In this paper we analyze and compare the role of sorcery and witchcraft in contemporary local and regional politics in Guyana and the Venezuelan Amazon in order to illustrate the way in which occult forces have been incorporated into the regional and national political process. In general terms this has recently been the subject of study by both Taussig (1997) and Coronil (1997) who, in different ways, consider how the ‘magic’ of the Venezuelan State is established through its association with occult powers, particularly the popular spirit-cults. In a broader frame of reference it is evident that Voudoun has played a similar role in the establishment of the Duvalier regime in Haiti (Diedrich 1970, Ferguson 1989) and it will be suggested here that Obeah has also been used to enhance the political potency of the Forbes Burnham regime in Guyana. However, although we may have elegant and informative studies of the forms of ideology that the ruling elites have deployed to gain consensus for their projects of modernization and development, we have little sense of how those process played out in the margins of ‘national’ political culture, or what broader cultural forms are harnessed in the process of occult government, in particular those that invoke indigenous powers or ‘indigeneity’ in general. Thus Taussig (1997) for example, discusses the ideological power of the “Tres Potencias” but does so through an exclusive consideration of the ‘Spirit Queen” - the latent and darkly mysterious spirit force of “El Indio” is left without commentary. This chapter is partly intended to correct that lack through a consideration of how native dark shamanism, by kanaimàs, pitadores and false prophets, has fed the political imaginary and practice of post-colonial Guyana and Venezuela.