A spiritual bath is a prepared bath, its water dressed with a chosen combination of herbs, roots, salts, oils, flowers or commercially prepared washes selected for a specific intended purpose, cleansing away accumulated negative influence, protecting the bather going forward, or drawing toward the bather a specifically desired condition, love, prosperity, success, depending on the ingredients and the accompanying prayer or intention the bather brings to the preparation. The practice is central to hoodoo and rootwork, the African American folk magical and spiritual tradition that developed in the American South, blending African, particularly Central and West African, spiritual and herbal knowledge carried under slavery with elements of Native American herbal knowledge and European folk magic and, significantly, with the Protestant Christian biblical and devotional framework within which most hoodoo practitioners have historically also operated, praying over ingredients and invoking biblical passages and figures, particularly the Psalms, alongside herbal and material preparation rather than treating hoodoo practice and Christian devotion as separate or competing systems.