About Mambo Samantha Corfield

Hello, and Thank You for Wanting to Know Me

Thanks for taking the time to read about me. I am Samantha Corfield, usually known around here as Mambo Sam. I know it can be difficult to decide whether you feel comfortable trusting someone you have only met through a website, especially when the work is personal, spiritual, and sometimes connected to the most private parts of your life. So this page has always been my way of opening the door a little wider and telling you who I am.

I am a Haitian Vodou Mambo Asogwe, formally Bon Mambo Feraye de la Kwa Daginen, and I am the founder of Spellmaker and The Voodoo Boutique. I was born in New Orleans on Christmas Day and grew up in a family where New Orleans Voodoo, rootwork, folk magick, prayer, Catholicism, herbs, and old family traditions could all exist at the same kitchen table without anyone finding that especially strange.

Over the course of my life I have studied and practiced several forms of magick and spirituality. My path has included my family tradition of New Orleans Voodoo, witchcraft, rootwork, ceremonial magick, and Haitian Vodou. I was initiated in Haiti as a Mambo Asogwe. I was also initiated into New Orleans Witchcraft by the late Oneida Toups, and my late husband, Houngan Bob, was an important part of my ceremonial-magick training. I remain deeply influenced by the Catholic culture in which I was raised.

Spellmaker, Family Tradition, and the Work I Still Do

Spellmaker has always been a small family business. The roots of many of our products reach back through my family, especially the women who worked with herbs, roots, oils, prayers, charms, and folk-magick traditions long before anyone imagined selling such things on the Internet. Some of the product names are old family names. Some have grown and changed as I have learned more, practiced more, and combined my New Orleans background with the responsibilities and blessings of my Haitian Vodou initiation.

I still take great pride in the fact that this is not a faceless operation. Our products are made in small batches, and spiritual work is not treated like a conveyor belt. I consecrate the products I send out, and when I cast for someone, I know there is a real person behind the petition. People come to us because they are in love, heartbroken, frightened, hopeful, angry, grieving, trying to build a life, trying to save a relationship, trying to make peace, or simply trying to understand what comes next. I never forget that.

I also still believe strongly that the client has a role in spiritual work. Even when I am doing the casting, the desire belongs to you. Your prayers, meditations, affirmations, choices, and the energy you put toward your goal matter. Magick should not make you feel powerless. My hope is that it gives you something meaningful to work with while you continue to move toward the life you want.

Create Your Own Afterlife

In 2026 another major part of my work became public with the release of my book, Create Your Own Afterlife: Take Control of Life After Death, published by Llewellyn Worldwide.

The book grew out of something I have spent much of my life thinking about: why should death, and whatever may come after it, be something we are only allowed to fear or passively accept? Create Your Own Afterlife invites people to think about the afterlife they would actually want, to explore those ideas without being forced into one religious answer, and to consider how imagining that future can change the way we live right now.

My goal is not to tell readers that I possess the one correct map of what happens after death. I do not. My work is about spiritual autonomy, curiosity, imagination, and reducing the fear that can surround death. I want people to feel that they are allowed to ask questions, build a personal spiritual framework, remain uncertain where they are uncertain, and still create something meaningful.

That work has expanded into writing, interviews, private consultations, death coaching, and conversations about grief, fear of death, spiritual identity, contact with our dead, and the enormous question of what we hope is waiting for us. I also write The Afterlife Gazette, where I can continue those conversations in a more personal and exploratory way.

Teaching, Writing, and Community

Teaching has become increasingly important to me. Over the years I have taught Voodoo, Vodou, witchcraft, magick, spiritual practice, ritual work, and many of the subjects that surround them. I am especially interested in helping beginners understand that spiritual practice is something you do, not simply something you collect information about.

Spellmaker has always tried to offer more than products. We have created lessons, free classes, rituals, teaching circles, articles, videos, newsletters, and places where people can ask questions and learn from one another. Our free rituals and teaching circles are planned to begin again in January 2027, and the House of the Nine Mysteries continues to give me a place to teach, learn, and build community with people who want to participate rather than merely observe.

I also write about spirituality, death, the afterlife, magick, grief, the lwa, old New Orleans traditions, and whatever else has captured my attention long enough that I feel compelled to talk about it. If you spend much time around me, you will discover that the list of things I am interested in is not especially short.

A Little More of My Story

I was educated in New Orleans in both Catholic and public schools and graduated from Tulane University with a B.A. in Theatre Arts. A doctorate in Theology came much later. I am a Reverend with the Universal Life Church, an Oracle in my family tradition of New Orleans Voodoo, and a Haitian Vodou Mambo Asogwe.

I was married to my late husband, Bob, for 25 years. He was an initiated Houngan, an artist, a writer, a martial artist, and an enormous part of the early life of Spellmaker. His artwork and humor are still scattered throughout this website, and I intend to keep some of those things exactly because they are part of our history.

Love came into my life again with Matt, and we married in November 2005. Between family, Spellmaker, the House of the Nine Mysteries, my writing, my spiritual work, and whatever project has wandered into the room and demanded to be made next, my life remains very full.

After all these years, what I want has not changed very much. I want to do work I believe in. I want to make things that are useful. I want people who come to me for help to feel seen and heard. I want to preserve what deserves preserving, teach what deserves teaching, and remain curious enough to keep learning.