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CHAPTER 1
The Drinking Gourd and North Star Doorway
Before we learn of their spirits and their magics, I want to share the first and simplest of conjures for the spirits of the U.G.R.R., to set the tone through the most basic of formulas: our prayers of intent.
The North Star was sung to and wished upon as the great navigator those on the U.G.R.R. looked to to guide them out of bondage and point the way north. To stand beneath and draw the light of the North Star down upon us is a central sacred work with the spirits of the U.G.R.R. The North Star is a mirror that still reflects back to us the very eyes of those who gazed up toward it in prayer, vow, panic, and, for some, eventual joy. For many who fled on the tracks of freedom this was the only aid they had. No other codes, mysteries, or promise of friends waiting farther on down the line was there for them to hold on to, just the hope that somehow it would all work out. The North Star was the encourager to keep going, the comforter from above, a devoted eye of the ancestors looking down upon their people with love.
This is the holiest celestial mystery definitive of the U.G.R.R. and its legacy: the North Star's ability to house and reflect back to us that which was conjured into it. Yes, the freedom seeker used it to navigate. It was a symbol and code among friends and supporters, immortalized as a holy light for those greatest achievements of self-emancipation ever known. But it was also a mirror, and a mirror retains all that it captures. For every victorious moment of a freedom seeker standing upon his or her metaphorical Land of Canaan, across the borderline of the "River Jordan" gazing upon her with unfathomable joy, there is sadness too. How does one find words to describe the level of sadness and tragedy retained and reflected back? We can look to the North Star with dry eyes and praise its heavenly light and all that it stood for, but all her mysteries must be grappled with. For she also captures forever the last moments of those who were not successful, whose tear-filled eyes gazed one last time at their comforter before their life was stolen away. Many of the old U.G.R.R. tracks to freedom are still in haunt; not all spirits who wander them have found their way into the arms of Mama Moses and her Followers or the shrines of their living descendants. Even today some of those that were successful now lie beneath parking lots, their names forgotten, headstones absent.
This is the nature of this tradition of conjure, why we do it, and the blessings exchanged between human and spirit: We help those who are still lost to navigate their way and continue to elevate the spirits of the U.G.R.R. by bringing them home to their families, whether they are here among the living or loves residing in the hereafter. For every spirit or mystery we work with and explore within this book, we strengthen our connection to the spirit world. For every Cairn and Cross we build, every mojo or talisman we create, every spiritual sung and invocation announced, we are enhancing our powers of conjuration toward this very work.
When you stand immersed in the North Star's subtle yet sacred light, let your focus blur to just beyond your peripheral so that the doorway that the mirror provides will open to you. Let your will and prayers center on the intent that the spirits continue to find their loved ones and friends that helped them and end in an embrace in spirit. Allow that aim be carried to the winds. Let every conjure you do for the spirits be unto this purpose, your shrine to the spirits of the U.G.R.R. act as a safe house, the symbols and the spirituals you sing and whisper a means of encouragement. Bring them to a place of comfort. And from there, for every time we work among the conjures of the U.G.R.R., let them finally embrace their loved ones, Mama Moses, the Diviners, and the Healers. Let them hear the call to séance and find solace among the spiritualists. Let them give the warrior handshake to Captain Brown. Once within the fold of the spirit world of the U.G.R.R., these spirits will be able to choose their trail from there: to carry on to their god and the angels, to arrive and love their descendants, or to live among the active spirits so that the work can continue.
Every hug and handshake shared in the spirit world of the U.G.R.R. is possible because of the sacred work that still must be done. We must still fill the spirit world with light, protection, and sustenance and never forget its need to exist. For we will always need this spirit world and its heroic fraternity where white and black fought together, whose bonds have remained intact into the afterlife. It's up to us to add to that afterlife and nurture it, making it stronger and safer and sharing it with those who possess a capacity to take the flame and illuminate their part of the continual interconnected quilt of freedom. Now more than ever we need to be able to draw from this beautiful spirit world, conjure it into our reality, and in doing so feed and strengthen it.
Many spirits have already chosen to work among the ghost tracks, trails, homesteads, statuary, altars, and graves of prominence so that those who were forgotten can continue their journey and reach eternal freedom. And for each of us working under the North Star exalting and feeding those working spirits, we enable and uplift them hand in hand.
Find Your Connection with the North Star Mirror
No matter where we live — in light-saturated cities or under clear country skies — the North Star is visible up above, twinkling in the heavens.
Locate the North Star, also known as the polestar, wherever you are. You can do this by finding the secret coded companion she sits beside: the Drinking Gourd, named so by the Africans for its similarity to a literal hollow gourd used for drinking, immortalized in spirituals but most commonly known as the Big Dipper, and to us in this tradition as the Cup of Conjure. City dwellers may have to travel a few blocks to get to a good place to view it, but many of the practices in these pages require a little bit of work at times to achieve, even what appears to be the most basic.
The Big Dipper is a constellation that never sets in the northern sky. It circles around the North Star. Use whatever means you have to find the cardinal direction north in your area, then look for the stars that form a bowl on the end of a handle. Folks name constellations for what they look like, and this grouping looks like a dipper or a drinking gourd. Now look at the bowl of the Big Dipper. The two stars that make up the end of the cupping shape form a line, and if you follow the line out of the Big Dipper and off into space with your eyes, you will find the bright beacon of the North Star.
Once you've located the Big Dipper, take some time to make a connection. Ponder the Drinking Gourd, its mysteries and cloaked meaning, and how many drank from that very cup to achieve eventual freedom. Then connect the two celestial mysteries: Once you have drawn the line to the North Star, fixate upon it, gazing and bonding with it by any means you can. Remember, it is a mirror, the gateway to the U.G.R.R. spirit world that will swing open. At this moment you are the gatekeeper.
Let your vision blur just a bit, at least to your peripheral, and you will not only be the gatekeeper but a beacon. You will be a lantern bearer, your spirit will become illuminated by its holy light, and the spirits will see you — through the buildings that may be around you and the noise that may surround you, they will hear you.
Imagine at this moment that the wandering spirits that were lost on the trails of freedom will catch a glimpse of you, that those who are already elevated and exist among the U.G.R.R. spirit world will spot your light, and indeed Mama Moses will see you too. Mama Moses and her Followers will look into your soul and know it as kind, as an ancestor or as a friend. Who knows how many other conjurers on any given night are gazing upon the North Star's mirror for this simplest, yet sacred act and how many more spirits still wander, eyes fixed upon her light?
Speak aloud or just in a whisper, and let the spirits know you are a lantern bearer and that your shrines and work are for them. Each of us engaging in this practice creates our own grid in an ever-evolving constellation of illuminated souls fixed upon the earth. We are the beacons, the "shooflys" in the old code for the trusted allies on the Underground Railroad, the guides.
The Lantern Bearer's Prayer
Do this work as often as possible or when time presents itself. Praying to the North Star will enhance your connection to Mama Moses and the spirits of the U.G.R.R. Reciting the prayer out loud is the most effective.
To the Drinking Gourd high in the sky, Let me drink from your chalice of silvery light; Let me open the gate whilst quenched from your holy cup of conjure. Sweet North Star, great lantern bearer of the sky, Mirror who reflects God's light from afar, Let my lantern bear your sacred light and I will cast it to the shadows, Let those who still have rivers to cross be guided by my lanterns light, Let a column of your holy light beam down upon my home, Let our lanterns shine, connected, eternal and forevermore,
The Conjuration of Harriet "Mama Moses" Tubman
I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.
–Harriet Tubman
In the spirit world of the U.G.R.R. Harriet Tubman is the "General"— and for good reason. It was a title bestowed upon her in a mystical and spiritual proclamation by none other than the martyr, the insurrectionist, and her friend and brother-in-arms "Captain" John Brown. She was fond of this name till her dying days. Harriet Tubman was a mystic, a healer, a warrior — she was Mama Moses who, like her biblical namesake, led her people to freedom.
Before we begin to work with the powerful and beautiful spirit of Mama Moses, let's have a look at some of the highlights of this fascinating holy woman's life.
Harriet Tubmans Early Years
Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross in approximately 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland. Until she reached young adulthood, she was called Minty. Her mother, whose name was Rit, was a slave with a position in the "big house" where the plantation master lived and was a conjure woman like her mother had been before her: Minty's grandmother, presumably renamed Modesty by her slaveholders, was an Ashanti who had been brought over from what is now Ghana. Minty was always aware of her Ashanti ancestry. Minty's father, Ben Ross, who was born into slavery in America but had his freedom granted to him in middle age, was a skilled woodsman and woodworker, a man respected by everyone: his fellow enslaved, free people of color, and the masters for whom he labored.
During the time she was enslaved, Minty was beaten brutally. By the time she was six years old, Minty was already caring for her baby brother, so she was then sent out to labor as a nursemaid and to provide child care in other homesteads. There young Minty suffered more physical abuse. She learned to improvise quickly and to wear numerous layers of clothing to absorb the constant whippings and beatings.
I grew up like a neglected weed, – ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it. Then I was not happy or contented.
–Harriet Tubman in Benjamin Drew, The Refugees
Her young life would change forever after a brutal and fateful assault by a wicked man. At about the age of fifteen, while running into town for goods, she encountered a fellow enslaved youth she knew personally who had slipped away from his plantation without permission. His furious overseer soon appeared and wanted Minty to help apprehend the boy. She refused, and when the boy ran for it, the overseer threw a several-pound metal weight toward him. It struck Minty in the head instead. This was a severe and life-threatening injury. Bloodied and experiencing head trauma, she spent days drifting in and out of consciousness. Her master did not think she was worth medical attention and had her back at hard labor within weeks.
This head injury is considered the catalyst that brought on her lifelong visions, prophetic dreams, and hearing the voice of God. It was her initiation into the world of the mysteries. Spirituality had been a part of her core from a young age; from Bible stories told to her to the lore and legends of her maternal grandmother from Ghana, young Minty was aware of the worlds of African spirits as well as the Holy Spirit and everything in between. One of the foremost Tubman historians, Dr. Kate Clifford Larsen, says in Bound for the Promised Land, "Tubman's religiosity was a deeply personal spiritual experience, unquestionably rooted in powerful evangelical teachings, but also reinforced and nurtured through strong African cultural traditions." Her history of spirituality and the head injury came together to form a perfect storm to create the mystic she would become and the general in the war she would soon fight. These would be the foundations of a holy woman, rootworker, healer, and warrior. Young Minty had also seen firsthand that resistance was viable, even if it might seem futile at times. She not only knew all about Nat Turner's initially powerful rebellion and the brutal result from 1831, but considered him a local hero, as many of the enslaved did.
Her family's slave master Edward Brodess had already sold some of Minty's siblings south, never to be heard from again. Not long after her injury, he made it known that he planned on selling her youngest brother, a child named Moses. Rit hid her infant son for over a month with the help of fellow slaves, as well as some free people of color. When the time finally came that Brodess and the buyer were to enter Rit's dwelling to retrieve the child, Rit resisted and threw a curse at them, promising death to whomever touched her child. The sale was called off. This act of resistance had an impact upon Minty in more ways than one.
God's time [Emancipation] is always near. He set the North Star in the heavens; He gave me the strength in my limbs; He meant I should be free.
–Harriet Tubman to Ednah Dow Cheney, in Kate Clifford Larsen, Bound for the Promised Land
Through years of child care and nursemaid duties Minty had gained a reputation for doing extremely hard labor, preferably alone — which was not uncommon for enslaved women — in order to avoid brutal treatment from the house mistress and sexual advances by the masters. During these years of hard labor, a new opportunity sealed her future as an Underground Railroad conductor and warrior. Minty's master allowed her to hire herself out: for an annual fee paid to her master she could work for herself, enabling her to buy her own livestock and grow her own food to sell and trade in the hopes of saving enough money to possibly purchase her own freedom. This era brought her back into close proximity with her father, Ben Ross, which made Minty very happy.
Being in close quarters to her father brought her more indispensable tools. While surrounded by mostly black men working on docks and in timber crews, Tubman was able to learn secret codes of communication and networks of travel that were mysteries among black mariners. The mariners were familiar with a world seemingly far away, including the shipyards and ports in Baltimore, communities and landscapes all along the Chesapeake Bay, right up to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The black mariners and Tubman's father were able to share safe locations as well as ones fraught with danger. This secret language that was essentially a map and code of communication would come in handy soon enough.
As a young woman living through harsh realities that enslavement brought, blessed and a young prophetess as she may be, she still felt the very human desire for love. Her first love was for a man named John Tubman, a free man of color. Relationships between slaves and free people of color were not uncommon at that time or in that region, although they brought with them a lot of complications. Any children born to such a couple were considered property of the slave master of the mother. Their time together is shrouded in mystery, but John and Minty were married in 1844 when they "jumped the broom." They lived together in a small cottage, were for a time a happy and loving couple, and it was then that she changed her name from Minty to "Harriet" in what is believed to be a combination of a religious conversion and the honoring of a relative, quite possibly her mother. She would be known as Harriet Tubman from then on.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Conjuring Harriet "Mama Moses" Tubman and the Spirits of the Underground Railroad"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Witchdoctor Utu.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
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