, with their whole body. Even when the mind “knows” this work isn’t something to fear, that ol colonial anxiety can still rise up in the body when it’s present in an overtly Hoodoo physical space , whispering doubts when entering spaces where the work is being done, telling the person that they don’t belong, that they’re out of their realm.
These spaces are to give tangible experience to push back on those anxieties. These gatherings are opportunities for people to step out and put what they’ve learned to the test in a supportive environment - to see how it fits in the world beyond some of the niche spaces in which they learned.
People may lament about “events,” but how valuable is it to be physically present in spaces that will help you to discover how these teachings can be part of everyday life, and to feel the benefit of community standing beside you as you do?
It’s a chance to be with others who carry the same ancestral way. A chance to witness community in a tradition that has so often been hidden. A chance to touch, to see, to hear, to feel people who understand, and to smell the earth and sacred place. The senses that can’t be replicated.
All Saints’ Day with the Chesapeake Conjure Society requires work, yes. But it is work made lighter when done with love.
You may find that it brings you a kind of joy you didn’t know you needed, and we will be glad to have shared that with you.
Bring 9 Pennies
Cover your head in white
Bring an offering
Wear a mask
Bring a word
Be ready to work!
You will be supported in learning how to be a living spiritual steward of a cemetery.
Come through, bring your offerings, and join us at Mount Auburn - the biggest historically Black cemetery in Maryland.
Please join the Chesapeake Conjure Society as we wrap up the annual celebration of #hoodooheritagemonth by venerating our honored dead. Sunday, November 1, 2025 4pm - 7pm EST at Mt. Auburn Cemetery here in Baltimore.
Registration is required. Register here.