A little bit ah mud
An Eagle’s claw
Some donkey blood
And a rabbit’s paw

One black hen
 A golden thread
A grain a hair from Napolean head

If nothing go wrong
Cost ah livin’
must come down
                                              🧙  Witch Doctor – The Mighty Sparrow, 1976

Business as Unusual
This incantation may not move today’s gods of enterprise. Nevertheless, there is a growing demand for spirituality and magic in the business realm, where unpredictability makes it rife for higher-power interventions.

Maybe it’s the crumbling of the Trump dynasty, but according to experts, reliance on faith becomes more relevant in times of crisis. So, like other success factors, the “Lawd, put a hand” strategy could again become a crucial part of supply chains.

Feng Shui, yoga, affirmation and mantra are making a transcendental comeback. These systems have been allies in Eastern business decision-making for eons. The Chi and chakras pendulums – Asian Obeah, so to speak – are on the upswing through the magic of digital media.

Digital-Spiritual
Psychotherapy and counselling are also now available online and on-demand through services like Talkspace, Therapytribe and Betterhelp. However, for most Caribbean people, these are no different from sessions with the neighborhood Obeahman on the hill – prime real estate any seer-man worth his salt.

Commerce and the Mystical
In the boardroom: 

• Cosmology,
• Astrology,
• Witchcraft,
• Sorcery,
• Necromancy,
• Prophecy, or closer to home,
• Obeah and
• Other mystical practices,

might only be invoked in the tongue lashing of a competitor or delinquent colleague. However, back when fertility and profit, doom and destruction, freedom or servitude came from above, and survival was a blessing, mysticism was a slick, state-of-the-art addition to most management toolkits.

By acts of parliaments in the 1700s, Obeah was made and remains illegal in most regional territories – black magic outlawed in a white world. Nevertheless, the spectres of these histories still play poltergeist with our perceptions of homegrown magic and supernatural forces.

In this three-part series, the following articles will explore, within legal limits, the prospects and applications of Charms, talismans and signs in the digital era – fingers crossed.