Eltham.
_Obeism._--As your correspondent T. H. (Vol. iii., p. 59.) desires "any
information" on the subject of _Obeism_, in the absence of more and better,
I offer my mite: that in the early part of this century it was very common
among the slave-population in the West Indies, especially on the remoter
estates--of course of African origin--not as either a "religion" or a
"rite," but rather as a superstition; a power claimed by its professors,
and assented to by the _patients_, of causing good or evil to, or averting
it from them; which was of course always for a "consideration" of some
sort, to the profit, whether honorary, pecuniary, or other, of the
dispenser. It is by the pretended influence of certain spells, charms,
ceremonies, amulets worn, or other such incantations, as practised with
more or less diversity by the adepts, the magicians and conjurers, the
"false prophets" of all ages and countries.
{150}
On this matter, a curious phenomenon to investigate would be, the process
by which the untonsured neophyte is converted into the bonneted doctor; the
progress and stages of his mind in the different phases of the practice;
how he begins by deceiving himself, to end in deceiving others; the first
uninquiring ignorance; the gradual admission of ideas, what he is taught or
left to imagine; the faith, of what is fancied to be so, the mechanical
belief; then the confusion of thought from the intrusion of doubt and
uncertainty; the adoption of some undefined notions; and, finally, actual
unbelief; followed by designed and systematic injustice in the practice of
what first was taken up in sincerity, though even this now perhaps is not
unmixed with some fancy of its reality. For this must be the gradation more
or less gone through in all such things, whether Obeism, Fetichism, the
Evil Eye, or any sort of sorcery or witchcraft, in whatever variousness of
form practised; cheats on the one hand, and dupes on the other the _primum
mobile_ in every case being, some shape or other of _gain_ to the
practitioner.
It seems, however, hardly likely that Obeism should now be "rapidly gaining
ground again" there, from the greater spread of Christianity and diffusion
of enlightenment and information in general since the slave-emancipation;
as also from the absence of its feeding that formerly accompanied every
fresh importation from the coast: as, like mists before the mounting sun,
all such impostures must fade away before common sense, truth, and facts,
whenever these are allowed their free influence.
The conclusion, then, would rather be, that Obeism is on the decline only
more apparent, when now seen, than formerly, from its attracting greater
notice.