What is a mojo? A charm bag of African-American Hoodoo practice filled with magical ingredients accompanied by positive prayers and instructions for each ingredient.
Some folks told us that mojo bag fixing and preparation are inspired by the distinctive Kongo accessories, called "minkisi" (singular "nkisi"), worn by "banganga" (singular "nganga") or healers to show their status within their community. Objects such as fruits ("luyala"), charcoal ("kala zima"), mushrooms ("tondo"), fossil resins ("luhezomo"), white chalk or kaolin clay ("luhemba"), red fruit ("nkandikila"), kernels or nuts ("nkiduku") and any other pieces considered spiritually significant, or any articles that shamans may have found a resonance or unique attraction to are held in this accessory bag. These objects are called "bilonggo."
Also, in Kongo tradition, the vessel or body for an nkisi, known as "nitu," is not limited to a red leather bag or cloth since other folks use a wooden box, gourd, animal horn, or tooth, monkey's skull, or snail shell. Nkisi is thought to hold a force from the dead that has chosen to yield to a superior power - the human will. The spiritual forces that may reside in it are ancestral spirits ("bakulu"), tutelary spirits ("bisimbi bankita"), or earthbound spirits ("minkuyu"). Banganga talk to their minkisi to seek advice and guidance, just like what the owners of mojo bags do nowadays. Often, their patients are told to return for their solution or treatment in the morning so the banganga can wait for the answers or diagnosis through dreams or omens.
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| A medicine container or nkisi mbumba. (Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Museum of African Art) |
The "nkita nsumbu" is a popular non-figurative nkisi in which the bilonggo are kept in a bag or sack. It is employed to heal boils and bodily swelling in women, ailments thought to be caused by bisimbi bankita. These medicine bags usually contain kaolin clay, nuts, seeds, shells, eggs, white chalk, quartz crystals, flowers, beaded items, and a knife blade. This particular type of nkisi greatly resembles the modern-day mojo hands, not just in their physical forms but even in their magical methods and materials employed in the construction.
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| A Kongo medicine bag made in the late 1800s, typically carried by shamans. (Photo courtesy of Wellcome Collection Gallery) |
Some people say, though, that charm bags were remodeled from the container of magical power called "mooyoo," which is usually found in the lower abdominal region of figurative minkisi - "nkisi biteke" (more prominent figure) and "nkisi nkondi" (more petite figure); a physical representation of a spirit crafted into the form of human or animal. Some practitioners supposed that this is where the term mojo is derived. Like mojo-making, a ritual expert activates it by breathing into the mooyoo, the 'breath of life or 'spirit,' and immediately seals it (typically with a mirror). Among the people of the Congo basin and Mayombe forest, especially the Kongo, Teke, and Yaka people, healing and divinatory powers are enhanced by fetishes such as this.
Others thought its etymology was related to the West African word "mojuba," meaning a prayer, as it is prayer in a bag or a spell one can carry. According to Yoruba thought, prayers, praises, and songs hold a life force called "ashe." Enslaved Yoruba people brought the concept of ashe to the United States through charms, amulets, and power objects. In Yoruba tradition, a power object known in some lineage as "awure" is a collection of ashe.
Ashe is the spark of life. It is like the spiritual fuel of creation, and nothing can exist or function without ashe. It is present in all-natural, organic, man-made, and inorganic materials. Yoruba charms usually contain herbs, bones, shells, and prayers. This captures the magical powers within the ashe of each plant, animal, and voiced word. Like Yoruba charms, mojo bags are created by changing the use of the things and the maker's consciousness from without to within, from physical to spiritual. Rootworkers attune themselves to the 'spirit force' or ashe within the things around them and the ashe within them through the recital of blessings, which transforms a variety of mundane materials and actions into spiritual experiences designed to increase awareness of the presence of the spirits. By doing this, they change their view on the material world dramatically and qualitatively, turn everything into unity, and utilize the new functions of things that are more natural, useful, and lovelier than what they presently know them to be.
Before the rise of Islam in Mali and Gambia, the Bambara people also made power objects called "boli" that were usually encrusted with things associated with the purpose of the charms. Encrustation was the process of giving food or nourishment to the boli. Food sustained the life of the charms, and Bambara people typically fed their power objects with mixtures of ground stones, bones, animal skins, animal parts, minerals, alcoholic beverages, honey, animal blood, chewed and expectorated herbs, and other vegetable matter. Hoodoo practitioners have also adopted this routine as most of their charms are fed with herbal blends, powders, dressing oils, liquors, and body fluids periodically to maintain their lives.
In Louisiana, these amulet bags are called "gris-gris." Some historians say they originated from the Dagomba people in Ghana and were adopted by other Muslim tribes. The original gris-gris was usually inscribed with scriptures from Qu'ran and was used to ward off evil djinns and misfortunes. When the practice of making and using gris-gris came to the United States with enslaved Africans, Islamic texts were lost over time. They were progressively replaced by magical alphabets, sigils, and symbols from Judeo-Christian grimoires. The belief in giving protection and luck to its owner soon changed, and gris-gris were thought to bring malefic magic or sorcery upon the victim. Slaves would often use the bag against their masters to get revenge. There are stories in Louisiana about folks who had upset other people and then waking up one morning with a gris-gris on their doorsteps. Folks tend not to touch such objects, and others would go so far as to have their house moved so they wouldn't have to cross it. Over time, practitioners of Louisiana Voodoo eventually adapted the concept and principle of charm or spell bags, which were already common in the practice of Hoodoo.
Mojo bag is also known as the trick bag, root bag, and curio bag in some parts of Georgia and South Carolina, jack bag and toby in Maryland and Delaware area, nation sack in Mississippi and Tennessee area, and jomo or mojo hand throughout the South. The word 'hand' in this context may derive from the use of finger and hand bones of the dead, herbs like five-finger grass and lucky hand root, and animal curios like alligator's claw and rabbit's foot in mojo bags or possibly, a correlation between what the hands can get like coins and bills when one owns a money-drawing or a gambling mojo bag, for instance. In that sense, the charm is a 'helping hand.' Other researchers and folklorists said that the word, 'hand' in mojo hand came from the Bantu term "handa," which means 'escape, or be rescued from danger.'
Conversely, the nation sack is an old traditional Hoodoo charm of particular interest to women because it keeps a man faithful and true to his wife by controlling his ability to be sexually aroused with other women. Nation sack is actually a misnomer for nature sack. Marketers of Hoodoo suppliers misunderstood specific African-American pronunciation patterns and labeled the product 'nation' instead of 'nature,' which was pronounced by Blacks at that time as "naitcha." Original nature sacks were fixed and tied by midwives conjure women throughout the Black-Belt South, not only in Memphis. But it was only in Memphis that the sack started to be known as the nation sack since people, as already mentioned, misunderstood Southern Black pronunciation patterns. It was also confused with donation sacks carried both by preachers and prostitutes around the place in the late 1800s. Nature sack refers to male sexual potency and virility as nature. In Hoodoo, to say that a man has lost his nature means that he either cannot get an erection or has difficulty with such.
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| The Big Hand Brand Curio Bag advertisement above depicts a popular mojo bag consisting of magnetic lodestone, High John the Conqueror root, Salep or Lucky Hand root, and Devil's shoestrings in a red flannel bag. |
Mojo symbolizes its owner's power, so it must be fed regularly with energy to stay alive. It is also widely believed that every mojo bag contains fragments of its owners' spirits. Making a mojo bag is a good practice, too, for refining non-living material things and elevating them to a state of being sentient and spiritual.
What goes into a mojo bag?
- Herbs and roots
- Minerals (pyrite, lodestone, sulfur, salt, blue anil balls, etc.)
- Animal parts (black cat's hair, chicken wishbones, rat bones, cowrie shells, rabbit's foot, etc.)
- Personal concerns or items (nail clippings, hair, pieces of fabric from one's clothes or underwear, etc.)
- Lucky charms and tokens (dice, skeleton key, mercury or silver dime, magnetic Scotty dogs, horseshoe nails, blue glass eye disks, etc.)
- Soil, dirt, and dust (bank dirt, footprint dirt, dust from Churches, etc.)
- Paper talismans (seals from the Key of Solomon, 6th & 7th Book of Moses, etc.)
- Petition papers
- Trademark ingredients (a unique ingredient of the root doctor or practitioner)
The oldest mojo bag recipe for good juju that I am aware of contains rock salt, black pepper, red pepper, chicken feet, a rabbit's foot, ashes, and razor blades.
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| Preparing a mojo hand for love with a red candle, Come To Me oil and powder, Crown of Success powder, rose petals, and love-drawing flowers and herbs. |
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| Assembled ingredients for a money-drawing mojo bag. |
Color Symbolism of Bag/Cloth
In contemporary Hoodoo practice, rootworkers use other colors of cloth.
Black - reverse evil, malediction
Red - Romance, sex, passion
White - Healing, protection
Blue - Peace, harmony
Pink - Love, affection, attraction
Purple - Power, control, persuasion, dominance
Orange - Courage, motivation, inspiration, road opener
Yellow - Devotion, attraction
Brown - Justice
How to prepare a mojo bag?
As with all contained spells, the ways and methods of making mojo bags vary from practitioner to practitioner; however, specific elements in the process are standard in the Hoodoo tradition.
The ritual for preparing a mojo bag is usually performed in a magical or spiritual workspace or on an altar, accompanied by candle burning and incense smoking.
Stages or phases of mojo making:
- Assembling: gathering all ingredients or materials corresponding to the bag's goal.
- Fixing: prayerfully filling the flannel bag with all ingredients and tying or sewing it up (all mojos should be closed or concealed).
- Awakening or Heating Up: declaring the purpose of the mojo and bringing it into life by an audible recitation of purpose, breathing air out into the bag, and bathing it with candlelight.
- Feeding: unlike other spell bags, a mojo is alive, so it needs to be fed. Foods or nourishment for the mojo could be dressing with a liquid like liquors or other distilled spirits, urine, semen, colognes or perfume, etc., anointing it with appropriate condition oils, incensing, and praying.
- Naming: the bag's name may come to us as we make it.
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| Mojo hands are usually bathed with incense smoke when feeding it. |
Mojo Customs and Traditions
Traditionally, a mojo hand is covered with a red flannel bag because red is considered a lucky color for several reasons. One of the bases is that the color red in Kongo symbolism indicates the binaries of life, such as birth and death, sunrise and sunset, and the color of the earth itself, where magical and spiritual forces intersect. If there is one thing that these African charm bags have in common, it is that they are made of red cloth or leather.
Some root doctors or toby makers ensure that the total number of ingredients comes to an odd number (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13), which is believed to be the luckiest and most sacred number in Hoodoo. Other practitioners, however, don't count the items at all. If one is fixing a love mojo hand, love tokens and trinkets go in pairs: a pair of lodestones, a pair of magnetic Scotty dogs, a couple of miniature turtle doves, and a pair of shells. Leaves and root chips can go by pinch.
Some rootworkers ensure each ingredient is unique and distinct, like one herb, one personal item, and one animal curio. Others use different combinations, and it is acceptable to have more than one herb, mineral, etc., in a bag.
Some rootworkers ensure each ingredient is unique and distinct, like one herb, one personal item, and one animal curio. Others use different combinations, and it is acceptable to have more than one herb, mineral, etc., in a bag.
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| A root doctor making a hand and a suitcase of different kinds of mojo. (Photo courtesy of Newbell Niles Puckett Memorial Gift, Cleveland Public Library, Fine Arts and Special Collections Department) |
Blessed and natural waters like Church waters, rainwater, river or spring waters, herbal-floral colognes such as Florida Water and Hoyt's cologne, and even liquors like Whiskey and Rum are used in which large leaves or roots and other solid materials are being soaked.
God-made ingredients such as roots, herbs, animal parts, and minerals used for mojo bags are believed to be naturally and immanently powerful, so traditional rootworkers do not perform any consecration or empowering rituals to bless or charge them with energy, just like how some Neo-pagans do in every implement or supply they have. Instead, rootworkers talk to the herbs and minerals, reminding them of their magical purpose, and they 'bless' and 'thank' God for increasing divine presence in the world through recognition of God's role in creating the spiritual and magical attributes of the herbs, roots, minerals, and animals.
If one uses a drawstring bag to cover his mojo hand, tie the knot in Miller's style, as it is the traditional binding method to secure a sack or a bag. Traditional knot spells could be applied if one makes a nation sack to bind a man's nature. After a woman fills the sack with appropriate ingredients, tie the bag, but don't pull it tight yet. Hide it under the pillow or bed while having sex with her man, and when he reaches the climax, wipe the string of the bag with his semen. Wait for him to fall asleep and immediately, upon retiring, tie the knot tight three times, as she has tied his nature and kept the bag out of his sight.
When feeding, the bag is not generally soaked through the oils, special waters, etc., but simply dabbed with the liquids. The only exception to this rule is a gambling hand, as old-time poker players were instructed by rootworkers to make their women urinate all over the mojo hand. However, such a mojo bag would only be used for one night and should be disposed of properly after the game.
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| A simple Money and Luck mojo bag contains nutmeg, lodestone, mercury dime, and sugar. |
Mojo bags are usually always carried by the person, always out of sight and, most significantly, out of the range of touch of others. A mojo is typically worn by a person under the clothes or, if not worn, hidden away somewhere safe. For the first seven days, most rootworkers suggest that their clients keep it as close to the owner as possible, wearing it near the skin. After seven days, it is up to the owner if he would still like to wear it, pocket it, put it in the bag, or hide it in a secret place and only carry it when its magic is needed. Suppose someone accidentally or unintentionally notices the bag. In that case, one should never reveal its purpose but immediately change the conversation topic for him to prevent the 'killing of the hand.'
Just like we need to get our haircut occasionally, mojo bags should constantly be renewed or remade (quarterly or annually). Take all solid hard items such as pyrite, lodestone, shells, claws, or bones out of the bag and set them aside. Leave all the delicate items such as herbs, hair, feathers, and broken items inside the bag and bury them in a yard in a ritual manner. If the petition paper or paper talisman is already worn out or unreadable, bury them with the rest. Wash all the solid items with holy water, Florida water, or Whiskey. Get a new flannel bag, replace the soft and broken things, make new petition paper and paper talisman, and redo everything. Make sure to keep the mojo for three days while doing this rite.
Psalms are customarily being recited to empower the bag. If the bag is prepared for three different conditions, recite three Psalms while passing it through the incense smoke.
Just like we need to get our haircut occasionally, mojo bags should constantly be renewed or remade (quarterly or annually). Take all solid hard items such as pyrite, lodestone, shells, claws, or bones out of the bag and set them aside. Leave all the delicate items such as herbs, hair, feathers, and broken items inside the bag and bury them in a yard in a ritual manner. If the petition paper or paper talisman is already worn out or unreadable, bury them with the rest. Wash all the solid items with holy water, Florida water, or Whiskey. Get a new flannel bag, replace the soft and broken things, make new petition paper and paper talisman, and redo everything. Make sure to keep the mojo for three days while doing this rite.
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| Love Attraction mojo hand with ingredients like a rose petal, lovage root, two magnetic lodestones, and iron filings. |
Psalms are customarily being recited to empower the bag. If the bag is prepared for three different conditions, recite three Psalms while passing it through the incense smoke.
Suppose the bag was prepared and fixed by others. In that case, the owner, upon receiving it, will need to personalize it, generally by dressing it with bodily fluids like urine, semen, blood, or saliva. Though, I reckon it is worth mentioning too that in Hoodoo, it is only women's urine that is considered lucky, not men's, due to the 'copulins' suspended in vaginal fluids, which are basically attractants for males.
Alright, folks, enough with my rambling; time out for music!
GOT MY MOJO WORKIN'
by Muddy Waters
Got my mojo workin' but it just don't work on you
Got my mojo workin' but it just don't work on you
I wanna love you so bad, but I don't know what to do
Goin' down to Louisiana, gonna get me a mojo hand
Goin' down to Louisiana, gonna get me a mojo hand
I'm gonna have all you women right here my command
Got my mojo workin'!
Got my mojo workin'!
Got my mojo workin'!
Got my mojo workin'!
Got my mojo workin', but it just don't work on you!
I got a Gypsy woman giving me advice.
I got a Gypsy woman giving me advice.
I got a whole lot of tricks keepin' them on ice
Musicians such as Muddy Waters have standard references to mojo bags in the 20th-century blues.
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| An old-style red flannel mojo bag containing herbal, mineral, and zoological curios. |
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