The Balm Yard is "a Holy place that is wholly consecrated to God almighty for the cleansing and healing of the Nations" (34); ironically, it has now come to be associated with the magical practices termed
Obeah.
"In this Law, unless the context otherwise requires, '
Obeah' shall be deemed to be of one and the same meaning as 'Myalism'." This remains in force today.
(8)
Obeah is native magic practiced in the Caribbean.
Similarly, creatures as variable as the Sasquatch of North American folklore; Baba Yaga, the witch of Slavic and Russian myth; and the rolling calf born out of the Jamaican
obeah religion all emerge on the streets of Toronto.
Voodoo and
Obeah eventually became tools to fight back against the oppressor.
(7) Those scholars who come nearest to addressing what I read in Voyage in the Dark as the novel's Gothicism restrict their analysis to a specifically Caribbean framework by examining the various references in Rhys's oeuvre to
obeah, the Afro-Caribbean system of occult belief and ritualism practiced on her home island.
By the end of the collection, thereader has a good knowledge of island culture, customs and practicesfrom
obeah to Methodist or Anglican doctrines to a Pentecostal flavourof religion.
Beckford also calls for the incorporation of elements of non-Christian African Diaspora religions--Vodou,
Obeah, and others--into Pentecostalism.
obeah, dressing in the fashion of the humble decent-- careful not to
This sensuous, queasy, dream-sequence uncertainty, the casual allusions to
obeah (witchcraft) and to eerie island folktales, sets up a kind of contrapuntal tension against the grimly real history (including the Second World War and Korean War) surging alongside--compounded, too, by the steady, ugly incursions on island life by American culture and tourism" joan frank
Kingston, Jamaica, October 30, 2014 --(PR.com)-- Readers of the Persaud Girls four-book series can expect to experience a “different side of Jamaican fiction” according to author Teisha Mott, who says her work focuses “not on the familiar cultural themes, for example, of life in rural Jamaica or
obeah,” but rather on love, marriage and the coming of age of four women who are not only rich but beautiful.
Works such as Monique Mojica's Princess Pocahontas (1991), Guillermo Verdecchia's Fronteras Americanas (1993), and Nicole Brooks's
Obeah Opera (2012) similarly hinge on "I am" statements as a loaded refrain and marker of identity construction.
Yseult was much weighed down and, having been raised a princess--and a mermaid to boot--much surprised by her new station, which included but one servant, the chocolate-hued Irmella, who did not do windows and had formerly been an
Obeah witch.
