Code-Switching as Black Magic
Wisdom and Healing in Darkness
“In case of trouble, arise at dawn and face the east. Take the vial of spirit oil in one hand and the cake (in its box) in the other. Read the Twenty-Third Psalm and let that be your prayer. When you come to the part, ‘Thou anointest my head with oil,’ shake the bottle well and pour three drops on your head and anoint your head. Do this every time you want to conquer and accomplish.”
Zora Neale Hurston writes this, quoting Mother Hyde (a New Orleans spiritualist) on the third page of her deep-dive into American Hoodoo (published in 1931 in the Journal of American Folklore). Included at the end of this article are various recipes provided by conjurers, hoodoo doctors, and spiritualist practitioners. Code-switching between the academic language required by the journal and the conjurer dialect that she’s picked up in her research, Hurston writes about the “Paraphernalia of Conjure” near the end of her article, giving detailed descriptions of what is used (and how) in the work of black magic-making.
Water Notre Dame: Oil of White Rose and water. Sprinkle it about the home to make peace.
Cleo-May, a perfume. To compel men to love you.
French Lilac. Best for vampires.
There are parallels to the witch practices I see today, of course. Plants and herbs with various healing properties. Love tinctures. Anointing oils. Spells and meditations.
What I’m interested in exploring, however, is Hurston’s deft navigation between academia’s authoritative stance and the subjugated knowledges of the hoodoo practitioners she encountered.
What would it mean to conceptualize code-switching as black magic?
In her article, Hurston writes that “All of the hoodoo doctors have non-conjure cases. They prescribe folk medicine, ‘roots’, and are for this reason called ‘two headed doctors’.” (p. 320) What a split. And of course, there’s duality in the connotations of voodoo and hoodoo as well. “Contemporary images of Voodoo characterize it as a ‘black magic,’ a racial and moralistic double entendre frequently employed in scholarship on the subject.” (Middleton 2016: 156).
I wonder if Zora ever felt two-headed.
Possessing two heads. Of two minds. Of two worlds. Eatonville and Manhattan.
What must it have been like to submit this article to the Journal of American Folklore? A student of anthropology at Barnard and then Columbia, one of very few black students at the time, “Hurston calls herself ‘Barnard’s sacred black cow’ and glorifies in how everyone wants to be her friend in New York because of her minority status…The cow’s image invoked is again anthropomorphic, and with it, Hurston affirms her spiritual and political value as an African-American” (Hembrough 2016: 169).
There are parallels to my own experiences of tokenization at a predominantly white institution for graduate and undergraduate education, of course. Everyone wanting to be your friend. Pity. Fear. Overly-friendly essentializing.
There is a feeling of being looked at, but not seen—I wonder if Zora experienced this, writing about black magic practitioners for a predominantly white academic audience.
In her last year at Barnard, Zora wrote “How It Feels to be Colored Me.” She writes:
I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.
In the code-switching, the inner conflict emerges. It is also present in Zora’s writing. She wrestles with respectability, trying to resist tragic Negrohood, but gets entangled in her aspirations that conflict with the constraining whiteness all around her.
The Wikipedia entry for “black magic” describes it as “the use of supernatural powers or magic for evil and selfish purposes.” But is it really selfish or evil to want more for oneself? What’s so selfish about wanting to be seen as a person and not a “sacred cow?” What’s the evil in trying to navigate white supremacist academic institutions as a black woman writer?
Code-switching is black magic in that it is used by folks of color for survival in a sea of white. Up against a white background, we switch up our language and our stance, risking selling out our own communities, all for the sake of being seen. Protection, hexing, curses, and healing. The use of language and action to uplift ourselves. When we speak the language of the oppressor in classrooms and seminars at the university, perhaps we’re beating them at their own game. Perhaps we’re spellcasting, subverting their objectification of us. The code-switching is part of the magic, turning darkness into a safe haven from the overwhelming whiteness of the academy. We heal with each other in the darkness. The darkness is where we grow together. POC spaces on campus are magical — places where wisdom lies away from book-knowledge and linguistic abstraction. POC spaces are where we don’t need to switch up our language to survive and resist.
Black people are magic. We speak multiple languages, never getting tongue-tied in all-white settings. We code-switch to cast our own protection spells. Language-shifting between our own lived experiences and the academic dissection of them. Using our bodies and tongues to bridge the gap. Code-switching requires strategy, wisdom, and access subjugated senses of selfhood. It is done in self-interested ways, because it is a means of self-protection. Code-switching is my black magic, and black magic is our survival.
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Brianna Suslovic is a young twentysomething with a passion for social work, social justice, intersectionality, and witchcraft. She’s honing her tarot skills and self-educating about crystals, focusing her craft on the practice of writing as self-healing. She is particularly interested in self-care and collective care through witchcraft. Her work has been published at Black Girl Dangerous, The Tempest, and The Establishment. For more, check out her website at briannasuslovic.com. To support her work, please visit her Patreon or buy her a coffee.
