Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Charles Kehinde Alasholuyi on Facebook
31 March at 22:40 ·
A 2-year-old Nigerian 'witch' boy who was found emaciated and riddled with worms after his family left him for dead in Akwa Ibom state has made an incredible recovery
Many thanks to Anja Ringgren Lovén [shown in the picture feeding Hope ] who adopted him
Two months ago Hope was living on the streets of Nigeria, riddled with worms, on the brink of starvation and cast out from his community accused of being a "witch".
Now, new pictures shared by Anja Ringgren Loven who adopted him reveal the extraordinary transformation he has undergone in a matter of weeks.
She said she first saw the problems created by superstition in rural Nigeria when she travelled there alone three years ago and met children "who had been tortured and beaten almost to death because they were accused of being witches and therefore left alone on the street"
'Thousands of children are being accused of being witches and we've both seen torture of children, dead children and frightened children,' she wrote on Facebook, accompanying images of her feeding the young boy and appealing for donations to help pay for his medical bills in January. 'With all the money, we can, besides giving Hope the very best treatment, now also build a doctor clinic on the new land and save many more children out of torture!' she said.Ms Loven runs an children's centre where the youngsters she saves live and receives medical care, food and schooling. She and her husband, David Emmanuel Umem, began building their own orphanage in late January- "Incredible Recovery of the Nigerian Boy Saved by Anja Ringgren Loven" Goals Daddy.- Anja Ringgren Loven's personal Facebook account
- DINNødhjælp - deres overlevelse Anja Ringgren Loven's non profit organization
- Anja Ringgren Loven's official Facebok page
What should be done about the problem of children and old women, the primary victims-I wonder why men are not singled out- being turned out of their homes and communities on being accused of witchcraft?
Ebohon has mounted spirited public efforts over the years, built a cultural centre, engaged in media appearances defending witchcraft, , some of which I have witnessed, has made himself accessible for interviews, one of which I conducted and can recall clearly although I was not mature enough then to know how maximize the opportunity of access to this clearly very informed man and has written books, such as Ebohon and his Centre : A Life, Paganism : Not My Religion, Cultural Heritage of Benin, Life and Works of a High Priest of African Religion: A Guide to the Ebohon Centre Museum and Hospital Complex, With Interviews by Osamwọnyi Osagiẹdẹ and Efe Jereton Mariere, and others as indicated by the School of Oriental and African Studies library listing under his name, books which are visible online and which I am only just learning about.
Such efforts as that by Ebohon contribute to the urgent need to publicize readily accessible coherent statements of what may be understand as witchcraft, its significance,pros and cons, how people may become witches or stop being witches, in a manner that members of the public can freely access and examine.
The Facebook page of the Witches and Wizards Association of Nigeria, which I discovered on reading this essay, has some valuable information on child victimization and on ethics in seeking initiation into witchcraft, but its sadly little more than another platform for political expressions, a central preoccupations of Nigerians in cyberspace. A comparison between the page and those of the Egbe Aje Iyami Aje Temple of America,described below, makes clear what is required to demonstrate a serious public presentation of a spiritual discipline.
The only other effort known to me, apart from that of Ebohon, but much more specific in relation to witchcraft as a textually presented idea, to develop African witchcraft concepts in a manner that the public can access, in terms of ideas and practices clearly spelt out and publicly propagated by a person or group of people sharing a lifestyle they describe as embodying those beliefs, is the Egbe Aje Iyami Aje Temple of America, an organization deriving inspiration from Yoruba concepts of female centred spiritual power, Awon Iyami which may be translated as "Our Mothers Arcane " and their description as aje, which bears a similarity to aspects of the witchcraft concept in the West and which I learnt about through the active promoting of this group in the work of Mercedes Morgana Bonilla, also identified in terms of her initiatic name, Iyanifa Fakinsuyil'Aje Afirimaako Iku Ladde, on Facebook, where one may also see the Egbe Aje Iyami Temple Worldwide and Egbe Aje Iyami Temple de America Facebook pages of the group.
Mercedes proudly posts on the social media site pictures of her husband, son and other family members living a fulfilling ling life as normal human beings, along with her vast collection of witchcraft materials and images and icons on female spirituality from various parts of the world, thereby indicating witchcraft in the African or African inspired context does not have to be seen in terms of the life destroying demons of African lore.
Recent literature on ideas similar to witchcraft in Africa include the books of Teresa Washington, Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Àjé in Africana Literature and The Architects of Existence: Aje in Yoruba Cosmology, Ontology, and Orature, building on the Yoruba Iyami conceptions, while older works from the same body of ideas include Hallen and Sodipo's Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy and Oyerunke Olajubu's Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere also addresses the subject, while works outside the scholarly domain but focused more on the perspective of a practitioner of Yoruba spirituality include Àràbà Ifáyẹmí Ẹlẹ́buìbọn 's The Invisible Powers of the Metaphysical World: A Peep Into the World of Witches.
To the best of my knowledge, the impact of Washington's books is primarily in the West, as in its being used as a storehouse of ideas by the Iyami Aje Temple of America, as shown by its Facebook page and that of Mercedes, even as the influence of the other scholarly productions seems centred on scholars in the field, while I understand Elebuibon as elaborating on the generally held orientation on the idea in Yorubaland.
Scholarship on witchcraft in the West, however, was central to inspiring its 20th century public discussion and its flowering as a new religious community shaped by and identified with a flood of literature and artistic forms produced by its practitioners and about them, in the context of formations of various groups practicing different kinds of witchcraft based on the founders of their central ideas, Gardnerian or Alexandrian witchcraft, for example, as well as the development of solitary, individualistic witchcraft, hedge witchery or hedgecraft, which relates chiefly to herbalism and movement between human and spirit worlds, and kitchen witchcraft, "a form of witchcraft practiced concurrently with tasks centered on the kitchen, such as cooking and baking, and making use of readily available items".
All these varieties can be traced, even if not in a direct line, to centuries of growth of beliefs and practices in Europe, which have fed some of its more vigorous literary traditions, beliefs and practices now formalized, institutionalized in some cases, and publicly presented in a manner that opens it to public examination even as the practitioners are at liberty to maintain a degree of exclusivity as they may see as relevant to a system that requires a degree of privacy.We need a similar expansion of the space of discourse, of belief and of engagement with the idea of witchcraft in Africa.
Conceptions of witchcraft, whether in the West or their equivalents in Africa and other parts of the world, may be seen as fundamental to humanity-they are not going anywhere regardless of the levels of scientific, technological and social development of a civilization.
Could such concepts not be examined for their value, contributing to removing witchcraft in Africa from the domain of superstition to that of definite knowledge, eventually doing away with the culture of victimizing people, particularly the weaker members of society such as children and old women, in the name of something which the communities in question cannot defend in a rational manner?
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