Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [196]
In a Zulu tale of the origin of death, a lizard carrying the news of death outraces a chameleon who has the message of eternal life. The chameleon arrives only to find that people have accepted the lizard’s words as the truth.
People with Special Spiritual Abilities. Magic played a major role in many traditional African religions in which the only way an average person could approach the divine was thought to be through priests or medicine men. As the historian of religion Huston Smith writes, “We can think of shamans as spiritual savants…exceptional to the point of belonging to a different order of magnitude. Subject to severe physical and emotional trauma in their early years, shamans are able to heal themselves and reintegrate their lives in ways that place psychic if not cosmic powers at their disposal. Those powers enable them to engage with spirits, both good and evil.”
These healers and shamans were usually elders and other individuals singled out for some remarkable ability, and typically were responsible for healing, divination, exorcisms, and escorting the dead to the underworld. As true of shamans in many traditions, the tribal priests of Africa usually performed in an ecstatic trance induced by dancing, drumming, chanting, or with the use of a drug or alcohol. Since there was no established church or clergy in ancient Africa, the appointment of these priests was often hereditary. Among the Masai of eastern Africa, for example, the medicine men all came from one clan.
According to Paul Devereux, an authority on ancient mysteries, “The shaman* was the person who acted as the intermediary between the tribe and the otherworlds of spirits. A shaman would heal the sick tribal members by locating their lost souls, perhaps entering the spirit world to reclaim them, or by deflecting bad spirits and invisible influences. There were also a variety of other reasons for entering the spirit realms, such as accompanying the souls of dying people or seeking information from the spirits or ancestors.”
Fetishes. Bones, carved statues, or unusual stones were thought to be inhabited by spirits and contain magical powers, but they were more closely associated with dead ancestors and seen as an integral aspect of ancestor worship in many African traditions. The word “fetish” was coined by Portuguese sailors, some of the first Europeans to encounter these figures among the Yoruba and the Dogon of western Africa. But the use of fetishes was widespread throughout Africa, and in the Congo, for instance, included elaborate, nail-studded statues called nkisi nkondi (“power figures”).
Don’t snicker if you happen to be one of those people with a “lucky coin” or a rabbit’s foot in your pocket. They are “fetishes,” too.
What role did myth play in African villages?
It may take “a village to raise a child,”* but what does it take to hold a village together? Just as the temple complexes of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the agoras of Greece, were the pulsing centers of those cultures, the African village was—and in many places, remains—the heartbeat of Africa. And the myths and stories of African tradition are the connective tissue that hold the village together.
In societies like ancient Africa, where there were no written records, myth played an important role in maintaining a sense of history and cohesion. Just as the bard provided the collective memory of the Greeks, Celts, and Norse, the African storyteller always helped unite the village with sacred stories. These storytellers weren’t mere entertainment, trotted out for a once-a-week religious service. Their performances, combining story and song, drumming and dancing, were an integral part of daily village life and helped to convey important messages