There are two types of gris gris: new world gris gris, and old world gris gris. Old world gris gris functions like a luck magnet or a device of fate improvement that has a magical bond to the soul, and new world gris gris functions like a magical battery that can empower its user. In both worlds of the Earth however, gris gris, whether new schooled or old, is always understood as an object of voodoo magic. Empowered gris gris can do many things for its owner. Self empowerment. Self defense. Life manipulation. All sorts of things of magical causality file away under fate management. If you’re a magician, gris gris is pretty vital, kind of like a doctor’s stethoscope but more so, at least in vocations of voodoo magic. To be a magician, you have to have some sort of agency in the magical fields of earth. To have agency in the magical fields of earth, you must believe that you can satisfy the cosmos. The cosmos is the orchestrator of humanity; it is everything we think and feel and everything that makes us be. The cosmos lives in every mind, but only 1 can make it be: God, of course. This is what persuasive magic is: you appeal to God, or to the Gods, or to the cosmos, or to what have you, for power. That’s what half of gris gris is all about. The presentation of the behavior. The ritual. The time. The energy. The confidence. The focus. The wisdom of faith. It’s all a game of persuading the cosmos to empower you. To practice voodoo without gris gris, is to approach a battlefield without a weapon. If you think you know how to do voodoo, but you don’t have no gris gris, your player index spells out charlatan. You gotta get yourself some gris gris.

The purpose of gris gris can be multifunctional. In both casual, (new world,) and traditional, (old world,) voodoo, gris gris is a device of magical construction. Traditional gris gris from West Africa is used as an amulet that can bring good luck. Traditional gris gris is oftentimes like a meatball made of leather with a little strap or something, and some etch-work. Many West Africans believe in gris gris so much that gris gris is oftentimes considered part of an effective contraceptive game plan. These people of west Africa are spiritually enlightened people as a rule of thumb. In the jungles and the forests virtually everyone agrees with magic, for example. But even in the cities it’s pretty much like that, too. The people of West Africa are mostly non-disenlightened by atheistic influences; they certainly believe in the power of prayer as a baseline of what is possible. Personally, in my western born view, I believe in the stork––I believe that the reincarnation machine implants every newborn baby with a soul upon conception––but I don’t know if magic upon the earth within the fields can afford contraception: said the old me. The me before I realized God can orchestrate consciousness in such a way that we resolve to abstinence. So, yes, the cosmos can definitely make contraception happen. Two points for West Africa. The outstandingly pious cultures of West Africa are beautiful just to know that they exist. It’s a shame ethnocentric secularites today can misplace guilt, “adopt” a child, elixir the problem with nickels, and all the while dehumanize classic humanism, just for the price of a cup of coffee––it’s crazy.

Magicians are practitioners. Practitioners are makers of magic. Makers of magic are humans who possess willful influences upon the magic fields of Earth. Practitioner gris gris is maybe most common in western voodoo or, Louisiana voodoo, Haitian voodoo, other islandic voodoos, and occultist magic in the proverbial west. Practitioner gris gris is new world gris gris, and it is more sophisticated than traditional gris gris, in that the user’s function in the process of empowering the gris gris is not one that is passive, but assertive. Whereas traditional gris gris is more of a rabbit’s foot and, a self-sustaining device of magic, practitioner gris gris is a magic battery that requires user energy to charge it up and use it. Practitioner gris gris can be any item that you carry on your person. It can be a leather meatball but it doesn’t have to be; sometimes it is better when it is not. A crucifix, a handkerchief, a donut coin, a medallion, a crystal, a tiny doll––a toy soldier––a golden baby––many things will work. The item will have to carry some meaning. Ideally some transformative meaning, for magicalization of an object is the name of your game. In a perfect world, you want your gris gris to be symbolic of your means, your ends, or the process by which the former becomes the latter.

Vulcanizing faith with prospects of doubt. Magic’s functionality, when considered through an anthropological but secular perspective, enhances magical vision with a broadened perspective. A practitioner of magic will want to empower his or her gris gris with contagion, imitation, and fetishization. These three terms indicate magical laws which anthropologists have deduced from the study of magic. Understanding magical laws can help reinforce confidence in what you’re doing. Confidence is the precursor of your next move; without confidence, your magic goes stale incredibly fast. Therefore, confidence is D-way of all ways to get what you want in your endeavors when you wish to envessel persuasive magic with directive sentience. In this way, it follows in my experience that with or without a mind full of magical sentience in the rubrical sense, gris gris can become empowered to great ends. I once had maintained some gris gris for a few months. By month 2 I began to feel abnormally strong both physically and mentally––basically whenever I wore my gris gris, which was a polished nickel orthodox cross on a dog tag bead chain that I dedicated to both blue and red magic in the pursuit of enhancing my poetic competence. For a while it worked; I felt a great sense of vitality if nothing else, which probably did help improve my poetry. However by month 4, the gris gris actually turned against me because I had made the unwise misstep of prematurely evolving my worship tactics to adopt practices of directing newfound energy towards Jesus Christ; this might sound kosher enough, for my gris gris was a crucifix, but the shift in my magical center dispurified the integrity of my gris gris which was founded upon self importance, not divine sympathy. Basically the gris gris began to make me feel ill. After 2 weeks of constant malaise, I abandoned my gris gris by disempowering it with a ritual of disownment; I swiftly began to feel better. So, gris gris can sometimes be a double edged sword.

How to empower gris gris. One way to empower gris gris is to direct one’s thoughts, and thus direct specific repeating energies, toward the gris gris whilst contacting the gris gris, either by rubbing the gris gris, kissing the gris gris gris, rubbing spit into the gris gris, coughing upon the gris gris, or what have you. Over time, with consistent thought, ritualization, categorization, metallization, metacognition, sentimentalization, increased sophistication, and basically just a butt load of attention paid to the gris gris, magic will be the outcome is the belief of practitioners. This magic will be able to suit ends that are self empowering, otherly disempowering, protective, defensive, or even charity oriented, as in altruistic––but who turns to magic to help save the world, am I right? Who do you think you are? Can you split bodies of water like Moses in some equatable sense of a feat that you have commandeered for the globalizing good of Earth’s greater humanity? If Moses didn’t do it, neither shall you. It would be difficult to ascertain and quantify your impact in such a big dynamic world full of trillions if not quadrillions, or more yet, of variables, that we cannot account for in any great proportion of the gestalt that we cannot see. Charity magic probably doesn’t exist in my opinion. Maybe in some cases to help out an individual of personal interest, but that’s as far as it likely ever goes. Self empowerment is the driver of most magical exploits by humans in the physical plane. If one is a maker and a caster of spells––whether white spells or black spells, self oriented or individually directed, in any case powerful gris gris can definitely come in handy as pivotal enhancer of one’s persuasive magic. It can be a real difference maker.

Final notes on gris gris. The logical foundation of gris gris is the assumption that matter is a substrate and consciousness is a self fulfilling seed empowered by focus; magic is the cherubite spawn of souls germinating desires in the physical plane. This is what persuasive magic is all about; it’s a process of beggary––a series of chronic ritualized appeals paid to the cosmos; it must be pulled off with grace; your energy should match your convictions, and your convictions should speak for some system of belief which you can reference to entertain a basis of factuality for magic on the earth. This belief system shall be forged in faith, so it may become functional in your magic.