Babus, Fakis, Sangomas – these are a few of the names of spiritual or mystical healers and practitioners found all across the African continent. A version of the tradition they follow, obeah, made its way to the Caribbean among enslaved populations, from West Africa. Today, obeah endures, despite colonialism and the adoption of Christianity across much of the Caribbean.

This week, I spoke to our Caribbean correspondent, Natricia Duncan, about the tradition, and a new Jamaican film that highlights aspects of obeah. Our conversation revealed to me that obeah, something I knew very little about, was in fact uncannily familiar.

Obeah – ‘demonic’, or demonised?

Obeah is a syncretic practice that merges pre-Abrahamic African religion, Christianity, and indigenous Caribbean features. It is part medical and natural, utilising material from animal and plant life to heal; and part supernatural, using spells to ward off evil and summon good fortune. To west Africans, obeah broadly falls in the “juju” tradition of folk magic. For Haitians, it’s similar to vodou, for African Americans, hoodoo. The common belief is that forces in the spiritual world can influence the material one through physical objects such as amulets, charms and talismans, or ritualistic concoctions to heal or curse. One such mixture is featured in the new Jamaican suspense thriller, Stew Peas.

The film is focused on the Jamaican obeah belief that a woman can “bind” a man by serving him a traditional kidney bean and meat stew, secretly mixed with her menstrual blood. The film poses a rare opportunity to have a conversation about obeah, which is taboo in many parts of the Caribbean. Practices that fall under the umbrella are illegal in Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda and a number of other nations, and in some communities you’ll be hushed for even mentioning the word.

Living in fear of evil spells

Obeah looms large in the Caribbean cultural imagination. Natricia, who is from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, says that she was keenly aware of obeah and related spiritual beliefs and traditions growing up. During electricity outages in her community, the candles came out and “jumbie” stories were told, ones “based on a belief in spirits, in a world we can’t see, in supernatural abilities”. Natricia describes frequent interventions from elders, who gave advice to children to make sure that someone didn’t “do them” – that is, cast an evil spell on them. They believed that spells could be cast through the use of personal physical objects, sometimes as simple as a borrowed pencil. “As a child, you really believe these things.”

But in Natricia’s experience, obeah is also closely connected with herbalism. The belief is that “there is power in nature, in the soil, in animals”. She recalls how a desperate mother she knew was advised by an “obeah man” – the term for a practitioner – to burn all her son’s clothes, and make a medicine from the ashes, to treat his severe epilepsy. “There were also practices of using water boiled with lizards to heal asthma,” she says. Most of this was harmless stuff, but she also recalled negative experiences, where some were poisoned or broke out into rashes due to obeah potions.

Colonial connections

While speaking with Natricia, I’m struck by just how similar her childhood experiences were to mine, considering I grew up across the world from her in Africa. I saw that same deference to traditional healers during periods of illness, that same fear of being hexed by haters, that same belief in the supernatural that could be leveraged for effect in the material world. The only difference is that, in the Caribbean, there is more tension between these practices and Christianity than there is in Sudan with Islam. In her experience as a Christian, Natricia tells me, obeah “represents evil”.

That stigma can be traced back to enslavement and colonisation. During enslavement, many of these practices represented something that offered hope, togetherness, a sense of identity and a connection to the homeland from which they were stolen. But they were opaque to Christian colonisers in the Caribbean, who began to group these diverse practices under the umbrella of “obeah”, and demonise them. From the 18th century onwards, a time characterised by large scale plantation enslavement and subsequent revolts, anti-obeah legislation began to pass. Jamaica made the practice illegal in 1760, after a large uprising known as Tacky’s Rebellion, in which obeah men administered oaths to rebels, and conducted rituals thought to grant protection from colonisers’ weapons. Other British colonies followed in criminalising obeah. Natricia tells me: “Anything that resulted in people gathering or having ideas about empowerment would have been considered a threat, and forbidden.”

Why has obeah endured?

Obeah is not an ancient tradition entirely distinct from more modern organised religion. Obeah also touches on themes present in monotheistic religions. Natricia points out that Christianity often endorses a similar notion of good and evil spirits, or a fallen angel in the devil, hellbent on leading humans astray. The difference is that, in the forms of Christianity that she has experienced, “God is all-powerful – as long as you are under his protection, you are safe.”

I wonder if monotheistic religions lack, and therefore create a yearning for, that connection to the physical world, where religion is not only a matter of faith or prayer, but a form of tactile interaction with material items and nature. Perhaps, says Natricia. But the use of these objects isn’t only psychological. Some of the healing properties of plants and herbs used by spiritual healers for centuries are now being confirmed by modern science. Papaya, for example, has well-evidenced wound healing properties, and tamarind is useful for reducing inflammation and aiding digestion.

Obeah’s endurance in the Caribbean may also be connected to developing medical systems, a limited access to care and a lack of awareness of mental health. Natricia says that growing up, she was aware of unwell children who were treated as cursed or possessed by evil spirits, prompting their “desperate” parents to seek out alternative medicine. But again, she cautions, the same notions persisted for a long time in Christianity, where mental illness was treated as possession by a demon that needed to be exorcised.

Still complex, still surviving

From talking to Natricia, I’m struck by how common our experiences of these traditional practices are, despite massive geographical distance and cultural variation. Obeah, and its origins and derivatives, cannot be clearly traced or attributed to one specific historical phenomenon. The fact that these varied forms of spiritual practice still endure across the diaspora, despite decades and even centuries of counter-programming from colonisation and conversion, is striking. Their survival demonstrates the enduring appeal of the spiritual realm. The possibility that life is not only about submission to a single omnipotent creator, but a two-way exchange, in which people attempt to control their fates through summoning higher forces.

Once that notion is seeded, for better or for worse, it is hard to relinquish. It’s complex, Natricia says. There is the “the westernised part of your brain”, but alongside it always sits that “core belief … the nights listening to those stories”.

Main image by Natasha Cunningham/Getty Images/Shutterstock