16 Facts About Obeah

Obayi, better known as Obeah, is a Caribbean term for an ancestrally inherited body of healing and spiritual knowledge that is rooted in West African spiritual and healing traditions from places such as Ghana, Ivory Coast and Nigeria.

Obeah is a syncretic body of knowledge that continues to evolve.

Obeah is said to be difficult to define, as it is believed by some to not be a single, unified set of practices, since the word "Obeah" was historically not often used to describe one's own practices.

Obeah is the justice-seeking arm of the Akan religion, and, in its original, traditional form, is similar to other African diaspora religions such as Palo, Haitian Vodou, Santeria, and Hoodoo in that it includes communication with ancestors and spirits and healing rituals.

Variants of Obeah are practiced in the Caribbean nations of in The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Turks and Caicos Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Virgin Islands, as well as by the Igbo people of Nigeria.

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In parts of the Caribbean where Obeah developed, enslaved people were taken from a variety of African nations with differing spiritual practices and religions.

The origins of the word "Obeah" have been contested in the academic community for nearly a century; there is not a widely accepted consensus on what region or language the word derives from, and there are politics behind every hypothesis.

In British colonial communities, aside from referring to the set of spiritual practices, “Obeah” came to refer to a physical object, such as a talisman or charm, that was used for evil magical purposes.

Obeah incorporated various beliefs from the religions of later migrants to the colonies where it was present.

Obeah has received a great deal of attention for its role in Tacky's Rebellion, the 1760 conflict that spurred the passage of the first Jamaican anti-Obeah law.

Parts of the Caribbean where Obeah was most active imported a large number of its slaves from the Igbo-dominated Bight of Biafra.

Term 'Obeah' is first found in documents from the early 18th century, as in its connection to Nanny of the Maroons.

Obeah is said to have used her obeah powers to kill British soldiers in Nanny's Pot, a boiling pot without a flame below it that soldiers would lean into and fall in, to quickly grow food for her starving forces, and to catch British bullets and either fire them back or attack the soldiers with a machete.

The laws forbidding Obeah reflected this fear: an anti-Obeah law passed in Barbados in 1818 specifically forbade the possession of "any poison, or any noxious or destructive substance".

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 practitioners.

Trinidad and Tobago Obeah includes the unique practice of the Moko-Jumbie, or stilt dancer.