Baby Water Spirits With Blue Hair and Blue Eyes Laying Down in a Tub
Obeah Is a Fact of Life, and Afterlife, in the Caribbean
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September 10, 1972
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Caribbean travel notes:
On Barbados, an 18‐year‐old girl is awakened by a tapoing at her window. She recognizes the rings on the hand waving good‐by as her grandmother's, hut when she rushes outside, no one is there. Later the girl learns that her grandmother has died at that very moment... on the other side of the island.
In Jamaica, a dying woman warns her husband that if he mistreats their son, she will come back to haunt him. He remarries and has a second family. Then his first wife begins showing up at the front gate. The night fishermen see her, standing there in the same white dress in which she was married and buried. It is not until her husband sets down rules for his second wife concerning the upbringing of the first wife's son that the ghost vanishes.
In Georgetown, Guyana, a live black chicken is found under the clothes of a not‐yet‐buried corpse. With it are slips of paper bearing the names, birth dates and addresses of certain people. Those mourner,: who are named flee the scene in panic. They know they were expected to suffocate and die within nine days, like the chicken that was to have bean buried with the body.
This is obeah, the black magic of the Caribbean. It is too secret, too mercurial for statistical study, but it found everywhere in the West Indies, and believers consider it effective both in matters of life and death and in day ‐to ‐day affairs. A person might turn to obeah if he yearns to see his competitor's business fold, or if he wants to clinch a promotion, or if he needs spell that will make him irresistible to the opposite sex. Man's scientific advancements may have taken him to the moon, but witchcraft remains alive and hexing in the West Indies. Peace of mind is still something to be worn around your neck.
Tourists seldom realize how powerful and persistent this obeah, or necromancy, is throughout the Caribbean islands. Brought over centuries ago by African slaves, it has thrived, enhanced by superstitions prevalent among Scotch and Irish Highlanders, interlaced with Christian ritual and aided by an expert botanical knowledge inherited from the Carib Indians.
Obeah is a private pursuit, something just between a fellow and his fears. Since obeah is technically illegal on most islands, its believers maintain a conspiracy of silence. Caribbean obeahmen live in seclusion in the bush, out of the eye of the law, which is forever on their trail. They speak in unknown tongues, which not even they themselves can always understand. Their powers can both heal and harm and are for hire by rich, poor, black and white.
Obeah (or Obecyahism) is not to be confused with the formalized rites of Haiti's more familiar voodoo. Obeah has no creed or organized service of worship. In the language of the Ashanti, obay'fo meant wizard, and obi in East Africa meant sorcery or fetishism. The etymology has been traced to ancient Egyptian mythology in which ob (or aub) mean serpent. Moses warned the Israelites not to recognize the demon Ob, translated in the Bible as divinator or sorcerer.
Peace of mind in the West Indies is something to be worn around the neck to ward off the jumbies.
Whatever its sources, obeah drove the West Indian sugar magnates right up the plantation walls. When Africans were shipped to the New World, they were forced to relinquish language, culture and religion. Black magic they managed to cling to, perhaps because represented revenge and hope to them. The planters outlawed African drums, for fear they might communicate a message of insurrection, yet they considered obeah merely quaint superstition at first. They did not prohibit Africans from wearing amulets or packets of herbs around their necks. The planters seldom discovered the slaves who were secretly harvesting arsenic beans in their gar
Most planters eventually learned at first‐hand about the power obeah had over their slaves. The latest European medicines were useless against the slave who moaned, "I obeahed. I goan die." Without any apparent physical symptoms the African turned his face to the wall and "pined away."
A search of an obeahman's shanty would reveal only a few cats' ears, bottles of grave dirt, dried plants and some human hair. "Shadow‐catching" was called in the 17th‐and 18th‐century plantocracy era. Someone who was spellbound believed an enemy had caught his shadow and thus had the power to bring about his death.
When it finally dawned on a planter that he himself might be the victim of this underground resistance, he outlawed obeah, making its practice punishable by death. Still, people continued to die without symptoms. Convictions were impossible to obtain because no one would testify against an obi‐man for fear of being hexed himself. Deathbed confessions, however, were not unusual. "Remember when Massa's son was sick? Well, I de one put somethin' in his soup."
A drop of poison secreted under servant's thumbnail as he served the tea and the slave had her gruesome revenge on a cruel master.
It was a West Indian slave named Tituba, part Carib Indian and "very proficient in the art of black magic," who started the witch hunt of 1692‐93 in Salem, Mass., which resulted in 19 innocent people being hanged and one SO‐year‐old man "pressed to death." Tituba had been brought to Massachusetts from Barbados by Samuel Parris, a merchant turned Puritan minister.
Of course all that happened nearly 300 years ago. Surely one would think this cult of the occult would have perished by this time. Well, the truth is that obeah remains a vital, if clandestine, force in West Indian life. The man who vehemently denies obeah nevertheless stuffs his window frames each night to keep out jumbles, or zombies, or duppies. Graves In places like the Virgin Islands are surrounded by conch shells, guaranteed to steer away evil spirits. Nearly everyone, it turns out, has had some personal brush with sorcery and the supernatural. Obeah practices are not restricted to any class, racial group or educational background.
Before the West Indian tells you his hair‐raising story about the man who was killed on St. Vincent's Dorsetshire Hill by a jumbie's chain, he prefaces with, "Course I doan follow obeah."
"I doan hold wid such notions personally," a Vincentian shopkeeper says, grabbing a handful of salt and tossing it over his shoulder. "Still, I'm not one for takin' foolish risks."
Obeah is the scapegoat for bad times, something to hang bad luck on, and ready explanation for disease. Obeah is real, not only because people think it is but because its practitioners have a formidable knowledge of the properties of plants. Animal entrails may be part of their kit, but it is the leaf broths and bark teas and berry astringents with which these expert herbalists are able to heal or to harm. When the London‐or Toronto‐trained physicians at Government Hospital fail to cure with their needles and pills, one seeks out the "bush doctor."
Love Potions
His "wish‐bag" can protect one from enemies. His love potions with names like "Follow Me, Man," guaranteed to turn a perfume advertiser positively green, promise that affections will be returned. He can recommend virility victuals and insure faithfulness from one's beloved. The powers of obeah protect fishermen, aid farmers' crops, get a man's boss to offer him a raise, make a man's shop profitable, help a lawyer win his case by tongue‐tying his opponent in court, or drive off that evil spirit which has brought one down on one's luck.
With his occult powers, the obeah doctor can control both the living and the dead. He can haunt a house, ruin marriage, "put a jumbie on you till you go outa your head," cause someone to break out in sores—and for the proper price, even in this rational, scientific age, cause death by using poison spiders, contaminated water, rusty nails, black candles and grave dust.
For those who can't afford a professional job, there are do‐it‐yourself hexes:
"Git your enemy's footprint and gather up dirt where he walked into a bag. Add salt and tie de bag on your wall. Then stick pins In th' bag. Right away, wherever he may be, de foot or arm goan swell up and take sores."
if a person wants to keep someone's field from producing, all he has to do is place a roasted breadfruit on the land with a dried herring inside and the crops will wither. To keep thieves away, put a miniature coffin on a pole; it will be more effective than a scarecrow or no‐trespassing sign. If such techniques fail, it means simply that the person not a true believer. That is the obeah doctor's insurance against failure. Faith can move mountains, so if the mountains refuse to budge there is obviously serious lack of faith somewhere.
The head of a white rooster or a lime cut in half and left in a yard means that someone "has put somethin' on the occupant."
Woe to anyone who discovers a dead lizard in a matchbox on his porch or tiny box covered in black cloth and containing a seed or coffin nail wrapped in black, for those are signs that his own body will soon be in its shroud. A coin or handkerchief found in the yard not disturbed for fear it might be hexed.
Painful Symptoms
Jumbie dust or grave dirt is powerful stuff. If it is sprinkled where an enemy walks in bare feet, his legs will soon start to itch, then swell up and begin burning with pain and break out in festering sores. Unless he gets help from the bush doctor and soaks in prescribed herb cures, he could get an infection and might even die. ("Carricou Jack, the obeah man, took de bones and teeth from a grave, and boil dem into tea, and de victim die 'fore de ninth day!"
Of course a nonsuperstltious American tourist wouldn't believe any of this macabre malarky. That is, not until he visits the but of someone like Jestina Bailey, the obeah woman, or hears the story told by an overseer for a banana estate on St. Vincent whose 20‐year‐old daughter had been hexed.
"She break out in sores an' her limbs swell up and she took to bed, wanting to die. Doctor couldn'a help. He doan know what cause her agonies. So at last, I takes her to de bush doctor." The only cure for an obeah he is more powerful counter‐obeah.
Somewhat reluctantly the overseer consents to let a visitor tag along when he takes the girl to Jestina Bailey for treatment. Jestina's neighbors not only stand in awe of her unfathomable powers, they have also made her the neighborhood scapegoat. When anyone is uptight or having a tough time of it, it is because of "dat ooman up there on the hill. She all time makin' evil deeds."
"I doan belief obeah, but I tell you, Jestina Bailey walk wid de debil," one Vincentian said in a guarded whisper. "She wan' me marry her daughter, but choose another, so she put a jumbie to lib at our house and hex my marriage. Oh, we livin' bad, bad. Plenty trouble from her.
"One night I dream she chokin' me. Old Jestina got her hands on my throat 'n I canna move. De Lawd save me, for suddenly I hear myself speakin in tongues. From my mouth comin words doan unnerstand. Then she vanish and since that night, I got no more misery."
Jestina learned her secrets and inherited her powers, it is said, from her father, Ezra Bailey. He confessed "devil play" on his deathbed, and to prove his powers to skeptics he vowed to return from the dead to claim his wife and children on the ninth day (the day the evil spirit supposedly leaves the body, permitting the soul to ascend to heaven and eternal rest).
"An' who' you think, man? Before nine day dawnin Ezra's ooman and two children take sick and lie down and die. Strong healthy folk but no doctor can save 'em fer they touched by Ezra's hand from the grave! Only de daughter, Jestina, left to carry on his dirty business.
"After Ezra died, he used to walk plenty at night. He tryin' alway to take some person to de other side with him. An' he hopin' to recruit live folk to do de debil's work."
Ezra's daughter had apparently been a willing volunteer and had studied under experts at Trinidad. Some timehonored obeah formulas have been recorded by an underground press. Books like "Pow‐wows With a Lost Friend," "Titabeh," "The Black Arts" and "The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses" are committed to the obeah doctor's memory. More often, obeah secrets are Jealously guarded. The great fear of an obeah man is a fellow practitioner whose powers outshine his own, casting "double obi" spells, causing his own to boomerang.
It was 11 P.M. when the overseer's daughter and the rest of, the party climbed the forested hills above Kingstown, St. Vincent's capital. The girl's appointment with the bush doctor was set for midnight. The group trudged dirt path through arrowroot fields, toting baskets of breadfruit, avocados and rum, partial payment for medical fees. It was a heavy darkness, unbroken by neon or electric lights. The sea, whose incessant rhythms were comforting by day, now seemed menacing. It was a night that had forgotten to hang out its moon, and the only lights besides the flashlights the girl's party carried were the wavering torches of the night fishermen parading down to the beach with their woven traps, the centuries‐old traditional fishing techniques used by Carib
Soldier crabs made a weird clatter as they crawled through town, eternally on their way between sea and mountaintop, seeking fresh water. Indeed, in this nocturnal atmosphere, their dragging claws could be taken for footsteps or jumbie chains. Caribbean nights belong to the wind, which sets tropical leaves fluttering like huge hands and breaks the stillness with whistling echoes. Over all, those frowning omnipresent moun tains, the rugged spine of the island, brooded above their domain like so many primeval gods.
Bush doctors do not hang out shingles. The party struggled through vines that would have made Tarzan jump for joy. The but of Jestina Bailey, Spellbinder, was far from any road. Just before he knocked at the deer of the small, unpainted shack, the girl's father pointed to a pot where a skull was buried —filled with silver coins to keep the spirit on Jestina's side.
Part‐time Sorceress
When Jestina opened the heavy wooden door, the callers were surprised to see that she didn't bear the slightest resemblance to a Halloween witch. In fact, she could have been cast for part in "Arsenic and Old Lace" — as one of those sweet old ladies. Inside, under better light, the visitor recognized the sorceress as a woman who worked at the hotel laundry. She practiced her superpowers part time, "moonlighting" whenever people hired her to hex or help.
The overseer's daughter, who did indeed have an unsightly skin condition, got into a bush bath outside at precisely midnight. Jestina Bailey disclosed that this particular cure had been revealed to her in a dream. Her therapy was combination of ancient root remedies, Christian incantations and intuitive psychology.
Although the rest of the party was excluded from the mysterious ceremony of exorcism, they could hear strange chanting and see from the window Jestina kneeling before a burning candle. The overseer explained that the candle was red, which was the color to "keep off bad times and provide happily‐ever afterdom." A green candle would have brought money, while yellow signifies power and a blue one is lighted for love. The black candle, sometimes planted outside the house of a person under hex, symbolizes death and destruction.
The girl's steaming cure‐all was a potpourri of lemon‐grass, horehound, limes, olive bush, soursop leaves, circe bush, honeysuckle, cowfoot, guava, sage, jackin‐the‐bush, thistle, elder, bitter tally, cochineal, duppy‐basil and grape and ringworm bush, all steeped in the right combination of rainwater and seawater.
Gruesome Paraphernalia
Tools of the trade of alchemy and witchcraft cluttered Jestina Bailey's shack. Calabash bowls held animal bones and teeth. Her other paraphernalia included feathers, egg shells, playing cards, cat and dog skulls and citrus peels. Packets of leaves and roots hung from walls and hundreds of bottles lining shelves were filled with powdered leaves, ground herbs, human hair and ashes.
"These vials," the overseer said, pointing to a couple on one shelf, "they hold grave dirt."
After centuries of experimentation, plants, aphrodisiacs and home‐cooked chemical combinations often do achieve their intended effects in the West Indies, for better or for worse. All that is required is the faith of the followers. Animal entrails may be part of the obeah bag, but much more powerful are the lotions and potions. Although some obeak, recipes are jealously guarded professional secrets, others are common knowledge. Soursop leaves steeped in hot water brews homemade phenobarbitol. The wild sea‐onion causes the heart to speed up dangerously. Castor‐oil beans inflame the intestinal tract.
The dead can have power over the living. A jumbie, or zombie, is an emissary of the devil who borrows the body of someone who has died. It roams at will and can enter another human or animal body, even forcing a man to commit a crime (a belief which supplies an offender with a handy alibi).
"My sister feel someone tuggin her hair, a ting she couldna see kept pullin at her night after night. Was de jumbie come to carry her away." Sudden death is sometimes explained as "a touch from de grave" or "a jumbie thief."
The obeah doctor can summon jumbies for assistance. One young man, a clerk in a supermarket on St. Vincent, tells about the night he passed Jestina's house on a crab‐hunting expedition and saw a ball of fire roll out of her window.
He watched and It turned into a green phosphorescence and he was nearly overcome by a stench of decaying matter. He could hear Jestina chanting frenzied words inside. Suddenly, where the glow had been, there appeared ram, which immediately ambled off into the darkness.
Jumbles are not always easy to see, except by those they are sent to "hum bug." However, some observers swear if a person "takes some water from a dog's eye and puts it into his own, the jumbles will appear." Or if one is out strolling some night with someone who sees the jumbie, all he has to do is "mash his toe against a rock til it smarts and he too can see the jumbie glow."
The pantheon of obeah is a full one. "Maljeaux," the evil eye, is taken so much for granted in the islands that people joke about it. On the main street in Kingstown two women pass a little girl and one stops to say, smiling: "Oh what a little gem she is." But her companion coaxes her on: "Aw, leave dat poor child alone. Doan put de maljeau on her."
People may not know that their eye is evil. A taxi driver described one such case. "I know a pretty miss. She doan know she got de evil eye. She see my pepper tree and says, 'man, dat's a nice pepper tree and dat healthy tree wilt and die dat same week."
In the Grenadines, the island chain between St. Vincent and Grenada, houses are often marked with the sign of the cross against the evil eye and parents may protect their newborn baby by calling in the bush doctor to bathe him and say prayers for his welfare. The best insurance against the evil eye is camphor and garlic worn in a bag around the neck and an open Bible kept under the baby's pillow.
Many West Indians are spooked by things that go bump in the night—spirits who shrink themselves and roll about in calabashes or turn into stones. "You may sit on a stone, man, and discover it is the devil!"
Then there are runks (or runx), which look like pigs and block one's path. The way to deal with one of these is to hit it, but don't count the number of swats or it will attack. Just call out, "That is none," with each blow.
La Jablesse (Joblesse or La Diablesse) is a siren who waits for those coming home late and lures her victims into the woods for illicit love affairs, then gets them so lost that they never again find their way home. Jablesses are believed to haunt deserted coral reefs off the Grenadine Islands, enchanting men and driving them insane or leading them onto dangerous shoals. They can be identified by their cloven hooves, which make an incessant clump‐clump as they limp along.
Werewolf Role
The loup‐garou (Lagahoo or Loogaroo) is a chain‐dragging creature with the power to transform itself into any animal but is particularly fond of playing werewolf. He will devour anyone, living or dead, with the exception of twins. The way to restore a Loup‐garou to human form is to spill his blood. Or you can outsmart him by leaving 99 grains of sand (or rice or corn, depending on the island) outside the house. He has this compulsion to count them, and when he has gotten up to 99 he will search everywhere for the 100th. Unable to find it, he will think he's made a mistake and begin counting all over again, and keep on until dawn breaks and he must take human form once more.
Finally, there is the soucouyan (sukuyan), or heg, a female vampire who thrives on the sweet blood of children. She might turn out to be that dear old lady down the street who at night leaves her own skin behind in a heap and metamorphizes into a bat, ball of fire or huge egg or becomes invisible. The weapon to use against her is salt.
Find her skin and thoroughly salt it. This causes it to shrivel, and when the soucouyan returns just before the first cock crows, calling, "Skin, come to owner," she will discover that it no longer fits. Pull and tug though she.may, she will never be able to wear it again and the world will thus be rid of one more heg.
A Vincentian woman introduces visitor to one of her children, a submissive blond boy of about 8, and goes on to explain that she is lucky to still have him since his "shadow had been drawn."
"This boy was sucked by a heg bout three years ago." The child nods emphatically, and as his mother speaks his eyes grow very wide. "Is true," she goes on, "I caught the evil, disgustin' ting at his neck while he sleepin.
"I make prayers and yell at de heg to get out and she do vanish. The boy is unconscious, not heself at tall, so we carry him to the bush doctor. He know how to find the guilty heg and salt her skin and offer her presents, so she doan come back. It cost us plenty, plenty money, but my boy thrives today."
Then observing the skepticism on the visitor's face, she adds, "You doan believe? Look, look, my boy's neck." She pulls his head sideways and points to what appears to be a tiny purple birthmark just below and back of his ear. "See! Is proof! The mark of the beg!"
This boy will grow up a believer, that much is certain. He never doubts this terrible tale he had heard his mother relate so often. It is through such retelling and embellishment that the belief in supernatural beings is nurtured in the West Indies.
Obeah provides ready answers to the unknown, alleviates personal guilt, offers outlets for hostility and explanations for failures. And its practitioners earn living from people's fantasies and fears.
If all these tales of witchcraft cast a momentary shadow over the travelposter image the visitor might have of the Caribbean isles, all he has to do to avoid getting hex appeal is to live the simple life:
"Doan gib nobody cause for jealousy, and nobody goan put trouble on you! Doan have too much ambition or get too much good tings, or surely somebody goan get plenty, plenty vexed and he humbug you."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1972/09/10/archives/obeah-is-a-fact-of-life-and-afterlife-in-the-caribbean-obeah-a-fact.html
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