P O C O M A N I A
Jamaican Voodoo in the World of the Spirits
Text: Ziva Brecelj / ipa PRESS
Photography: Bojan Brecelj / ipa PRESS


It happens at once, some day, some time, in remote, muddy poor villages in Jamaica. Men, women, children gather under a tin roof of one of the ordinary decaying huts that even from far doesn’t resemble to a church … as if all intuitively felt the "right moment" to gather together and guided in trance by the Mother travel together into the Spirit World, where the Holy Spirit and other spirits will talk to them and advise them… Thus begins Pukumina, the ritual of Pocomania, of which the meaning is " small madness’ ".
Throughout decades African slaves, transported to Caribbean colonies, in Jamaica intimately preserve and practise semi-secretly these ancient spiritual practices in Revival Churches where the Christian Holy Spirit found an important place among other spirits in the World of the Spirits.