A Portmore pastor is expressing deep concern over what he said is the growing number of persons turning to obeah, instead of the church, for help and their willingness to fork out thousands of dollars for a service that is, essentially illegal.

Steve Liston, assistant pastor at the Restoration Outreach Ministries in Bridgeport, St Catherine, said for years he has observed implements prescribed by obeah practitioners in the homes of numerous persons who have sought prayer from the church.

This led him to investigate the extent of obeah practice across the island and submit the survey to his church board earlier this year.

According to Liston, he interviewed 70 persons in the island’s 14 parishes. Interviewees included persons who practised obeah, their clients and agents hired to distribute business cards or promote their activities.

Liston concluded in his report that a single obeah practitioner, claiming to be able to heal, remove demons and perform whatever his/her client demanded, could earn, in one week, what an average church with over 100 members made in two months.

According to the pastor, one obeah man working six days may see between 40 and 50 persons daily and can earn as much as $8,444,790 per week, while a church, open for three days weekly, can earn a maximum of $351,000.

“These people are marketing (themselves), they are getting a chunk of the money, they are not paying tax,” Liston complained.

“We need to determine how we can, as the Body of Christ, counteract this disparity,” Liston said in his commentary posted at the end of his survey. “The enemy’s territory is more prosperous than the House of God here on earth. Do we think that the Lord is pleased about this?”

He noted that although obeah is illegal, the practitioners are not arrested and their activities flourish without hindrance.

The Obeah Act says a person practising obeah, or myalism as it is sometimes called, is “liable to imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for a period not exceeding 12 months”. When convicted, the accused may also receive a flogging.

But a Sunday Observer survey of Resident Magistrate’s Courts in at least five parishes could not identify anyone being convicted for practising myalism in the last 10 years.

However, court clerks admitted, ironically, that the courts were frequently the venues where elements of the occult are manifested.

Lisa James, assistant clerk of the courts for 13 years, who is now based at the RM court in Savanna-la-Mar, recalled several cases in which persons appeared before the judge with a nutmeg or lime in their mouths. “They feel it might ward off evil spirits,” she told the Sunday Observer.

Sandria Wong-Small, clerk of the Montego Bay RM court for four years, said it was the norm to smell unusual odours on persons inside the courtroom. “There are some days people turn up and there is a very strange odour on the person. I can’t guarantee that it is so (obeah), it’s just unusual,” she said.

In May Pen, an assistant clerk for over 14 years, who did not want to be named, said she is used to seeing frogs with their mouths padlocked on the stairway leading to the judge’s chamber, apparently to prevent a witness from speaking.

She also said she has seen oil on the floor of the court building and related a story of that superstition not helping a man who was being tried for shooting with intent.

“They were trying to see if he could get away,” she said. “But he got sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.”

Quite the opposite happened in another case. The trial actually seemed to be working in the accused’s favour, she said. He was being tried for robbery and illegal possession of a firearm and came to court wearing a large ring and sporting a bright red handkerchief.

“Every time he wiped his brow with the red handkerchief, the judge was about to let him go, but when his hand went down, the judge found another reason to hold him,” she said. He was convicted but was not given a custodial sentence.

Liston estimated that there are hundreds of obeah men and women across the island – “at least three in every community” – but the most prominent and expensive ones, he said, are found in Portland, St Thomas and St Mary.

He said that most people go to an obeah man or woman for healing of ailments, protection against evil, to receive something they desire or to be lucky. “People are losing their jobs so they spend a lot of money weekly to keep their jobs so they don’t become redundant,” Liston argued.

He related the story of a young woman whom he named only as Michelle who paid $2,000 to be able to get a visa at the US Embassy.

According to Liston, Michelle sought out a known ‘reader’ on Red Hills Road, who operated from his home in what looked like a doctor’s office with a separate room where ‘patients’ sat, waiting to be seen.

When it was her turn, she entered a room where the ‘reader’ was seated around a table, clad from head to toe in green. “He used a deck of cards to tell me what my problems were,” she said. Then he prepared a bath made from a combination of oils, concoctions and pigeon’s blood and told her what to do.

She did eventually get the visa, but there is one thing she never forgot. He spoke quite a lot, she said, bragging about his exotic night moves. “He said he had to consult the spirits naked each night.” These spirits did his bidding, and he paid them by performing a series of occultic rituals with silver coins, rice and rum.

Liston also said that community ‘dons’ and drug couriers were among the persons who utilise the services of these ‘spiritualists’. He recalled the case of two young men killed outside the home of a noted ‘reader’ in the Mountain View area of Kingston earlier this year. The men were scheduled to fly to England and had apparently gone to the woman for protection. Police believe that they had planned to carry drugs to the UK.

“Most of the dons use protection to be invincible, so nobody can shoot them,” said Liston. “The two guys in the east… they were getting protection to carry drugs overseas. to go through the airport so nobody could catch them. Obeah men get a lot of money off that.”

According to Liston’s survey, that service can cost a maximum of $200,000.

Liston also said that his research showed that persons may also turn to obeah to get land when there is a rift or even to break up marriages.

“We have a serious land problem in Jamaica and you have a lot of disputes. family fighting for land and people spend a lot of money to kill you or remove you off the land,” he said.

“A lot of money is being spent to separate husbands from their wives. and it’s sad and it’s destroying the community.”

He said it was common for people, after counselling and prayer, to talk about their visit and how much they paid a ‘reader’ to get relief.

Several of these persons, he said, have told him that after paying $500 for consultation, a ‘reader’ may prescribe five to seven ‘baths’ to “remove whatever jinx you have on you”.

The baths, he said, are mixed with oil, potions and other substances. The ‘reader’ bathes the ‘client’ after stripping him/her naked. “They say they are sending away all kinds of demons and people believe in it and spend a lot of money,” Liston said.

In sharp comparison, he noted, most churches do not earn income from persons seeking prayer or counselling. Nor do they charge for funerals.

While some money is earned from tithes and offerings, donations and fund-raising ventures, the amount is barely enough to keep the doors open, much more pay salaries, he said.

Although Liston blamed the churches for not adequately educating or meeting the needs of the public, his church like most others, condemns the practice of obeah and even the visits, which, he warned, brought God’s curse and would eventually end in disaster.

Only a few weeks ago, Liston and a team from his church were called in to pray at the Duhaney Park Primary School for an uncontrollable nine year-old girl who had slashed a classmate on her hand with a razor blade.

The mother of the girl, who was called in after 3:00 pm, admitted that the child had received several ‘baths’ as remedies for asthma. What happened after was that the mother noticed that her daughter was always speaking to an invisible ‘friend’.

“The child was possessed with a demon,” Liston said. That prayer session lasted until 8:00 pm that evening.

Said the pastor in his survey notes: “Isn’t it time that the Church begins to reorganise and market the power of God – the only true power?”

“Isn’t it time now to raise up a prophetic group to counteract this specific area of the enemy’s camp and reclaim souls for Christ?” he asked.