Obeah

Obeah, or Obayi, is a series of creolized African (mostly West African) diasporic spiritual and healing traditions that arose in the former British colonies of the Caribbean. There are regional variations. Enslaved West Africans (especially the Ashanti and other Tshi-speaking peoples) brought with them to these colonies where it absorbed European (most notably, Christian) influences. Practitioners called Obeahmen and Obeahwomen serve their clients by assisting them with their problems. In the Bahamas, a practitioner is called a Bush man or bush doctor. In Trinidad, a common designation is Wanga man. In Grenada, they are often called Scientists. In Guyana a practitioner may be refered to as a Professor, Madame, Pundit, Maraj, or work-man. It is beleived that possession of spiritual gifts is revealed to a practitioner in late childhood or early adolescence through dreams or visions. It is sometimes also believed that an Obeah practitioner will bear a physical disability, such as a blind eye, a club foot, or a deformed hand, and that their powers are a compensation for this. disability. A practitioner's ability to attract clients is usually based on their reputation.[17] Older practitioners are usually esteemed more highly than are the younger ones. They do not normally wear special clothing to mark their identity. In Trinidad and Tobago, contemporary practitioners often advertise their services in the classified section of newspapers. Clients typically pay for the services of an Obeah practitioner, the size of the fee often being connected to the client's meansHealing practices often incorporate herbal and animal ingredients. Obeah often also involves the casting of spells to ontain justice for a client. Other usages include attracting a partner, finding lost objects, getting a person released from prison, obtaining good fortune for gambling or gaming purposes, and exacting revenge upon an enemy. These practices often include petitions to supernatural forces for divine intervention. British rulers of the colonies disapproved of African traditional religions, so they introduced various laws to curtail and prohibit them. Obeah emerged as a system of practical rituals and procedures rather than as an inclusive religious system involving communal worship and rituals. Consequently, Obeah differs from the more worship-focused African diasporic religions in the Caribbean like Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santería and Palo, or the Jamaican variant of Obeah. Obeah is similar to Quimbois, a related practice in the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Unlike other Afro-Caribbean religious traditions, Obeah does not strictly centered on deities who manifest themselves through divination and the possession of worshippers. Practitioners are, however, free to choose to incorporate deities into their practice, as they do with lesser spirits. Since the 1980s, Obeah's practitioners have labored to remove legal restrictions against their practices.