By Nadine Wilson Harris
Weaves, hair extensions, and wigs are being shipped to Jamaica to satisfy the appetite of local women for silky tresses, but some pastors believe these imports have unleashed a plague of demons in the nation as they are often used for idol worship in their countries of origin.
Bishop Dr. Grace Ade-Gold said she has had to deliver some of the wearers of these hair extensions from spiritual bondage over the years and urges women to, at the very least, pray over their acquisitions before installation.
“You don’t know whose hair you are putting on your head,” said the bishop, who is the founder of Arise Shine Apostolic and Deliverance Ministries located in Kingston.
She recalled encountering spiritual attacks when she gave in to the appeals of a hairdresser to install a pack of human hair once.
“She said it was very nice, and she has used it on many people,” said Bishop Ade-Gold.
“When I went to sleep, I found myself in a hall filled with people that were gyrating with snakes [pythons], and I was in warfare until I woke up,” she recounted.
She said she had other dreams, which propelled her to quote from the Bible and eventually to pray and ask God to reveal the source of the attacks. She was told it was as a result of the hair she had installed. The pastor said she immediately had it removed, and with that, the dreams stopped.
“Sometimes God is speaking to us and say, ‘Hey don’t buy that’, but yet we still buy it because it makes us feel good,” she said.
The Jamaican hair importation industry is said to be worth billions of dollars, as women have exhibited no qualms in forking out as much as $100,000 in some instances to purchase hair that has been imported from Western countries. According to Fortune Business Insight, the global hair wig market is projected to grow to US$3 billion between 2023 and 2028. That amounts to J$150 billion.
Several investigations have confirmed that a lot of the hair shipped to countries in the west is from India, where it was sacrificed to idols and pagan deities in Hindu temples. An investigative report undertaken by BBC News found that it is an age-old tradition for millions of women to travel to Hindu temples in southern India every year to get their hair shaved for religious reasons.
“It is done as a religious offering in fulfilment of a vow, and in earlier times was just left to float down the river and go to waste,” Emma Tarlo, a professor of anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the author of Entanglement: The Secret Lives of Hair, told the BBC.
The Indian women sacrifice their hair because they have no money to give to the gods, who they petition for a wide range of things, including financial security and warding off ill-health. The sacrificed hair, which initially went to waste, is now being sold for profit to countries like the United States. The money earned is used to maintain the Hindu temples.
“Most of the hair from different temples is taken to factories where they are steamed and curled and then shipped off to African women who are more than excited to wear this hair even at the most expensive prices,” Temi Iwalaiye, a lifestyle reporter at Pulse in Nigeria, wrote last year.
Local beauty therapist Stacey-Ann Blake believes that women can adopt the spirits of their hairs’ original owners.
“The hairs that are selling, there is a lot of spiritual things attached to it that we don’t know and we go through attacks on our minds,” she said.
“The synthetic hair is fine, but the human hair—you don’t know who they cut these hairs off. It could be a witch; it could be somebody who is in the dark forces. It can be from a dead person,” she told Freedom Come Rain.
She said persons should ask the Holy Spirit to guide them when selecting hair for installation.
“You can be wearing something that fits you and makes you look good, but spiritually, you are being caged by it,” said Blake, who used to sport dreadlocks but was advised to cut it off when she started experiencing spiritual attacks. The attacks ended when she removed the locks.
Bishop Ade-Gold noted that apart from hair, other fashion trends are being used for spiritual attacks because they have been manipulated by satanic forces to cause oppression, bad dreams, failed relationships, joblessness, sicknesses, and diseases, among other things. She advised persons to refrain from wearing clothing, shoes, or handbags with snake or leopard prints, god or goddess patterns, or occultic signs and symbols.
The deliverance minister will be partnering with others to host a Global Spiritual Warriors Summit from July 24 to 30 across three parishes. It is expected to galvanise spiritual warriors from Jamaica and around the world and involves other pastors from Kenya, Haiti, USA, Ghana, Bahamas and Jamaica.