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Date: 26 Oct 2000 00:00:00 GMT
Subject: Re: "Hoodoo Chruches" (was: Re: Magical and Religious Terminology (was Spells and Rituals of Summoning ....)
Message-ID: <20001026003841.02397.00000937@ng-cn1.aol.com>
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>Not at all, I never said anything suggesting a limited concern on the part
>of African religious practice with God or the concern with spiritual
>progression. This is completely your problem.
Not at all, underneath the distinctions you sought to make between who was
concerned with pie-in-the-sky and who was concerned with practical results in
the here-and-now, is an unmistakeable suggestion that traditional African
religion was of the practical sort, and pie-in-the-sky questions of "religion"
was a post-Christian defense-mechanism. I fully appreciate that this is not an
either-or proposition. If you agree that it is rather a both-and proposition,
and that moreover, Africa's concern with "religion" was not only an original
invention, but a gift to the rest of the world, along with whatever it is you
mean by sorcery, I would happily rest.
The only point I had made
>was that the distinction that Western tradition makes between sorcery and
>religion is one that is not apriori a distinction in African religion as
>it is in Western religion and western social sciences.
This is false as a matter of fact. In Haiti the distinction between houngan and
bokor is clear. In Trinidad, where I'm from, there is a clear distinction
between orisha-worship and the practice of obeah. Among the Akan, there is a
particular deity, Nana Tigare, that is known as a "witch-catcher". Choose
whatever words you may like, but the contrasting realities that exist between
"good" or beneficent practice, and "evil" practice, are as much recognized in
traditional African spiritual practice and worldview, as in any other.
>There are distinct cases where socially devient behaviour is condemned in
>African society,
tautological, but do go on ...
>but the absolutism of Western dualistic notions of good
>and ill do not exist.
>The African recognizes many shades of gray.
To posit shades of gray is itself to presuppose the dual absolutes at opposite
ends of the continuum of gray. The African recognizes both the absolutes
("good", "evil") AND recognizes that there is a distinction between something
being good, and something merely seeming to one to be good. There is also a
distinction between something being good, and something being good for one.
Taboos are a highly individualistic thing. One of my teachers has a personal
taboo against okra. Not that she doesn't like it, but that during her
initiation into priesthood, this was one of the items that she was told she may
not eat. So okra is good, as we all know, but it is not good for her. Etc. So
yes, there is a greater relativism in the everyday African understanding of
good and bad, albeit within an overall unchanging Absolute, which, properly
understood, allows for such relativism, and albeit with clear semantic
demarcations being maintained between "good" and "evil". Such relativism is not
foreign to Judeo-Christian tradition either. That is why you can find words in
the Bible to support any position one desires (almost). So it falls back on
inner knowing, conscience, to know what applies when. I give one example. "Thou
shalt not kill" is supposedly one of the commandments handed down on Mt. Sinai
to Moses. Western Christians have no difficulty being relativist about that, as
we see with Christian (also Jewish) chaplains serving without apparent crises
of conscience among the armed forces, counselling soldiers trained and sent out
to be efficient killers.
>Eoghan
>
Peace,
Grisso
A snake in the village had bitten so many people that few dared go into the
fields. Such was the Master's holiness that he was said to have tamed the snake
and persuaded it to practice the discipline of non-violence.
It did not take long for the villagers to discover that the snake had become
harmless. They took to hurling stones at it and dragging it about by its tail.
The badly battered snake crawled into the Master's house one night to complain.
Said the Master, "Friend, you've stopped frightening people--that's bad!"
"But it was you who taught me to practice the discipline of non-violence!"
"I told you to stop hurting--not to stop hissing!"
--From One-Minute Wisdom
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