What's Your Favorite Mojo?

One of my daughters-in-law posted on FB that she was getting a flu shot this year because she's afraid of ebola.  I asked her if a flu shot protected people from ebola;  and she said "a flu shot is effective against unreasonable fear."  Now that makes sense to me.  Personally, I've never gotten a flu shot and don't plan on getting one this year.  But I have my own mojos to protect me from unreasonable fear;  and I'm sure  mine would sound as useless to flu-shot believers as flu shots seem to me.  So I started thinking about various mojos that people use.

At top left is a conker or buckeye, long considered a good luck charm (and what does a lucky charm do if not protect the carrier from fears and dangers?).  A friend told me yesterday about children who live near her and sell buckeyes at their family's farm stand as lucky charms. They do a brisk business. Next to the buckeye is a mala, a set of beads used by Hindus and Indians to keep count while reciting, chanting or mentally repeating a mantra.  A friend who had lived in India for ten years gave me the mala, and I imagine it is comforting to hold, just as my grandmother's rosary beads soothed her when she was terrified of a thunderstorm or hurricane.  At the bottom of this page is a flu shot, which imparts, along with whatever it's shooting into the person, a kind of security similar to that given by the mala and buckeye to those who believe in them.

On the right is the Real Deal:  a bottle of genuine Lourdes water.  My French Catholic voodoo grandmother would have cherished a bottle of this, believing as she did in the efficacy of holy water.  Lourdes water is not only holy water but it comes from the spring in Portugal where the Virgin Mary is believed by some to have appeared and worked miracles.  Thousands of pilgrims make the trip to Lourdes every year to bathe in the waters that continue to flow from a little spring near the grotto where the lady appeared.  The same friend who gave me the mala made a trip to Lourdes out of curiosity, and she brought me this bottle of Lourdes water.  I'm not sure if it's one of my mojos, but I have been keeping it for a very long time.  I am curious to note that in all these 12 or so years it has not shown any stagnate water signs but is as fresh smelling and looking as it was when I got it.

And at the bottom is part of my favorite voodoo pacquet, not really mojo for me but still nice to have around.  I suppose my trusted mojo is the Chinese herb and the probiotic-rich yogurt I faithfully take every morning, along with my daily trek in the woods.