Edward A. Lowe

From Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers

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Edward A. Lowe, Professional Hoodoo Astrologer

Astrology was not only used in ad campaigns that reached into Black neighbourhoods and kitchens, astrologers also practiced hoodoo. The Standard O & B Company of Chicago distributed Zodiac-themed coins, oils, and candles to hoodoo rootworkers via mail order and Chicago was a major center for the promulgation of astrological conjure.

During the 1920s, Texas-born Edward A. Lowe (September 19, 1908 - December 17, 1987) migrated to Chicago’s South Side “Bronzeville” district. There he cast natal and progressed horoscopes for clients, according to “the science of the Zodiac.” He enlisted in the United Sates Army during world War Two, and served from August 1943 to September 1944.

The 1945 book “Black Metropolis: a Study of Negro Life in a Northern City” by St. Clair Drake and Horace Roscoe Cayton described Lowe’s “jinx-removal candles” and “efficacious oils,” as well as his “elaborate altar, where a rack of candles burns and a coloured glass bowl contains oil and water” for clients to touch in a ritual of purification.

Professor Lowe sold policy tickets for illegal betting, published his own “Spiritualistic Dream Book” for catching lucky numbers, compounded and marketed his own brand of Algiers Oil, and called himself an “Astro-Numerologist.” Thus in Edward Lowe we see the perfect amalgam of the conjure doctor and the astrologer, putting the lie to the notion that Southern-born root doctors don’t work by the signs of the Zodiac.

He filed an application for Social Security retirement benefits in September 1969