Editing Mojo (African-American culture) (section)

== Making a mojo ==
[[File:Grigri peul.jpg|thumb| A petition paper with a verse from the [[Quran]] is placed inside a gris-gris (mojo bag) made by enslaved West African Muslims in the [[Americas]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Yvonne |first1=Chireau |title=Black Magic Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition |date=2006 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520249882 |pages=35, 47–49 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TbIwDwAAQBAJ&q=gris-gris}}</ref>]]
Most Southern-style conjure bags are made of red flannel material. The use of red flannel bags for mojo bags was influenced by the Bakongo people's [[Nkisi|minkisi]] in Central Africa, and in Hoodoo red symbolizes protection from evil and spiritual power.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Thompson |first1=Robert |title=Flash of the Spirit African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy |date=2010 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=9780307874337 |page=131 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DzOIY4iHSjAC&q=red%20flannel}}</ref> Research from the [[National Museum of African American History and Culture]] explained that the color red symbolizes sacrifice, transition and power among the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo]], the [[Republic of the Congo|Republic of Congo]] and [[Gabon]] and among the Yoruba in [[Nigeria]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Juneteenth |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/juneteenth |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |publisher=Smithsonian Institution |access-date=2 June 2024}}</ref> Other times when red cloth was not available, African Americans used whatever cloth they had to create a conjure bag.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puckett |first1=Newbell N. |title=Folk beliefs of the southern Negro |date=1926 |publisher=The University of North Carolina press |page=226 |url=https://archive.org/details/folkbeliefsofsou00puck/page/226/mode/2up?q=mojo+bag}}</ref> The contents of each bag vary directly with the aim of the conjurer. For example, a mojo carried for love-drawing will contain different ingredients than one for gambling luck or magical protection.<ref name=Whitten312-318>Whitten, Norman E., Jr. (1962). "Contemporary Patterns of Malign Occultism among Negroes in North Carolina." ''Journal of American Folklore'' 75.298: 312–318.</ref> Ingredients can include graveyard dirt, roots, herbs, animal parts, minerals, coins, crystals, good luck tokens, and carved amulets. The more personalized objects are used to add extra power because of their symbolic value.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puckett |first1=Newbell N. |title=Folk beliefs of the southern Negro |date=1926 |publisher=The University of North Carolina Press |pages=234–236, 384 |url=https://archive.org/details/folkbeliefsofsou00puck/page/234/mode/2up?q=mojo}}</ref> 

To house spirits of the dead inside mojo bags, jars, packets, and other containers and charms, graveyard dirt from a deceased person's burial plot is used. Spirits of the dead can protect a person from physical and spiritual harm. The conjurer prepares the graveyard dirt with certain incantations, prayers, Biblical or Quranic scriptures and other ingredients to instruct the spirit to heal or protect a person. Historians have traced this practice to the Bakongo people of Central Africa where Bakongo (Bantu people) utilize graveyard dirt to house spirits of the dead, animal spirits, or ancestral spirits inside conjure bags for healing or protection.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bankole |first1=Katherine |title=Slavery and Medicine: Enslavement and Medical Practices in Antebellum Louisiana |date=2019 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9780815330592 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yGumDwAAQBAJ&q=conjure}}</ref> African Americans during slavery and freedom combined [[Native American ethnobotany|Native American herbal knowledge]] with African spirituality. Enslaved and free Africans upon arrival to the United States used North American herbs, roots, and animal parts to create conjure bags. However, they applied an African interpretation in the preparation of herbal ingredients by creating nkisi and performing African religious rituals in the preparation of spiritual medicines.<ref name="mdpi.com">{{cite journal |last1=Clausnitzer |first1=Danielle |title=Adorned by Power: The Individualized Experience of the Mojo Bag |journal=Race and Religion: New Approaches to African American Religions |date=2017 |volume=8 |issue=10 |url=https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/8/10/213 |access-date=11 October 2023}}</ref>

A former slave from Texas said to make a conjure bag African-Americans "would take hair and brass nails and thimbles and needles and mix them up in a conjure bag."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Federal Writers' Project |title=Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 16, Texas, Part 1, Adams-Duhon |journal=Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938 |date=1936 |page=199 |url=https://memory.loc.gov/mss/mesn/161/161.pdf |access-date=8 January 2022}}</ref> Prince Johnson, a former slave from Mississippi, said his slaveholder would inspect her slaves to make sure they did not have any charms underneath their clothes.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Federal Writers' Project |title=Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 9, Mississippi, Allen-Young |journal=Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938 |date=1936 |page=79 |url=https://memory.loc.gov/mss/mesn/090/090.pdf |access-date=8 January 2022}}</ref> An oral account from Patsy Moses, a former slave from Texas, mentioned the use of red flannel cloth to make conjure bags using frog bones to protect from an enemy.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Reinhard |first1=Carley |title=The African Slave Trade and American Slaves: The Migration of Black Mythology |url=https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/81149/FallForum-CarleyReinhard.pdf?sequence=1 |website=The Global Mobility Project at Ohio State University |publisher=Ohio State University |access-date=11 October 2023}}</ref> Other Texas slave narratives showed that red flannel cloth was commonly used to make mojo bags incorporating frog bones, snake skins, and roots to protect from their enemies and remove curses.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 16, Texas, Part 3, Lewis-Ryles |journal=Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project |date=1936 |volume=16 |issue=3 |pages=2–3 |url=https://www.loc.gov/resource/mesn.163/?sp=149&st=text |access-date=11 October 2023}}</ref> Some mojo bags were made to cause harm and bad luck for slaveholders, and other mojo bags were for protection depending on the ingredients used by the root worker.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kelly |first1=Joseph |last2=Bodek |first2=Richard |title=Maroons and the Marooned Runaways and Castaways in the Americas |date=2020 |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |isbn=9781496827234 |pages=37–38 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3NjaDwAAQBAJ&q=conjure%20bag}}</ref> William Webb made mojo bags for enslaved people in Kentucky to keep the peace between the enslaved and their enslavers. Webb instructed the enslaved to gather roots from their local environment and place them in conjure bags and pray over them to keep the spiritual magic of the mojo bags active.

During slavery, there are records of African American ministers and church members in [[Black church]]es in [[Virginia]] and [[South Carolina]] were known by the members of their congregation and in the [[The Slave Community#African cultural retention and slave culture|slave community]] to conjure spirits, speak to the spirits of the dead and carry and make mojo bags. After the [[American Civil War]], some African American ministers and church members continued to rely on Hoodoo and make mojo bags and saw no contradiction in their practice with Christianity. One African American church [[Minister (Christianity)|minister]] relied on a conjurer to make him a mojo bag to attract more members to his church. For four years, the minister relied on the mojo bag to increase the membership of his church. Every Sunday, the church pews were filled. After four years, the minister did not feel comfortable depending on the spirit of a mojo bag and not the Christian God to grow his church. The minister threw away the mojo bag; when he did, people stopped coming to his church. These written accounts showed that African Americans who identified as Christian continued to believe and practice [[Juju|African spirituality]] and some African American Christians relied on Hoodoo when experiencing tough times in life.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Chireau |first1=Yvonne |title=Conjure and Christianity in the Nineteenth Century: Religious Elements in African American Magic |journal=Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation |date=1997 |volume=7 |issue=2 |pages=225, 230–231 |doi=10.2307/1123979 |jstor=1123979 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1123979 |access-date=10 February 2022}}</ref> Some African-Americans made money making and selling mojo bags as a full-time business. [[Jim Jordan (conjure doctor)|Dr. Jim Jordan]] was a conjure doctor in [[North Carolina]] and became a multi-millionaire by providing conjure services to people all over the United States during the [[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow]] era. He owned a conjure Hoodoo store and provided medicinal and spiritual healing to his clients using charms and herbal remedies.<ref>{{cite web |title=Conjure doctor well remembered in Murfreesboro |url=https://www.wral.com/conjure-doctor-well-remembered-in-murfreesboro/14415175/ |website=WRAL |date=2 February 2015 |publisher=WRAL News |access-date=8 July 2022}}</ref>

Another version of a mojo bag is a ''prayer cloth.'' Prayer cloths are white church cloths imbued with spiritual power from a pastor of a church. A pastor prays over the cloth speaking the power of God into the cloth with prayer and anointing of Holy Oil and functions like a mojo bag. Church members take prayer cloths with them in their purses or placed under their beds for protection. This modified version of a mojo bag is mostly found in African-American churches.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hazzard-Donald |title=Mojo Workin' The Old African American Hoodoo System |date=2013 |page=170 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=9780252094460 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FL05AUXiW18C&q=Mojo%20bag%20Reverend%20Ike}}</ref>
[[File:Mulatto ex-slave in her house near Greensboro, Alabama, May ... (3109751881).jpg|thumb|African-American women sewed charms and mojo hands into their quilts for spiritual protection. Newspaper is placed on the walls to ward off evil spirits.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Brooks |title=Spirit Deep: Recovering the Sacred in Black Women's Travel |date=2023 |publisher=University of Virginia Press |isbn=9780813948942 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jnGgEAAAQBAJ&q=newspaper+&pg=PT243}}</ref>]]
The creation of mojo bags in Hoodoo is a West and Central African practice brought to the United States by enslaved Africans. In Africa, petition papers with [[Quran]]ic verses along with herbs, roots and other ingredients are placed inside a leather bag and concealed by wearing them under the clothes. A few enslaved Africans brought their conjure bags (mojo bags) with them from Africa when they boarded [[slave ship]]s heading to [[North America]]. African-American [[Quilting|quilt]] makers sewed mojo hands into quilts for protection. This practice originates among [[West Africa]]n people as they sewed [[Adinkra symbols|Adinkra]] and [[Nsibidi]] symbols as protective charms into their fabrics. The [[Ekoi people|Ejagham]] women of [[Cameroon]] and [[Yoruba people|Yoruba]] women in [[Nigeria]] make cloths with sacred symbols on them. During the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, many West African people were taken to the United States and enslaved on plantations and continued to practice their traditions by sewing mojo hands into their quilts.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Farrington |first1=Lisa |title=Creating Their Own Image The History of African-American Women Artists |date=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780195167214 |pages=30–31 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I7TS6bFWCbUC&q=Mojo}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wahlman |first1=Maude |title=African Symbolism in Afro-American Quilts |journal=African Arts |date=1986 |volume=20 |issue=1 |pages=68–76 |doi=10.2307/3336568 |jstor=3336568 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3336568 |access-date=21 July 2023}}</ref>

On slave plantations in the United States, the creators of gris-gris (mojos) became the root workers, conjure doctors, and Hoodoo doctors in enslaved and free African American communities. Enslaved and free black root workers created mojo bags and placed Bible verses, petition papers, roots, herbs, animal parts, graveyard dirt, and other ingredients to conjure a negative or positive effect. They used either Christian or Islamic prayers to spirituality charge the mojo bag. During slavery, many of the mojo bags created were for protection against a harsh slaveholder. The petition papers placed inside a mojo bag can have either a [[Bible]] verse, a Quranic verse, symbols, and other characters to conjure a positive or negative magical result. In the United States, enslaved African Americans called mojo bags "voodoo bags." After the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], mojo bags were created in Black American communities for protection from [[Police brutality in the United States|law enforcement]], to attract love, protection, money, employment, or to communicate with spirits. Folklorist Newbell Niles Puckett documented a mojo practice of an African-American cook in the [[Mississippi Delta]]. The African-American cook had a mojo bag with a "lizard's tail, rabbit's foot, a fish eye, snake skins, a beetle, and a dime with a hole in it." This mojo bag was worn by the cook for good-luck.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Puckett |first1=Newbell Niles |title=Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro |date=1926 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |location=Chapel Hill |page=234 |url=https://archive.org/details/folkbeliefsofsou00puck/page/234/mode/2up?q=mojo}}</ref> 

Other conjure bundles in the hoodoo tradition are hanged on the side of the door or beds where people sleep to protect from conjure.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hughes |first1=Sakina |title=In the shadows of the invisible institution: Southern Black folk religion and the Great Migrations |journal=Senior Honors Thesis and Project |date=2005 |issue=Eastern Michigan University |page=2 |url=https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1100&context=honors |access-date=29 December 2021}}</ref> Conjurers made a [[Goofer dust|goofer]] bag with goofer-root, cloth, strands of hair, needles, and graveyard dirt. To add potency to conjure bundles the hair from a camel was added. It is believed that walking over a buried mojo bag would "goofer" the individual.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Pyatt |first1=Sherman |title=A dictionary and catalog of African American folklife of the south |date=1999 |publisher=Greenwood Press |isbn=9780313279997 |page=21 |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionarycatalo0000pyat/mode/2up?q=bag}}</ref>

Traditionally, a client consulted with a root worker to know what kind of mojo he or she needed as not all mojos are the same, as one mojo can not work for everyone. Each person needs a different mojo. In traditional Hoodoo, if there are several people needing love, the root worker or conjurer created different mojos for each of their clients. One mojo created the same can not work for everyone. By the twentieth century, Hoodoo was culturally appropriated by white merchants that profited from Black spiritual culture.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hazzard-Donald |first1=Katrina |title=Mojo Workin' The Old African American Hoodoo System |date=2013 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=9780252094460 |pages=182–183 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FL05AUXiW18C&q=mojo}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Anderson |first1=Jeffrey |title=Conjure in African American Society |date=2008 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |isbn=9780807135280 |page=119 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FwsPJzl4A9cC&q=mojo}}</ref> Spiritual shops sold the same mojo to their customers. In traditional Hoodoo, certain songs, prayers, symbols, and ingredients are used to conjure or manifest results. After Hoodoo was appropriated, the same mojo was sold to consumers.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Yvonne |first1=Chireau |title=Black Magic Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition |date=2006 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520249882 |pages=35, 45–51 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TbIwDwAAQBAJ&q=gris-gris}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Hazzard-Donald |first1=Katrina |title=Mojo Workin' The Old African American Hoodoo System |date=2013 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=9780252094460 |pages=41, 65–67, 107, 207–208 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FL05AUXiW18C&q=mojo%20bag}}</ref> "For Hoodoo practitioners looking to sell their goods, it has therefore become more profitable to rely 'on stereotypes of…[H]oodoo to attract their primarily white clientele' (ibid.) than to promote the sale of historically accurate ritual objects that appeal to modern, African-American practitioners of Hoodoo. Additionally, white shop owners seem to dominate the mainstream Hoodoo market, undermining the ability of African-American people to rely on their religious beliefs to assure their economic empowerment."<ref name="mdpi.com"/>

African American practitioners from the [[Millennials|Millennial]] and [[Generation Z|Gen Z]] generations are incorporating new techniques such as the use of various crystals in the creation of mojo bags and using [[Tarot|tarot cards]] for divination to consult with spirit. The creation of mojo bags is an individualized practice based on regional ingredients and ingredients purchased in stores and online.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hazzard-Donald |title=Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System |date=30 December 2012 |pages=162, 209 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=9780252094460 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FL05AUXiW18C&q=crystals}}</ref>