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…