Recently I told you all of an experience I had with an obeah man I called, “Bishop Abraham”, and his spirit wife, a mermaid (if you didn’t read that story, read it here).
If you remember from that story, Bishop Abraham had lost his powers due to several reasons, and in the physical world, he had lost his human wife (not in death) and all of his wealth. He was a great obeah man in his time, but he was slipping now, because the Water Mother (a fish-tailed being) had left him. There was some violation done that had chased the Fish away from him.
The world at large (as he was quite famous) had no idea that the mighty Bishop Abraham had fallen weak, and the powers that he had used to heal, restore, and destroy had left him. Only his reputation from way back when stood still, not only in his community, but within the world at large.
Several months after I left his home and flew back to New York, I received a phone call from some women who knew me, they were people I had worked with in the past but had also heard of the Bishop and had commissioned him to come do work for them. They had known that I had been in Jamaica with him, and they had some problems at their home, and were told by others that they should call Bishop Abraham so that he might assist them.
The women sent for him and a day before he arrived, the women asked me if I would come and stay at the house to be there during the ritualistic ceremonies. They trusted me and did not know the Bishop very well, and thought that having my presence would assure their safety.
I agreed and I went on the journey.
How was I to know it was to be a journey that would test my spirit?
When I arrived, the Bishop was happy to see me, but he did not know that I, myself, was invited to supervise him.
I watched on as he did his rituals, filling the yard with religious statues, making the yard look like a Catholic church, and planting all sorts of things. I kept quiet as I watched him, because I realized that the things he did were foolishness, at least to how I knew it.
Remember, he had lost his powers that had been loaned to him by his spirit-wife, the Mermaid, but no one except me knew this. And so I watched as he fumbled about pretending to be banishing evil spirits, and I said nothing.
But there was something that he did at nights with me, after working the days and nights at the house. We would sit on the veranda outside together. He was a chainsmoker, and it was fascinating to watch him do this because he had no teeth (actually he did have teeth, but at times he opted not to wear them), so the tip of his cigarette was extremely wet, and anyone passing by as he spoke.
As we sat together, discussing spiritual things, I got the strange feeling that he was testing me. It seemed as though there was something about me that fascinated him, only I am not sure that it was in a good way…
“Tell me what you see about my future”, he would ask me while watching me curiously. “And tell me if you see me marrying again.”
Then he would go off mumbling things I didn’t understand. There were times I wondered if he was going mad or playing fool to catch the wise.
I had to be wise because some spiritual people are not always benevolent, and I had sensed an air of malevolence in him. Of course, I had heard stories, but I never go off hearsay. The feeling I felt with him was eerie, and I couldn’t wait to go home. But soon, something would happen that would grant me that wish.
On top of his strange behavior, at times he would get up from his seat and pretend to stumble, and I would rush to catch him, and when I did so, he would take his right foot and step on my left foot.
“You alright?” I would ask him concerned, while swiftly moving my foot… But I already understood the test.
(Can you guess what he was trying to do? Comment if you can pick it up)
After this I became even more wary of him than before.
One morning he called me into the kitchen and gave me a piece of paper with the cost of his work written on it. I don’t know why he felt that I had to deliver the message to the woman who hired him, but I realized that he couldn’t face her with the cost because it was exorbitant. The woman was a Jamaican woman, a very aggressive one to boot. She was wealthy but wasn’t afraid to call a spade a spade.
I took the note to her and she looked at it for a few minutes… and said nothing. After what was about 10 minutes of a painful silence, and a blank expression, she stood up, put on her plush robe (as it was early morning) slipped into her house slippers, grabbed what looked like a hockey stick, flung open the backyard door and began to smash every Archangel Michael and every Mother Mary statue that Bishop Abraham had planted.
I clutched my pearls in shock!
The ones she couldn’t break, she called her son to bring a hammer. Poor Mother Mary’s head broken off, Michael’s wings flew left and right. The quiet upper class Hamptons, New York neighborhood was terrorized by this Jamaican woman smashing Catholic statues in her backyard. When her children tried to calm her down, her posh neighbors listened to her voice echo through the neighborhood that “she did not even have 100 strands of hair on her private parts” (it was not said as decently as I am trying my best to put it lol).
On that morning her mouth needed washing out with bleach and lysol because the names she called Bishop Abraham are not in the Oxford dictionary. The neighborhood knew he had no teeth and more.
Bishop Abraham heard the chaos and asked me what was happening. I told him that she was angry about the price he had charged her, and she says she is not paying it.
The Bishop said sternly, “She has to pay me. As long as squirrels are running around outside, she has to pay me. As long as rats invade peoples house and steals food, she has to pay me. As long as stray dogs are on the road to be caught, she must pay me.”
I understood the threat, and I’m sure you do too.
But the woman didn’t care. She shouted that he should get out of her house. She said she was going to detox her children to get rid of the spiritual medicines he had given to them to drink. She shouted to her children to call a taxi and send this man to the airport now. She unraveled all the things he planted throughout her home, she grabbed the protective locket on her son’s neck and sailed it onto a neighbor’s lawn, she threw away all the baths and all other things he had created for her. The only thing she never did was grab a gun to chase the Bishop away.
If you read the Mermaid post, this was was a famous obeah man. People would rob banks to pay him. This was Master Redeemer himself. Any sickness cured, any problem solved. And it was a true gift. The spirit (i.e. his mermaid wife) truly worked through him.
But ever since his powers had gone, he had often experienced disgrace, such as my friend here who was currently on a rampage of claats.
Now let me tell you how I got caught up in all of this…
We left that day. The woman’s fiance volunteered to drive the Bishop home (where he was staying), and me as well. The fiance laughed dryly and shook his head saying, “that is just how she is“, gingerly trying to disassociate himself from the problem in case the Bishop decided to obeah her.
But the Bishop cried the whole way, all while threatening “Not while squirrels are on the road! She must pay me!” he bawled.
It was to be a week after I arrived home that I would discover that the woman was not much of the Bishop’s concern after all– it was me.
I went to my bed one night, the week after the trip, and the moment I closed my eyes I was transported into a room that I was unfamiliar with. In the room, there was a television and a blue couch. I saw Bishop Abraham.
“Sister O,” he said to me. “There is something in the spirit world that I want, and I want you to go and get it for me.”
Trustingly, (or probably naively), I said, “Okay.”
He sat on the blue couch and told me to lay on my back with my head in his lap. He proceeded to tell me to open my mouth and in his hand was a dropper with some clear liquid. He dropped 3 small drops of clear liquid into my mouth. As soon as it touched my tongue, voices rushed to my ears and said, “DON’T. SWALLOW. THAT.“
My eyes were closed but I could see him. He rose, laid my head gently on the spot where he was sitting and stood over me, watching me, as though waiting for something to happen.
Those voices came back again, “Do NOT swallow!“
I felt myself rushing towards a cavernous tunnel, but the voices continued their warnings.
On my physical bed, I was struggling to wake up. Eventually I did.
By 6am the following morning, my phone rang. It was Bishop Abraham, whom I had not spoken to since the day we left the woman’s home.
He sounded surprised to hear my voice. He cleared his throat and proceeded to ask brightly, “Sister O! How yuh doing?“
(Who calls someone’s house at 6am in the morning to ask them how they are doing?)
I told him that I was sleeping, and I would call him back.
I never did.
When I fully woke up that morning, I inquired as to what was that experience… and the Spirit told me that as the Bishop had lost all of his powers, he was on the hunt to regain them again. He believed that if he got rid of me, he could partake in whatever power he believed he saw in me. But to do that, he needed to attack me.
He called that morning hoping that I would not answer the phone.
There are certain people in life that are touched by the hands of God to do their natural work or to activate their natural gift to serve humankind. However, there is a Light that walks with such people. Some are able to see it, others are not. And then there are those who once had something, but lost it along the way, perhaps by their own actions or inaction.
However, the powerful are always trying to hold back those who they believe should not have any power at all. And so a husband can marry a wife and try to dim her light or vice versa. A boss can see a person’s glory (or Light), and as simple as giving her a fruit to eat if he has the knowledge, he can remove it, and so he grows while she stays stagnant.
The power Bishop Abraham once possessed did not belong to him, but still, he misused his gifts, swerved away from his purpose, and landed himself in disgrace.
Some place in the Christian Bible says, “And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.”
This is how I recommend all to live their lives. Embrace your spirituality. It is your inheritance. But be humble, and you shall be embraced by unseen hands.
I love you all,
Obara Meji
