Noun

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.

However, quite often it is also applied to protect from obeah' spells which the client feels himself or herself to be suffering from. Since '''obeah''' can also cast protective spells (e.g., against other ' obeah spells), it is not entirely correct to dismiss it as an evil practice.

Obeah —a set of hybrid or creolized beliefs dependent on ritual invocation, fetishes, and charms—incorporates two very distinct categories of practice.

but he went down to death, with dusky dreams of African shadow-catchers and Obeahs hunting him.

I asked him if he had been charmed as a child by an Obeah'. ' Obeahs are the magicians of the Carribean islands.

Mr. M. J. Walhouse then read a paper on "Some Indian Obeahs'", and exhibited some photos of Kurumbars, and a piece of the bone of an elk and an iron cock's spur, with which a man had been murdered, both of which had been regarded as ' Obeahs .

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.”