How to Make a Mojo Bag (and Whose Tradition It Is)

What a mojo bag actually is

A mojo is a small cloth bag of prepared items, carried on the person, treated as a living thing rather than an object. That last part is the distinction that matters and the one most often skipped: a mojo is not a lucky charm you put in a pocket and forget. It is named, spoken to, fed on a schedule, and retired when its work is done.

The container is almost beside the point. What makes it a mojo is the combination of what goes in, the work done over it while it is assembled, and the ongoing relationship afterwards. Bought pre-made and never fed, it is a sachet.

You will find the same object under a long list of names: toby, lucky hand, nation sack, conjure bag, or simply hand or package. The variety of names is itself a clue about the history, which is worth a section of its own.

Where mojo bags come from

The word and the practice are Central African in origin, carried to the American South by enslaved people and developed there into what is now called hoodoo or rootwork.

"Mojo" derives from the Kikongo word mooyo, referring to the spirits held within a magical charm — specifically the cavity of an nkisi, the Kongo sacred object in which empowering materials are enclosed. That is the direct ancestor of the bag: a container whose contents are what make it work. The Bakongo minkisi tradition is also the likely source of the red flannel convention, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture notes that in the regions where mojo practice was common, red carried associations of sacrifice, transition and power. Where red cloth was not available, enslaved practitioners used whatever was.

The West African parallels have their own names and their own lineages: juju from Hausa, and gris-gris from Mande communities with Afro-Islamic roots. These are related traditions rather than synonyms, which is why the comparison table below is worth reading before you use the words interchangeably.

Much of what is documented about nineteenth-century practice comes from the Federal Writers' Project interviews with formerly enslaved people, recorded between 1936 and 1938, alongside later ethnographic collection. The recorded contents of period bags are startlingly concrete — one documented example held a lizard's tail, a rabbit's foot, a fish eye, snake skins, a beetle and a dime with a hole in it.

Is hoodoo a closed practice?

Practitioners disagree, and anyone telling you the question is settled is overstating their case in one direction or the other. It is worth laying out the actual positions rather than picking one for you.

The case that it is closed: hoodoo developed specifically out of the experience of enslaved African Americans, as a survival technology under conditions designed to destroy African religious practice. On this view the tradition is inseparable from that ancestry and that history, and working it without that inheritance takes the aesthetics of a practice while leaving behind what produced it. Many Black practitioners hold this position firmly and publish on it.

The case that it is open, or partly so: hoodoo has been commercially traded for more than a century, much of it through shops and mail-order catalogues that sold to anyone, and it has always absorbed material from European folk magic, Indigenous plant knowledge and Jewish and Christian sources. On this view it is a syncretic folk practice rather than an initiatory one, and the meaningful requirement is respect, accurate crediting and learning from Black practitioners rather than ancestry as such.

What both positions agree on is easier to state, and it is the practical part: learn it from the people whose tradition it is, credit it by name rather than dissolving it into "witchcraft", do not claim a lineage or an initiation you do not have, and do not market it as an ancient secret. We are a shop, and it would be convenient for us to declare the question closed in the direction that sells more. It is not ours to declare. If you are working outside the tradition, the honest position is that you are a guest in it, and guests behave differently from owners.

The same question arrives in a different costume elsewhere in this shop, and we answer it the same way — see our note on white sage, honestly.

Four bags that are not the same thing

Name	Tradition	What sets it apart
Mojo bag	African American hoodoo	Named, fed, carried hidden on the body, treated as alive
Gris-gris	Mande West African, Afro-Islamic roots; later New Orleans	Often contains written text; a distinct lineage, not a synonym
Charm or sachet bag	General European and modern folk magic	Usually herbs alone, not fed, no ongoing relationship
Medicine bag	Various Indigenous North American nations	Closed, nation-specific and often ceremonially conferred — not a mojo bag by another name

What you need to make a mojo bag

Five categories of content and one bag. Nothing here is expensive, and the traditional materials are deliberately humble.

The bag. Red flannel, small enough to hide in a fist, with a drawstring. Traditionally sewn rather than bought, and hand-sewing it is part of the work if you are able. A square of flannel gathered and tied with cotton cord does the same job. Colour conventions exist — red for the general case, and other colours for specific work — but red is the default for good historical reason.

A root or curio. The anchor item. A whole root, a small bone-shaped curio, a coin, a lodestone. This is the piece the bag is often named for.

Herbs. One to three, chosen for the purpose. Our list of herbs for protection covers the protective end, which is the most common request.

A mineral or metal. A small stone, a pinch of iron, a silver dime in the older sources.

Something personal, and a petition. A hair, a nail clipping, a thread from your clothing — the "personal concern" in the tradition's own vocabulary — together with a written petition naming what the bag is for. We have a full guide to writing a petition paper, including how it is folded and which way it is turned.

How to make a mojo bag, step by step

Assemble it in one sitting, name it aloud as you close it, and feed it before you carry it. The order matters more than the ingredient list.

Some workers pass the closed bag through incense smoke before the first feeding. If that is part of the practice you are learning, our guide to burning resin incense on charcoal covers the mechanics.

What to put in a mojo bag

Match the contents to one job, and keep the count odd. The table below is a starting structure rather than a set of recipes — in a living tradition the specific items vary by worker, region and what is to hand.

Structure by purpose

Purpose	Typical anchor	Common herbs	Usual feeding
Protection	Iron, a small nail, a protective curio	Rue, rosemary, black pepper, agrimony	Protection oil
Money and work	A coin, a lodestone	Basil, cinnamon, alfalfa	Money oil, or whisky
Luck	A holed coin, a lucky curio	Nutmeg, five-finger grass	Spirits
Love	A paired curio, rose quartz	Rose, lavender, damiana	Perfume or love oil

A note on love work in particular: a bag aimed at a specific named person who has not consented is the point at which this stops being a personal practice and becomes something else. We take that seriously enough to have written about it separately in love spells and consent.

Why does a mojo bag need an odd number of items?

Because the convention says so, and that is the honest answer — the odd count is a rule of the tradition rather than a mechanism anyone can explain.

The usual numbers are three, five, seven, nine and thirteen, and workers differ on whether the petition paper counts toward the total. Various rationales get offered: that an odd number cannot be evenly divided and so cannot be split against itself, that the numbers carry their own associations, that thirteen is the full complement. These are explanations after the fact rather than reasons the rule exists.

What it does in practice is impose a limit, and the limit is useful. A bag with an odd cap forces you to choose the items that matter instead of adding everything that seems relevant, which is the single most common fault in a first attempt.

Anatomy of a five-item bag

How do you feed a mojo bag?

A drop or two of oil, spirits or perfume on the outside of the cloth, on a schedule you keep. The traditional liquids are alcohol, perfume, water or — in older sources — the worker's own bodily fluids, applied to the bag rather than poured into it.

Frequency varies by worker. Weekly is common, as is feeding on a particular day of the week chosen for the purpose, or at the new moon. What the sources agree on is regularity rather than any specific interval: an unfed bag is generally held to go quiet.

Two practical points. Keep it to a drop — a saturated bag stains clothing and the contents rot. And if you feed with oil, expect the flannel to darken and stiffen over months; that is the bag ageing normally, not spoiling. Our guide to dressing a candle with oil covers the same handling in a different application.

How do you carry a mojo bag?

Against the body and out of sight. Concealment is not modesty — in the tradition it is functional, and it is the most consistently reported rule after feeding.

The documented conventions are specific: men carried the bag in a trouser pocket, women pinned it beneath the waist or clipped it inside a bra. The common thread is skin contact or near it, under clothing, where nobody sees it and nobody brushes against it.

For anyone whose clothing does not lend itself to any of that, a small inside pocket or a cord worn under a shirt keeps the same two conditions: close, and hidden. A bag on a visible chain around the neck satisfies neither.

Why shouldn't anyone else touch it?

Because the tradition holds that another person's handling disturbs the work, and because concealment and exclusivity are part of what defines the object.

The practical rule that follows is worth stating for anyone living with other people: a mojo does not go on the nightstand, in a shared drawer, or anywhere a guest might pick it up and ask what it is. If someone does handle it, the usual remedies are to re-feed it and re-state its purpose, or in more conservative practice to retire it and build another.

This is also the reason a mojo made for someone else by a worker is handed over closed, with instructions, and not opened by the recipient.

How long does a mojo bag last?

Until its job is done, which is a real answer rather than an evasion — a mojo is made for a purpose and retired when the purpose is served.

The signs practitioners look for are the work completing, the bag falling apart, or the sense that it has gone inert despite regular feeding. None of these is a measurable threshold, and honest sources do not pretend otherwise. A bag made for a defined situation — a court case, a job search, a move — has an obvious endpoint. A general protection bag may be carried for years and fed indefinitely.

Retiring one is a deliberate act rather than a matter of throwing it away. Common practice is to open it, separate the contents, thank it, and dispose of the parts according to what they are: organic material to the earth, coins and metal kept or passed on, paper burned. Our note on disposing of ritual offerings covers the general principle, and the salt caution there applies if your bag contained any.

What about graveyard dirt and animal parts?

Both appear throughout the historical record, and both come with conditions that the recipe lists tend to leave out.

Graveyard dirt is a documented traditional ingredient, and in the tradition it is not simply soil from a cemetery. It is taken from a specific grave, from a person with a specific relationship to the work, with permission asked and payment left. Taken without any of that, it is dirt. There is also a practical dimension: many cemeteries prohibit removing anything, and behaviour at a grave is governed by ordinary courtesy and often by law. Our guide to cemetery etiquette for ancestor work covers this properly, and ancestor work covers the relationship that makes it meaningful.

Animal parts — the rabbit's foot, the snake skin, the bone — are equally documented and equally common in period bags. Modern practice on this varies widely, and there are two considerations beyond taste. Many species and their parts are legally protected, and possession can be an offence regardless of intent; and ethically sourced alternatives exist for nearly every traditional curio. Naturally shed material, ethically sourced bone, or a carved substitute are all in current use.

Neither of these is a reason to avoid the tradition. They are reasons to find out what you are handling before you put it in a bag you intend to carry against your skin.

Which bag suits what you are actually trying to do?

Three questions, mostly about commitment rather than about purpose.

Voices from practice — where the current interest came from

Rather than invent testimonials, it is worth naming the actual reason searches for this went up, because it is documented and recent.

Ryan Coogler's 2025 film Sinners put hoodoo on screen with a hoodoo consultant engaged specifically to get it right and to protect how Black spirituality was depicted. The film drove a visible wave of interest — enough that "mojo bag sinners" now sits among the top autocomplete suggestions for the term, alongside "mojo bag hoodoo" and "mojo bag for protection". A good deal of the audience arriving at this subject in the last year arrived through that door.

That matters for how this article is written. A reader who came from a film about Black Mississippi in 1932 is owed the tradition's actual name and lineage, not a generic "witchy pouch" treatment with the history sanded off. It is also why the closed-practice section sits near the top of this page rather than buried at the bottom: it is the first question a thoughtful newcomer asks, and the shops selling the supplies are generally the last to raise it.

The other signal in the autocomplete is purely practical. The completions cluster hard around for protection, for wealth, for luck, from scratch — people want a purpose and a method, in that order. Hence the structure above.

What we don't promise

This is a documented folk tradition. It is not a tested intervention, and we make no claim that it produces any outcome.

• We do not claim a mojo bag attracts money, love, luck, employment or safety, or that it repels anything.
• We do not claim any health or healing effect, and nothing here is a substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.
• We do not claim authority in hoodoo. We are a retailer describing a tradition that is not ours, from public sources, and we have said so plainly above.
• We do not claim our oil works better than another, or that a bought item outperforms one you make. The flannel square is traditional and costs almost nothing.
• We do not claim the closed-practice question has a settled answer. We have set out both positions and declined to rule on it.

Practically: how to work with this

If you want to begin today, begin by reading a Black practitioner rather than by buying anything.

After that, the smallest real version is five items in a flannel square: an anchor, one herb, one mineral, a folded petition, and something of your own. Name it aloud when you close it. Feed it the same day each week. Carry it under your clothes. Write the card.

Give it a defined job with an end you would recognise, at least for a first bag — "until the move is done" teaches you more than "for general good fortune", because you find out what finishing feels like. And if after a fortnight it is living in a drawer and you have fed it once, that is useful information too: an herb sachet or a spell jar may simply suit your life better, and neither asks to be carried.

If protection rather than portability is the actual goal, a fixed working at the threshold is the lower-maintenance form — warding your home and black salt cover that route.

The ritual oils are what we keep for feeding, and the protection shelf covers the fixed-place alternative if carrying something daily is not realistic.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a mojo bag and a gris-gris?

They are related but distinct traditions, not synonyms. The mojo comes out of African American hoodoo, with the word deriving from Kikongo mooyo, referring to the spirits within a charm and to the cavity of an nkisi. Gris-gris comes from Mande West African communities with Afro-Islamic roots and reached the United States largely through New Orleans; it more often contains written text. Treating the two words as interchangeable erases two different lineages.

Is a mojo bag the same as a medicine bag?

No. A medicine bag belongs to various Indigenous North American nations, is specific to the nation it comes from, and is frequently ceremonially conferred rather than self-made. It is a closed practice and not an available style to borrow. A mojo bag comes from African American hoodoo and has a separate history entirely. The two get used as synonyms constantly, and they should not be.

Can anyone make a mojo bag, or is hoodoo closed?

Practitioners genuinely disagree. One position holds that hoodoo is inseparable from the African American experience of slavery that produced it, and that ancestry is the requirement. Another holds that it is a syncretic folk practice, commercially traded for over a century and always absorbing outside material, where respect and accurate crediting are what is required. Both positions agree on the practical points: learn from Black practitioners, name the tradition rather than dissolving it into "witchcraft", and claim no lineage or initiation you do not have.

How often should I feed a mojo bag?

Regularly, on a schedule you actually keep — weekly is the most common, and some workers feed on a chosen weekday or at the new moon. Use a drop or two of oil, spirits or perfume on the outside of the cloth rather than pouring liquid in. The sources agree on consistency rather than on any particular interval; an unfed bag is generally held to go quiet. Keep it to a drop, or the bag stains clothing and the contents rot.

Why does it have to be an odd number of items?

It is a rule of the tradition rather than a mechanism anyone can demonstrate. The usual counts are three, five, seven, nine and thirteen, and workers differ on whether the petition paper counts toward the total. The explanations offered — that an odd number cannot be evenly divided, that particular numbers carry associations — are rationales after the fact. What the rule does usefully is impose a limit, which forces you to choose the items that matter.

What happens if someone else touches my mojo bag?

The tradition holds that another person's handling disturbs the work, which is why concealment is treated as functional rather than as discretion. The usual remedy is to re-feed the bag and restate its purpose aloud; more conservative practice retires it and builds a replacement. In practical terms it means the bag does not live on a nightstand or in a shared drawer, and a mojo made for someone else is handed over closed.

What colour should a mojo bag be?

Red flannel is the default and the historically documented standard, likely inherited from Bakongo minkisi practice; the National Museum of African American History and Culture notes that in the regions where mojo practice was common, red carried associations of sacrifice, transition and power. Other colours are used for specific work in modern practice, but red is the traditional general case. Where red cloth was unavailable, enslaved practitioners used whatever they had.

Can I buy a mojo bag already made?

You can, but in the tradition a bag made and fed by a worker for a named recipient is a different thing from a pre-filled pouch sold off a shelf. Much of what makes a mojo a mojo is the assembly — naming each item aloud as it goes in, stating the purpose, bringing it to life on closing — and the ongoing feeding afterwards. A bag bought unfed and never fed is, functionally, an herb sachet, which is a perfectly good object under its own name.

Sources & further reading

• Wikipedia, Mojo (African-American culture): the Kikongo etymology from mooyo, the nkisi cavity, the alternative names toby, lucky hand, nation sack and conjure bag, red flannel and the Bakongo minkisi influence, documented contents and the carrying and feeding conventions.
• National Museum of African American History and Culture: the associations of the colour red with sacrifice, transition and power in the regions where mojo practice was common.
• Federal Writers' Project slave narratives, 1936–1938: the primary interview record of nineteenth-century conjure practice, including bag contents.
• Original Botanica, Is Hoodoo a Closed Practice? and What is Hoodoo? A Guide to the History of Rootwork (2024–2025): a Black-owned botanica's statement of the closed-practice positions.
• The Wild Hunt, Mojo, Music, and Magic in Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" (June 2025), and reporting on the film's hoodoo consultant: the documented source of the recent wave of interest.

A charm bag represents a purpose; a figure represents a person. If you want the second kind, see how to make a poppet.