About The Conjure Woman Episode

A troubled palm reader is forced by her spirit guides to revisit past lives in order to remember why she has incarnated at this time.

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The Conjure Woman Episode Synopsis

Conjure Woman is on the verge of a total breakdown tonight. She’s loosing her ability to foretell the future, her sole source of income, and with it all of her old faithful clients. The few new clients she has are calling to demand their money back with threats of reporting her for false advertising. The bank is about to foreclose on her house and she’s run out of extensions on her power bill. On top of all this, she’s too broke to buy medicine for the migraine headaches she suffers constantly. All she can do at this point is pray for help to get her through the night.

Help arrives when a paying customer shows up at her door for a reading. No sooner than Conjure Woman begins to see a trip on the horizon of her visitor’s palm, she sees something else that scares her to the bone. With little explanation, she stops the reading and shoos the visitor out the door just as a host of lively Sista Spirits descends on her parlor. They have come in response to her prayers.  They know what she saw and will do whatever it takes to make her finish what she’s started. 

But when the visitor returns, Conjure Woman refuses to continue the reading until the Sista Spirits warn that if she doesn’t, neither she nor her ancestors will ever rest in peace. Her only hope for the future is to recall the story her grandmother used to tell of the evolution of their bloodline. Conjure Woman happily concedes to take the visitor on the trip of remembrance, if that’s all it will take.

The problem is she doesn’t remember the entire story. The Sista Spirits intervene by taking her back through time to relive her grandmother’s incarnations and ultimately the darkness and terror foreshadowed in the visitor’s palm. The horrors of her ancestral memories are so painful that Conjure Woman wills herself to death. 

Yet, what she learns in the Spirit realm gives her the compassion to forgive the unforgivable and the courage to reincarnate with a distinct purpose. She returns to the early 1900s as her great-great grandmother to rewrite her family’s herstory and to pass on her enlightened consciousness for generations to come.

She eventually returns to the present, her memory fully in tact.  Conjure Woman has become the woman that her spirits guides always knew she was destined to be.  

Reincarnation, Part I

i want to pivot from our conversation about the African American spiritual practice of Conjure to the topic of reincarnation, which we will explore in the upcoming event:

as stated in the flier, reincarnation/rebirth is one of the central themes of my play The Conjure Woman Episode. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions defines rebirth as "[t]he belief (also transmigration, *metempsychosis, reincarnation, etc.) common in Eastern religions, that there is a continuity from one life to a next, either of a self or soul . . .  or, in the case of Buddhism, of the process itself." although i get it on an intellectual level, i can't honestly say i totally believe in reincarnation. my soul isn't yet convinced of that truth, because i can't tell if, at times, i'm truly remembering past life experiences or receiving information from Spirit, or just making stuff up in my head. 

on the other hand, i'm fascinated with the whole phenomenon of cellular memory and the possibility that i have inherited grey matter genes, that is, grey matter composition, including memories, from my parents and ancestors. this would explain why i have felt at home the first time i've visited new places and other deja vu type experiences. from that perspective, reincarnation makes perfect sense to me; bits and pieces of my ancestors abide in me. they live on through me.

i've invited Rev. Douglas Kinney to participate in the panel discussion for the aforementioned event, because he's written extensively on this topic and performs past life regressions, which is another central theme of the play. my Conscious Life Design partner, Rev. Bernette Jones, will also participate on the panel to bring a metaphysical perspective to the discussion. AND, if at all possible, i want to bring my fellow Trail of Dreams Peace Walker, Audri Scott Williams, up to B-more for this event, because she has a wealth of information to bring to this conversation.

please join us on October 2nd for what promises to be an enlightening and entertaining experience. i look forward to sharing the stage again with the fabulous Walks on Water (aka Nataska Humminbird) and Olufunmilayo Jomo. big fun!

Conjure in the Culture & Arts Continued

i've come across what promises to be an eye opening documentary on Conjure titled The United States of Hoodoo (2012) by Oliver Hardt and written by Darius James and Oliver Hardt. the distribution website states, "The United States of Hoodoo is a film about how African American based spirituality has influenced American culture." here's the link if you'd like to read more: http://hoodoo.stokedfilm.com/

 the film is available for rent or sale on Vimeo. i plan to watch it later this week after completing my final teaching gig for the summer at Howard Community College. (looking forward to reclaiming some free time head space for the next 3 weeks!!) anyone care to watch the film with me? i would appreciate your thoughts/responses as we continue to explore what Conjure is and isn't, how it shows up in our culture, and--of particular interest to me--how we give life to this topic in different artistic forms and mediums.

follow me on FB and join the conversation there (Lenett Nef'fahtiti Myrick & Lenett Nef'fahtiti Partlow-Myrick)