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Mojo containers are bags, gourds, bottles, shells, and other containers. [2] [3] The making of mojo bags in Hoodoo is a system of African-American occult magic. The creation of mojo bags is an esoteric system that involves sometimes housing spirits inside of bags for either protection, healing, or harm and to consult with spirits.
A nganga created mojo bags for individuals, using ingredients connected to a specific simbi to invoke the spirit into the mojo bag. Bakongo spiritual philosophy influenced the creation of mojo bags, with Black Americans including certain natural ingredients or animal bones, to house the simbi spirit or an ancestral spirit inside a bag for ...
The mojo bag or conjure bag derived from the Bantu-Kongo minkisi. The nkisi (singular) and minkisi (plural) are objects created by hand and inhabited by a spirit or spirits. These objects can be bags (mojo bags or conjure bags), gourds, shells, or other containers. Various items are placed inside a bag to give it a particular spirit or job to do.
The creation of a Bakongo person, or muntu, is also believed to follow the four moments of the sun, which play a significant role in their development. [7] Musoni is the time when a muntu is conceived both in the spiritual realm and in the womb of a Bakongo woman. Kala is the time when a muntu is born into the physical world. This time is also ...
Bakongo descendants saw the wilderness as a symbol of freedom but also sorrow. Because early enslaved Bakongo had no ancestors on this side of kalûnga (which became synonymous with the Atlantic Ocean), it meant they had no blood tie to the new lands in which they were transported. [1] Thus, banganga had no way to connect to the spiritual world.
The Kongo cosmogram (also called yowa or dikenga cross, Kikongo: dikenga dia Kongo or tendwa kia nza-n' Kongo) is a core symbol in Bakongo religion that depicts the physical world (Ku Nseke), the spiritual world (Ku Mpémba), the Kalûnga line that runs between the two worlds, the sacred river that forms a circle through the two worlds, the four moments of the sun, and the four elements.
Similar to mojo bags in the United States, these banganga contained items from important places in nature and spiritual items, such as forest dirt, volcanic ash, and the hair, ashes or bones of an ancestor. They were seen as means to honor Nzambi, the mpungo and mfumbi (ancestral spirits), and the forces of nature. [14]
Nzambi Mpungu was recorded as the name of the God of the Kongo people as early as the early 16th century by Portuguese who visited the Kingdom of Kongo. [1] [2]European missionaries along with Kongo intellectuals (including King Afonso I of Kongo) set out to render European Christian religious concepts into Kikongo and they chose this name to represent God.