USA Africa Dialogue Series - THE QUESTION OF ONLINE GROUPS FOR PRACTICAL AND THEORETICAL DISCUSSION OF AFRICANA SPIRITUAL AND MAGICAL PRACTICE

I get the impression that online groups that openly discuss theory and practice in African or Africana derived spiritual traditions are not easy to find.Out of the few I have found it seems fewer still are  active. .The active ones I belong to are Orisa Ifa Olodumare,Followers of Ifa Orunmila,African-American Wiccans,Black Power Satanism,Credo Mutwa,Tewagi-Schools of Unified Learning and Voodoo-l. 

I tried to join a particular  one that looks active,Temple of the Luciferian Vampire, but without success

Of the other groups I belong to Evocational Magics is a very rich group that welcomes different traditions and some practitioners describe their experiences with African Diaspora spiritual traditions.

The limitations I have had with finding groups that discuss experiences and theory in Africana(both African and African Diaspora) traditions is highlighted by my experiences of getting banned from or cautioned partly for posting Africana material to groups which ostensibly have to do with spirituality as a whole but which in practice are centred on Western traditions.

The open discussion of knowledge is central to how knowledge grows. Africans need to discuss their explorations of spiritual realities so they can contribute to each other's knowledge and that of the world.

Again,the West seems to be ahead of Africa in this regard as they have been in science,technology and the development of widespread forms of writing.Western magical and divinatory traditions have been  central to the development of Western science.They also provide possibilities of a variety of ways of arriving at knowledge that people can draw on in various aspects of life.

At the centre of the Western approach to practical magic and mysticism,not only religion,is the gradual development of an intellectual and practical tradition led by practitioners and scholars.

It is most thrilling reading the accounts of spiritual/magical practice in Evocational Magics,Joy of Satan and its subsidiaries  such as Advanced Meditation,in Solomonic etc.The efforts of members to analyze their experiences and informing assumptions is also most eye opening.Such sharing and analysis is at the centre of the development, systematization and dissemination of knowledge.

I am eager to find more groups where practitioners of Voodoo,Orisa traditions,Bini spirituality and other Africana centered traditions  etc come together to discuss their explorations.

It would be wonderful to hear more from the Africa/Africana traditions regardless of the race of their practitioners.

It would be particularly valuable to learn about personal experiences that demonstrate or suggest encounters with aspects of existence not ordinarily accessible to human beings such as  altered states of consciousness,invocation of spirits,divinatory experiences,healing,spiritual combat,unusual dreams,projection of consciousness,astral travel,spirit visitations,journeys to other dimensions,communication  with inanimate forms of sentience such as trees and other natural forms,among others.

thanks

toyin

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