Editing Spirit possession (section)

===Hoodoo===
The culture of [[Hoodoo (spirituality)|Hoodoo]] was created by African-Americans. There are regional styles to this tradition, and as African-Americans traveled, the tradition of Hoodoo changed according to African-Americans' environment. Hoodoo includes [[Ancestor worship|reverence to ancestral spirits]], African-American [[Quilting|quilt making]], [[Herbal medicine|herbal healing]], [[Kongo religion|Bakongo]] and [[Odinala|Igbo burial practices]], [[Holy Spirit in Christianity|Holy Ghost]] shouting, [[Mary Jenkins Community Praise House|praise houses]], [[Snake worship|snake reverence]], [[Black church|African-American churches]], spirit possession, some [[Nkisi|Nkisi practices]], [[Spiritual church movement|Black Spiritual churches]], [[Black theology]], the [[ring shout]], the [[Kongo cosmogram]], [[Simbi]] water spirits, graveyard [[Evocation|conjuring]], the [[crossroads spirit]], making [[conjure cane]]s, incorporating animal parts, pouring of [[libation]]s, [[Bible conjuring]], and conjuring in the African-American tradition. In Hoodoo, people become possessed by the Holy Ghost. Spirit possession in Hoodoo was influenced by [[West African Vodun]] spirit possession. As Africans were enslaved in the United States, the Holy Spirit (Holy Ghost) replaced the African gods during possession.<ref>{{cite web |title=Uncovering the Power of Hoodoo: An Ancestral Journey |url=https://www.pbs.org/video/uncovering-the-power-of-hoodoo-an-ancestral-journey-skgy16/ |website=Public Broadcasting Service |publisher=PBS |access-date=25 May 2023}}</ref> "Spirit possession was reinterpreted in Christian terms."<ref name="University of Georgia Press"/><ref>{{cite web |last1=Opala |title=Gullah Customs and Traditions |url=https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Gullah%20Customs%20and%20traditions.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160907122717/http://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Gullah%20Customs%20and%20traditions.pdf |archive-date=2016-09-07 |url-status=live |website=Yale University |access-date=24 May 2022}}</ref> In African-American churches this is called being filled with the [[Shout (Black gospel music)|Holy Ghost]]. "Walter Pitts (1993) has demonstrated the modern importance of 'possession' within African- American Baptist ritual, tracing the origins of the ecstatic state (often referred to as 'getting the spirit') to African possessions."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wilkie |first1=Laurie |title=Magic and Empowerment on the Plantation: An Archaeological Consideration of African-American World View |journal=Southeastern Archaeology |date=1995 |volume=14 |issue=2 |page=141 |jstor=40713617 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40713617 |access-date=23 June 2023}}</ref> Church members in Black Spiritual churches become possessed by spirits of deceased family members, the Holy Spirit, Christian saints, and other [[List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources|biblical figures]] from the Old and New Testament of the Bible. It is believed when people become possessed by these spirits they gain knowledge and wisdom and act as intercessors between people and God.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Jacobs |title=Spirit Guides and Possession in the New Orleans Black Spiritual Churches |journal=The Journal of American Folklore |date=1989 |volume=102 |issue=403 |pages=46–48 |doi=10.2307/540080 |jstor=540080 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/540080 |access-date=14 April 2022}}</ref> [[W. E. B. Du Bois|William Edward Burghardt Du Bois]] (W. E. B. Du Bois) studied African-American churches in the early twentieth century. Du Bois asserts that the early years of the Black church during slavery on plantations was influenced by Voodooism.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wortham |first1=Robert |title=W. E. B. Du Bois and the Sociology of the Black Church and Religion, 1897–1914 |date=2017 |publisher=Lexington Books |page=153 |isbn=9781498530361 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=opY-DwAAQBAJ&q=voodooism}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hucks |title=African-Derived American Religions |journal=Religion and American Cultures an Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity, and Popular Expressions · Volume 1 |date=2003 |page=20 |isbn=9781576072387 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9RYs-Z6AdpQC&pg=PA20}}</ref>
[[File:Yowa (b8b4e9d1-581f-4325-bc6b-e9ef5739ff33).jpg|thumb|The Kongo cosmogram inspired the ring shout, a sacred dance in Hoodoo performed to become possessed by the Holy Spirit or ancestral spirits.]]
Through counterclockwise circle dancing, ring shouters built up spiritual energy that resulted in the communication with ancestral spirits, and led to spirit possession. Enslaved African Americans performed the counterclockwise circle dance until someone was pulled into the center of the ring by the spiritual vortex at the center. The spiritual vortex at the center of the ring shout was a sacred spiritual realm. The center of the ring shout is where the ancestors and the Holy Spirit reside at the center.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hazzard-Donald |first1=Katrina |title=Hoodoo Religion and American Dance Traditions: Rethinking the Ring Shout |journal=The Journal of Pan African Studies |date= 2011 |volume=4 |issue=6 |page=203 |url=http://www.jpanafrican.org/docs/vol4no6/4.6-11HoodooReligion.pdf |access-date=2 December 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Lincoln |first1=C. Eric |title=The Black Church in the African American Experience |date=1990 |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=9780822310730 |pages=5–8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W_oSBFOgzJYC&q=possessed%20by%20the%20Holy%20Ghost}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Pollitzer |first1=William |title=The Gullah People and Their African Heritage |date=2005 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=9780820327839 |pages=8, 138, 142 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2efDSQdNq-cC&q=possession}}</ref> The Ring Shout (a sacred dance in Hoodoo) in Black churches results in spirit possession. The Ring Shout is a counterclockwise circle dance with singing and clapping that results in possession by the Holy Spirit. It is believed when people become possessed by the Holy Spirit their hearts become filled with the Holy Ghost which purifies their heart and soul from evil and replace it with joy.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stuckey |first1=Sterling |title=Reflections on the Scholarship of African Origins and Influence in American Slavery |journal=The Journal of African American History |date=2006 |volume=91 |issue=4 |pages=438–440 |doi=10.1086/JAAHv91n4p425 |jstor=20064125 |s2cid=140776130 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20064125 |access-date=1 December 2021}}</ref> The Ring Shout in Hoodoo was influenced by the [[Kongo cosmogram]] a sacred symbol of the [[Kongo people|Bantu-Kongo]] people in Central Africa. It symbolizes the cyclical nature of life of birth, life, death, and rebirth (reincarnation of the soul). The Kongo cosmogram also symbolizes the rising and setting of the sun, the sun rising in the east and setting in the west that is counterclockwise, which is why ring shouters dance in a circle counterclockwise to invoke the spirit.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hazzard-Donald |first1=Katrina |title=Hoodoo Religion and American Dance Traditions: Rethinking the Ring Shout |journal=The Journal of Pan African Studies |date= 2011 |volume=4 |issue=6 |page=203 |url=http://www.jpanafrican.org/docs/vol4no6/4.6-11HoodooReligion.pdf |access-date=2 December 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Ferguson |title=Magic Bowls |url=https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/lowCountry_furthRdg4.htm |website=African American Heritage and Ethnography |publisher=National Park Service |access-date=2 December 2021}}</ref>