More Obeah

[Fledgist]

Re: More Obeah

Originally posted by sukuna:
[qb] Kokobay/Kokobya

III: Histories, Journals, Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Writings that show religious, pedagogical, cultural influences on folk performances

According to this text, Kokobya another word for Obeah in Nevis. Kokobay, to put it nicely, the art of inflicting people with sicknesses and diseases to a few islands including mine, Monserrat and Grenada [img]/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]
Kokobay is used to scare off children from wrong doing. Because it is thought that you get sickness when you do immoral things, it is/was said to children, if you did this or that you will get kokobay, for example, sleeping with your cousin or stealing sugar.
One of the most common forms of kokobay is a growth on the eyelid.
To put kokobay on anybody, you have to have the knowledge of where to find the agents in nature.

One story is about a fisherman and two women.

The first woman found out that he was sleeping with somebody else, so she got something and prepared herself for him, cooked and enticed him. He declined her offer because he said that before he go fishing, he should not sleep wid any woman, so the thing stayed inside of her and burnt her out. [/qb]

In Jamaica, 'cocobeh' means 'leprosy'.

[rufian]

Re: More Obeah

Originally posted by Fledgist:
[qb]

Originally posted by sukuna:
[qb] Kokobay/Kokobya

III: Histories, Journals, Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Writings that show religious, pedagogical, cultural influences on folk performances

According to this text, Kokobya another word for Obeah in Nevis. Kokobay, to put it nicely, the art of inflicting people with sicknesses and diseases to a few islands including mine, Monserrat and Grenada [img]/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]
Kokobay is used to scare off children from wrong doing. Because it is thought that you get sickness when you do immoral things, it is/was said to children, if you did this or that you will get kokobay, for example, sleeping with your cousin or stealing sugar.
One of the most common forms of kokobay is a growth on the eyelid.
To put kokobay on anybody, you have to have the knowledge of where to find the agents in nature.

One story is about a fisherman and two women.

The first woman found out that he was sleeping with somebody else, so she got something and prepared herself for him, cooked and enticed him. He declined her offer because he said that before he go fishing, he should not sleep wid any woman, so the thing stayed inside of her and burnt her out. [/qb]

In Jamaica, 'cocobeh' means 'leprosy'. [/qb]

yes that is the African meaning, still checking from where

originally spelt 'kokobe'

JesusDread if you are here, [img]/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] wa e mean ina haitian creole? is it pronounced the same way?
I see it used so far in context to mean to cripple, diseased, invalid, idiot.
Do you know? [I am being serious here]

[qb]
Pran kouray, pa kwè vye frè;
Ti tak lajwa nan gòdèt kè
Kokobe grangou twa jou
Pouvwa nèg bakoulou.
[/qb]
Lang manman (pou Felik Morisseau-Leroy), pa Gary Daniel

In the creole translation of the bible
Job Chapter 29 vs 15
Se mwen ki te wè pou avèg yo. Se mwen ki te mache pou kokobe yo.
I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame

Luke Chapter 13 vs 11
Te gen yon fanm nan sinagòg la ki te malad. Depi dizwitan li te gen yon move lespri sou li ki te fè l' rete kokobe; li pa t' kapab kanpe dwat menm.
And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.

[rufian]

Re: More Obeah

To add the the above.
kokobay was also used to scare off young girls from straying. Girls would be told, if you like to take men, me go corn you wid kokobay, however in my days it was replaced with pepper.

[rufian]

Re: More Obeah

Bahamas
Obeah
Cat Island, a quaint and sparsely developed island, is said to be the centre of the practise of obeah - a Bahamian version of voodoo. Obeah, which slaves originally brought with them from Africa, is a type of folk religion that brings together bush medicine and witchcraft. The Islands Of The Bahamas is a Christian country with the largest number of churches per capita in the world. And yet, you will occasionally run across an obeah man who is the spiritual leader/healer of this religion. Obeah is not spoken about openly by believers, but you might see evidence of it in people's yards. Some Cat Islanders hang bottles from trees to protect themselves and their families from evil spirits.


Storytelling
Story-telling

Before the modern amenities like television,radio,telephone etc., we entertain ourselves with the oral tradition of story-telling.Most of these stories had a moral point,ghost stories or just plain comical tall tales.Usually the main characters were Ba'Bookie,Ba'Rabbie and Shine.Ba'Bookie was a goat,Ba'Rabbie was a rabbit and Shine was a slick,quick-witted,super black,fast-talking,American man. (go figure)

Most of the tales begun thus............"once upon a time,and a very old time,the monkey chew tobacco and spit white lime.It was'nt your time.It was'nt my time.It was ole ole time "After hearing that,Brace yourself for some flying bull.

The majority of Bahamian ghost stories originate from Cat island.Not surprisingly since Obeah,a form of Black Magic,is heavily practice there.Tales of * "spearit" flogging the living and of the Obeahman "fixin' people" is common.The most famous of all ghost stories is one about "Sammy Swain".If young women want a husband,she will cook a pot of what is called "Cookoo Soup".The ingredients is much too *"dutty" to post here!

http://www.thingsbahamian.net/storytelling.htm

The Islands Of The Bahamas is a Christian country with the largest number of churches per capita in the world. And yet, you will occasionally run across an obeah man who is the spiritual leader/healer of this religion. Obeah is not spoken about openly by believers, but you might see evidence of it in people's yards. Some Cat Islanders hang bottles from trees to protect themselves and their families from evil spirits.

http://www.bahamasgateway.com/legends.htm

The Island[cat island] was first settled by Loyalists around 1783, but was named after Arthur Catt a pirate who frequented the Island. Although it is said to be the least known Island in the Bahamas, locals know it quite as an ‘Obeah Island’ with tales of illness and retribution meted out by the workers of Obeah – a form of witchcraft.

http://www.thebahamasreport.com/public/168.cfm

[rufian]

Re: More Obeah

Originally posted by MissB:
[qb] A tale from St. John's.

Some practitioners of Obeah follow a dark and deadly path. It is said that they can grant great power, wealth and worldly delights. They are also said to cast evil and wicked spells that can bring pain, sickness, insanity and death.

Others are dedicated to the light, to warding off evil spirits and harmful spells, and to aid their fellow man on the often difficult and treacherous journey of life.

Magic, like anything else in the universe, does not occur without consequences, and with consequences comes responsibility. Most Obeah men and women are considered mediums or intermediaries between the individual wanting a spell cast and the person who receives that spell. It is widely accepted that the initiator of the spell is accountable for the consequences of the magic. Sometimes, however, the Obeah priest or priestess acts on their own for their own purposes. In this case, they must bear full and total responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This is the story of one such Obeahman, who corrupted by the power that he possessed, practiced his dark arts in order to satisfy his own wanton and selfish desires.

The Obeahman in question had long ago withdrawn from society and lived as a recluse near a secluded swamp surrounded by a dark forest. On one of his rare visits to the village, he became obsessed with desire for an attractive young married woman. The next new moon, at the stroke of midnight, the sorcerer performed an ancient ritual that allowed him to leave his body in the form of an evil spirit.

Unseen and unheard by any of the villagers, he made his way to the door of the woman's house. He knocked on the door. The woman's husband opened the door. The evil spirit then blew a magic dust that he was holding in his hand into the face of the unsuspecting husband.

The husband then fell into a profound sleep; one which seemed more like a coma or death than ordinary sleep. The spirit then took the woman, bewitched her with a spell, and had sex with her until just before the dawn. Before the sun arose, the spirit took leave of the house and returned to the shanty in the swamp and back into the body of the Obeahman.

Both husband and wife awake shortly after dawn. Neither remembered anything of the night before, The woman, however, felt drawn and ill at ease and was troubled by a deep scratch that itched and burned.

On the evening of the next new moon the spirit generated by the Obeahman returned to the couple's house. The husband was again rendered unconscious and the woman bewitched into having sex with the spirit. As on the previous month, neither husband nor wife remembered anything and the only evidence left by the evil spirit was the disturbing scratch that itched and burned.

The woman began to feel unexplainably ill and depressed. One day the woman's brother came to visit and noticed that something was troubling his sister. He asked her what was wrong and in the course of describing her feelings she showed her brother the scratches that refused to heal. Suspecting that his sister was under the influence of an Obeah spell, the man took her to see a white magic woman.

The Obeah woman immediately recognized the scratch as the mark of the evil spirit. She told the woman what was happening and gave her an herb, which her husband was to brew into tea and drink at dusk on the new moon to counteract the effects of the magic powder.

On the next new moon the spirit returned. He blew the dust into the husband's face, but this time the man did not sleep, he only pretended to. The spirit then took the wife and began to have sex with her. Her husband taking hold of a large sharp knife which he had kept hidden and ready for this very moment, plunged it into the spirit's back with all his might. The evil spirit uttered a horrifying shriek, jumped from the bed and ran out the door. Returning to the swamp, the wounded spirit reentered the body of the Obeahman who could now feel the life force draining from his body. The Obeahman knew that there was no hope. No doctor or no hospital could save him, neither could his magic incantations, because his spirit was mortally wounded and as a result the body could not go on living. The Obeahman locked this door, sat in his chair and waited for death.

Some weeks later, a hunter passing by the swamp was struck by a nauseating odor emanating from the shanty. When no one answered his calls, he broke down the door and found the decaying body of the evil priest.

Just as it is in the physical realm, so it is in the spiritual realm. Balance will inevitably be restored. The laws of karma can be as rigid as the laws of physics, and the Obeahman, who had abused his powers, had to bear the responsibility for his actions, for which he paid the ultimate price.

Link

[/qb]

This sounds like a male sukuna. After all one of the things that obeah people tell about to prove their strength is being able to leave their bodies at night and travel as spirit.

[rufian]

Re: More Obeah

St. Lucia

St Lucia


by William Dalrymple

If I really wanted to comprehend St. Lucia, said the politician, there was only one thing for it: I should talk to an obeah man. Or, better still, a gadee: a black magic woman...




"Yeh, you gotta watch out for the magie noir," said the driver of the airport taxi as he crashed first in, then out, of a pothole. "Fella from Soufriere I know: fell out with a local obeah [Black Magic] man. Bad business."

"Why? What happened to him?"

"Obeah man turned fella into cow. Then sold him to some dude in Antigua."

The driver shook his head: "Can't be too careful. Particularly these days."

"What do you mean? Has black magic been getting more common?"

"No," said the driver. "Now the fella will probably go down with this mad beef."

We were driving through a green tunnel of coconut palms on St. Lucia's Caribbean coast. Lianas and tree ferns tangled above thickets of bougainvillaea and Night Flowering Cereus: on either side rose great cathedrals of tamarind, buttressed by bushes of nutmeg and spandrels of soursop. Chickens looked down on us from their roost in the branches of a mango tree. Occasionally we would pass a village, a cluster of wooden huts painted ice cream colours with a bar sign-posted: COOL JOINT BAR - NICE PLACE FOR A BITE TO EAT or perhaps THE LOVE LIBERTY DISCO: IN GOD WE TRUST. Beyond, above the corrugated iron roofs of the rum shacks, towered the great twin peaks of St. Lucia's two tropical Matterhorns, the pitons.

Most Caribbean islands are now thoroughly resort-ravaged: Martinique these days feels like the more suburban parts of the Cote D'Azur with its quasi-Parisian flyovers and six-lane Euro-sprawl, while Barbados has become Surrey-in-the-Sun: a grownup never-never land of bars and golf courses, sun tans and saunas, a figment of Ian Fleming's imagination colonised by people from Dorking.

But St. Lucia has so far managed to avoid this fate. The southern two-thirds of the island - mountainous, thickly forested and astonishingly beautiful - are still almost completely untouched by development. The soil is rich and the vegetation as thick as in a Kew hothouse. Moreover, thanks to an accident of history, the land is equitably distributed: in the course of the eighteenth century the island passed 14 times between the British and French, but happened to be in French hands in 1789 on the outbreak of the French Revolution; a guillotine was quickly set up in Soufriere and the entire plantation aristocracy was decapitated. As a result almost everyone in St. Lucia owns a smallholding. This has in turn led to a quiet rural prosperity and an almost complete absence of crime.

Perhaps this also accounts for the islander’s strange innocence: their curious lack of interest in money, the way people in buses wave happily at passers-by. Their tiny shacks and houses - usually smaller than a village cricket pavillion - are brightly painted and spotlessly clean. School children troop along the roads in neat uniforms: "Even at its most rank and jungly," wrote Martin Amis when he came to the island, "St. Lucia has a kiddy book harmlessness. The leaves and palms seem greased with baby oil. You expect to encounter Babar the Elephant, smiling tigers, naughty monkeys. Even the real dangers are Disneyish: poison apples, falling coconuts."

Probably the most striking example of the way the island has survived oddly untouched by the twentieth century is the degree to which St. Lucia's rich folklore has survived undisturbed. The airport taxi driver talked about black magic as casually as he did BSE; later, planning a trip to the rainforest, the girl at the hotel reception warned me, in the same breath, to watch out for the fer de lance, (St. Lucia's one poisonous snake) and Papa Bois (the ghostly Father of the Forest, who leads hunters and woodcutters astray as a punishment for their attacks on his domain). The islanders think nothing odd in this; nor do they see any contradiction in their religious syncretism: the habit of many rural St. Lucians piously to attend Sunday mass after first ridding themselves of evil spirits to the sound of drums the night before.

There is, moreover, a complexity and sophistication to the island's pantheon of vampires, demons and demiGods that can compete even with the contortions of Hindu mythology. At night, rural St. Lucians keep an eye out for the soucouyant: a Caribbean cousin of the Transylvanian Vampire who sheds her skin and flies through the night scouring the island for her victims: you can see her as a ball of orange fire crossing the night sky. The soucouyant can be kept out of a house by hanging a special wreath of acacia, thorns and herbs from the doors and windows, but the only way to destroy her is to find her desiccated skin and fill it with salt and pepper so that it becomes too itchy to put back on; a priest will then be able to finish her off with a sprinkling of Holy Water and a flash of his silver cross.

Equally fearsome is the St. Lucian diablesse: a beautiful white demoness usually encountered on bridges or on rivers; she will talk quietly and politely to her victim, before using her magical beauty to lure him into the forest. Once enchanted, the victim will be fed on lizards, wood ants and snakes. Sometimes he is never seen again; or if he is lucky he will awake next morning in a crevice on some rockface or ravine. A diablesse can be recognised from the fact that her left foot is cloven, and that under her skirts can be glimpsed heavy steel fetters. If in doubt make the sign of the cross; a true diablesse will immediately disappear.

"Our society has always had two layers," explained Kennedy Boot Samuel, St. Lucia's leading folklorist. "One is the official, obvious, colonial heritage: Christianity, democracy, the English language, and all the ideas and ways of behaving that go with that. But when you go deeper among the people you discover that there still survives the older subversive African traditions, which on this island have become thoroughly mixed up with St. Lucia's indigenous Amerindian culture. That hybrid culture is unspoken, yet it is still pretty vibrant - even if few educated people will be immediately willing to admit it. But in crisis situations - when you are in love or in serious trouble or badly sick - when you really need to curse or to bless, then nearly everyone in St. Lucia still turns to that other tradition."

One St. Lucian politician - a rationalist with no religious faith or belief in obeah - described to me how no one would have taken him seriously as a candidate for election unless, at the launch of his campaign, he did not first spend a night in a graveyard invoking the support of his constituency's spirits. If I really wanted to comprehend St. Lucia, said the politician, there was only one thing for it: I should talk to an obeah man. Or, better still, a gadee: a black magic woman.

Ma Dubois lives in the village of Micoud on the island's windswept Atlantic coast. Unemployed men in Homburg hats squat on their hams outside the village rum shacks, flossing their teeth with grass stalks. The houses here all look alike - rusty duckboard roofs, flapping shutters, peeling paint - but you know her shack immediately: it's the one with the queue of petitioners waiting outside on the veranda.

"You gotta understand," says Ma Dubois, "The obeah man is using his skills to do dirty work, to make dirty curses. This is why these people come to me every day."

Ma Dubois gestured at the waiting patients: a young mother in tight leggings, an old man clutching a rum bottle, a pretty girl with purple dreadlocks: "I'm like a doctor," she says. "Only different."

Ma Dubois is in her late seventies: old and wrinkled with a blue frock, a brillo pad of wiry grey hair and a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses. All around her shack are hung Holy medals and images of the Sacred Heart; every tabletop is cluttered with great battalions of luminous Virgins. Over the mantlepiece the Pope shares pride of place with a clock decorated with a technicolour Ascension.

"So how do you cure someone who has been cursed?" I asked.

"Haha!" said Mama Dubois, smiling enigmatically.

On the table, a radio was tuned to an American gospel channel, and the bible-beating wafted through: "What are you learning from God's word? Friend: if you are growing spiritually we'd lurv to hear from you. Your communication is vurry precious to us."

"Please," I said. "Give me an example."

"Well," said Ma Dubois. "If an obeah man been doin' bad spells and the person comes to me, I tell her this. Take nine baths in the water where a stream of spring water hits the sea. First thing in the morning before the sun rises: the sun must not see the water. Then take some of the water and put in a bottle. Bring it home then consecrate it."

"Consecrate it?"

"You must read the psalms over it: psalms 10, 15, 29, 68 and 91. Add three drops of turpentine and three drops of Jeyes Fluid. Add a little nutmeg, some powdered reindeer horn, five vine leaves and a piece of Peruvian bark. Drink it three times a day, after meals. After that no obeah man will be able to do anything to you."

"What do the obeah men think of you?" I asked.

"Oftentime they try to kill me," said Ma Dubois, frowning. "But I'm safe. Because I wear the most powerful prayer on my body."

Ma Dubois touched a charm suspended on a chain around her neck: "Because of this they can't touch me."

"So you're not afraid?"

"I'm not afraid of obeah," she said. "Let me tell you a story. In St. Lucia we have a custom. When somebody dies we sit up with the body and sing hymns from 6pm until 6am the following morning. One night last month I was part of a group doing this. At two in the morning I feeling a little tired so I went out for a walk. Suddenly in the middle of the road I saw a cow."

"A cow?"

"A cow. Big one with two horns. Coming towards me. No one else was in the street. But I knew that this was no ordinary cow. I knew this was an obeah man who was only pretending to look like a cow. So I stand in the middle of the road and shut my eyes and I shout out: 'Behold the cross of the Lord! Fly Powers of Darkness! Lion of the tribe of Judah! The Root of David has conquered all! I deprive you of your manliness! Alleluliah! Alleluliah! Then I open my eyes, and you know what I saw?"

"What?"

"The cow had gone. But standing in the same place I saw my neighbour, Titus Montlouis. He shouted curses at me, but there was nothing he could do. Since then I've been very careful with Titus. Particularly when I was told in a dream that he was really a Fallen Angel."

"A Fallen Angel?"

"Its true," said Ma Dubois. "When the Good Lord threw Lucifer outa' His Holy House, many of them bad Angels they landed in St. Lucia. They lived in the bamboo, but recently us has been cutting down the bamboos, so them fallen angels from heaven - they're lady angels mostly, in long dresses - been wanderin' round roamin' the roads like stray dogs... other than Titus Montlouis, who lives next door."

Ma Dubois crossed herself: "You see I know the secret names of them bad angels" she said, "Brufer, Kokbiel, Zigiel, Leviathan... I have the secret of the psalms and the secrets of my African grandmothers. Two kinds of knowledge, two kinds of cure. Together they make me strong. They let me undo anything an obeah man or a Fallen Angel can do: anything."

"They do all bad things," said the old woman laughing a long, loud cackling laugh. "But with me: I can undo it."

http://www.travelintelligence.net/ws...s/art_731.html
More on the culture

[rufian]

Re: More Obeah

Dominica

SUCHUYAN
(INFORMATION FROM A CONTACT)
More info to follow.

The official version of history claims that the Caribbean island of Dominica was discovered by Christopher Columbus on Sunday 3rd November 1493. (1) The name of this beautiful and rugged Windward Isle was (they say) chosen because it was discovered on a Sunday. (Latin: Domingo-Sunday). There are other possibilities though, and I will leave it to the reader to make up their own mind as to which is the more likely. Domus in Latin means home. Iniquus means wicked. Do we have 'Home of the Wicked? Possibly. Or maybe Dominus meaning Lord and Iniqus, wicked - Wicked Lord - we know who that is, don't we? The iniquitous credentials of Columbus and his masters are well documented in books such as David Icke's The Biggest Secret. But to this we may add the 'peoples history', the folklore.


Shortly after Columbus's "discovery," Spanish troops and Dominican missionaries made numerous attempts to colonise the island. However after ample bloodshed the Spanish and Vatican marauders were sent packing by the warlike Carib inhabitants, who called their home, Waitikubuli ('Tall is her body' ). The next wave of Europeans were the French who succeeded in colonising part of the island and by 1727 there were 50-60 families settled on Dominica. However in 1761 the British overthrew the French but surprisingly (or perhaps not) allowed the French colonists to stay on their farms. Because the island was covered in a vast and thick rainforest the British, who appear to have been very strongly represented by Scots, shipped in large numbers of African slaves to act as a labour force.


Local folklore amongst the descendants of the slaves in Dominica, and I am told throughout the Caribbean tells that these French, British and Spanish colonists whiled away their isolated lives with frequent and frenzied orgies of sadistic debauchery.


These Suchuyan (Soo-koo-yan), meaning witches cast a cloud of terror over the slave settlements that were huddled tight to the colonial forts. At night people would disappear sometimes never to be seen again. Those that did return told tales of the Suchuyan peeling back their own skin before their orgies and sucking the blood of their victims. Frequently their attackers were seen to'shapeshift' into birds, animals and reptiles; sometimes changing shape many times in one session. When their 'feasting' was over they would don again their skin. Sometimes the slaves were made to watch at other times they would awake back at their hut, having lost all memory of the previous night but with a tell-tale bruise (note: my source did not say puncture wound) upon their wrists.


Today this horror still continues but now the cosmopolitan population serves to confuse and thereby camouflage the Suchuyan. Generations of interbreeding means that now the Suchuyan inhabit the bodies of myriad races including some of the descendants of the original black slaves.


There are both male and female Suchuyan. One clue to the presence of a male is a long 'shhhheeee' noise, like a heavy chain being dragged along the ground.


IMPORTANT NOTE


I stress that my contact is not suggesting every inhabitant, or any particular race are Suchuyan. I emphasise that their bloodline is a restricted one. Not every early settler (probably only a few of them) was Suchuyan. Although their numbers have been strengthened by immigration some would now be living in other parts of the world. All but a few of the inhabitants of these strikingly beautiful islands are friendly, happy and human.

I like the twist of peel back skin on this one. [img]/forums/images/graemlins/704555_dwl.gif[/img]
Very well put IMO, this tale highlights the heriditory factor. [img]/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]