The most powerful voodoo for me has always been the visual voodoo - seeing something in your mind then doing it for real. It's a matter of magic, a practice - closing your eyes in the on-deck circle and seeing your vantage from the batter's box - watching pitches come in - spraying line drives all over the field, sharply to right, sluggo to center, pow to left. When you open your eyes the visual goes audio; you have this echo of all three liners crackling through the air, and you step into the box wanting to hear that crack and sizzle again. To hear it you have to see it happen.
The instant on-deck trance is only one form of hitting voodoo. Divers others present themselves in the actions of batters preparing to hit. Some are simple rote religion, like the sign of the cross; others are more temporal, like using the bat to mark a line for your toes, or reaching it out to touch the plate in one or several places. The best hitter I ever knew as a teammate used to thump his bat head once on the plate in a gesture reminiscent of a mountain gorilla. Fearsome and eager, he was both believer and believed.