Although lacking a self-perpetuating institutional structure, Obeah was a crucial element of Afro-Caribbean religions everywhere from Suriname's Maroon societies (communities of runaway slaves) to the Leeward Islands' slave societies.

However, quite often it is also applied to protect from obeah spells which the client feels himself or herself to be suffering from. Since obeah can also cast protective spells (e.g., against other obeah spells), it is not entirely correct to dismiss it as an evil practice.

Obeah—a set of hybrid or creolized beliefs dependent on ritual invocation, fetishes, and charms—incorporates two very distinct categories of practice. The first involves "the casting of spells for various purposes, both good and evil: protecting oneself, property, family, or loved ones; harming real or perceived enemies; and bringing fortune in love, employment, personal or business pursuits"[…]. The second incorporates traditional African-derived healing practices based on the application of considerable knowledge of herbal and animal medicinal properties.

[…] but he went down to death, with dusky dreams of African shadow-catchers and Obeahs hunting him.

A Jamaican Christian came to me for counseling. […] I asked him if he had been charmed as a child by an Obeah. Obeahs are the magicians of the Carribean islands.

Although Adair suspected that obeahs often employed poisons, he emphasized that the diseases induced by obeahs resulted from "depraved imagination, or a powerful excitement or depression of the mental faculties."

Mr. M. J. Walhouse then read a paper on "Some Indian Obeahs", and exhibited some photos of Kurumbars, and a piece of the bone of an elk and an iron cock's spur, with which a man had been murdered, both of which had been regarded as Obeahs.

Sometimes an egg is boiled hard, and laid in the middle of the road, surrounded by a circle of plantane bark; at others, pieces of hair, cats' teeth, cocks' feathers, and bits of glass, broken amber, and snakes' skins, are placed at the person's door; but oftener buried so as to be concealed from sight. Whoever touches an obeah of this kind, is certain to bring all the mischief intended for the obeahed person, upon his own head; and the consequence is, very few Negroes, if any, venture to remove the charm, or even to come near it. A lock of the obeahed person's hair is almost indispensably necessary, […]

[I]f any negro from that time forward should be proved to have accused another of Obeahing him or of telling another that he had been Obeahed, he should forfeit his share of the next present of salt-fish, which I meant soon to distribute among the slaves, and should never receive any favour from me in future; […]

A negro takes a dislike to a negro or negroes, either upon the same estate with himself or upon another; he goes to the Obeah woman and tells her that he will give money or something else as payment if she will Obeah such and such persons. The Obeah woman then goes to those people, and tells them she has Obeahed them. Slow poison is at times secretly administered, but in by far the greater number of cases the mind only is affected; the imagination becomes more and more alarmed, the spirits sink, lassitude and loss of appetite ensue, and death ends the drama.

A poor old woman who thinks she has been Obeahed lies ill in an isolated hut on the short cut to New Castle. I discovered her while out shooting, and promised to send her medical aid. Her case is pressing.

Obeah

Meaning

Noun

Verb

Synonyms

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