Description

Obeah, or Obayi, is a series of African diasporic spell-casting and healing traditions found in the former British colonies of the Caribbean. These traditions derive much from traditional West African practices that have undergone cultural creolization. There is much regional variation in the practice of Obeah, which is followed by practitioners called Obeahmen and Obeahwomen.

Obeahmen and Obeahwomen serve a range of clients in assisting them with their problems. A central role is played by healing practices, often incorporating herbal and animal ingredients. It often also involves measures designed to achieve justice for the client. These practices often make reference to supernatural forces, resulting in Obeah sometimes being characterised as a religious practice. 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 developed among African diasporic communities in various British Caribbean colonies following the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th to 19th centuries. It formed through the adaptation of the traditional religious practices that enslaved West Africans, especially from the Ashanti and other Tshi-speaking peoples, brought to these colonies. There, they also absorbed European influences, especially from Christianity, the religion of the British colonial elites. These elites disapproved of African traditional religions and introduced various laws to curtail and prohibit them. This suppression meant that Obeah emerged as a system of practical rituals and procedures rather than as a broader religious system involving deity worship and communal rites. In this way, Obeah differs from more worship-focused African diasporic religions in the Caribbean, such as Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santería and Palo, or Jamaican Obeah. Since the 1980s, Obeah’s practitioners have campaigned to remove legal restrictions against their practices in various Caribbean countries.