Category Archives: Encounters with AIRR

My clients know that one of my AIRR colleagues that I often promote and refer to is Karma Zain. As soon as I learned about her, her excellent blog, and work I knew I had found someone who had grown up with root magic traditions just like I had. Karma possesses a wonderful blend of intelligence, scholarly wisdom, and down to earth Southern style know how. Her small batch spiritual products are some of the best on the market and her dedication to her clients goes above and beyond. I am honored to call her colleague and friend in the art!

In her own words: I’m a born and raised Southerner who grew up learning a dizzying list of patron saints, 75 ways to cook a plucked chicken, and a bunch of folk cures for getting rid of everything from warts to unpopular suitors. I specialize in success, protection, uncrossing, reversing, and spiritual cleansing work. I have been studying folk magic my whole life, from Southern-style herb lore in neighborhood candle-shops to comparative ritual and lore of the African diaspora in universities. It’s as much a part of the fabric of my life as red dirt roads and gumbo. I work with clients from all kinds of faiths and creeds. I was raised a sort of maverick, hippie-flavored Catholic; most of my clients are Protestant or consider themselves spiritual but not a certain denomination, and I work to provide services that fit with the client’s lifestyle, situation, beliefs, and practices.

Karma is running an awesome special right now at her Bonanza booth, where orders totaling $50 or more get 10% off – no need to enter any coupon codes. The system will do the math for you. But *do* read the fine print and policies about getting the lowest possible shipping rate first, because the system usually does *not* do the math on the shipping properly. Use the “make an offer” feature so that she can manually adjust the shipping total before confirming your order

On the web you can find Karma at:

her official AIRR page

Big Lucky Hoodoo Blog

Karma Zain Spiritual Supplies

Karma Zain at Bonanza

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What is your philosophy on magic and root work?

I’m not sure I can say I have “a philosophy.” I have some beliefs, and I have some best practices, and I have some tendencies informed by my own experience, preferences, and background, but I’m not sure it would be right to call any of that philosophy.  And that may be related to the fact that I’m allergic to bumper-sticker thinking and to summing things up in witty or pithy aphorisms that could be reduced to a bumper sticker or motto. One-size-fits-all approaches rarely fit anyone, and I suspect that an ability to understand that, what that means for the practice of rootwork in your own life, and how to apply the moving parts in any given situation, is as much an ingredient in successful rootwork as is anything else. And if I have such a thing as “a” philosophy on rootwork (and I’m still not sure I do, especially not if spiritual work principles and the professional principles involved in deciding whether and how to take cases for clients are both being included here under one umbrella), then that would probably be it: tailor things to the situation, people, and available resources.

It’s the difference between being able to mimic a recipe and being able to pull off your own take on it when it’s 4 pm, you are having unexpected company, you don’t have time to go to the store, and you have to make do with what you have in the pantry even though a picky teenager and a vegan are both coming to dinner.  Can you take what you have and what you know and make good on the task at hand? Do you know when to cut down on the butter or salt, damn what the recipe says? That’s the difference between running a kitchen like a pro and being in home ec.

I’m not saying it’s a free-for-all, and I’m not saying you don’t start from somewhere. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with using commercial formulas – heck, I make them, and I think they’re good, solid building blocks for your work (as are the formulas of many of my friends and colleagues – hey, I have more than one cheesecake recipe at home!). But some people get stuck on “which spell to use,” as if this tradition involved books of shadows and collections of spells. It absolutely does not; everything is tailored, or it should be.

I have watched a lot of clients reach a certain stage in their own study and sort of hit a plateau, where they are unsure “which spell to use” or “what to do if I can’t get John the Conqueror root.” They never seem to get past that, those little details, the “published” spells, the worries about “substitutions.” I’ve watched others who start out being clients and end up working for themselves; they’re the ones who grok the underlying principles eventually and know how to make dinner for eight with what’s in the pantry when the clock is ticking. I mean, when the clock is really ticking, you whip out the Pinesol, the emergency candles from the hurricane kit, and the olive oil. That’s all you really need, when it comes down to the wire. The rest is icing. The expensive oils and resins, the specialized tools and figural candles, all that is nice to have, but a talented and knowledgeable home-worker can do the job with a $5 budget and stuff he or she picks up from the dollar store. That, to me, is at the heart of traditional Southeastern US conjure – pragmatism. To heck with whether the moon is void of course, you know?

Same thing with choosing and tailoring approaches. I’ll get clients who ask for a breakup spell because there’s one too many folks in the relationship and they see this extra person as an obstacle to their happiness with their partner. But breakup is not always the best approach – we have to get at the bottom line, what is ultimately the most important thing. Is it breakup that’s the goal, or is it a stable, faithful relationship? I insist on a consultation before discussing anything like that, and sometimes the consultation will show that breakup is not the best route. Sometimes the best route is working on communication, or the sex life, in the home. Sometimes it’s doing a love-drawing spell on behalf of the interloper, so that person finds another interest and leaves your partner alone. That’s what I work to get at whether I’m working for myself or working for a client – the bottom line, the big picture.

So I suppose I could say that one of my guiding principles is “get at the root, not the symptoms” and another is “keep it simple.” I don’t think either of those are philosophies, precisely, but they’re important principles related to how I work, anyway.

On one level, I like doing Success work for clients. I like to see my clients succeed and see the benefits from their efforts. I like to help them get at where their strengths are, articulate their goals, work towards them with realistic steps and see progress. That’s fun work that I enjoy. But on another level, I find working with the less-fun cases quite rewarding. The single mom trying to get the deadbeat ex to pay child support, the incredibly long court cases that wear people down where the jerk with the money is using that money to wear down the person with the righteous cause, the person pummeled by self-doubt trying to get back into dating again, stuff like that. It’s often exhausting work, quite time consuming for everybody involved, and I try not to take on too many cases like that at one time, but that kind of work can be deeply rewarding.

Rootwork is not a panacea, and sometimes it’s not even worth it. If you are spending weeks and months doing a Pay Me Now working, where somebody owes you $200 and you’ve burnt $100 worth of candles, it might be time to change tactics. If that person has cheated on you three times, how many more candles are you going to burn before you decide to focus on drawing somebody into your life who can appreciate you and the love you have to give? Think of the bottom line. Sometimes it’s going to be easier and quicker to accomplish the job through mundane activity, direct communication, taking an unpleasant or uncomfortable step, or doing plain old interpersonal work.

Rootwork can help all of these goals along, of course, but it’s not a substitute, and there are times when you can find yourself getting hung up too much in the work itself, maybe because it gives you a sense of control or agency in a situation where you otherwise have none. Don’t get me wrong – having a sense of agency in a situation where not much is in your control can be very beneficial. But if you find yourself in a case of diminishing returns, don’t lose sight of the big picture. Sometimes priorities compete, and ideals have to be prioritized, and the best thing for it is a little break, some soul-searching, and some Clarity or Wisdom baths while you gather your resources and give it a good thinking-over. Don’t underestimate the wisdom in your heart, but don’t underestimate how the noise of the world can obscure it sometimes.