The Spellcaster's Source Hoodoo and Voodoo Witchcraft Blog of Talia Felix

When I was a kid in the early 90s, I started developing an interest in perfumes. Neither of my parents used them or liked them, but they wanted to encourage me in my interests, so they would give me whatever samples they came across, and sometimes take me to perfume counters at malls to examine different fragrances. One sample I was given was a tiny frosted glass bottle of Queen of Tibet perfume. It had an orange color, and the scent was what I would now recognize to be mostly musk and citrus. It was one of the nicer samples I had, and I liked the image of the name, so even though I didn't really like the scent the best (I'm more of a tea rose type) I used it when I used perfumes. Whatever company made Queen of Tibet perfume seems to be gone, and it looks like it wasn't overall a very popular scent -- no old bottles for sale on eBay, no references to it surviving in Google Books. Yet as an adult, I was a little surprised to see Queen of Tibet oil listed in Anna...

The original recipe for cologne was reputedly given to St. Elizabeth of Hungary by an angel -- the concoction was known as "Hungary Water" and was used primarily as a medicine, rather than just a mere fragrance. Charles Godfrey Leland remarked that it therefore was appropriate hoodoo practitioners would use such a substance for feeding their conjure bags and other talismans. The term cologne actually comes from a later preparation, Cologne Water (named for the German city.) The original Cologne Water is a spirit-citrus perfume launched in 1709 by Giovanni Maria Farina (1685–1766), an Italian perfume maker from Santa Maria Maggiore Valle Vigezzo, Italy. In 1708, Farina wrote to his brother Jean Baptiste: "I have found a fragrance that reminds me of an Italian spring morning, of mountain daffodils and orange blossoms after the rain". He named his fragrance Cologne Water, in honour of his new hometown. The Original Cologne Water composed by Farina was used on...

Mojos, or Conjure Hands, or Medicine Bags, or whatever you like to call them, are popular and classic parts of hoodoo and rootwork. The fact that they are easy to make and send as a "ready made spell" also causes them to be popular with the retailers of occult supplies. This post is focusing on another element: feeding a mojo. This is usually an issue whether you bought your bag ready-made or whether you put it together yourself. In fact, if the bag is actually a mojo (rather than a gris-gris) it's always supposed to be fed. Only rarely are some mojo hands meant not to be fed repeatedly -- most typically in cases where they are meant to work on another person and are hidden or buried near the spell-target's home or workplace. Of course the practitioner isn't expected to have further access to the bag, and thus they are not given further feedings. Most hands, however, are kept in the practitoner's home or, most commonly, carried by the practitioner. These a...