practicesWearing hidden
said kept out of sight, on purpose
also: carrying concealed · under the shirt · next to the skin
practiceNorth AmericaMainland Southeast AsiaWestern EuropeJapanAustraliaDiasporaUnited States of AmericaThailandItalyVatican CityJapanAustraliaHaiticonfidence medium
Among Arrernte groups, tjurunga were kept apart from the camp in a sacred place closed to women and to uninitiated men, and in the period described only initiated men could see or touch them. Australian collecting institutions hold material of this kind under access restrictions set by the relevant communities. This atlas prints the restriction and holds no description of those objects or their keeping places. — Arrernte practice as described in the cited account, and AIATSIS, which restricts access to culturally sensitive collection items to those with the permission of the relevant Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander community
The atlas prints the restriction and stops. Why.
The rule that a charm is not to be seen. Hoodoo mojo bags are made for one person and kept on that person, out of sight: men in a trouser pocket, women clipped to the bra, either pinned to clothing below the waist. Catholic devotional scapulars hang front and back under the outer clothes and are designed to be unobtrusive. A Thai takrut goes under the shirt at the chest or the waist. The charm that hides and the charm that stares out from a windscreen are doing opposite jobs.
citedWhen
1281 to now still carried cited
| Period | medieval Europe to the present |
|---|---|
| How the date is known | textual — a dated text describes it |
| Note | Dated from the Carmelite constitution of 1281, the earliest dated rule about concealed wearing in these sources. Concealment is older than that in every tradition named here. |
Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.
The thing itself
| Form | Sewn packet or pouch |
|---|---|
| Made of | Cloth · Leather and hide · Copper and bronze · Silver · Paper |
| Goes | On the chest, under the shirt · Sewn into clothing · In a pocket or a bag · At the waist · In the skin |
| Made by | a conjurer, a monk, a religious order, or a temple |
| Retired | no — it is kept |
What its carriers say it stops
Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.
- Another person's sorcery citedsaid by hoodoo practitioners, who hold that a mojo made for one person has to stay concealed on that person
- Bad luck, unspecified citedsaid by Catholic wearers of the devotional scapular, worn under the clothes as a pledge and a reminder
- Blades and bullets — invulnerability charms; reported, never recommended citedsaid by Thai wearers of takrut, worn at the chest or the waist to protect specific parts of the body
The story
Concealment has a legal history in hoodoo. Some conjurers hid their charms and others, who made a living from conjure, wore their mojo bags on the outside of their clothes — the cited account records both, and the trade sign and the private charm were different objects. Where the mojo holds a love working, practitioners sometimes specify that it be worn next to the skin; the hiding place is treated as part of whether it works.
Catholic practice built hiding into rule. The Carmelite constitution of 1281 required the scapular to be worn even in bed, under penalty of serious fault, and the constitution of 1369 attached automatic excommunication to a Carmelite saying Mass without one. Short devotional scapulars given to people outside the orders were designed to disappear under ordinary clothes at home and at work. John Paul II said he received his first Brown Scapular at ten and wore it into his papacy.
Thailand hides the object and also fixes its height. The rule reported in the amulet literature is not to wear Buddhist amulets below the waist: they go at the neck or above the waist, out of respect for the Buddha, while takrut, which carry no Buddha image, may go in trouser pockets. Japan hides the contents rather than the object: omamori are carried openly on a bag or a phone strap and customarily never opened, so that the packet is visible and its inside is not.
Inference — two opposite logics run through this atlas and they meet here. The eye, the horn and the hand work by being seen — they intercept a look. The sewn bag, the scapular and the takrut work by being unseen. A collection that files both as amulets is filing two different mechanisms under one word, and the clearest way to tell them apart in a museum tray is to ask where the object sat on the body.
How it is made and carried
Under the shirt on a cord; pinned inside clothing; in a pocket; sewn into a lining; clipped where another person will not look. Several traditions add a height rule, a side rule or a no-opening rule on top of the hiding.
Now
Live everywhere the practice is. Scapulars are still worn under work clothes; mojo bags are still made to order and concealed; Thai amulets are worn under the shirt in cased frames and lifted out to be examined by dealers with loupes, which is the moment the private object becomes a traded one.
What this is near
What names this one
Each in its own words, from its own page.
Where this came from
- Mojo bag — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Scapular — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Takrut — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Thai Buddha amulet — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Omamori — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Tjurunga — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
Elsewhere
Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.