“I would say instead that Hoodoo is Congo religion as reborn in the South, and Palo as it was reborn in the Carribean. They have he same roots, and similar origins. The bottle-spell of Hoodoo is an Nkisi, and it is brought to life with mambo (sung prayer) and mpemba (candle) the same as the makuto/cunanche of Palo. It’s a beautiful thing to discover, especially for we American Paleros who don’t speak Spanish. Much of the herb and root lore of Palo is in Spanish, and many of the plants aren’t native to North America, or aren’t available except by mail. As this is nature religion, we really should be using the plants and dirts that are available in the nature around us to build our makutos and prenda..our Hoodoo roots allow us to use the herbs and roots native to this land we are in for practical spiritual work in Palo as well. Because of the reality of the herbalism in both systems–congolese wisdom broadened by interaction with Native American priests who shared the wisdom of the native plant species–there is no dissonance whatsoever in the use of herbal lore from both systems in the creation of our medicines, be they tea or an Nkisi/Nganga. Add the lore of hoodoo to the treasure-trove available from our Tatas/Yayis and Nicholaj’s excellent herb treatise in the Garden of Blood and Bones, and the English-only speaker is blessed with a huge amount of wisdom for working Mayombe. Beautiful. The Congo came to the Americas with their own Christianity, having had Christianity (made thoroughly Congolese and interpreted through their existing spiritual wisdom) a part of their culture a century before large-scale Atlantic slavery had begun. The Christian elements of Hoodoo are themselves directly rooted in the Congo approach to the Christian mysteries, and we need look no further than Palo Kimbisa to see the equivalent of the practice in Palo.”