Making
Although most Southern-style conjure bags are made of red flannel material, most seasoned conjurers use color-symbolism. This practice embodies itself in the practice of hoodoo, where green flannel is used for a money mojo, white flannel is used for a baby-blessing mojo, red flannel is used for love mojo, and so on. West Indians also use mojo bags, but often use leather instead of flannel.
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. Ingredients can include 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 the symbolic value.
Read more about this topic: Mojo (African American Culture)
Famous quotes containing the word making:
“The making of a picture ought surely to be a rather fascinating adventure. It is not; it is an endless contention of tawdry egos, some of them powerful, almost all of them vociferous, and almost none of them capable of anything much more creative than credit-stealing and self- promotion.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“You all talk like somebody else made these laws and Pharaoh don’t know nothing about ‘em. He makes ‘em his own self and he’s glad when we come tell him they hurt. why, that’s a whole lot of pleasure to him, to be making up laws all the time and to have a crowd like us around handy to pass all his mean ones on. Why, that’s a whole everything under the sun! Next thing you know he’ll be saying cats can’t have kittens.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“We are told to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, and what is laid down in those constitutions?... Certain great fundamental ideas of right are common to the world, and ... all laws of man’s making which trample on these ideas, are null and void—wrong to obey, right to disobey. The Constitution of the United States recognizes human slavery; and makes the souls of men articles of purchase and of sale.”
—Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842–1932)