Dear ToyinIfa,
As the old windbag Polonius says to Laertes, "This above all- to thine own self be true" - and Pope wasn't paraphrasing or misinterpreting him when he wrote
"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of Mankind is Man."
Sure, we have been responding to the "Know thyself"
The present danger is that 419 Spiritual scammers have multiplied and are now in positions to mislead much of e.g. Nigerian mankind.
As I see it, the work that you are doing is important. Thanks for letting us know that you have been tasting the pudding and not just reading and cogitating about it. You too must be aware of the imperfections, if not the dangers of mediating your own experiences of African spirituality through the prism of other people's mystical experiences arrived at through Christian mysticism, Christian Kabbalah, Hindu tantra, etc. I'm thinking of the equivalence that some have attributed to Oya - as corresponding with "the mother of God" - the Blessed Virgin Mary for example – or to Parvati, "The Shakti" etc.
For an illustration of what I mean – and this is on the level of interpreting poetry, I refer you to "African Literature Today - A journal of Explanatory Criticism N0 2 ( Edited by Eldred Jones ) and Ime Ikkideh's two page letter in that issue - a reply to Ronald Dathorne's analysis of the opening poem of Okigbo's " Heavensgate". (At the time of writing his analysis Dathorne was working for UNESCO, in Sierra Leone, teaching at MMTC....)
Please excuse me for the imprecise wording that requested your take on "the relationship between the Western phenomenon of witch/ Wicca and what is generally known as witchcraft in West Africa" The "I'm thinking more of the sociological impact and less of the esoteric, about what you have to say" refers to the ever on-going witch hunts and execution/ murder of those indentified and apprehended as witches in Nigeria.
One of the reasons for this could well be that the hunters of witches in Nigeria are zealously trying to execute the punishment contained in these lines that we read in Parshat Mishpatim for the Sabbath of January 25 , 2014 :
"Exodus 22: 17 -18:
17. "Do not allow a sorceress (or sorcerer) to live"
18. "Any person who sleeps with an animal must be put to death (by stoning)
There's the following short commentary on Exodus 22.17 on page 194 of "A Divinely Given Torah – in our Day and Age" – Studies on the Weekly Torah Readings from Bar-Ilan University) by Dr. Meir Bar-Ilan .
If you could demonstrate that Nigerian witchcraft is not evil, and be able to disseminate that kind of information to the witch-hunters, then you would have helped save the lives of many who are presently misunderstood and falsely accused.
About the experience of trances and other phenomena – this can be endless.
Here are a few words that you may find interesting, from page 105, of Volume Fourteen of The Notebooks of Paul Brunton:
"Buddhism points out that although Nirvana is, there is no self to perceive it. As Buddhism denies a permanent self, the question of what Nirvana is experimentally does not arise. Nirvana is not a state of mind which is to be produced but is what is realised when the long-cherished notion of "I" is given up. Nirvana, in short is the miracle of egoless being. The Buddha's doctrine of the soul was stated in negative terms because he was controverting current misconceptions. He explained this in his Alagaddupama Majjhima 1, 135: "Even in this present life, my brethren, I say that the soul is indefinable: Though I say and teach thus, there are those who accuse me falsely of being a nihilist, of teaching the non-existence and annihilation of the soul. That is what I am not and do not teach."
Immanuel Kant, may have succeeded unwittingly in getting you into a trance alright, by just reading a few pages of his, but please, don't you ever mention his name to me again and I would have told you the same this last Friday night when I newly came across this quote of him on page 14 of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture" by Yoram Hazony
"The Jewish faith was, in its original form, a collection of mere statutory laws upon which were established a political organisation; for whatever moral addition were then later appended to it in no way whatsoever belonged to Judaism as such. Judaism is not really a religion at all but merely a union of a number of people who, since they belonged to a particular stock, formed themselves into commonwealth under purely political laws..... ( Only later was Judaism) interfused , by reason of moral doctrines gradually made public within it, with a religious faith – for this otherwise ignorant people had been able to receive much foreign ( Greek) wisdom"
(Author's note: "For a thorough and chilling account of the role played by anti-Semitism in Kant's philosophy, see Michael Mack "German Idealism and the Jew" (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 20039 pp 1-41
One last little thing, may I kindly refer you to one of the few books that I have yet read about Yoruba Religion: Professor the Rev Canon Harry Alphonso Ebun Sawyerr's: "God : ancestor or Creator"
Pray for us
Peace & Love,
Sincerely,
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
No comments:
Post a Comment