How to tell mojos apart when you have more than one

Nowadays mojo bags are often color coded: yellow for court case, red for love, purple for success or mastery, green for money. Red was the most traditional color, though, because it is powerful and because red flannel was commonly available, back in the day. I prefer red for all purposes, but I may rethink this.

Like many conjures, I put charms & symbols on mojo bags to tell them apart. I have metal dollar signs, crowns, hearts, and little blue "evil eye" beads. But today I was putting together two protective mojos: one "Leave Me Alone or Die" and one "Protect My Car." And no skulls or cars in my charm collection. No embroidery thread either.

But my daughter is an artist, so...

I just asked her to draw the skull for this "Leave Me Alone or Die" mojo bag.

Naturally, this Protect My Car mojo was even easier. (It'll get an Evil Eye bead, too, as soon as the last remaining ingredient arrives.)

And here's a honey jar for someone else who needs the Housing Authority to treat them right.

Thank you, O.L.K.

(Twitter, my shiny new tech toy, is down at the moment; it is to laugh! So I'll just post here about today's adventure.)

I have two mojo bags almost assembled and ready to go, except they need graveyard dirt; this person needs strong protection, and there's no stronger spiritual protection than a spirit who has passed on. So I went to the graveyard, to where the military graves are. Plain white stones with clear black lettering, so that no matter how old the grave is, the stone is absolutely legible. As I stood at the foot of that section - sort of like reviewing the troops, I thought - I saw several promising names: FARMER, RICH, BULLIVANT (for protective work, maybe?). And I was about to introduce myself to Mr. Bullivant when someone else - O.L.K.- caught my eye. I won't reveal his name here, because people deserve their privacy. But his seriousness, interest (and, I confess, the fact that he was a World War I veteran) commanded my respect. So I introduced myself, explained the situation, and paid him for the two spoonfuls of earth I took from his grave.

It's been raining since last night, so that earth is drying in a very slow oven right now.

I don't post nearly often enough, I know.

Would you like to be able to look over my shoulder, kind of, in something approaching real time?

Well, I'm on Twitter.

And this is for comments that are longer than the 140 characters Twitter allows. But they're automattically linked to Twitter as soon as I post them anyway.

So, yeah, I guess this blog is mostly for philosophical and historical ruminations now; and for posts that really need more than one illustration; TwitWall will only allow you to post 1 per entry.

I haven't quite figured out how to link Twitter to this blog yet.

Willits Cemetery

Well, I had to take something to the graveyard. I'm always a little nervous about a new cemetery - it's not the dead that bother me, it's the living caretakers; I just worry that one of these days I'll get the stinkeye or be chased off. Didn't happen this time.

It's a beautiful place, though. We took some pictures.

Cleansing: what, how, why? Part 2 of 2

All right, my thoughts turn from "sin," however defined, to "cleansing" and "purification." The questions that arise now are these:

• What, precisely, is being removed, dissipated or banished? (And is "precisely" even a useful word in this context? :))
• When the cleansing takes place, how is your life changed?
• What is being restored?
• And what, if anything, does all this have to do with repentance?

Maybe it's time for some visual aids. We can at least get a grip on the first two questions:

• A Wiccan cleanses her house of ghosts (except for lilac, the herb attributions she uses are European, and long ago entered into hoodoo; ditto the use of Christian prayer. Don't let the ominous soundtrack scare you off).
• A Mayan curandera cleanses a foreign journalist of tension and wards off misfortune (no, not hoodoo at all, but very instructive. Spiritual work starts around 2:17).

More later, perhaps.