Tybee Island Police Department Finds a Decapitated Voodoo Doll: Should They be Worried?

Photo courtesy of the Tybee Police Department Facebook page.

Published on Aug 29, 2016

​Voodoo dolls can mean different things to different people and the Tybee Island Police Department in Georgia is trying to find out the intentions of an individual or a group that left a beheaded doll and a lizard carcass outside the police station. Voodoo dolls can mean different things to different people and the Tybee Island Police Department in Georgia is trying to find out the intentions of an individual or a group that left a beheaded doll and a lizard carcass outside the police station. The department noted on its Facebook page, "Despite the overwhelming support that we receive on a daily basis, there is the occasional reminder that not everyone likes the police. We'll be reviewing the surveillance footage to see if we can identify our fan..." Lt. Emory Randolph told WJCL, "I definitely think there is a pretty dark message involved that somebody is trying to direct at the police department...To have the head pulled off the doll -- it's obviously not a sign of a friendly gesture." Facebook users chimed in as well with one noting, "Contrary to popular belief, Voo Doo is meant to do good. If this person intends on using it for bad, they can expect it to come back to them ten-fold." and another commenting, "This makes me sick. When you catch the idiots, throw the book at them and make them eat the lizard!!!!"

Should the Tybee Island Police Department be worried?

Well, that all depends on whether or not they believe in the power of image magic.

Image magic is a practice that spans the continuity of human cultures worldwide. It is based on the principle of "like produces like," which means whatever is done to the doll will, in theory, happen to the individual or group the doll represents.

Contrary to the misinformation given by some Facebook users on the Tybee Island Police Department's Facebook page, animal sacrifice is not needed to "activate" a doll. There is no special blood and no special animal required to make a doll work its magic. The use of blood in connection with fetishes is an entirely different practice and is typically done as an offering to a given Spirit by initiated devotees of various African-derived religious traditions.  What was found outside of the Tybee Island Police Department does not fall into this category, not even remotely.

What it does fall under is the individualistic nature of doll baby conjure. It may have been deployed by someone who is a practitioner of Hoodoo, a folk magic tradition with its roots in West African cultures, or European witchcraft, which has a strong component of poppet magic. The fact that a Voodoo doll was used does not relegate the act to the religion of Voodoo, however, which does not use dolls of this nature (tourist trade voodoo) for this purpose (to harm).

The fact that the doll was deployed with a decapitated lizard tells me it was left there by an individual who dabbles in image magic with no formal ties to any Aftrican Traditional Religion (ATR). More than likely, it is someone who was recently convicted of a crime or related to someone who was recently convicted of a crime, or someone who believes they or someone they know has been harassed or wrongly convicted, or has a beef with the legal system in general in the area. The latter is the weakest theory, because in such cases the conjure would be more appropriately left outside a court house. However, the target could be one person who works at the police department or the entire police department.

Another possibility is that there is an individual who abused or otherwise hurt a spouse or partner, and they work at the police station. In this scenario, the conjured doll is then placed outside of the perpetrator's home or place of employment.

Whoever the intended target may be, if the doll was placed there intentionally as an actual conjure and not as a joke (which is another possibility), it is indeed a warning. But what is it supposed to do?

Doll baby conjure is pretty straightforward when we look at it through the lens of image magick. When a conjured doll is left out in the open for the public to find and see, there is an element of psychological warfare going on. The intention is to intimidate and manipulate via sheer shock value. But,  what does decapitation mean? To decapitate a person is to kill them, quite simply. But in the world of conjure, it also indicates removing the source of a person's power.

And the decapitated lizard? This was just there to reinforce the curse, to amplify its effect and to amplify the psychological effect to those who saw it. Pairing a conjured doll with another item as reinforcement can be traced back to the ancient Greeks who deployed cursed dolls called kollosoi along with curse tablets made of lead or clay into which the curse was inscribed. (It is the pairing of objects in the deployment of curses which is the parallel, for the sake of clarity. The individual or individuals who laid the curse may have no knowledge of this ancient practice at all).

To learn more about how decapitation of statues figures in magic, read That Sexy Saints Head is One Powerful Conjure Curio.

To learn more about the use of dolls in magick and ritual, check out the first books ever written on the subject here.

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