Talk:Obeah/Draft

Obeah (sometimes spelled Obi, Obea, or Obia) is a term used by the Igbo tribe in Nigeria, and also in the West Indies to refer to sorcery, and religious practices developed among West African slaves, specifically of Igbo origin. Obeah is similar to other Afro-American religions including Palo, Vodou, Santería, and Hoodoo. Obeah is practiced in The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, The Virgin Islands, and other Caribbean nations.

Obeah is associated with both benign and malignant magic, charms, luck, and with mysticism in general. In some Caribbean nations, Obeah refers to folk religions of the African diaspora. In some cases, aspects of these folk religions have survived through syncretism with Christian symbolism and practice introduced by European colonials and slave owners. Casual observation may conclude that Christian symbolism is incorporated into Obeah worship, but in fact may represent clandestine worship and religious protest.

Origins

In parts of the Caribbean where Obeah existed, slaves were taken from a variety of African nations with differing spiritual practices and religions. It is from these arrivals and their spiritualisms that Obeah originates. The hypothesis of origin that is most accepted and is supported by the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute database traces obeah to the dibia or obia (Igbo: doctoring) traditions of the Igbo people. Specialists in Obia (also spelled Obea) were known as Ndi Obia (Igbo: Obia people) and practised the same activities as the obeah men and women of the Caribbean like predicting the future and manufacturing charms. Among the Igbo there were oracles known as ọbiạ which were said to be able to talk. Parts of the Caribbean where Obeah was most active imported a large number of its slaves from the Igbo dominated Bight of Biafra.

In another hypothesis, the Efik language is the root of obeah where the word obeah comes from the Efik ubio meaning 'a bad omen'. The last hypothesis of the origin of Obeah lies with the Ashanti who called their priests Obayifoɔ and their practices Ɔbayi (pronounced "oh-beh-ee", the word was an anglicized distortion like many other Akan words, e.g., "bɛsɛ" becoming "bissy", thus the pronunciation of "obeah") (Akan: witchcraft). There is also evidence of Akan names among Obeah men of the Caribbean in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Akan origin of Obeah has been criticised by several writers who hold that an Igbo origin is more likely. However, in colonies where Bight of Biafra slaves were less represented and Akan were plenty (Suriname and Guyana), Obeah is thought to be more of a mixture of Akan and European Christian beliefs. According to Edward Long a slave-master and historian, the Akan culture dominated Jamaica and even other newly arrived enslaved Africans had to conform to it and that only Akan gods and customs were observed, because Akan people were the majority of the slave population on the island. The first time in Jamaican history the term "obeah" was used was to refer to Nanny of the Maroons an Ashanti-Akan queen as an old 'witch', to slander her because of her defeating the British.

Obeah came to mean any physical object, such as a talisman or charm, that was used for evil magical purposes. Referred to as an Obeah-item(for e.g. an 'obeah ring' or an 'obeah-stick', etc. translated as: ring used for witchcraft or stick used for witchcraft respectively) Obeah incorporated various beliefs from the religions of later migrants to the colonies where it was present. Obeah also influenced other religions in the Caribbean, e.g. Christianity which incorporated some Obeah beliefs.

In 'The Serpent Myth', William Wynn Westcott, one of the founders of the 19th century Golden Dawn magical order, claims "Ob was an Egyptian word for serpent' and is the source of the term 'Obeah'.

History

Obeah figure confiscated from a black man named Alexander Ellis on his arrest in suspicion of practicing as an 'obeah-man' in Morant Bay, Jamaica in 1887.

The term 'obeah' is first found in documents from the early 18th century, as in its connection to Nanny of the Maroons, but discussion of it becomes more frequent when it was made illegal in Jamaica after Tacky's War, in which an obeahman provided advice to the rebels.

In 1787 a letter to an English newspaper referred to "Obiu-women" interpreting the wishes of the dead at the funeral of a murdered slave in Jamaica: a footnote explained the term as meaning "Wise-women".

A continuing source of white anxiety related to Obeah was the belief that practitioners were skilled in using poisons, as mentioned in Matthew Lewis's Journal of a West India Proprietor. An anti-Obeah law passed in Barbados in 1818 specifically forbade the possession of "any poison, or any noxious or destructive substance". A doctor who examined the medicine chest of an Obeah man arrested in Jamaica in 1866 identified white arsenic as one of the powders in it, but could not identify the others. The unnamed correspondent reporting this affirmed "The Jamaica herbal is an extensive one, and comprises some highly poisonous juices, of which the Obeah men have a perfect knowledge."

During the mid 19th century the appearance of a comet in the sky became the focal point of an outbreak of religious fanatical millennialism among the Myal men of Jamaica. Spiritualism was at that time sweeping the English-speaking nations as well, and it readily appealed to those in the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, as spirit contact, especially with the dead, is an essential part of many African religions.

During the conflict between Myal and Obeah, the Myal men positioned themselves as the "good" opponents to "evil" Obeah. They claimed that Obeah men stole people's shadows, and they set themselves up as the helpers of those who wished to have their shadows restored. Myal men contacted spirits in order to expose the evil works they ascribed to the Obeah men, and led public parades which resulted in crowd-hysteria that engendered violent antagonism against Obeah men. The public "discovery" of buried Obeah charms, presumed to be of evil intent, led on more than one occasion to violence against the rival Obeah men.

Laws were passed that limited both Obeah and Myal traditions but due to the outrages perpetrated by the mobs of Myalists, the British government of Jamaica sent many Myal men to prison, and this, along with the failure of their millennialist prophecies.

Obeah in Trinidad and Tobago

One aspect of Obeah that is familiar to Trinidad and Tobago, though not all other nations where Obeah is practiced, is the Moko-Jumbie, or stilt dancer. Moko was a common word for Ibibio slaves. In the Trinidad and Tobago Obeah tradition. A Douen is a child who has died before being baptized, and is said to be forced to forever walk the earth at night in English-speaking regions of the Caribbean. Jewelry is made from deadly toxic red and black seeds called jumbies, jumbie eyes or jumbie beads (seeds of Abrus precatorius containing the lethal AB toxin abrin) in the Caribbean and South America. By contrast, the moko-jumbie of Trinidad and Tobago is brightly colored, dances in the daylight, and is very much alive. The moko-jumbie also represents the flip side of spiritual darkness, as stilt-dancing is most popular around holy days and Carnival.

Obeah in literature

Although 18th-century literature mentions Obeah often, one of the earliest references to Obeah in fiction can be found in 1800, in William Earle's novel Obi; or, The History of Three-Finger'd Jack, a narrative inspired by true events that was also reinterpreted in several dramatic versions on the London stage in 1800 and following. One of the next major books about Obeah was Hamel, the Obeah Man (1827). Several early plantation novels also include Obeah plots. In Marryat's novel Poor Jack (1840) a rich young plantation-owner ridicules superstitions held by English sailors but himself believes in Obeah.

The 20th century saw less actual Obeah in open practice, yet it still appears quite often in fiction and drama. The following is only a partial list:

• Aleister Crowley, a controversial English mystic declared the 'Book of the Law' was dictated to him in 1904 by a non-physical being. Ch 1 verse 37 reads: "Also the mantras and spells; the obeah and the wanga; the work of the wand and the work of the sword; these shall he learn and teach"
• Zora Neale Hurston researched and wrote widely on the subject, including essays, drama, and the novel Jonah's Gourd Vine.
• The former slave, Christophine, in Jean Rhys's novel Wide Sargasso Sea is a practitioner of Obeah.
• Solitaire, the female lead in the James Bond novel Live and Let Die (novel), is said to have "the power of the Obeah."
• An Obeah woman is a sort of matchmaker in Earl Lovelace's novel Salt.
• Ma Kilman in Derek Walcott's epic poem "Omeros" is a healer who uses Obeah.
• In the novels and memoirs of Jamaica Kincaid there are several passages that mention Obeah.
• There are frequent references to Obeah in The Suffrage of Elvira written by V S Naipaul
• A central character in Unburnable is reputed to be an Obeah woman.
• The protagonist of the novel Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson is an Obeah-woman in training, learning from her grandmother. She uses her abilities to defeat an evil Obeah-man and his duppy.
• Obeah is heavily referenced in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's novel Cemetery Dance.
• A main character in the 2009 YA novel Three Witches by Paula Jolin (Roaring Brook/MacMillan)is a native of Trinidad and attempts to use Obeah to raise a dead classmate.
• Several characters in the book "The Book of Night Women" by Marlon James are said to practice Obeah, and it is a focal point at a number of points in the novel.
• Shadowcatcher, the antagonist in the Nicholas Da Silva graphic novel series Dread & Alive (novel), is an Obeah-man who uses Obeah to regain the prized amulet taken away from him by his brother, Cudjoe, the Myalman of the Jamaican Maroons."
• Robert Louis Stevenson Jamieson and his brother Arthur Conan Doyle Jamieson are both practicing Obeah in the Necroscope: the lost Years Novel from Brian Lumley.
• Obeah figures in prominently in The Lazarus Curse (Dr. Thomas Silkstone #4) by Tessa Harris. The story centers around Jamaican slaves in 18th century England and the Obeah-men and their spells/talismans.

Obeah in popular culture

• In the films Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, and its sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, the character of Tia Dalma is called an "Obeah woman" and has (among other skills) the power to restore life.
• In the action thriller Marked for Death, obeah plays a major role in the plot.
• Captain Beefheart composed and recorded a song called "Obeah Man" in 1966, but it went unreleased until included in the 1999 box set "Grow Fins: Rarities 1965–1982". He also used the phrase "obi-man" in the song "Golden Birdies" on his album Clear Spot.
• The famous Grenadian-Trinidadian calypsonian The Mighty Sparrow sings a song entitled "Obeah Wedding".
• Bahamian singer Exuma recorded the song "Obeah Man", which was included on his eponymous debut album in 1970.
• African American singer, pianist and civil rights activist Nina Simone took on the role of "Obeah Woman" in the song of the same name which she performed live on It Is Finished (1974). She used this image of a powerful African witch, who "could hug the sun, kiss the moon and eat thunder" to manifest her rage concerning the situation of African-Americans at the time.
• The film Meet Joe Black features a Jamaican woman who calls the title character an "obeah man" (translated as "evil spirit") until she has learned that he is in fact a personification of Death.
• A chutney music duo Babla & Kanchan sang a song entitled "Obeah".
• Obeah is a Salubri clan discipline in White Wolf Publishing's Role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade.
• Obeah is the religion listed on a computer screen of a 13-year-old girl, Alisa Beldon, identified as a latent telepath in the Babylon 5 episode "Legacies" (Season 1, Episode 17).
• In the television series version of Da Kink in My Hair hairstylist Starr chants to give herself strength which suspiciously sound like spells to some of the Caribbean clients of the West Indian hair salon. When styling church-going Sister Corrine the woman exclaims "Don't bother bring dat obia business to me...get this vodou witchcraft woman 'way from me head!" illustrating the contrasts between acceptance and disdain for obeah in the Caribbean.
• In episode 2 of the 1974–1975 television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, entitled "Zombie", a grandmother, identified as "Mamalois" (the feminine version of "papaloi", an Obeah priest), seeks revenge for her grandson's death by turning him into a zombie to do her bidding.
• Obeah plays a major role in the 2001 horror movie Ritual.
• In Live and Let Die, James Bond's love interest, Solitaire, played by Jane Seymour, is said to have the power of the Obeah.
• A subplot in a Barney Miller episode entitled "Computer Crime" (season 5, episode 22) features an Obeah woman (played by Mabel King).

See also

• West African Vodun - West African religion, an antecedent of Haitian Vodou
• Eddie Nawgu - A Nigerian sorcerer from the Igbo tribe
• Pericoma Okoye - A Nigerian musician and Obeah practitioner from the igbo tribe

External links

• History of antagonism between Myalism and Obeah in Jamaica
• Obeah Afro-Caribbean Shamanism
• The Caribbean Black Magic Obeah: Interview with White Magician

{{Afro-American Religions}} {{Religion in Jamaica}} {{Religion in Trinidad and Tobago}} {{Odinani}} [[Category:Obeah| ]] [[Category:Afro-American religion]] [[Category:Afro-Caribbean religion]] [[Category:Afro-Jamaican culture]] [[Category:Christianity and religious syncretism]] [[Category:Igbo words and phrases]] [[Category:Religion in the Bahamas]] [[Category:Religion in Barbados]] [[Category:Religion in Belize]] [[Category:Religion in Dominica]] [[Category:Religion in Grenada]] [[Category:Religion in Guyana]] [[Category:Religion in Jamaica]] [[Category:Religion in Suriname]] [[Category:Religion in Trinidad and Tobago]]

Information From Additional Sources

Cutting across space and time: Obeah's service to Jamaica's freedom struggle in slavery and emancipation

Expanding missionary reach failed to dislodge Obeah and Myal; this failure to eclipse African spirituality reveals the deep seated theological and cultural divide separating Afro-Jamaicans and European missionaries. Before and after emancipation Christian converts retained rather than purged many African theological concepts as European missionaries and Afro-Jamaicans theological differences reflected West and Central Africa's continued polytheistic influence. As their ancestors sensed Afro-Jamaicans felt multiple spirits were responsible for good and evil. (7) Additionally, they believed good and evil was manufactured and controlled in the physical realm through human agents. It was further felt similar to how a person's good aura could improve one's prosperity that a person's negative vibrations were a source of illness, poverty, job loss and other debilitating conditions specific to the material world. Surviving these ordeals hinged on being spiritually fortified and Christianity's outer worldly emphasis apparently seemed more possible to accept when buffered with Obeah, a tradition seemingly more designed to navigate the concrete world.

Obeahs war rituals survived the erosion of time and were passed like heirlooms between successive generations of freedom fighters as in the practice of consuming rum mixed with gunpowder. Rebels throughout enslavement when they took oaths to pledge their loyalty to each other and their revolt drank this liquid admixture to seal their pact. Binding oaths with liquid concoctions occurs in several West and Central African societies...Apparently for its spiritual function it was perceived as important to perform when planning rebellions.

Common protocol for preparing and hosting rum and gunpowder rituals always demands an adept Obeah man as master of ceremony. The necessity for an Obeah man to mix and serve the drink is an interesting finding revealed during the trials for enslaved Africans indicted for their roles in the 1823 Boxing Day conspiracy. At the trial it was discovered that the leaders following several failed attempts to properly prepare the beverage and perform the ritual recruited, for this task, Guinea Jack. (23) This revelation encourages deeper exploration of Bogle's true religious identity. Bogle only could effectively perform rum and gun powder rituals if he was similarly trained as Guinea Jack.

Similarities between the indentured Central Africans' spiritual system and Obeah are very striking. In both traditions heavy emphasis is placed on manipulating spiritual forces to achieve predetermined objectives and also on curing maladies with leaves, barks, and roots. (26) And Obeah in 1865 was still highly regarded as an effective healing system. The widespread practice where Afro-Jamaicans resorted to Obeah for healing so gravely concerned white authority that at the Royal Commission convened in 1866 to investigate factors that triggered Morant Bay's war also spent time interrogating Obeah. Several examinees explained to the commission that Obeah addressed their medical needs in ways that Western medicine failed.

The Obeah man's arsenal in pre and post-emancipation times also included wooden effigies. These objects referred popularly as Obeah piccanini challenges how Obeah is perceived as lacking a pantheon of deities as found in Santeria, Candomble and Voudun where worship revolves respectively around Legba, Ogun, Shango and other Orishas or Lwas. And the Orishas, Lwas, and other similar pantheons have deities that are portrayed as wooden effigies, and this practice is traced to several West and Central African societies. With the proliferation of African religions in Brazil, Cuba and Haiti this practice was preserved and Jamaica with its pronounced West and Central African heritage suggest that the Obeah piccanini in fact was an Orisha, Lwa, Abosom, Nkisi or another African spirit. Attaching greater significance to the Obeah piccanini redefines Obeah within a much broader religious paradigm, suggesting Obeah piccanini were empowered with an equal spiritual value to an Orisha, Lwa or Nikisi has merit based on how their usage compared with how Guinea Jack healed, divined and prophesized with four wooded effigies.

in the 1823 Boxing Day conspiracy and the Morant Bay War? In the aftermath following both events effigies were confiscated and as iterated above, these carvings represented West and Central African deities. And the effigies are receptacles where the spirits they represent are contacted. Custodians or owners of these vessels, in West/Central Africa, communicated with the indwelling spirit through clay pots filled with water, cowry shells, kola nuts, and sand to name a few of the substances diviners use to contact spirits. Guinea Jack used a mirror to summon and see the spirits residing in his wooden effigies.

Paul Bogle's 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion and Guinea Jack's 1823 Boxing Day Conspiracy as anti-colonial and pro-Black movements irritated the system and became excuses to slaughter Black people. Obeah specialists were hunted and executed in large numbers as they were leaders, cultural custodians and healers. Emancipation clearly brought no relief for the Obeah man; the laws remained unchanged and were continually revised.

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History

The earliest known occurrences of the term in writing, from Barbados, date from the early 1700s. By the late eighteenth century, the word had also begun to appear frequently in writings from Jamaica and other British Caribbean colonies. It is apparent from these early sources that during the slavery era Obeah often referred to divination, healing (frequently using herbs), and spiritual protection of various kinds, although it could also have fearful connotations, sometimes being associated with accusations of sorcery. It was not long before whites began to realize that belief in Obeah could be brought into the service of slave rebellions. One result was the rapid introduction of anti-Obeah legislation in Jamaica and a number of other colonies.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, as the influence of Christian missionaries grew, depictions of Obeah became increasingly one-sided and negative. Obeah was now often reduced by writers to a virulent form of witchcraft or sorcery with a single purpose: to harm or destroy its "victims." Such hegemonic ideas formed part of the more general denigration and stigmatization by colonial authorities (and the educational and religious institutions aligned with them) of cultural expressions identified with the black population, especially practices and beliefs understood to be of African origin. But because Obeah practitioners were in direct competition with the purveyors of hegemonic interpretations of Christianity that provided ideological support for the colonial project, they were singled out for attack and bore the brunt of a particularly fervent and sustained campaign of demonization.

"in the literature on the West Indies, 'obeah' is synonymous with evil magic, and Miss Beckwith tacitly accepts this interpretation. On the basis of the Suriname data, to say nothing of some of Miss Beckwith's own statements, this interpretation does not stand. If we take the case among the Bush-Negroes [Surinamese Maroons] … we find that obia is a healing principle"

A careful re-examination of written references to Obeah in various parts of the Caribbean, from the earliest descriptions to those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, reveals that most of those who have consulted Obeah practitioners have actually done so for protection and help with illness or other personal problems, or more generally to bring good fortune, rather than to wreak vengeance on enemies or inflict disease and misfortune upon innocent victims. Like fears and accusations of witchcraft in other parts of the world, anxieties regarding the working of malicious Obeah in the Caribbean likely have more to do with interpersonal tensions and mechanisms of social control in particular communities—in this case filtered through the prism of hegemonic colonial ideologies—than with the actual practice of Obeah.

In more recent years, colonial laws against Obeah have periodically been challenged elsewhere in the region, and in some cases repealed. In Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, for instance, Obeah is no longer a legal offense; in other countries, such as Jamaica, anti-Obeah statutes remain on the books. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Astronyte (talk • contribs) 06:21, 15 April 2017 (UTC)