Language of the Blues - Edmonton Blues Society

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Depending on how they are made
and what is placed inside them, Jack balls may bring luck, love, a job, or protection.
Certain types of Jack balls are used as divination pendulums to tell the future. If you want
to know whether a solider will return safely from war, for instance, make a Jack ball with
something from that person at the core. 241
what happened when he was carrying a Jack ball in his pocket that his aunt had given
him- without teaching him how to use it correctly:
I went to a nightclub, I was squeezing it tight
The precursors for Jack balls are Kongo charms that involve tightly binding objects
inside pieces of cloth with symbolic numbers of knots. Bakongo mythology states that the
very first charm given to man by God was Funza, the distributor of all charms. Funza was
char -
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egg, that this nkisi
This belief in twisted roots as reserves
of great power survived in African American hoodoo use of John the Conqueror.
In Flash of the Spirit, author Robert Farris Thompson described a luck ball made in
Missouri in the nineteenth century using four lengths of white yarn doubled four times
and knotted, and four lengths of white sewing silk folded the same way and knotted to
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Song:
- J.B. Lenoir
JA K E
was much sought after during Prohibition. When the Treasury Department became aware
of this, the Department ordered anyone making Jamaica Ginger to change the formula.
What unscrupulous vendors did, instead, was doctor their Jake with an industrial
plasticizer (a chemical that makes plastics soft and bendable) so that if government
tens of thousands of customers to become paralyzed in their hands and feet. For many the
damage was permanent.
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