“For a baby she throws a powerful spell,” said Denver.
”No more powerful than the way I loved her,” Sethe answered and there it was again.
from Toni Morrison’s, Beloved1
The first batch of ‘I’m Baby’ Oil was for the whole, coming from the Heart. It was a single oil trying to do entirely too much for itself. An attempt to simplify the process, but the process isn’t always meant to be simple. Trying to be 3 in 1, but only God can do that.
At that time, High John and I were bickering. He knew, and I refused to know, that what I needed wasn’t to fly but to stand firmly where I was and to try and change things. All my youth spent wild and running. And there was always a reason, he informed me, that when some flew he chose others to remain. “Stop running for the fence and look around.”
That was the year I got sober and began work on a condition oil not for Flying Africans, but for those here on the ground. Sometimes the remedy is presence, accepting where we are and using what we’ve got to conjure a bad situation better.
The ‘I’m Baby’ Oil collection is about Hoodoo. It’s about survivors and the tricks that get and got us through. Anointing the nape of my neck with the Head, so I’m spiritually covered. Anointing the skin over my Heart as I call down holy, ancestral Black courage. Anointing my wrists with Hand to sway fortune. To, as Morrison said, “let the rest of the world move over to where I was.”2
If I can’t fly to heaven, I will pull it down. I’m a child whose needs should be met. I’m a child who is open to receiving unconditional spiritual love. I’m a child who is learning not to run, but to fight and recover. To resist.
For those who can no longer remember how or are otherwise not allowed to fly, he left the symbol of a root that sits in the ground daring to bring forth sustenance and beauty. He is the patron saint of these oils. And so is every Black Mother whose love sparked divine love for ourselves. To cradle us through times like these. We are their beloved children. We are our ancestors’ babies.
What I want you to walk away from this needing isn’t an oil but the truth of your why. You weren’t put here as punishment or left here alone while others abandoned reality or shuffled off the mortal coil altogether. If you’re still here and feeling it deeply it’s because there’s need for you to try and change things. There’s a need for your fight, recovery and resistance. To conjure a bad situation better. And it behooves you to move now from why to how. And the how is Hoodoo. It’s your magical ability to make way from no way. To pull heaven down. To make it move to where we are.
And the more of us that know that, the more we live in the legacy of our ancestors and spirits.
Morrison, T. (1993). Beloved. Chatto & Windus.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9866511-i-stood-at-the-border-stood-at-the-edge-and
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