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RELIGION, RITUAL AND AFRICAN TRADITION

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Contents

PREFACE.....................................................................................viiACKNOWLEDGMENTS.............................................................................xvIntroduction................................................................................1Identifying God.............................................................................3Definitions and parameters..................................................................7The Supernatural............................................................................10Vodoun......................................................................................14Islam and Africa............................................................................15Spiritualism, healing, and the human experience.............................................19Symbols of religious experience.............................................................24Religious symbiosis and communication.......................................................33Ancestor veneration, kinship, and ritual....................................................35Limits of religious behavior: the spiritual realm...........................................39Ritual in marriage..........................................................................40Ritual in festivals and death rites.........................................................42Ritual in public worship and community fellowship...........................................44Notions about witchcraft....................................................................46Activities and powers of witchcraft.........................................................48Witch hunters or witch doctors?.............................................................50Identifying witches.........................................................................51What is magic?..............................................................................54Magic and ritual............................................................................57Religion as real life.......................................................................60Community focus.............................................................................61Searching for alternatives..................................................................63Religion and society........................................................................65Personification of collective desire........................................................66A QUICK REFERENCE TO THE DISTRIBUTION OF SELECTED AFRICAN ETHNIC GROUPS.....................69REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READING............................................................119INDEX.......................................................................................129

Chapter One

Introduction

Religion is as old as mankind and is found wherever organized communities exist. Religious emotion is among the most intense and profound that has been experienced. The development of that emotion is, in a very real sense, one aspect of the history of humanity that has been internalized more than any other. Many writers are convinced that it is the only area through which cultural traditions can be carried spatially and temporally. This would be an erroneous view of the African continent. This introductory chapter aims to review some of the known African traditional religious concepts and beliefs and to demonstrate their many roles in the general shaping of traditional life among different African societies and carrying these intense emotions to levels that have encouraged the development of social structures for their survival.

The beginnings of all societies relate to their environmental settings and human resources. Humans have lived, for several millions of years, in a world of peril and uncertainty and have been compelled to seek security. The most familiar way to achieve this has been by the control of nature. However, this move had to be undertaken against the backdrop of the conditions and limitations of their existence. Even with several millennia of experiences and knowledge of the experience, humans have been unable to cope with all aspects of the challenges of life. Although throughout the ages, particularly before the days of modern science, humans managed to somehow control several of the factors of the environment, there have been wide gaps in their knowledge and capabilities. As life became hazardous, humans began to develop awareness of a power that could not be physically perceived and, therefore, first conceived as an invisible power but one which played and still plays a crucial role in their life and survival. Consequently, humans, for brief periods of time, suspended the task of adjusting to the world via material means and resorted to spiritual (non-material) methods. This power is not only believed in (as, for example, in modern times, one believes in electricity), but human beings became aware of this power because of a feeling of being in the presence of some indefinable, impersonal, all-pervading entity. This experience in essence might have been the first indicator of religion-the attitude of individuals in a community concerning the powers that they conceive of as the ultimate control over their destinies or interests. This attitude probably manifested a practical relationship with that which was believed in as "supernatural." But because such experiences developed into group consciousness, they probably crystallized in definable religious concepts about the supernatural. Humans had to devise some practical ways of dealing with things that were unknown, mysterious, and potentially dangerous. The most obvious examples were birth and death. Humans might know that any of these would come, but dealing with it was another matter. It was, probably, in view of these two contrasting situations that some anthropologists think that human societies belong to two worlds. One of them is the mundane and the practical, in which humans think and know what is going on and why. The other is the world of the strange, the unseen, and the unpredictable, or what has been referred to as the "supernatural."

In the context of African tradition, the two worlds flow together. It is considered that any opposition or disharmony between them is rooted in human ways of thinking and general behavior. It has been observed that African traditional institutions, such as chieftaincy, festivals, ritual, and other rites, attempt to maintain a continuous link between the two worlds. Many anthropologists have demanded that in order to appreciate these two worlds, active effort should be made to cope with both aspects of the belief. Differences in the approaches to religious concepts also vary mainly because of differences in experience. Interpretations should also take the particular society's traditional concepts and values into consideration. Inability to understand African religious thoughts and actions has also been worsened by erroneous presentations in early colonial writing, religious and other discrimination, colonialism, and imperialistic strategies of domination.

Identifying God

God is acknowledged by African societies as the creator and maker of the universe. This concept of God is not unique to Africa. According to the Yoruba of...