Guard rings are heavily used and hold significant spiritual weight in the occult practice of Obeah.
Rather than just being an ordinary piece of jewellery, for Obeah practitioners, a guard ring serves as a powerful amulet.
Despite the existing Obeah Act and the possibility of a prison term, the pursuit of wealth and protection is driving persons to the loaded ring market.
The rise of the loaded ring market online suggests that many Jamaicans are looking to Obeah for their prosperity. Many of these persons are adding their voices to the legal effort to decriminalise the country’s obeah law, claiming that it interferes with their right to engage their cultural tradition.
Scholars, such as Professor Clinton Hutton, and human rights attorneys are actively pushing for decriminalisation of the practice. They argue that the 1898 law is a legacy of colonial control and that criminalising the practice restricts inherent constitutional rights to religious and spiritual freedom.
Dr Donald Stewart, a retired pastor who is now a missionary in Africa, has warned Jamaica against repealing the Obeah law.
“We have observed that anywhere you have this strong belief in spiritism, and in mostly African countries they call it ‘juju’, whenever there is that, people become very superstitious, and they are no longer thinking for themselves because everything is tied to the spirits,” noted Dr Stewart, who has witnessed firsthand the devastating effect of occultic rituals as he interacts with different villagers in Africa.
“They pour libations, whether it is blood, chicken blood, or goat blood, or whether it is oils of different kinds, or whether it is what some may call consecrated water or alcohol, and they pour these things in worship to their ancestors and worship to the gods of the mountain or gods of the trees and rivers,” he said. He pointed to the fact that God has warned against these practices and urged Christians to renounce them from becoming an accepted part of daily living.
“We have seen where curses have actually been on people’s lives. We have seen where people have been demonised; some say ‘Demon’ possessed. Those who know what’s going on have had to be praying and casting out demons out of people, setting people free, breaking curses, and so on,” he told Freedom Come Rain during an interview earlier this year.