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Mojo (African American Culture)
Mojo , in the African-American spiritual practice called Hoodoo, is an amulet consisting of a flannel bag containing one or more magical items. It is a " prayer in a bag", or a spell that can be carried with or on the host's body. Alternative American names for the mojo bag include gris-gris bag,Bradley, Jude; Coen, Cheré Dastugue (2010). ''Magic's in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris and Sachets''. Woodbury, Minnesota: Llewellyn. hand, mojo hand, conjure hand, lucky hand, conjure bag, trick bag, tricken bag, root bag, toby and jomo. 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. Other times mojo bags are created to manifest results in a person's life such as good-luck, money or love. History and ideology Central and West Africans all practiced the spiritual art o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Slavery in the United States, enslaved Africans who are from the United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African-American, the majority of first generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin. African Americans constitute the second largest racial group in the U.S. after White Americans, as well as the third largest ethnic group after Hispanic and Latino Americans. Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of West Africa, West/Central Africa, Central African with some European descent; some also have Native Americans in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gullah Jack
Gullah Jack (died July 12, 1822), also known as Couter Jack and sometimes referred to as "Gullah" Jack Pritchard, was a Methodist, an African conjurer, and a slave to Paul Pritchard in Charleston, South Carolina. Background Little was known about his background, except that he was of Angolan origin and was shipped from Zanzibar to America under Zephaniah Kingsley's direction. He was sent first to Florida, to the Kingsley Plantation. However, in 1812 after a Seminole raid on the Kingsley Plantation, he escaped to Charleston, South Carolina where he was eventually purchased by Paul Pritchard in 1821. Role in the 1822 Slave Revolt Gullah Jack is historically known for his role as a co-conspirator, along with Denmark Vesey, in planning the large slave rebellion that would become known as Denmark Vesey's slave conspiracy, in 1822. Both Vesey and Gullah Jack were involved in some capacity with the AME Church in Charleston. It was at the AME Church that Vesey recruited Gullah Jack ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simbi
A Simbi (also Cymbee, Sim'bi, pl. Bisimbi) is a water spirit in traditional Kongo spirituality. In Haitian Vodoun context, they are a large and diverse family of serpents known as loa. Hoodoo In Central Africa's Kongo region, "...bisimbi inhabit rocks, gullies, streams, and pools, and are able to influence the fertility and well being of those living in the area." "What are bisimbi? They have other names, too. Some are called python, lightning gourd or calabash, mortar or a sort of pot. The explanation of their names is that they are water spirits (nkisi mia mamba). The names of some of these minkisi are: Na Kongo, Ma Nzanza, Nkondi and Londa. There is a significant amount of Kongo culture that continues today in the African American community, because 40 percentage of Africans taken during thtransatlantic slave tradecame from Central Africa's Congo Basin. Simbi (Bisimbi, plural) spirits are also revered in the United States in the African American community in the practice o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nkisi
or (plural varies: , , or ) are spirits or an object that a spirit inhabits. It is frequently applied to a variety of objects used throughout the Congo Basin in Central Africa, especially in the Territory of Cabinda that are believed to contain spiritual powers or spirits. The term and its concept have passed with the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas. Meaning The current meaning of the term derives from the root , referring to a spiritual entity or material objects in which it is manifested or inhabits in Proto-Njila, an ancient subdivision of the Bantu language family. In its earliest attestations in Kikongo dialects in the early seventeenth century, it was transliterated as in Dutch, as the ''mu-'' prefix in this noun class was still pronounced. It was reported by Dutch visitors to Loango, current territory of Cabinda, in the 1668 book '' Description of Africa'' as referring both to a material item and the spiritual entity that inhabits it. In the sixteenth century, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minkisi (Kongo, Landana, Cabinda), World Museum Liverpool
or (plural varies: , , or ) are spirits or an object that a spirit inhabits. It is frequently applied to a variety of objects used throughout the Congo Basin in Central Africa, especially in the Territory of Cabinda that are believed to contain spiritual powers or spirits. The term and its concept have passed with the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas. Meaning The current meaning of the term derives from the root , referring to a spiritual entity or material objects in which it is manifested or inhabits in Proto-Njila, an ancient subdivision of the Bantu language family. In its earliest attestations in Kikongo dialects in the early seventeenth century, it was transliterated as in Dutch, as the ''mu-'' prefix in this noun class was still pronounced. It was reported by Dutch visitors to Loango, current territory of Cabinda, in the 1668 book '' Description of Africa'' as referring both to a material item and the spiritual entity that inhabits it. In the sixteenth century, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional African Religions
The traditional beliefs and practices of African people are highly diverse beliefs that include various ethnic religions.Encyclopedia of African Religion (Sage, 2009) Molefi Kete Asante Generally, these traditions are oral rather than scriptural and passed down from one generation to another through folk tales, songs, and festivals, include belief in an amount of higher and lower gods, sometimes including a supreme creator or force, belief in spirits, veneration of the dead, use of magic and traditional African medicine. Most religions can be described as animistic with various polytheistic and pantheistic aspects. The role of humanity is generally seen as one of harmonizing nature with the supernatural. Spread Adherents of traditional religions in Africa are distributed among 43 countries and are estimated to number over 100 million.''Britannica Book of the Year'' (2003), ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (2003) p.306 According to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', as of mid-2002, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African Diaspora Religions
African diaspora religions are a number of related Pagan beliefs that developed in the Americas in various nations of the Caribbean, Latin America and the Southern United States. They derive from Pagan traditional African religions with some influence from other religious traditions, notably Christianity and Islam. Characteristics Afro-American religions involve ancestor veneration and include a creator deity along with a pantheon of divine spirits such as the Orisha, Loa, Vodun, Nkisi and Alusi, among others. In addition to the religious syncretism of these various African traditions, many also incorporate elements of Folk Catholicism including folk saints and other forms of Folk religion, Native American religion, Spiritism, Spiritualism, Shamanism (sometimes including the use of Entheogens) and European folklore. Various "doctoring" spiritual traditions also exist such as Obeah and Hoodoo which focus on spiritual health. African religious traditions in the Americas can v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African Diaspora
The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries, with their largest populations in the United States, Brazil and Haiti. However, the term can also be used to refer to the descendants of North Africans who immigrated to other parts of the world. Some scholars identify "four circulatory phases" of this migration out of Africa. The phrase ''African diaspora'' gradually entered common usage at the turn of the 21st century. The term ''diaspora'' originates from the Greek (''diaspora'', literally "scattering") which gained popularity in English in reference to the Jewish diaspora before being more broadly applied to other populations. Less commonly, the term has been used in scholarship to r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yoruba People
The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute more than 42 million people in Africa, are a few hundred thousand outside the continent, and bear further representation among members of the African diaspora. The vast majority of the Yoruba population is today within the country of Nigeria, where they make up 21% of the country's population according to CIA estimations, making them one of the largest List of ethnic groups of Africa, ethnic groups in Africa. Most Yoruba people speak the Yoruba language, which is the Niger–Congo languages, Niger-Congo language with the largest number of native or L1 speakers. In Africa, the Yoruba are contiguous with the Yoruboid languages, Yoruboid Itsekiri to the south-east in the northwest Niger Delta, Bariba people, Bariba to the northwest in Benin a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kongo People
The Kongo people ( kg, Bisi Kongo, , singular: ; also , singular: ) are a Bantu ethnic group primarily defined as the speakers of Kikongo. Subgroups include the Beembe, Bwende, Vili, Sundi, Yombe, Dondo, Lari, and others. They have lived along the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, in a region that by the 15th century was a centralized and well-organized Kingdom of Kongo, but is now a part of three countries. Their highest concentrations are found south of in the Republic of the Congo, southwest of Pool Malebo and west of the Kwango River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, north of Luanda, Angola and southwest Gabon. They are the largest ethnic group in the Republic of the Congo, and one of the major ethnic groups in the other two countries they are found in. In 1975, the Kongo population was reported as 4,040,000. The Kongo people were among the earliest indigenous Africans to welcome Portuguese traders in 1483 CE, and began converting to Catholicism in the late 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mandingo People Of Sierra Leone
Mandinka people of Sierra Leone (commonly referred to as the Mandingo, Mandinka or Malinke) is a major ethnic group in Sierra Leone and a branch of the Mandinka people of West Africa. Most Sierra Leonean Mandingo are the direct descendants of Mandinka settlers from Guinea, who settled in the north and eastern part of Sierra Leone, beginning in the late 1870s to the 1890s under the rule of prominent Mandinka Muslim cleric Samori Ture. Also later a significantly large population of Mandinka from Guinea migrated and settled in Eastern Sierra Leone and Northern Sierra Leone in the early to mid 20th century. The Mandingo people of Sierra Leone have a very close friendly and allied relationship with their neighbors the Mandingo people of Guinea and Liberia, as they share pretty much identical dialect of the Mandingo language, tradition, culture and food. The Mandingo constitute about 6.9% of Sierra Leone's population. The Mandingo are over 99% Muslim, adherents to the Sunni traditio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
