[Video description: A tiktok about voodoo dolls posted by @/tryguys.
High Priest Robi: So let's talk about the voodoo doll. The idea of stabbing needles in dolls to hurt people. Doesn't come from Africa, Haiti, or New Orleans. Comes from England. Witches in England use a small doll about the size of this cucumber, known as a poppet. And they would take these wax dolls and take the hair of the people that hurt them, put them in these wax dolls, and take these long ass needles and start stabbing these dolls with these needles—but not to hurt that person. Let me defend my pagan witches, cause even they are getting a bad name right now. They're not evil! The only reason we believe that witchcraft is evil is because of Christian colonization. How did it end up being a "oooo, voodoo doll!"? So as people of color, back then, it's illegal for us to go to the hospitals, to marketplaces, but the most important thing, it's illegal for us to read or write.
(Here they show a snippet from an 1839 issue of The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper published in Boston, which says that in Virginia teaching free Black people reading or writing can result in the school being closed and the pupils being whipped, and in Louisiana teaching a free Black person in Sunday School is punishable by $500, then death.)
High Priest Robi: But I'm the Voodoo priest. You come over to me, lil cousin, you say, "Robi, I got a headache and this headache will not go away". Okay, Imma dab a lil lavender oil right under your nose. Imma start making a doll that looks exactly—I'll do it! I'll make a doll that looks exactly like you to the best of my ability. Once we're done, I'll take a needle and put it in the head of the doll. Imma take that doll and put it up there on the shelf. Then you can go on home. So the next week, when you come back to see me, you gonna be like, "Robi, that's my doll up there. That's the doll we made together last week". And I take that doll off the shelf, and I see there's a needle that I placed in there in the head of the doll. So I'm gonna ask you, "Oh, the last time you came to see me, I see I worked on your head. Is your head feeling better?" If you say your headaches are gone, Imma remove that needle out the head of that doll because the chamomile stuff worked. But if you say no, Imma leave the needle in the head of the doll because what I did didn't work. The voodoo doll is a recordkeeping device. It's a medical chart. It's illegal for Black people to read or write.
High Priest Robi: That's it!
Jared Popkin: That blows my mind!
Ryan Garcia: That blew my mind.
Here's the full video where the Try Guys talk to High Priest Robi, an initiated priest in Traditional Louisiana and Haitian Voodoo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCj3vrkM8wM
Here's his Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/highpriestrobi
And here's a link to the Boston Public Library's article on The Liberator: https://www.bpl.org/blogs/post/the-liberator/
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