Needless to say, the rapport between the two diviners is striking, with the "doubling" of the divinatory work ensuring better results. Thus, diviners seek in their relations with other beings (and with clients) that "perfect knowledge of each other" which transcends usual human communication. Ifa is an indispensable treasure trove of knowledge that can’t be duplicated elsewhere; much of its knowledge has been handed down from babalawo [Ifa priest/diviner] to babalawo for centuries. I also celebrate and honor the king's festivals and ceremonies in my hometown and other places where I live and do research. Another West African adage offers: "If speech has burned your mouth, silence will heal you." As if to underscore this point, the other popular divination agent for the Dogon is the ant. After about fifteen minutes, the cover is removed and the rearrangement of objects is studied. "For starters, the word "religion" is problematic for many Africans, because it suggests that religion is separate from the other aspects of one's culture, society, or environment. Female masked spirits featured prominently as judicial courts and judges of moral conduct. I think this description perfectly expresses the critical dynamics of divination in many African cultures, those esoteric processes that operate whether through diviners or through their devices. Du Bois's grave in Accra, I noticed an unusual line pattern on the ceiling of the small building covering the grave. Mothers have held rare protests in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, and elsewhere, demanding to know the fate of their children who originally were sent to Eritrea for military training. "–by Anthony Chiorazzi, MTS candidate. At that time, the area was occupied by many large Nguni communities and clans (also called the isizwe people or nation, or were called isibongo, referring to their clan or family name). Although the silence and slow speed of snails does not seem to recommend them as divinatory agents, they are encountered in divinatory paraphernalia throughout Africa, as with diviners in Mozambique. Most slaves in Africa were captured in wars or in surprise raids on villages. The World Health Organization (WHO) is building a better future for people everywhere. Some type of device usually is employed, from a simple sliding object to the myriad symbolic items shaken in diviners' baskets. The Dogon live in villages set along the plateaus and against the high cliffs of central Mali. It is a way of life, and it can never be separated from the public sphere. Divination itself is a liminal activity operating between worlds; thus, it employs liminal creatures who move between worlds. The Yoruba system of Ifa is rigorous and demanding, with diviners trained for at least sixteen years; but also on the Ifa tray is the face of Eshu the Trickster, who is the messenger between humans and the other world and who can affect all divination sessions. For that reason, "twins do not need speech to communicate with each other or with a host of spiritual entities"; further, the Senufo hold that "too much talk obstructs the passage of knowledge. Intriguingly, this system overlays the fox's nonverbal answers onto the human's nonverbal questions. Morag Gunn is a writer in her mid-forties who lives in a riverside farm in East Ontario. Everywhere he went in southwestern Nigeria, he never opposed or spoke out against African culture—including initiation rites, festivals, and traditional Yoruba dress—as long as it didn't directly conflict with Christianity.For myself, I negotiate between my Yoruba and Christian identity by, for example, affirming those aspects of African culture that promote good life and communal human welfare. Health lays the foundation for vibrant and productive communities, stronger economies, safer nations and a better world. An old African adage says: "The sky is large enough for birds to fly around without one having to bump into the other. (iv) They predict on future occurrences. The king did not believe him and sent a guard to see if his story was true, with orders to kill him if it was not. All day long the hunter begged the skull to speak, but it remained silent and the hunter was killed. All cultures use animals to represent their values, and, just as animals "speak" for humans in folktales and so on, their "silence" is equally significant. Over the past two decades, WHO has been working with countries to ensure safe and effective traditional medicine development in Africa by providing financial resources and technical support. Examples can be found among peoples from West, Central, and Southern Africa. Copyright © 2021 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, Religious Resources for Living Through Crisis, Contact Development and External Relations, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School. ... As pairing makes the client congruent with the diviner and the diviner congruent with the spirits, all come to share a common perception. Based on his long experience of fieldwork in West Africa, Dominique Zahan expresses this eloquently: It [silence] is the supreme virtue, as it subsumes integrity, courage, the power of the soul, prudence, modesty, and temperance. Since hearing is greater than sight for the pangolin, it reminds us that, universally, there are many blind "seers" or diviners, but few, if any, deaf diviners. In the ancient Benin kingdom, in Nigeria, the Oba only spoke publically to issue a death sentence. Corn kernels are scattered in the dish and the top is replaced on the container. While my discussion here deals with creatures actually employed in divination systems, accenting the "silent" component must be seen as an argument from my own academic perspective. On another visit to Ghana, I noticed a newspaper ad for a printing company. The final diagnosis and plan for action are rendered collectively by the diviner and the client(s).1. Again, it doesn't reflect the multiplicity of ways that traditional African spirituality has conceived of deities, gods, and spirit beings. In fact, the spider is the supreme tale-teller of all animals and, as Anansi, is also a wondrous trickster. Piet Meyer, "Divination Among the Lobi of Burkina Faso," in, T. O. Beidelman, "Ambiguous Animals: Two Theriomorphic Metaphors in Kaguru Folklore,". Partial answers are perceived; then the whole procedure is repeated until the diviner is satisfied with the revelations made by the crab.16. Archived. Indeed, most diviners (komien) work with a variety of spirit helpers who "possess" the diviner during divination sessions in order to provide oracular messages. (iii) They heal the sick and give remedies for the suffering. Diviners—who go through a long educational and apprenticeship program—hold the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African people. The reason that twins are critical among the Senufo and other West African peoples is that they have shared the womb together and have "perfect knowledge and perception of each other." For diviners this is even more critical. In North Africa the prevailing role of diviners, talismans, signs, and markings right on the body still continues. Note the liminality in space and time—a common feature of many African divination systems. It is difficult to know a snake's voice. Islam has experienced a similar rapid growth.Yet consider that in 1900 most Africans in sub-Saharan Africa practiced a form of indigenous African religions.The bottom line then is that Africans who still wholly practice African indigenous religions are only about 10 percent of the African population, a fraction of what it used to be only a century ago, when indigenous religions dominated most of the continent. Here, as so often in divination, we find male and female pairing and the suggestion of androgyny. Among the Batammaliba of Togo, both client and diviner hold a stick, and its movements convey the oracular message.5. The solitary, nocturnal pangolin quietly moves through the undergrowth hunting for insects. The otter-shrew in Yaka (Democratic Republic of the Congo) belief aids diviners because it moves between water and land. He went on to conduct some of the most significant research on African religions in decades.Olupona, professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African-American studies in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, recently sat down for an interview about his lifelong research on indigenous African religions.Olupona earned his bachelor of arts degree in religious studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1975. Here again, the chameleon acts as messenger, with another silent creature as an alternate. The special rapport necessary between diviner and spirit—and between diviner and client—is frequently expressed in terms of twinning; that is, the diviner and spirit establish a relationship as if they are twins. At dawn the next morning, diviners return to read the patterns of the fox's paw prints for the oracle's answers to their questions. It is the reticent person who is the sage. "You should only answer with the stick, not with your mouth," the diviner advises the client.9. They have also fostered a greater feeling of individual self-worth by acknowledging important milestones in one's life, including becoming an adult or an elder.In lieu of these traditional African ways of defining oneself, Christianity and Islam are gradually creating a social identity in Africa that cuts across these indigenous African religious and social identities. Diviners strongboxes were a lot more fun when they weren't rarer than exalted orbs. The defining line between deities and ancestors is often contested, but overall, ancestors are believed to occupy a higher level of existence than living human beings and are believed to be able to bestow either blessings or illness upon their living descendants.Gazette: In trying to understand African spirituality, is it helpful to refer to it as polytheistic or monotheistic?JO: No, this type of binary thinking is simplistic. Sometimes the diviner's body becomes the vehicle of communication through spirit possession. African spirituality has always been able to adapt to change and allow itself to absorb the wisdom and views of other religions, much more than, for example, Christianity and Islam. Human rights groups have expressed concern over Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni authoritarian regime. The Lobi maintain that the thila (protective spirits) have no tongues and can only communicate through humans—but only by means of the joined hands of the diviner and client during divination.8 The Batammaliba of Togo also engage in "silent" communication through divination, as the diviner interprets the movements of the staff he and the client hold as it responds to their questions. Sangoma, highly respected healer among the Zulu people of South Africa who diagnoses, prescribes, and often performs the rituals to heal a person physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.The sangoma may address all of these realms in the healing process, which usually involves divination, herbal medicine, and specific customized rituals to cure illness and restore well-being. And if these shrines are not properly cared for by the designated descendant, then misfortune in the form of illness might befall the caretaker. One of the world's most remarkable creatures is the chameleon. They do this by having Africans increasingly identify themselves as either Muslim or Christian, thus denying their unique African worldview that has always viewed—as evidenced in their creation myths—everything as unified and connected to the land, the place were one's clan, lineage, and people were cosmically birthed. Near Korhogo in northern Côte d'Ivoire, a Senufo diviner, a member of the Sandogo, an association of women who practice divination, sets up dual images in front of her while she divines in her "hut for twins." Divining processes are diverse, but all follow set routines by which otherwise inaccessible information is obtained. At the same time, to underscore my emphasis on emic (i.e., indigenous categories) as opposed to etic, or outsider, perspectives, I offer the following observation by a blacksmith in the Republic of Benin recorded by Allen Roberts: You with your science may have heard the call of a snake, but we here have not. But after braving that first blizzard in a land far from his native Nigeria, Olupona stuck it out and earned his Ph.D. Divination is an incredibly rich area for anthropological research—in fact, I would argue that there is no richer ethnography of a culture than the study of its divination system. (I myself have consulted with several diviners for my research on specific academic topics regarding African culture and history; consequently, if we were to lose Africa's diviners, we would also lose one of Africa's best keepers and sources of African history and culture. When I visited W. E. B. See more. Divination occurs neither during day nor at night, and neither in the village nor in the bush. African spirituality simply acknowledges that beliefs and practices touch on and inform every facet of human life, and therefore African religion cannot be separated from the everyday or mundane. Some say that the US is complicit in helping to prop up his 35-year rule. Once this perspective is recognized, many representations of it can be found. (most Nguni diviners were female, most Sotho-Tswana diviners were male) the power to divine by means of special techniques (e.g. This feature has been adapted by Luba diviners, who wear beaded hats with pangolin patterns to protect their heads. It is believed that mice "never lie" and that they hear the "sounds of the earth."14. The award allows Olupona a year of study and research in Germany; he is on leave this year (2015–16).Much of Olupona's work is an attempt to provide a fuller understanding of the complexity and richness of African indigenous thought and practice by viewing it not as a foil or as a useful comparative to better understand Western religions, but as a system of thought and belief that should be valued and understood for its own ideas and contribution to global religions.Harvard Gazette: How would you define indigenous African religions?JO: Indigenous African religions refer to the indigenous or native religious beliefs of the African people before the Christian and Islamic colonization of Africa. This essay is a modified version of a talk presented at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University on October 25, 2012. The hunter's head replied, "Talking brought me here."18. These chains are constructed of eight half-seed shells, which can fall with either their concave or convex sides upwards. HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138   617.495.5761, my.hds | Harvard University | Privacy | Accessibility | Digital Accessibility | Trademark Notice | Reporting Copyright Infringements. Moreover, the religions developed in the Americas impact Africa in that devotees of the African diaspora have significant influence on practices in Africa. The two diviners are using the eva system, which is related to the opele (divining chain) of the Yoruba that is incorporated into their major system of Ifa. Thus, akin to the Lobi thila, an otherwise mute but knowledgeable entity is only given voice through divination in order to aid humans. "We speak to a wise man in proverbs, not in plain language. Let me end with a story that illustrates the wisdom of silence and serves as a cautionary tale to any speaker. Instead, we find silent, quiet, voiceless creatures employed in the divinatory enterprise virtually throughout Africa.12. Throughout Africa, chameleons are held to be among the world's oldest and wisest of creatures. Diviner definition, a person who divines; soothsayer; prophet. In some other Central African divination systems, marked pangolin scales are cast and read by diviners. "7 This brings me to a second thread from Ellen Suthers's research, that of "silent" communication. The mouse crawls up to the upper chamber and eats some corn, thereby rearranging the bones. Copyright © 2021 The President and Fellows of Harvard College, Pilgrims: Progress and Regress in Three African Memoirs, An African Ecological Ethics of Invitation. Yes, they are small and silent; but they are also very clever, if not wise. Androgyny seems to be a common goal among the African cultures where diviners engage in cross-gender dressing. Specific animals (in part, as a whole, or symbolically) permeate African divination systems. Posted by 3 years ago. The hunter ran and told the king that he had found a skull that talked. Ancestors can offer advice and bestow good fortune and honor to their living dependents, but they can also make demands, such as insisting that their shrines be properly maintained and propitiated. Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yes, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God. Without voice ( it will hiss if disturbed ), most Sotho-Tswana diviners were female, most Sotho-Tswana diviners male. Self-Explanatory mechanisms that reveal answers ; other systems require the diviner 's ability to communicate often... ) and Great Britain ( 1795-1803 and 1806-1961 ) choices of divinatory agents is that ``... The people right on the container, the skull answered, ``,! 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