Longboarding is probably why my business is so successful, and being that
I have to constantly ship orders out, it could be a lot to wait for a train, so I actually
longboard to the post office.
With my shop last year, I did just as well being self-employed at my
shop, as I did working in corporate America.
Shontel is one of many Black women who profits from the current spiritual boom.
She is part of a trend of Black women-owned businesses, inspired by African traditional
religions. These spiritual businesses offer retail products like candles, oils and cleansing bags.
The owners are often practitioners of African-derived religions such as Hoodoo, Santeria,
Yoruba Orisha, and they also offer healing services, psychic readings and spiritual
counseling.
I do feel people are more open to going back to the days of our ancestors,
and that's very special.
I'm Shontel Anestasia.
I am 30 years old.
I'm an Apetebi in the Afro-Cuban religion, Lukumi.
Shontel started her Etsy shop after she was laid off from her sales advisor job in
2020.
I started the Urban Gurvi Mama Shop due to the Afro-Cuban traditions that my grandma actually taught
me at a young age.
So I wanted to create a shop that was specifically for women that not only guided them, but
taught them. When it comes to my clients and my buyers, it's
95% women.
My best selling product is my Elegua Candle.
Second to that, spiritual baths.
My community comes from definitely YouTube, TikTok and my Instagram.
I understood what my gifts and my grandma always told me my hands.
You know, like, my hands were powerful.
Some of these practices fall under the metaphysical or psychic services, and this industry is
experiencing a surge.
Over the next five years, psychic businesses in the U.S.
are expected to grow from 93,000 to nearly 100,000.
In 2020, the industry was worth over $2 billion and is expected to reach $2.4
billion by 2026.
As the pandemic brought instability and uncertainty to the world, many businesses like Rituals +
Ceremony helped people discover new ways to practice faith.
My name is Sarah Williams and I am the owner of Rituals + Ceremony in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Our goal is to help our customers create a sacred space for their home.
Sarah was born in New York.
Her family is from Liberia, West Africa, and she grew up in a Christian home.
I was a point in my life where I just wasn't happy where I was at, and during that search, I was looking
to find a space like Rituals + Ceremony, but I just couldn't find it.
So, I figured if I was looking for this space that other people were too.
Alongside running Rituals + Ceremony, Sarah is also a costume designer for TV and films.
Her shop closed during the height of the pandemic, but has since reopened.
We have been open now, for four years.
I have clients as young as teenagers, like 16,17, all the way to older
adults in their 50s, 60s.
We're embracing more of our identity, we're embracing more of our heritage, and it's just
something that I didn't want to necessarily let fade away into the background.
For Black women, Christianity has often been the source of comfort through trying times, but recent
data points to a more nuanced religious landscape.
Kiana Cox is a research associate at the Pew Research Center.
In a recent report, she helped track religious trends among Black Americans.
While the report finds that the majority of Black Americans are still Christian, their religious
affiliation also coincides with a wider range of spiritual beliefs and practices.
We did not report on the extent to which Black people are affiliated with African religions because that
number is actually very small.
But that's not the end of the story, though.
We ask people three questions: have you done any of these things at least once a month, if not more?
Have you prayed at an altar or shrine?
About 20% of Black Americans said that they have done that.
Have you consulted a diviner or reader?
About 12% of Black Americans said they've done that.
Do you burn candles, incense or sage as part of your religious or spiritual practice?
About 12% of Black people have done that.
So about 30% of Black people say that they believe prayers to their ancestors can protect them.
Even though they're not affiliated with African religions, some of these practices and beliefs that
we might associate with non-Christian religions are there.
Gladys Calvin Ibae, Joseph Calvin Ibae, Althea Jamison Ibae, Dorothy Lawson Ibae,
Rose Lewis Ibae, Charles Lewis Ibae, Nathan Lewis Ibae, Darius Keller Ibae, Tyronne
Calvin Ibae, Hilda Egono Ibae, John Egono Ibae.
One of the largest African traditional religions that some Black Americans practice is Orisha worship,
which derives from the Yoruba people of Nigeria.
This is Elemi, owner of a botanica shop in Newark, New Jersey.
The shop has been open for the past 12 years, and Elemi has the highest ordination in
five African traditions, including the IFA and Yoruba faiths.
The Yoruba tradition from Nigeria is the 10th largest religion in the world.
I notice in the last, I would say, maybe about seven to eight years, there has been
an influx of people of color, Black and brown people, Europeans,
people from Asia.
It's because the basis of all of these traditions is ancestral veneration, and we all have
ancestors.
She started out as a technology consultant, but was called by her spirits to open Yeyeo Botanica in
2010.
I've noticed over the years that the spiritual space has really kind of,
expanded and grown and become more inclusive.
And with this expansion, comes even more accessibility to spiritual businesses.
Peace, Light and Progress to the Guides and Protections of Shantrelle Patrice Lewis. Peace,
Light and Progress to the Guides and Protections of Shantrelle Patrice Lewis. Peace, Light and Progress
to the Guides and Protections of Shantrelle Patrice Lewis.
I am Shantrelle P.
Lewis, I am the co-founder of Shoppe Black and I'm also a Lukumi Shango priest.
For the past almost two decades, I have consistently grown as a priest, and as a spiritualist, and
Hoodoo practitioner as well.
My husband and I understood the need for Black people to be able to support our own and to locate
Black-owned businesses, and so in 2015, we started Shoppe Black as a platform
for finding and locating Black-owned businesses, globally.
What the resurgence of Hoodoo, the resurgence of spirituality has done, is create a market
for, and the need for people to want to purchase and buy
supplies that will allow them to also create prosperity, to create health, to bring in
love and to bring in all the good things that they want to attract to themselves by supporting people
that look just like them.
It's interesting in the pandemic, when so many traditional businesses were closing and struggling,
there was also huge businesses that were established and created, particularly by
Black women, and there are now still thriving.
Shantrelle uses her interest in African traditional religions to cultivate a community of other Black
women practitioners as a Hoodooist.
She also shares information to help demystify that religion.
Hoodoo is a religion, it's the culture.
Our enslaved ancestors, they brought their religion, their spirituality, their beliefs,
their skills, their medicine-making.
My name is Angèle.
I am the creator and founder of Hoodoo Hussy Conjure Enterprises.
I help support and co-create healing for people using herbs, using nutrition and using
spirit medicine.
Angèle works full time in education and started Hoodoo Hussey as a side business in
2017.
This is not something that is going to cover all of my costs.
Right now, the money that's made from it is really reinvesting in the business.
Money that I made 2021, during the pandemic in 2020, I really used it to up
my business game.
I think right now it's still, even though I'm about to celebrate five years of the business,
I think it's still setting the foundation for, you know, just a lot of growth.
I feel really, really blessed to be able to witness people in my generation and
younger, leaning into African and African diasporic spirituality.
That is our blessing and our gift.
These women represent a cultural shift that has many Black and brown millennials, and Gen Z folks,
questioning spirituality.
Through the rise of social media platforms, they're embracing their ancient spiritual gifts and their
businesses and guides flourish.
I'm very big on leaving a legacy behind and finishing what my grandma started.
When I'm gone, I want my kids to be doing this.
It's not just for now, it's for later and generations to come.