Personal Concerns in Rootwork and Hoodoo Spellwork Guide

If you have spent any time in hoodoo, rootwork, or the way we build spells here, you have already run into the phrase personal concerns. It means the physical pieces of a person that carry them into the work: hair, nails, sweat, sexual fluid, blood, urine, dirty clothes, a footprint, a signature, a photograph you can actually handle. In plain language, you are putting that person in the spell instead of asking the spell to go hunting for them.

That is why a working with a real concern hits harder than a working built on a name and a wish. The concern is the link. The rest of the rite tells the link what to do.

This page is about what counts, which concerns are stronger than others, when you use your own, when you use someone else’s, how to work when you cannot get one, and how people in this house actually obtain them without turning the night into an announcement.

What a Personal Concern Is

A personal concern is anything that has lived against the target’s body, come out of the target’s body, or been marked by the target’s hand in a way that still holds them. Rootworkers talk about it as putting the person’s nature into the work. Sometimes that is literal, as in blood, semen, menstrual blood, saliva, or urine. Sometimes it is close enough, as in unwashed underwear, hair from the pillow, or dirt from a shoe print.

The closer the item sat to the body, and the more it came out of the body, the stronger the link. That is the whole hierarchy, and it has not changed because the internet arrived.

From strongest to weakest, this is the order we use:

Sexual fluids, menstrual blood, and blood
Saliva, sweat, mucous, and urine
Feces, when the work is ugly and you want them marked as waste
Hair from the body or the head
Fingernail and toenail clippings, skin, scabs
Unwashed clothing, especially what sat against the genitals, underarms, or mouth
Dirt from a footprint or the track of their shoe
A photograph you can burn, bury, pin, or dress
A handwritten signature, used when you have nothing better

A photograph is not the same as a picture on your phone. Visualization helps you hold the target in mind, but most of this work wants an image you can put oil on, pin to a doll, set under a candle, or burn. You cannot burn your laptop. Print the face.

Graveyard dirt is a related class of concern, except the person is dead and you are linking to a spirit rather than a living target. That is its own work, and we have separate pages for collecting it and using it in hexes. Do not treat cemetery dirt as a lazy substitute for a living person’s hair. They are not the same ingredient.

Why It Changes the Spell

Candle work, incense, baths, and powders can move without a personal concern because they work through name, petition, timing, and force. Doll babies, honey jars, some mojos, some bindings, and a lot of domination work want the person physically present in the bundle. Without that piece, you are asking the spell to recognize someone from a description. With it, the spell already has them.

That is why I tell people to get hair early if they think they may need it later. A strand from a lover, folded into paper and put away, is insurance. You may never use it. If the day comes that you need a honey jar, a return working, a stay-with-me, or something meaner, you already have the link and you are not starting from a blank table.

I have had clients come in wanting a doll or a jar and they have nothing of the person except a name and a story. We can still set lights. We can still dress a candle and work a petition. What we cannot do as well is the kind of work that is built to hold a body. Do not wait until the relationship is already out of reach and then notice you never took the hair.

Using Your Own Concerns

Your own concerns tie the benefit, or the burden, back to you.

Urine in a prosperity floor wash marks the business as yours. Nail clippings in a mojo for work done with the hands tie success to the hands that earn it. Sweat or sexual fluid on a lodestone, a candle, or a petition puts your hunger into the draw. Blood is used when the work needs a deeper claim than spit or hair will give it.

This is not decoration. If the spell is supposed to come home to you, give it something that already knows the way.

Using Someone Else’s Concerns

Someone else’s concerns are how you work them when they are not in the room.

Hair under a candle with a petition points the candle at one head, not at “whoever.” Underwear in a jar, a doll, or a wrapping puts their sex and their smell in the work. Foot track dirt is old, mean, and useful when you want to affect their path, trip their luck, or send them walking. Feces belongs to the jobs where you want them treated as something to be got out of a life. Sexual fluid belongs to love, lust, binding, domination, and any working where the body is the point.

In love work, menstrual blood, vaginal fluid, and urine have a long European and American folk history for a reason. Women put a few drops in coffee, tea, or food to keep a man close and faithful. No church prayer is required. The idea is to get your scent and your body into his. The same fluids dress lodestones, amulets, and candles when the goal is sexual pull or a bond that does not slip.

You can combine concerns when the work is about two people at once. A strand of your hair twisted with theirs and put in a honey jar is a simple, ugly, effective way to sweeten and tie. Your fluid on their photograph does the same job with more heat. Their fluid in your working, collected after sex, puts their current into an aim they do not have to know about. That is the same principle as the sex magick we already teach here. The bed can raise the heat. The concern keeps the person in the spell after they have gone home.

How People Actually Get Them

If you live with the person, this is easy. Hair is on the brush, the pillow, the drain. Nails are in the clipper. Unwashed clothes are in the basket. If you only see them now and then, you take what the night gives you.

After sex, hair comes off the sheets and the body. Fluid can be taken while it is still wet if that is the working you came to do. A glass beside the bed is not romance. It is preparation. If a condom is involved, remember that many of them carry chemicals you do not want in a spell, which is why people who work this way prefer a clean collection when they can get it.

A comb, a hat, a scarf, a cigarette butt, a cup they drank from, the dirt off a shoe left by the door: all of that has been used. You do not need a dramatic theft. You need one item that is actually theirs, stored in paper or glass, labeled so you do not mix targets six months later.

A signature off old mail is the bottom of the list, but it is not nothing. Use it when it is what you have, and do not pretend it is as good as the underwear they slept in.

When You Do Not Have One

If you cannot get a concern, do not half-build a doll and then wonder why it feels like theater. Choose work that does not require one.

Honey jars and doll babies are traditionally built with a concern and they are weaker without it. You can still try them with a name paper and a photograph. Just understand you are working with a thinner link.

Candle spells, incense, spiritual baths, sachet powders, and many oils do not require a personal concern. Floor washes, setting lights with a photo, and some mojo bags can take one if you have it and still function if you do not.

So the rule is simple. If you have the concern, you have the full range of methods. If you do not, pick a method that was never built around one, rather than doing the right-looking spell the wrong way and calling the current weak.

How It Goes Into the Work

The concern does not sit on the altar for atmosphere. It goes into the job.

Hair is pinned into a doll, wrapped into a petition, placed under a candle, or tied to your own hair. Fluid dresses the candle, the name paper, the lodestone, the photograph, or the mouth of a jar. Nails and skin go into mojos and bottles. Unwashed cloth becomes the doll’s body or the wrapping around the work. Foot track dirt goes in bottles, powders, and path-workings. Feces goes where the job is to foul, drive, or get someone out.

Speak the name when you put the item in. Tell the concern what it is doing. A piece of a person with no instruction is just a piece of a person.

 

The historical use of urine & blood in love

Urine has been used by women in Italy and all over Europe  for centuries, to “secure” the affection and fidelity of their man.  Not only do they put a few drops of their urine in the mans tea or coffee, but also in food. Menstrual blood is used when the goal is to secure the relationship and to keep him faithful!

“No ritual, prayer, or invocation is necessary; you simply add some menstrual blood, vaginal fluids, or urine to his coffee or tea. The idea is to get one’s scent into the beloved’s sphere of consciousness”

Menstrual blood and vaginal fluids have also been used to anoint idols, amulets, and curios, such as used it to dress lodestones in spells for sexual attraction and bonding.

When to Use a Personal Concern

You can add your own personal concerns to mojo bags, candle spells and other spellwork when you want to strengthen the ties of the benefit to yourself.  For example, if you are doing a spell for prosperity to come to your place of business, you can add a little of your own urine to a prosperity floor wash, or if you are carrying a mojo bag to draw fame and success to your career as an artist, you may add fingernail clippings to ensure that work done with your hands draws the success.

You can add someone else’s personal concerns to your spellwork when you want to work on them remotely. For example, if you would like your child to succeed on a school test, you can place a piece of their hair under a success candle along with your petition.

You can add your personal concerns and another person’s personal concerns when you want to work on something for the both of you. For example, you can tie a strand of your hair around a strand of your lover’s hair to tie him or her to you before placing it in a honey jar.

 Getting a piece of hair is your relationship “insurance policy” – get a piece of your beloved’s hair as soon as possible and hold it aside. You may have a great relationship and you may never need to use it, but if the day ever comes that you need to use it for a spell, you will have it.

I have many clients who wish to do love poppets and honey jars and are only missing the personal concern. Yes, we can set candles and do other sorts of spellwork without a personal concern but not having that piece of hair limits the kind of spells that you can do. Don’t let that be you!

What if I Don’t Have a Personal Concern?

Then become a chaos witch like me and have many tools in your tool kit lol.

When working on yourself or someone you are close to, it is easy to get a personal concern. But what if you are working on someone who is far away or is estranged from you?  If you can’t get a personal concern, then my recommendation is to choose a type of work where a personal concern is not required.

Examples of work that require a personal concern are honey Jars and poppets or doll babies. You can most certainly try this type of work without a personal concern, but traditionally they are done with a personal concern and will have the strongest possible effect with one.

Examples of work that do not require a personal concern are candle spells, incense spells, spiritual baths and laying out of sachet powders or oils. These are not traditionally done with personal concerns, though if you wish to add a personal concern to a candle spell for example, you may.

Examples of work where a personal concern is optional are floor washes, setting lights (with a photo) and some mojo bags. Depending on the type of working your are doing, you may add a personal concern, but it is optional and not always necessary.

So, if you have a personal concern of your target, you have the full range of choices as to the kind of work you can do.  If you do not have a personal concern, then your best bet is to choose a type of work that doesn’t require one rather than choosing one that does and, in a sense, doing it only half way.

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