obeah

obeah A form of folk magic, medicine or witchcraft originating in Africa and practised in parts of the Caribbean.
(quote-book)|title=The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery|location=Santa Barbara, Calif.|publisher=(w)|year=1997|volume=II (L–Z)|page=477|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=ATq5_6h2AT0C&pg=RA1-PA477|isbn=978-0-87436-885-7|passage=Although lacking a self-perpetuating institutional structure, Obeah was a crucial element of Afro-Caribbean religions everywhere from Suriname's Maroon societies (communities of runaway slaves) to the Leeward Islands' slave societies.
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(quote-book)|year=2011|page=155|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=fAzYsAsJXDAC&pg=PA155|isbn=978-0-8147-6227-1|passage=Obeah—a set of hybrid or creolized beliefs dependent on ritual invocation, fetishes, and charms—incorporates two very distinct categories of practice. The first involves "the casting of spells for various purposes, both good and evil: protecting oneself, property, family, or loved ones; harming real or perceived enemies; and bringing fortune in love, employment, personal or business pursuits"(nb..). The second incorporates traditional African-derived healing practices based on the application of considerable knowledge of herbal and animal medicinal properties.
A magician or witch doctor of the magic craft.
(quote-journal) but he went down to death, with dusky dreams of African shadow-catchers and Obeahs hunting him.
(quote-book)|year=1986|page=299|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=eNqb5eVr0moC&pg=PA299|isbn=978-0-8254-3031-2|passage=A Jamaican Christian came to me for counseling. (..) I asked him if he had been charmed as a child by an Obeah. Obeahs are the magicians of the Carribean(SI) islands.
(quote-book) and Patricia L. Denault|title=Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830|location=Cambridge, Mass.; London|publisher=(w)|year=2009|page=320|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=Tl0H4S7W8qQC&pg=PA320|isbn=978-0-674-03276-7|passage=Although Adair suspected that obeahs often employed poisons, he emphasized that the diseases induced by obeahs resulted from "depraved imagination, or a powerful excitement or depression of the mental faculties."
A spellNoun spell performed in the practice of the magic craft; an item associated with such a spell.
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puhekieltä To bewitch using this kind of folk magic.
(quote-book)|year=1834|pages=146–147|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=zWQ6kd91c5cC&pg=PA146|oclc=822613847|passage=If any negro from that time forward should be proved to have accused another of Obeahing him or of telling another that he had been Obeahed, he should forfeit his share of the next present of salt-fish, which I meant soon to distribute among the slaves, and should never receive any favour from me in future; (..)
(quote-book)|title=Cruising Among the Caribbees: Summer Days in Winter Months|edition=rev. and enl.|location=New York, N.Y.|publisher=(w)|year=1903|page=88|pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=GT1sAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA88|oclc=5986784|passage=A negro takes a dislike to a negro or negroes, either upon the same estate with himself or upon another; he goes to the Obeah woman and tells her that he will give money or something else as payment if she will Obeah such and such persons. The Obeah woman then goes to those people, and tells them she has Obeahed them. Slow poison is at times secretly administered, but in by far the greater number of cases the mind only is affected; the imagination becomes more and more alarmed, the spirits sink, lassitude and loss of appetite ensue, and death ends the drama.
1906 December – 1907 May, Isabella S. Abel, “The Obeah-man”, in w:Windsor Magazine|The Windsor Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly for Men and Women, volume XXV, London: w:Ward Lock & Co|Ward, Lock & Co., Limited Warwick House, Salisbury Square, E.C., published 1907, (w) http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/224679211 224679211, https://books.google.com/books?id=2PnPAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA392 page 392:

A poor old woman who thinks she has been Obeahed lies ill in an isolated hut on the short cut to New Castle. I discovered her while out shooting, and promised to send her medical aid. Her case is pressing.