Jack Ball

A jack ball is a hand made in the round: cloth, wax or leather wound with cord into a ball and carried in the pocket or the bosom rather than worn as a bag. Hurston and Hyatt both record jack balls, and the object belongs to the same family as the mojo hand, distinguished by shape and by the kind of work it is put to - luck, finding, and the return or discovery of what is lost or hidden.

The ball is built around a core of roots and a personal concern, wound and bound, and kept on the person; it is fed and spoken to like a hand. Accounts differ about what goes at the centre, and some describe the ball as a thing with a kind of appetite that must be fed and not neglected. It is not to be opened, and the tradition holds that showing it or letting another handle it ends its work.

The ball's secrecy is the practice: the tradition forbids opening or displaying it, and the accounts that exist are from people who were trusted with the object. Its finding work is usually turned on lost property or a missing person rather than on an enemy, and where it is used to uncover someone's secret the tradition treats that as a matter needing justification.