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It probably grew, in the first place, out of African fetichism which was brought over from the dark continent along with the dark people. Certain features, too, suggest a distant affinity with Voodooism, or snake worship, a cult which seems to have been indigenous to tropical America.
This is the reason that the so-called witches and sorcerers and others of evil repute have been often able to acquire such a power over their victims, and to cause them so much trouble. This is the rule in the case keep it in mind! Voodooism Explained. "Among the negroes of the South, in America, and among the Hawaiians, we find marked instances of this kind.
And then was there not cotton, the machinery employed on rice-, sugar-, and cotton-plantations to "go, into"? to say nothing of the swamp-flora, the possible introduction of olives into Louisiana, and Voodooism to trace back to the Vaudois sorcerers of the fourteenth century and connect with the serpent-worship of some parts of Italy, where he had himself seen the peasants make their yearly procession with snakes wrapped about their necks, waists, and wrists?
It is still most potent in its evil, grotesque, and barbaric forms, in Fetichism, Voodooism, Bundooism, Obeahism, and Kahunaism, in the devil and animal ghost worship of the black races, completely exemplified in the arts of the Fetich wizard on the Congo; in the "Uchawi" of the Wasequhha mentioned by Stanley; in the marriage customs of the Soudan devil worshipers; in the practices of the Obeah men and women in the Caribbees notably their power in matters of love and business, religion and war in Jamaica; in the incantations of the kahuna in Hawaii; and in the devices of the voodoo or conjure doctor in the southern states; in the fiendish rites and ceremonies of the red men, the Hoch-e-ayum of the Plains Indians, the medicine dances of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, the fire dance of the Navajos, the snake dance of the Moquis, the sun dance of the Sioux, in the myths and tales of the Cherokees; and it rings in many tribal chants and songs of the East and West.
We call this faculty hypnotism now; and physiology seeks to connect it with the nervous affections of hysteria and epilepsy. At all times, and in all quarters of the earth, manifestations of it have not been wanting; and in Africa it has for centuries existed as a so-called religious cult, to which in this country the name of Hoodooism or Voodooism has been applied.
Without giving me time to reply: "The most notable survival of black magic that is, the scientific employment of darkness against light is to be met with in Haiti and other islands of the West Indies." "You are referring to Voodooism?" I said, slowly. He nodded, replacing his pipe between his teeth. "A subject, Mr. Knox, which I investigated exhaustively some years ago."
"Do you believe that this order or religion of Voodooism has any existence outside those places where African negroes or descendents of negroes are settled?" "I should not have been prepared to believe it, Mr. Harley, prior to my experiences in Washington and elsewhere." "Then you do believe that there are representatives of this cult to be met with in Europe and America?"
"That is about as far back, I should think, as any one could go, in the way of census-taking," the boy said. "I thought some of my up-country negro farmers were barbaric especially when I came across some voodooism, but now I see I didn't know what barbarism meant." "There's just as much savagery of a kind right in the heart of civilization," said the Porto Rican.
"I spent a morning in the British Museum reading up on that and other points. Here is a quotation from Eckermann's Voodooism and the Negroid Religions: "'The true voodoo-worshipper attempts nothing of importance without certain sacrifices which are intended to propitiate his unclean gods. In extreme cases these rites take the form of human sacrifices followed by cannibalism.
She was immediately accused of Voodooism by the whites of Cockeysville, she was taken to Towson jail, there confined and grilled by the sheriff of Baltimore County the Cockeys, and several other men, all demanding that she tell where the escaped slave was.
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