Also called mojo hand, gris-gris, gris gris bag, conjure bag, toby, nation sack, lucky hand
A mojo bag is a small cloth packet holding an odd number of roots, herbs, stones and written petitions, made for one purpose and carried on the body and fed so it keeps working. It is a core tool of African American Hoodoo, and its Louisiana relative is the gris-gris.
TraditionAfrican American Hoodoo and Louisiana Creole gris-gris
RegionAmerican South, especially the Gulf Coast
Era18th century onward, from West and Central African roots
Moon◐ Any moon
DayAny
ElementEarth
Difficulty●●○ Moderate
Time30 minutes, then carried
Tonight's moon is read when the page loads.
The working
Pick one purpose for the bag. Traditional bags are for luck, money, love, protection or court cases, not everything at once.
Write your wish on the paper, fold it toward you, and place it in the bag first.
Add the other items one at a time, an odd number in total, naming each and what it should do.
Tie the bag closed with a few knots while stating your purpose aloud.
Breathe on the bag to give it life, then dress it with a drop of whiskey or diluted oil.
Carry it out of sight, in a pocket or pinned inside clothing, and do not let anyone else touch it.
Feed it with a drop of the same liquid once a week, often on the same day, and speak your wish to it again.
Take care: Dilute any essential oil you put on a bag you will carry against skin (about 1 percent, 6 drops in 30 ml of carrier oil). Many traditional bags held animal parts or graveyard dirt; this version uses plant and mineral items only. Treat Hoodoo as a living Black tradition and learn from its practitioners.
Versions across time and place
i
Louisiana gris-gris
Louisiana Creole Voodoo · 1700s onward
The word gris-gris travelled with enslaved West Africans, many from Senegambia, to French Louisiana, where it named both charm bags and the act of conjuring. Le Page du Pratz described enslaved people's attachment to their 'gris-gris' in the 1750s, and New Orleans courts tried enslaved people for gris-gris work in 1773. New Orleans gris-gris could be kindly or harmful depending on the maker.
Recorded in: Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz, Histoire de la Louisiane (1758); court records of New Orleans, 1773
ii
Memphis nation sack
Hoodoo of the Mid-South · Early 20th century
A larger women's bag worn under the clothes and kept strictly private, often for keeping a partner faithful and for money. Informants told Hyatt that if a man touched it, its power was spoiled.
Recorded in: Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo-Conjuration-Witchcraft-Rootwork (1970-1978)
iii
West African Muslim amulet
Mande-speaking West Africa · Centuries before the slave trade
Among Mande-speaking peoples such as the Mandinka, Bambara and Dyula, a gris-gris was often a leather packet holding written Qur'anic verses, worn for protection. This is one root of the Louisiana word and the bag form.
Recorded in: Wikipedia, Gris-gris (talisman)
History
Mojo bags grew from West and Central African charm traditions carried to the Americas by enslaved people. Scholars link the word mojo to Kongo terms for the spirits in a charm, and gris-gris to Mande-speaking West Africa, where cloth or leather packets of written verses and roots were worn for protection. In French Louisiana, where many captives came from Senegambia, the colonist Le Page du Pratz noted their gris-gris in the 1750s, and New Orleans court records of 1773 mention gris-gris among enslaved defendants.
Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the bag became a staple of Southern rootwork, made by Black practitioners for clients who came for luck, love or protection. Folklorists including Newbell Niles Puckett (1926), Zora Neale Hurston (1931 and 1935) and Harry Middleton Hyatt, who interviewed hundreds of workers between 1936 and 1970, recorded the details. Blues singers made the mojo famous, from Muddy Waters to Junior Wells. Hoodoo is a Black American tradition, and its makers should be credited when the practice is shared.
