Mojo

The other day I ran into a woman from an art group that we attend.
“Haven’t seen you for a while,” I said.
“No,” she replied, “I seem to have lost my mojo.”
 
Her comment made me wonder about the word mojo.
 
The Online Etymological Dictionary suggests that the origins of the word mojo are probably related to Gullah moco (witchcraft) and Fula moco’o (medicine man). Mojo, meaning magic, first appeared in the southeastern United States in the 1920s.
 
“The Gullah are an African American ethnic group who predominantly live in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida within the coastal plain and the Sea Islands” (Wikipedia). 
 
Fula, the language of the Fulani people, is spoken as a first language by about ten million people and is widely used in West Africa (Wikipedia).
 
Wikipedia defines a mojo as an amulet consisting of a flannel bag containing one or more magical items—a “prayer in a bag”—that is part of the African-American spiritual practice called Hoodoo (not to be confused with Voodoo). Wikipedia defines hoodoo as “a set of spiritual practices, traditions, and beliefs that were created by enslaved African Americans in the southern United States from various traditional African spiritualities, Christianity, and elements of indigenous botanical knowledge.”
 
By the 1930s, mojo was also an underworld name for any of the poisonous habit-forming narcotics.
 
More recently mojo is used to mean “exceptional ability, good luck, success” (Dictionary.com).

Image:  The photo caption includes, “note the mojo around the neck of the center figure.”
New York Public Library Public Domain Collections.

Reference: Online Etymological Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/
https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-day/mojo-2021-10-18/