Bri Luna, who dubs herself “The Hoodwitch,” knows Black people can feel a way when you start talking about witchcraft, casting spells, or communing with spirits. That’s “devil worship,” they might say, or perhaps shunned together with the all-too-familiar dismissal: I don’t know nothing about all that. Yet if there’s one thing Luna, who’s been what you might call a full-time witch for more than a decade, wants Black people to know, it’s that what we in the Western world think of as witchcraft has been warped by Hollywood imagery and fed back to us through a white, misogynistic lens when in reality, the practice of magic is deeply rooted in the traditions and rituals of African and Indigenous people––our ancestors.

“’It's really sad,” says Luna, who is Black and Mexican and grew up in South Los Angeles. “It's unfortunate, because we do have such a rich culture, and history of magic. That is something that we really need to connect back to.”

She’s penned a book that’ll help. Blood, Sex, Magic: Everyday Magic for the Modern Mystic, out on Halloween, is a practical, relatable, and resonant collection of spells and magic pulled from Luna’s many years doing the work but also her personal life. Sharing stories from her youth with a Black grandmother and a Mexican granny, Luna writes in detail about the rituals and spells she witnessed––spirit work many people of color also saw our grannies doing under a different name. Lighting candles to pray, never throwing out old hair because it could end up in the wrong hands, using roots and herbs, like sage, to cleanse a space—these are all practices so common and ingrained in our collective experience that we may not be making the connection that they’re linked to ancestral tradition. For Luna, seeing a widening acceptance of mystic practices (think of Solange carrying Florida water into the Met Gala) or Black people talking more about our ancestors in general, is encouraging; magic, she contends, is fundamentally ancestral work.

“I'm very grateful to see in my era now that we are reconnecting back to our ancestry and decolonizing our spirituality. It is a way of honoring our ancestors. The beauty of traditions like hoodoo and conjure working, it's like when we embrace and come back and connect back to our roots. It is a way of uplifting and again, bringing honor to those who have come before us.”

Beautifully art directed (by Luna herself), Blood, Sex, Magic is full of prayers, affirmations, and sensible advice (‘Do not second-guess a gut feeling’) that invite the reader to not only reframe their ideas of magic but, importantly, see magic as a way of coming back to self. One theme that recurs throughout is knowing, loving, and trusting one’s self and intuition fully––and trusting ancestors to guide us through life, a concept many Black people buy into and believe without thinking about it. Similarly, Blood, Sex, Magic is full of spells and rituals to try out as well. While some of the spells and rituals might be more advanced than others (the ‘Panty Water Spell’ to dominate a lover, for example, is more on the advanced level), and the very terms ‘spell’ and ‘ritual’ are intimidating to some, a good chunk of what’s in again Blood, Sex, Magic is so organic to our existing experience reading it feels like getting back in touch with parts of yourself you already knew.

“I really do dress with intention,” she says. “How I'm doing my makeup, how I want to wear my hair…if we're wearing all black, it's like, we want to be protected, right? Like, don't talk to me. Or if you wear a red lip, you want people paying attention. This goes into color magic. And I don't think that a lot of people are aware consciously of what they're doing. When you are conscious of it, you can make the mundane a ritual: playing music, light some incense, you have candles going, your house is clean. it's just infusing the intention and into what you're doing in your day to day life. Anything can become a ritual and can be connected to the Divine or to the spirit realm.”

Most of all, she wants people of color to know that magic is already in us; it’s something we already are.

“There is magic in our ancestral lineage. This has been passed down through oral tradition. It survived the slave trade. Our magic had to be hidden. What we need to know is that you are here because your ancestors held on to those practices and those traditions. This is the last piece left of our rooting back to our home.”

Blood, Sex, Magic: Everyday Magic for the Modern Mystic arrives Oct. 31.