P. T. Barnum

“ It shows, too, how mean, vulgar, filthy, and altogether vile, is such religion as man, unassisted, contrives for himself. It shows, again, how sadly great is the proportion of the human race still remaining in this brutal darkness. ”

“ These lowest of superstitions are Fetishism and Obi, believed and practiced by negro tribes, and, remember this, even by their ignorant white mistresses in the West Indies and in the United States, to-day. Yes, I know where Southern refugee secessionist women are living in and about New York city at this moment, who really believe in the negro witchcraft called Obi, practiced by the slaves.
A Fetish is anything not a living being, worshiped because supposed to be inhabited by some god. ”

“ Obi is used only to injure, and the way to perform it upon your enemy is, to hire the Obi man or woman to concoct a charm, and then to hide this, or cause it to be hidden, in some place about the person or abode of the victim where he will find it. He is expected thereupon to fall ill, to wither and waste away, and so to die. ”

“ A less innocent kind of praying is one of the religious humbugs of the bloody and cruel Sandwich Islands form of heathenism. Here a practice prevailed, and does yet, of paving money to a priest to pray your enemy to death. ”

“ Such are the Andaman Islanders, who crawl on all fours, wear nothing but a plaster of mud to keep the musquitos off, eat bugs, and grubs, and ants, and turn their children out to shift for themselves as soon as the little wretches can learn to crawl and eat bugs. ”

“ The rain-making business, though very lucrative, is not without its disadvantages; for whenever Moselekatse, or Dingaan, or any other chief sets his rain-maker at work, and the rain was not forthcoming as per application, the indignant ruler caused an assegai or two to be stuck through the wizard, for the encouragement of the other wizards. ”

“ It is a curious fact, how ever, that if under these circumstances you can cause one of them to become converted to Christianity, or to become a Christian by profession, he becomes at once free from the witches dominion and quickly recovers. ”

“ And yet, absurd as these prayer-mills of the heathen really are, it may not be safe to bring them under unqualified condemnation: for who among us has not sometimes heard windy prayers even in our Christian churches? Young clergymen are especially liable and, I might say, prone to this mockery. ”

“ They practice it at home in Africa, and carry it with them to continue it when they are made slaves in other lands. Obi is now practiced, as I have already hinted, in Cuba and in the Southern States, and is believed in by the more ignorant and foolish white people, as much as by their barbarous slaves. ”

“ Modern Heathen Humbugs.—Fetishism.—Obi.—Vaudoux.—Indian Powwows.—Lamaism.—Revolving Prayers.—Praying to Death.
A scale of superstition and religious beliefs of to-day, arranged from the lowest to the highest, would show many curious coincidences with another scale, which should trace the history of superstitions and religious beliefs backward in time toward the origin of man. ”