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Witchcraft vs Obeah - What's the difference?

witchcraft | obeah |

As nouns the difference between witchcraft and obeah

is that witchcraft is the practice of witches; magic, sorcery or the use supernatural powers to influence or predict events while obeah is a form of folk magic, medicine or witchcraft originating in Africa and practised in parts of the Caribbean.

witchcraft

English

(wikipedia witchcraft)

Noun

(en-noun)
  • The practice of witches; magic, sorcery or the use supernatural powers to influence or predict events.
  • * 1387 , John Trevisa (transl.), Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis , chapter XLIV:
    • And in þat ilond is sortilege and wicchecraft i-vsed. For wommen þere selliþ schipmen wynde, as it were i-closed vnder þre knottes of þrede, so þat þe more wynd he wol haue, he wil vnknette þe mo knottes.
    Wiccans believe in a modernised form of witchcraft .

    See also

    * spellcraft * gypsycraft English words suffixed with -craft

    obeah

    English

    (wikipedia obeah)

    Alternative forms

    * obi, obea, oby, obia

    Noun

  • A form of folk magic, medicine or witchcraft originating in Africa and practised in parts of the Caribbean.
  • * 1997', James D. Rice, '''''Obeah'' , entry in Junius P. Rodriguez (editor), ''The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery , page 477,
    • 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.
  • * 2001 , Holger Henke, The West Indian Americans , page 89,
    • 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.
  • * 2011 , Margarite Fernández Olmos, Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Creole Religions of the Caribbean , page 155,
    • Obeah —a set of hybrid or creolized beliefs dependent on ritual invocation, fetishes, and charms—incorporates two very distinct categories of practice.
  • A magician or witchdoctor of the magic craft.
  • * 1860 , R. W. Emerson, The Story of West-Indian Emancipation'', Moncure Daniel Conway (editor), '' , page 651,
    • but he went down to death, with dusky dreams of African shadow-catchers and Obeahs hunting him.
  • * 1986 , Kurt E. Koch, Occult ABC , 2nd Edition, page 299,
    • I asked him if he had been charmed as a child by an Obeah'. ' Obeahs are the magicians of the Carribean islands.
  • A spell performed in the practice of the magic craft; an item associated with such a spell.
  • * 1893 , Publications of the Folklore Society (Great Britain) , page 254,
    • 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 .
  • * 2009 , Lond Schiebinger, Scientific Exchange in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World'', Bernard Bailyn, Patricia L Denault (editors), ''Soundings in Atlantic History , page 320,
    • 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.”