obeah

obeahnoun/ˈəʊbɪə/

• 1

  A form of folk magic, medicine or witchcraft originating in Africa and practised in parts of the Caribbean.

  • 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.
• 2

  A magician or witch doctor of the magic craft.

  • […] 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^([sic]) islands.
• 3

  A spell performed in the practice of the magic craft; an item associated with such a spell.

  • 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.

obeahverb/ˈəʊbɪə/

• 1

  To bewitch using this kind of folk magic.

  • 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; […]