Rootcraft

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“So it has always been, and so it is.” - Patricia, Legendborn

Rootcraft is a type of magic practiced. Rootcrafters are the descendants of those who developed the craft, Black folk who can borrow power from their ancestors and use it to heal, to speak to the dead, protect others, divine the future, and more.

Root

"Rootcrafters borrow root temporarily because they believe that root is not for people to own." They "make offerings to their ancestors so that they will share root with them for a time." Offerings include a collection of items that are organic or edible, such as things that used to be alive or things that are fresh. Mariah explains that they offer the favorite pieces of life to the dead because they remind the ancestors of their time on the human plane. After root is returned, they "thank them for being a bridge to its power. That is the unifying philosophy of their practice. Beyond that, families have their own variations, their own flavors, if you will. So it has always been, and so it is."

Power

The heart of Rootcraft is protection from those who would harm them [Black folks/rootcrafters], and if they do, healing so that they can survive, resist, and thrive. Root is about uplifting life not death. Even though they walk beside death to access it and honer the ones who came before, the working are for the living, not the undead. The ancestors control the amount of power a Rootcrafter has access, and unlike Bloodcraftes, they can't turn them on and off like a tap. Rootcrafters is nowhere near as powerful as the magic used by the Legendborn, but is far less dangerous, and won’t take a toll on the caster, allowing them to live long and happy lives.

Ancestral magic users have the strongest access to aether - to root - than any other humans. Rootcrafters especially. And their emotions can be richer too. So greater demons prefer to feed on them. Bree can access her ancestors' abilities in a new, more powerful way.

Branches of Root

Wildcrafter

Wildcrafters can manipulate the energy found in growing things like plants, herbs, and trees. Wildcrafters borrow power from their ancestors in order to use the energy of plants. That power is finite ans so is the living energy of plants. Their ability to operate as a vessel.

• Practitioners: Faye Matthews, Mary

Reader

Readers can see people's auras, and thus their emotions, intentions, and abilities. Folks emit personal energy that reflect the state of their spirit. Auras look like a faint sort of fog or thin mist. Readers could only see root if they asked their ancestors to lend their eyes, and only for a short time.

Magnifiers specialize in connecting folks to their own life force, their own vitality.

• Practitioners: Janice, Lucille, Hazel

Memory walker

Memory walkers can astrally project themselves into the memories of their ancestors, who they can interact with in a limited capacity. This branch of root allows practitioners to work memories by understanding their energy and power over the present day. They can't see root, but they can feel it. A memory walk is a sort of time travel into a memory of a person's ancestor. It's uncommon for someone from outside the family to be brought along for a walk. A memory walker is an observer only. The people in the memory can't see or hear them.

• Practitioners: Patricia Hartwood, Vera, Louisa, Cecilia, Ruth Hartwood

Healer

Healers use root to heal others and themselves.

• Practitioners: Jessie

Prophet

Prophets use root to see the future. They could only see root if they asked their ancestors to lend their eyes, and only for a short time.

Medium

Mediums can channel the dead and be channeled by them.

• Practitioners: Mariah, Bree Matthews,

Mediums

A Medium makes offerings to their deceased ancestors to borrow their knowledge and power. As a Medium, their power is wound tightly with death. Medium can't control the dead or contact a specific ancestor at will. All are different because ancestors themselves are different. Mediums is a branch of root with its own sub-branches, like possession.

Most Mediums could only see root if they asked their ancestors to lend their eyes, and only for a short time.

Possession

Medium possession, which is channeling a spirit forward to the living, is really rare. When possessed they have to focus from spilling them out, and keep their guard up so other ancestors from their line don't come knocking. The hardest part of being a Medium is closing the doors once they're opened. The unsettled spirits, the eager ones, look for ways in. A root shockwave, with enough power, can disrupt the dead beyond their location.

When possessed, like Bree being possessed by her grandma, Mrs.Charles, she acted as a lighthouse. A signpost for an older mother. She’ll passed the request on.

Bloodwalk

Mediums can travel the ancestral stream, a plane between death and the living. In this plane a medium can, bloodwalk, living through their ancestors memories, like Bree did with Arthur's Memories.

Bridge

A Medium walks the path between the living and the dead. Someone who can bridge the two natural, like Mariah, can see the connections — rare grift. They can see the connections between others’ lives and their brush with death.

Reader

Readers can see people's auras, and thus their emotions, intentions, and abilities. Folks emit personal energy that reflect the state of their spirit. Auras look like a faint sort of fog or thin mist. Readers ( and Mediums and Prophet) could only see root if they asked their ancestors to lend their eyes, and only for a short time.

Lucille does reading to her clients and uses focal items for aura work. Have the client hold them so she can help read the dynamic between them and their objective, or relationship.

Magnifiers

Magnifiers specialize in connecting folks to their own life force, their own vitality. Miss Hazel can see the light and energy around a person, and determine if someone has Root in them.

Rootcrafters

Different families have different approaches. It is taught within families and practitioners tend to keep the craft private. Most often, Rootcraft is passed from mother to daughter. If a child has a branch of root, their gift will manifest at an early age, usually around five or six years old, with some small, accidental crafting. Traditionally a mother teaches her daughter about the craft.

A granny woman is a root doctor, herbalist. There’s not many of them nowadays, but still a few. Miss Hazel is a Reader but is also an herbalist and Magnifier.

Protect

The foundation of root is protection, and it’s up to the ancestors to decide how much of that they want to offer and how much of that their descendants need.

Rootcrafters have been hunted by the Order for decades. Rootcrafters call the type of magic used by the Order "Bloodcraft." They have networks of stations to move Rootcrafters whose powers are big enough to draw attention from Merlins to get them to safety.

Volition is both a gravesite and a refuge. A site of mourning and a site of hope. Someone need to ask for permission before entering the root barrier.

A spirit’s house is where the spirits of the dead can reclaim a place for themselves and their own people. A place in the United States for their our own, to rest. Where they get to decide what to preserve, and how. The house won't let outsiders in, nonnegotiable.

Author’s Note

In addition to drawing on Tracy Deonn's own life to create the fictional magic system of rootcraft, she took inspiration from African American history and spiritual traditions. In particular, she focused on rootwork, also known as hoodoo or conjure. Rootwork was developed by enslaved Africans and their descendants under American chattel slavery, and it can be traced from its historic origins to varied practices in present-day African American communities. Rootwork is not a centralized tradition, and practitioners from different families, regions, and times have their own gospel on what it looks like. But there are common aspects, many of which can be found in other traditions and religions, including those with roots in West Africa. "Rootcraft" in Legendborn borrows four of these common elements: ancestor reverence and communion, the ritual use of organic materials, naturopathic medicine and healing, and themes of protection.

Rootwork is a historic and living folk tradition and spiritual practice, but it is not the practice in her book. While the rootcraft magic Bree explores in the book is fictional, Tracy chose to use the term "root" in Legendborn for four reasons:

• To set this type of ancestral, organic magic apart from the magic of the Order.
• Because of the power of this word in my community; imagery using roots exists across Black music, pop culture, and film.
• Because, for me and many other Black people in the South, it feels as if the very soil that helped grow this country is soaked with the acknowledged and unacknowledged blood, sweat, and tears of enslaved Africans and their descendants. And, in truth, it is.
• To hint at the solution to Bree's turmoil in the book, which is to recognize the living nature of love in her life, alongside death, and to literally go underground to find the truth of her origin.