#voodoo doll

Which one is it now boys?

The use of human-shaped figures to harm or curse people is well-attested in European magical traditions, often mentioned in accusations of witchcraft. So to the European mind, stabbing a nail into a doll = trying to kill the person the doll represents. But for the Bakongo people, there's a figure called the nkisi nkondi, which is (usually) a figure with nails pounded in it that houses a spirit to hunt down disease-causing evildoers. It's superficially similar, yes, but the underlying belief system is different.

When white colonizers saw the Kongo people with their nail-covered "fetishes" (a derogatory term for ritual objects in a maligned culture), they made the assumption that they must have been used for the same purpose as poppets in medieval European belief. And since, by that time, belief in curses was seen as primitive, it was transposed by the colonizers onto African religion as a way to call it evil. As descendants of West African people, kidnapped and dragged to the Americas, Black Americans who preserved these traditions were subject to the same racist stereotypes.

Armitage ends the essay by stating that, while the nkisi nkondi is not the direct origin of the concept of the voodoo doll, its misinterpretation by Europeans led to negative assertions about African religions that became widespread in popular culture. The survival of these practices through hundreds of years of oppression in a white supremacist society is a fascinating topic, and I worry that, by accepting one tour guide's explanation as an unquestionable final word, we're shutting ourselves out of learning.

nah, she is not making a magic potion, she's just giving him a bath. 🧼