Picking out the meat.
A note from Hess Love on researching regional Hoodoo
Many hands make quick work.
Build community from your knowledge, and your willingness to learn.
Connect with people that you can see, and touch, in real life. Share experiences with them, advocate for your local community with them, go through trials and error with them, and (in general) just figure things out with them.
We need to elevate ancestors, stories, animals, plants, people, and places whose contributions to our overall spiritual culture get overlooked
Near all of us have lineage from all over the Black areas of the States, however it can be overwhelming to research the unique regional Hoodoo of each area on your own. I focus on the Chesapeake area because I am from here, and the family that I was raised around is from here, yet my mother's family is from Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and the most southern parts of Virginia (and some even migrated to New York).
I rely on the folks who live in those areas to elevate local traditions, it helps me bolster elevation of my own folks without burning myself out with research.
Start with your family, dead and alive.
Who are your people?
What did they do?
How did they pray?
How did they speak?
What traditions did/do they carry?
Study your community: how do they speak? what are the regional cuisines? what dances do they have? what's the music history?
Your first line is a study of your people (and yourself), as an observer/participant.
Next, study your local wildlife: plants, animals, waterways, forests, whatever Earth saw fit to put where you are. Your people connected with that, they used that.
Hoodoo doesn't have a lot personified deities (although we do have a few!).
We have the Earth, and we have the way that we become/mesh/recognize the forces and activities of nature. We also have elevated ancestors.
River is river.
Fox is fox (maybe sometimes Br'er or "brother" fox).
A lot of our natural phenomenon, if they are given any other name, it's a name of kinship: brother, sister, mama, etc.
You study what those phenomenons mean, how they work, what intelligence they have, and what medicine they bring.
This work requires lots of going outside and listening (of course this is when you can, and within your bodily ability).
Visit areas of significance:
Waterways
Swamps, Marshes, and Forrests
Crossroads
Cemeteries
Parks that have African American history of recreation there
Former (or current) plantations
Homes of notable ancestors
Spots on the Underground Railroad
and on, and on.
What did they feel like? What did you hear? What did you see? What did you smell? What did you taste? What did you think?
Start digging into the history, seek out and read:
archeological finds
death records
old newspapers
predominate Black church denominations and what Africanisms and Indigenous spirit work that they hold. Some denominations started in different areas, and they can tell you about what Black spirit keeping was like in that area. Read whatever Black church records are available!
scholarly and layperson work you can find that talks about what life was like in your area in the centuries leading up to your existence
folklore collections
oral records
and on, and on.