Red Folder by Catherine Yronwode — Hoodoo Workshop Lessons

Short description:

Red Folder by Catherine Yronwode is a practical hoodoo workshop reference in oversized paperback (8.5″ x 11″, 136 pages). Yronwode, founder of the Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers (AIRR) and author of Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic, brings decades of research and practice into this accessible compendium covering spells, spiritual supplies, rootwork formulas, and Southern conjure tradition. An essential guide for any serious student of African American folk magic.

Description:

Quick Specs

• Format: Paperback (oversized, 8.5" x 11")
• Pages: 136
• Weight: 0.9 lbs
• Publisher: Missionary Independent Spiritual Church / Lucky Mojo Curio Company
• Year: 2019
• ISBN: 978-0996052368

The Sequel That Covers the Later Years of Hoodoo Heritage Festival Teaching

I carry the Red Folder because it represents a specific and irreplaceable slice of Catherine Yronwode's teaching archive. From 2014 through 2019, Yronwode distributed handouts and workshop flyers to attendees of the annual Hoodoo Heritage Festival in Forestville, California. The Red Folder collects and reprints every one of those documents in a single oversized volume. That means you are holding six years of private instructional material that was never posted online and never put into her major trade books. The topics lean heavily into seership and divination: working with crystal balls, pendulums, and numerology as conjure tools. It also covers conjure spells for money, love, protection, and luck, along with cursing, break-up work, and hot foot tricks for driving off enemies.

The Red Folder is the direct sequel to the Black Folder. If the Black Folder documents the foundational period of the Festival workshops (2008 through 2013) with an emphasis on spiritual supplies, candle work, mojo hands, and the basics of conjure cookery, the Red Folder picks up where that one leaves off. It extends into more advanced terrain: the secrets of conjure cookery and traditional herbal medicine, candle magic with spell sigils and petition papers, and how to construct mojo hands, sachet powders, and packet charms from scratch. The two volumes function as a matched set, and readers who own both have a rare documentary record of Yronwode's live teaching across more than a decade.

Yronwode is the founder of the Lucky Mojo Curio Company and the primary scholar behind "Hoodoo in Theory and Practice," one of the most thoroughly sourced free reference works on African American folk magic. She draws on the Harry Hyatt fieldwork interviews, oral tradition, and her own decades of rootwork practice. The Red Folder is not a watered-down introduction; it is the kind of material she shared directly with paying festival attendees. There is no equivalent source for this specific body of work outside of enrolling in the Hoodoo Rootwork Correspondence Course itself.

How to Use the Red Folder

The Tarot Fellow Standard

I stock Lucky Mojo publications because the quality control on their printing has been consistent across every order I have placed. Yronwode has noted publicly that she continues to work with the same printing company that Eclipse Comics used for their white-paper comics output going back to the 1980s — a detail that tells you something about how she thinks about the physical artifact. The paper is good, the binding holds, and the oversized format (8.5" x 11") means the handout material reproduced here is actually readable rather than squeezed down to fit a standard paperback trim. These are not mass-market books, and they do not read like mass-market books.

One practical note: the Red Folder is a reprint collection, not a newly written book. If you are hoping for original long-form chapters, that is not what this volume is. What it offers is density and documentation — every workshop handout from six years of festival teaching in one place, with Yronwode's voice intact and unedited. That is a specific kind of value. Pair it with the Black Folder by Catherine Yronwode for the complete two-volume set, and browse the full Voodoo, Hoodoo and Santeria books collection for additional titles in the tradition.

Frequently Asked Questions