Entry · catalog no. 3936
mojo hand
/ /ˈmoʊdʒoʊ hænd/ /MOH-joh HAND
noun · Deep South — Mississippi, Louisiana and the Delta · 1920s
✓ Verified
1.
A charm carried on the person — typically a small flannel or cloth bag holding roots, herbs, minerals and personal items, prepared or fixed by a practitioner and kept working by feeding it and telling no one. In blues usage it is overwhelmingly a charm for control in love: to hold a lover, win one back, or block a rival. Hand here means a combination or handful of ingredients, not the body part.
“He went down to Louisiana to get himself a mojo hand.”
Origin & Attribution
Hoodoo and conjure practice among Black Americans in the Deep South — Mississippi, Louisiana, the Gulf and the Delta — carried north and west by the Great Migration and by the recording industry. The etymology is likely African, with proposed cognates in Gullah moco, witchcraft, and Fula moco'o, medicine man. Carried by root doctors and conjure workers documented in the field by Newbell Niles Puckett and Harry Middleton Hyatt, and by blues singers from Ida Cox forward. The practice is regularly mislabeled voodoo; hoodoo is a distinct Black American folk-magical tradition, not Haitian Vodou.
1926
Newbell Niles Puckett documents mojo among Mississippi Black communities in Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro
1927
Ida Cox records "Mojo Hand Blues" for Paramount, issued as 12540
1960
Lightnin' Hopkins records "Mojo Hand" for Fire, the version that fixes the phrase in popular memory
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Deep South — Mississippi, Louisiana and the Delta · 1920s
Spoken by
Root doctors and conjure workers; blues singers and their audiences; Black Southern communities
$MOJOHAThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical99 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
48/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1927
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Ida Cox, "Mojo Hand Blues" (Paramount 12540)
1927
■
Newbell Niles Puckett, Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro (UNC Press)
1926
■
+ Cite a sourceLightnin' Hopkins, "Mojo Hand" (Fire)
1960
See also