voodoo dolls

Scope note: Generic term that commonly refers to a broad class of anthropomorphic figurines or dolls, historically made of wax, clay, lead, and other material, used as focus entities to ritually bind social and supernatural enemies. Though these figurative objects have been anachronistically linked to colonial syncretic religions such as Haitian Vodou or Mississippi River Valley Voodoo, often through the dissemination of racist popular culture in the 19th-21st centures, the dolls are not prominent features of any Vodun-based religions. Contemporary scholars specifically locate the false equvalence between these figurative objects and Vodu/Voodoo religions in the 19th century European misinterpretation of the Kongo power figure (ir nkisi nkondi). The objects that are vernacularly termed voodoo dolls, however, more accurately evidence a wide spectrum of defensive magic rituals employed by ancient Greco-Roman and Egyptian cultures, amongst others, to control evil forces. While evidence of these figurative objects was first documented in the 7th century BC, the use of these dolls is thought to have predated the Greco-Roman period and entered the European imagination as a cultural import from the East. Traditional treatment of dolls included twisting, burning, melting, and otherwise manipulating their limbs into bound positions' piercing the objects with pins or nails; and enclosing the dolls within sealed boxes.

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