AFRICAN NECROMANCY

 

 

 

Here I am going to give you the interesting information that I find about necromancy that is practiced in African traditions.

 

 

 

IN THE OBREAH TRADITION

 

In this regard, the expert on African magic, Miad Hoyora Korahon, wrote the following:

 

« When a person was murdered, if revenge is determined through Obeah magic, what is done is to put the jumbi (the ghost) of the deceased against the murderer.

 

This is an operation that requires the help of an Obeahman (a practitioner of Obeah magic) to whom for that purpose is given some part of the deceased’s unwashed clothes which was in the bundle on the board. Through this, it is said, the Obeahman can cause the jumbi of the deceased to haunt, frighten, drive mad, or kill the person it is “set” upon.

 

It would appear that the Obeahman makes the “shell” of the deceased do the haunting, either by invigorating it by some of his own psychic power, or by fixing an elemental in it for the purpose.

 

There are other modes of setting on jumbies at the command of the Obeahman, used when no part of the clothes can be given them. And there are also other ways of setting on a jumbi, without the use of the dirty clothes oracle at all, but by aid of some ceremony of the “scycomantic” kind, through which the “shell” is likewise made use of.

 

Here is a sample of the latter:

 

 

« In 1870, in the village of B, there occurred a quarrel between a man called L on the one part, and two men called respectively D and Y on the other part. The quarrel culminated in D and Y seeking the aid of an Obeahman.

 

L had a pony on which he used daily to ride to his work, and this animal was fixed upon by D and Y as their weapon of attack. They accordingly, with the aid of their advisee, tricked it in some fashion, with the result that one morning L having sharpened his cutlass (a sort of chopper used by all West India black men), put it into his bag that hung over his shoulder, in such a way that the point stuck out behind him.

 

He then saddled and mounted his pony, which immediately began to plunge and kick, finally rearing up and falling back on top of him, the point of the cutlass being driven nearly through him from behind.

 

L died from the effects of this wound within a few hours, expressing his opinion that some of his enemies had ‘tricked’ his pony so as to make it throw and kill him.

 

L’s family included an Obeahman, and by his advice L’s body was put into the coffin without any of the customary burial preparations in his clothes just as he had died.

 

Before the funeral, some of L’s family, including the last mentioned Obeahman, went through some ceremony in which some of L’s blood was used (further details of which I have not been able to get at) in presence of the corpse: which ceremony concluded later, before the funeral party, by their putting into the left hand of the corpse, —he had been a left-handed man— a sharp knife, and telling it to show them within nine days who had killed him. Then the lid of the coffin was nailed down.

 

Within the nine days Y disappeared; and D went mad, going about raving that L was chasing him with a knife in his hand.

 

He subsequently refused all food, but gnawed with his teeth his left arm; from the biceps nearly to the wrist, in a horrible way. Flies got to the arm thus wounded, and it soon became a mass of corruption, and D died in frightful agony, calling out the whole time to the bystanders to save him from L.

 

A few days after D’s death, Y’s hat and some of his clothes were found on a rock at the sea-side, where it was supposed he had gone to bathe, and been drowned? »

 

 

A friend of D’s gave me these particulars, and another man has since corroborated them.

 

With regard to the tricking of L’s pony, Obeahmen are said to kill and otherwise affect cattle and horses through obtaining possession of a portion of their hair, or a little of their urine.

 

These things being made use of to affect the animals through their astral forms, and L’s pony may have been tricked in that way. But other means are made use of by Obeahmen for tricking or influencing animals, principally spells or mantras, the uses of which will be referred to in a later chapter. »

(Theosophist, March 1891, p.345-347)