While voodoo was being reincarnated into a New World religion, hoodoo arose, divorced from religion. Hoodoo spread throughout the islands and coastal cities of Georgia and South Carolina, expanding rapidly as the slave population increased. According to Dr. Michael Gomez's book, Exchanging Our Country's Marks, a hoodoo root doctor must have the power to negotiate with spirits in order to deal with situations in the physical world. The root doctor's power can be used for good or evil, depending on the doctor and the issue at hand. The spirit can be sent by an enemy or can come of its own volition.
Root doctors are herbalists who use various plant and animal parts to cure or create ailments.
Rarely administered in their raw forms, the herbs are ground into powders or liquids and combined with other plants to form concoctions. Like the drug store pharmacist, the root doctor provides specific directions for its use, saying, for example, to bathe in the solution for nine days. Angel B. Hakim, a spiritualist in Savannah, says a root doctor's psychic ability to communicate and to command spirits is referred to as a gift, and is passed down from generation to generation. Hakim inherited her psychic gift from her clairvoyant mother and her prophetic father who was also a spiritualist. He healed people, removed hexes, brought families back together.