bocor

plural bocors · alternative bòkò · alternative bokor

1. voodooA voodoo practitioner who deals with malefic as well as beneficial effects; a sorcerer.

   “The bokor who knows the magic can make anyone a zombi—a Haitian living abroad, a foreigner.”

   1985, Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Simon & Schuster, page 47

   3 more examples

   The corpse is buried in all solemnity, and two days later, at dead of night, the bocor digs it up, stops feeding it salt, and has himself a zombie.

   1989, James A. Michener, Caribbean

   A bòkò is an entrepreneur, and has a reputation as a man who will “work with both hands,” that is, for healing and revenge.

   1995, Elizabeth McAlister, in Cosentino (ed.), Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, South Sea International Press 1998, page 305

   It seemed to him that he was […] surrendering all agency and becoming hers to command, as if she were a Haitian bokor and he at lunch at Bergdorf Goodman had been administered the so-called zombie's cucumber which confused his thought processes and made him her slave for life.

   2017, Salman Rushdie, The Golden House, Jonathan Cape, published 2017, page 180