The gris-gris is a protective amulet or charm that appears in two connected forms, the West African Islamic packet holding a written verse and the charm of the Louisiana traditions, and its history runs from one to the other.
The written amulet
In its West African form the gris-gris is a small packet, often of leather, holding a slip of paper on which a Quranic verse or other holy words are written, worn on the body to protect the bearer from harm, illness or misfortune, and this practice belongs to the widespread use of written scriptural words as amulets in West African Islam, where the marabout who writes them is a figure of standing. The power is held to reside in the sacred words enclosed, so the object is a bearer of the protective force of scripture carried against the body.
Across the Atlantic
Carried to the Americas under slavery, the gris-gris entered the folk practice of Louisiana, where the word came to name protective and other charms in the Voodoo and Hoodoo traditions of the region, their contents drawn from herbs, minerals and other materials as well as, sometimes, written words. In this diaspora setting the object retained its character as a made and carried charm while its contents and associations broadened. The gris-gris thus links a West African Islamic amulet practice to the folk magic of the American South, one of many threads by which African religious practice was carried across the Atlantic and transformed under the conditions it met there.