M • Object with supernatural powers "[A] Mumbo-Jumbo which has to be invoked . . ." -- Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched With Fire (199 ) • Obscure ritual "'What on earth is she doing in there?' 'Her usual mumbo-jumbo, I suppose,' said Williams. 'Twigs, leaves, feathers, exotic powders, chicken bones.'" -- John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994) • Rubbish An interjection said with "'enlightened' scorn." -- Henry Lincoln, Key to the Sacred Pattern (1998) • Supernatural "Aren't we crossing into mumbo-jumbo territory here?" -- Harville Hendrix, Keeping the Love You Find (199 ) "Why do I always get sucked into this supernatural mumbo jumbo?" -- Sherrilyn Kenyon, Night Pleasures (2002) • Superstition -- Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (2005) "[T]his is just verbal magic, mumbo jumbo, superstition in a modern form." -- Duke Maskell, The New Idea of a University (2002) • What's up? What's happening? -- Stephen Soitos, Blues Detective (1996) Origins: Mumbo jumbo is likely of Mandingo origin, derived from the name of the deity "Mama Dyambo" (literally meaning "ancestor with a pompon" or tuft on his hat). 7 There is a story of the "Mambo Jambo" talisman of eastern Senegal, reported in 1795 by Scottish explorer Mungo Park: Thought to be an idol in the shape of a grotesque snake -- similar to the 'Rainbow Snake' which is worshipped by tribes further down the West African coast -- the talisman was used by the Woolli River people to regulate village disputes by mak ing sacrifices to the image. [Explorer Mungo] Park's journals record that he found a mask of the Mambo Jambo spirit somewhere near Tambacounda, towards the confluence of the rivers Gambia and Kouloufou. His story of the rituals associated with the fetish so confused his listeners back in Britain that the phrase mumbo jumbo, meaning hocus pocus or superstitious rigmarole, was introduced to the English lexicon. 8 Some sixty years earlier, another explorer recounted: "At Night, I was visited by a Mumbo Jumbo, an Idol, which is among the Mundingoes a kind of cunning Mystery . . . This is a Thing invented by the Men to keep their Wives in 7 Robert Hendrickson, Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (1997) 8 Insight Guide: Gambia and Senegal (1999)