What Is Myal? Jamaica’s Healing Tradition Explained
What is Myal? Myal, or Myalism, is an Afro-Jamaican spiritual and healing tradition in which mediums, drawing on ancestral power through dance and spirit possession, worked to heal the sick and to undo harm blamed on the jealousy or malice of others. It grew up among enslaved Africans in Jamaica and was understood by its followers as the protective counterforce to Obeah, the practice feared as a source of harm.
Myal matters well beyond the history of religion. It shaped the Native Baptist movement, fed into the Great Revival of 1860–61, and lives on in Revival worship. It has also given Caribbean writers a way to talk about healing, memory and colonial damage, which is why we keep a reading list of novels about Myal for readers who want to meet the tradition in fiction.
Here we answer a narrower question: what Myal is, and why colonial law treated it as Obeah.
TL;DR
- Myal is an Afro-Jamaican tradition of healing, divination and ritual dance in which mediums sought to counter misfortune and harm.
- Its followers saw it as the opposite of Obeah, and Myal mediums were called on for protection against Obeah practitioners.
- Colonial law still tied the two together: Jamaica’s 1854 Act equated obeah with “myalism,” and that link carried into the Obeah Act of 1898.
- Myal outbreaks in 1841–42 and the Great Revival of 1860–61 helped produce Jamaican Revivalism, including Zion and the branch outsiders called “Pocomania.”
- Erna Brodber’s 1988 novel Myal opens with a community gathering to heal a young woman through the tradition.
Table of Contents
- What Myal is
- African roots and the first Myal society
- Myal and Obeah: opposites the law treated as one
- From the 1840s outbreaks to the Great Revival
- Why Myal matters to Jamaican literature
- Our perspective
- Read more from Maroon House Press
- FAQ
- Sources
What Myal is
The historian Monica Schuler, writing for the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, describes Myal as an African-Jamaican form of divination and a ritual dance. Its spirit mediums drew on ancestral power to heal and to counter misfortune that people believed came from others’ jealousy, greed and enmity. Illness and bad luck had a cause, often a human one, and that cause could be found.
Schuler notes that Myal bands dug up buried charms and recovered stolen “shadows,” the second souls that could be taken from a person and leave them sick.
The dance and possession
Dance sits at the centre of the tradition. In the twentieth century, Schuler records, Myal survived with some Christian additions in the parishes of St Elizabeth and Manchester, where the dance was known as gombay (drum) play. In Portland and St Thomas, among Maroon and Central African descendants, gombay play and intense Myal possession continued. Possession was what gave the medium sight. In an interview Schuler conducted in 1971, a Central African Kumina queen put it plainly: “When we got myal … we can find a thing bury … but when we normal, we can’t do these things.”
African roots and the first Myal society
Myal’s ideas about evil travelled with the people who held them. According to Schuler, Africans had already linked malevolent sorcery to enslavement before they were taken across the Atlantic. Their stories cast slave traders and owners as cannibals or vampires, and they carried those beliefs to Jamaica.
The earliest written description comes from the planter-historian Edward Long, who wrote of a new, open society called Myal that emerged in the 1760s, a decade of slave revolts. Initiation, as Long described it, involved drinking water mixed with calalu, then dancing until the initiate fell into a state resembling death; another mixture revived them. Initiation was believed to make people invulnerable to white men’s bullets. Schuler points out that baptism by immersion, which became popular with creole slaves, carried a similar meaning: both were rituals of death and rebirth.
Myal and Obeah: opposites the law treated as one
For its followers, Myal and Obeah were not the same thing at all. Obeah was feared as a means of harm. Myal mediums were the people you called when you believed Obeah had been worked against you. Schuler describes Myal as a counter to Obeah, with mediums neutralising it, for example by excavating buried charms.
Colonial authorities did not see it that way. Jamaica first outlawed obeah in 1760, after Tacky’s Rebellion, making it a crime punishable by death when committed by “any Negro or other slave,” as the historian Diana Paton writes for History Workshop. Paton explains that an 1854 Act went further and “equated obeah with ‘myalism’,” tying the offence to African-derived religion in general rather than to harmful acts alone. The Obeah Act of 1898, designed to make convictions easier, kept that link.
The result was that people who opposed obeah could be prosecuted for it. Paton notes that Revivalists, balm healers, Garveyites and early Rastafari were all charged under obeah laws. In June 2026 the Jamaica Observer reported that the law, which Paton says treats the two words as “of one and the same meaning,” faces a constitutional challenge, while Reverend Peter Espeut argued that Myal has historically worked against harmful practices and should not be criminalised alongside Obeah.
| Myal | Obeah | |
|---|---|---|
| How followers saw it | Healing and protection | A feared source of harm |
| Typical work | Finding buried charms, recovering stolen shadows, healing | Feared as the cause of illness and misfortune |
| Form | Communal dance and possession | Associated with individual specialists |
| Under colonial law | Equated with obeah from 1854 | Criminalised from 1760 |
From the 1840s outbreaks to the Great Revival
After emancipation in 1838, Myal bands on sugar estates became notorious. Schuler describes them combining African problem-solving with Jamaican Native Baptist practice; their ranks included archangels, angels and “ministering angelics.” In 1841, sparked by unexplained deaths and competition for work, Myal mediums began a revitalisation movement. They exposed people suspected of selfishness, sometimes forcing public confessions, stopped working to prepare the land for the return of Jesus, took over missionary meetinghouses and criticised missionaries’ baptismal practices. By November 1842, official suppression had driven the movement underground.
It came back in a larger form. The Obeah Histories project lists Myal revivals in Jamaica in 1842 and 1860–61. The second of these, the Great Revival, took place between 1860 and 1861 and brought spiritual outpourings, including African spirit possession, into mission houses, as Paul H. Williams reported in The Gleaner in 2025. Schuler writes that this revival gave the name “Revivalist” to the many sects that followed, and that the Myal spirit persisted in them as the Holy Spirit.
Revival, Zion and “Pocomania”
Writing in the Jamaica Observer, Kirt O. Henry summarises scholars including Edward Seaga and Barry Chevannes, who trace Revivalism to the Great Revival of 1860 and 1861. That movement gave way to two expressions, 60 Zion and 61 Revival. The second, with its African rituals and ancestor veneration, carried more stigma, captured in the outsiders’ label “Pocomania,” a term Seaga contested. Schuler goes further, tracing Jamaican ideas about evil and how to overcome it through Myal, Native Baptist, Revivalist and Rastafarian belief.
Why Myal matters to Jamaican literature
A tradition built on finding hidden harm and restoring a stolen part of the self is a strong frame for writing about colonialism, and Jamaican writers have used it. The best-known example is Erna Brodber’s Myal, published by New Beacon Books in London in 1988. Brodber, a Jamaican novelist trained as a sociologist, sets the novel in Jamaica at the start of the twentieth century. It opens with a community gathering to heal Ella, a young woman who has returned home after a failed marriage abroad, using the tradition the publisher describes as centred on the belief that good can overcome all. The novel won a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
The healing in Brodber’s book echoes the older Myal idea that a community can recover what has been stolen from a person. For more novels that take the tradition seriously, see our full guide to Myal in fiction.
Our perspective
At Maroon House Press we publish fiction rooted in Jamaican and Caribbean memory, folklore and history, and Myal sits close to the centre of that memory. It is one of the clearest records we have of how enslaved and newly free Jamaicans explained suffering and organised to heal it, on their own terms, while the colonial state worked to criminalise them.
The law spent well over a century calling healers and harm-doers by the same name. Fiction that repeats the confusion, or treats possession as spectacle, does a quieter version of the same thing. We would rather publish stories that let the tradition be what its practitioners said it was.
For more novels set on the island, from The Long Song to The Disappearers, see our guide to novels set in Jamaica.
Read more from Maroon House Press
If you are wondering why we resist the usual labels for books like Brodber’s, our essay on why Caribbean spiritual realism isn’t magical realism makes the case. For the spirits and creatures that share Myal’s world of folk belief, read our guide to Jamaican folklore creatures.
Schuler traces the line from Myal through Revival to Rastafari, and that later movement has its own literary history, which we follow in Rastafari in fiction.
FAQ
Is Myal the same as Obeah?
No. Its followers saw Myal as healing and protection and Obeah as a source of harm; Myal mediums were called on to counter Obeah. Jamaican law nonetheless equated the two from 1854 onward.
What happens in a Myal dance?
Dancing and drumming bring on spirit possession, which practitioners believed gave them the power to find buried charms and see what was hidden.
What was the Great Revival?
A religious movement in Jamaica in 1860–61 that brought African-style spirit possession into mission churches. It gave rise to Revivalism, including Zion and Revival (sometimes labelled “Pocomania”).
Is Obeah still illegal in Jamaica?
The Obeah Act remains on the books, though Paton found no conviction under it after 1964. As of mid-2026 a constitutional challenge to the Act had been filed, with no reported outcome.
What is Erna Brodber’s Myal about?
Set in early twentieth-century Jamaica, it opens with a community gathering to heal a young woman, Ella, through Myal after a failed marriage abroad.
Sources
- Myal (Monica Schuler, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History), Encyclopedia.com
- The Racist History of Jamaica’s Obeah Laws (Diana Paton), History Workshop
- Obeah battle (Alicia Dunkley Willis), Jamaica Observer
- About, Obeah Histories
- Formerly enslaved people created Revivalism (Paul H. Williams), The Gleaner
- Liberating Revivalism through the spirit and work of Edward Seaga (Kirt O. Henry), Jamaica Observer
- Myal by Erna Brodber, New Beacon Books
- Brodber, Erna (May), Encyclopedia.com
