Hoodoo

Hoodoo is a combination of voodoo and Roman Catholicism. It is a sort of folk religion or traditional magic practised in the southern United States of America. They believe that there is a battlefield in the spiritual world between good and evil, God and Satan. The goal of Hoodooism is to give people the ability to tap into the power of good to restore the balance in the physical world.

Through prayer, the names of saints, and the belief in Jesus, to do battle with evil forces in the world. They believe there are three ways to rid a "horse" (a possessed person) of an evil spirit: 1) Prayer; or 2) Cutting the victim’s forearm, because they believe that the flow of blood rids the body of demonic spirits; or 3) And the most extreme way, is to gouge out the victim's eyes, because it is believed that a spirit can not use a blind "horse".

See also: Vodun

External link:

Hoodoo in Theory and Practice by Catherine Yronwode: http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo

---

A hoodoo is a geological feature consisting of a freestanding column of stone. Hoodoos are usually found in arid desert regions, carved by windborne dust. They are composed of soft sedimentary rock, and are topped by a piece of harder, less easily-eroded stone that protects the column against attack from above.