Van Van Oil: Louisiana Rootwork, Spiritual Cleansing and Changing Your Luck

Louisiana has been my parents' home for almost 25 years now.

My family is not originally from Louisiana, but after more than two decades, a place inevitably begins to leave its fingerprints on you. At this point, my mother is cooking turkey necks and beans in addition to our own cultural foods, Christmas dinners have become increasingly Southern, and my collection of alligator curios from paws, heads, teeth, is getting entirely out of hand.

Of all the places I have lived and spent significant time throughout the Deep Southeast, I have now spent the most time in Louisiana, followed by Florida. And over the years, Louisiana has become more than simply the place where my parents live. It has become another landscape through which I have learned about plants, food, folk practices, spirituality, and the complicated ways cultures meet one another and create something new.

Naturally, I became deeply interested in New Orleans Hoodoo and Louisiana rootwork.

And it didn't take very long before I encountered Van Van Oil.

From Herbalism to Van Van

Long before Van Van entered my spiritual practice, aromatic herbs were already part of my life as an herbalist.

I have worked with lemon verbena and lemongrass for years, particularly as herbal teas and for traditional wellness uses. 

There is something wonderfully uplifting about citrus-scented herbs. They smell clean. Alive. Sharp without being harsh.

My relationship with these plants initially belonged primarily to herbalism.

Louisiana eventually expanded that relationship into spiritual work.

Van Van introduced me to another way of understanding aromatic plants, not simply for what they might offer the physical body, but for what generations of practitioners had understood them to represent spiritually: clearing, changing, protecting and opening the way forward.

Traditional Van Van formulas are especially associated with aromatic grasses such as lemongrass and related Cymbopogon species. Formulas vary among practitioners and spiritual houses, as traditional formulas often do.

Why Van Van Resonated With Me

Perhaps part of my attraction to Van Van is that its story feels familiar.

My own roots are multicultural. Different histories, traditions and ways of understanding the world meet within my own life rather than remaining neatly separated from one another.

Louisiana spiritual traditions developed within another extraordinary meeting place.

African and African American traditions, European folk practices, Indigenous influences, Caribbean traditions and Catholic devotional culture encountered one another within Louisiana's particular historical landscape. Hoodoo and Louisiana rootwork developed within that complicated cultural environment, particularly through the knowledge, survival and spiritual practices of Black communities.

Van Van belongs to that Louisiana rootwork landscape.

And I appreciate traditions that reveal what happens when people carry their knowledge with them, encounter other people carrying theirs, and create practices rooted in the place where all of those histories meet.

That is part of what drew me toward New Orleans Hoodoo.

Van Van was one of the formulas that stayed with me.

Eventually, I incorporated it into my own spiritual practice.

And eventually, I began making it myself.

What Is Van Van Oil?

Van Van Oil is a traditional conjure formula strongly associated with Louisiana Hoodoo and rootwork.

Its best-known purposes center around spiritual cleansing, changing one's luck, clearing away crossed or unfavorable conditions, protection, and opening roads to better circumstances.

What Is Van Van Oil Used For?

Traditionally, Van Van may be incorporated into spiritual work when circumstances feel stagnant, unlucky, crossed, obstructed or simply ready to change.

It may be used in work intended to:

Clear lingering negative conditions

Turn bad luck toward better fortune

Remove spiritual obstacles

Open roads to new opportunities

Cleanse after difficult circumstances or associations

Protect against unwanted influences

Prepare for a fresh beginning

Dress petitions, spiritual tools or other ritual objects

Support work intended to change an undesirable pattern

Van Van and the Art of Clearing Before Drawing

There is a tendency in spiritual work to immediately concentrate on attraction.

Bring me money. Bring me love. Bring me opportunity. Bring me success.

But sometimes attraction isn't the first work that needs to be done. You can't really pray for more if your hands are already full...

You can perform all the prosperity work you want, but if you are spiritually approaching the situation from the same patterns, conditions and obstacles that accompanied the old circumstances, perhaps the first question should be:

What needs to leave before something new can properly enter?

Someone seeking prosperity, for example, might begin with cleansing and Van Van or Road Opening work before moving into focused money-drawing work.

Someone beginning a new business might use Van Van as part of clearing away previous disappointments and establishing a different condition around the new venture.

Someone moving into a new home might incorporate it into cleansing and threshold work before establishing prosperity, protection and peace within the household.

The work acknowledges transition.

Van Van for Changing Luck

One of the traditional reputations of Van Van is its ability to help turn bad luck to good.

I don't interpret that as sitting around waiting for miraculous fortune to fall out of the sky.

Luck can also describe the condition surrounding us. Everything keeps going wrong. Plans repeatedly collapse.

The wrong people keep appearing. Money arrives and immediately disappears. Opportunities almost happen.

Van Van can be incorporated into spiritual work intended to interrupt that condition and to cleanse away what has become undesirable and deliberately establish movement toward something more favorable.

That is one reason Van Van pairs so naturally with Road Opening work.

How I Handcraft Van Van Oil

My relationship with Van Van has developed slowly through both herbalism and spiritual practice.

When I make Van Van Oil (or any oil for that matter) I work with plants' aroma, character and traditional purpose.

The finished oil carries the unmistakable brightness associated with Van Van work: fresh, citrusy, green, clean and uplifting.

Smell creates an immediate relationship with a spiritual preparation. Before you have dressed anything, prayed anything or begun the physical work of the ritual, you have already encountered the formula through scent.

Van Van smells like movement to me. It smells like opening the windows.

My years working with aromatic herbs gave me one relationship with citrus-scented plants.

Louisiana rootwork gave me another.

Van Van brought those worlds together.

My Relationship With Van Van Today

After all these years, what began as curiosity about Louisiana Hoodoo became another strand within my own spiritual practice.

My relationship with Louisiana didn't begin because my family came from generations of Louisianans. We didn't.

It developed through time. Through family, neighbors, friends. Through food. Through plants. Through listening. Through learning. Through returning again and again.

I work with it. I learned from it. I made it. And I developed my own relationship with it.

Perhaps that is ultimately what I appreciate most about traditional spiritual preparations.

A formula can have a history much older than your relationship with it.

You respect that history. You learn where it came from.

And then, through years of working with it, you begin developing a relationship of your own.

For me, Van Van remains fundamentally a formula of clearing, changing and moving forward. And then decide what you want to place upon the path ahead.

 

Luz y progreso

White Table Tarot

 

Image of my latest gator curio collection addition! *Note to Self: Update blog image with one of my old photos from Aswan, Egypt in which I am holding a 35lbs gator! LOL

 

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