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To: alt.lucky.w From: lrdleolido@aol.com (LrdLeoLido) Subject: Re: Gris-Gris (was: Come to Me Oil) Date: 29 Sep 1999 06:19:23 GMT >Gris-gris is a term i have only encountered among the Frech-Creole and >Caribbean people. It crops up in the U.S.A. in New Orleans, where >Haitian refugees settled after the slave revolt in Haiti in the early >19th century. Until recently, when it was popularlized through music and >other mass-media, the term gris-gris was not encountered in the general >practice of conjure or hoodoo among African-Americans in the U.S.A. > >I have been told that gris-gris means "grey-grey" in French, although i >suspect it may derive from a sound-alike word in some African language, >for there is nothing about it that is "grey." Perhaps a scholar of >African languaes has an opinion???? As I understand it, "gris-gris" does indeed mean "grey-grey" in French, but the meaning is that it is double-grey. Negatives in African languages are cumulative, so it means "really grey." I was told this was because it's believed that grey magick is stronger than either black or white, combining as it does the power of both, using the power of a black magick charm for a white magick end or vice versa. Certainly fits with what I've seen of most hoodoo charms, since they combine elements of both sorts of magick. Kevin http://www.sff.net/people/Kevin.A.Murphy
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