Bantu Religion + Kongo Shamanism in California
SOURCE : Report of a Kumina gathering in Jamaica
Kumina is both a religion and dance that has been retained from the African heritage. It is kept alive in St. Thomas by people who drum and dance while speaking the Bantu language of the Congo.
It is the practice of bringing down spirits of the dead to [...]
SOURCE : The Serpent as Gnostic Liberator in New Orleans Voodoo
Voodoo originated in the African kingdom of Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin). Vodu was the region of the Dahomeans. The word vodu and its various forms – voodoo, voudou, vaudau, even hoodoo – encompassed all aspects of the religion, including the gods, the cult, [...]
SOURCE : Reincarnation in African Traditional Religion
One of the ways of increasing the ancestor’s vital force is by sacrifices and prayers from the living descendants. Hence the wish of Africans to have many children who will offer sacrifices to them after death. By an inverse movement the “force” of the ancestor flows into the sacrifices [...]
In the world of Kongo witchcraft, people don’t go to a “better place” when they die, but instead linger on as powerful spirits with their own appetites and agendas, the inhabitants of a hidden realm just as vast, bewildering and morally ambiguous as our own.
SOURCE : Ndoki bueno ndoki malo: Historic and contemporary Kongo religion in the African diaspora
The religious traditions of Central Africans have been less a focus of attention than those from West Africa. Despite being often more widespread in the American diaspora, these traditions are often overlooked by academic studies or characterized as witchcraft rather than [...]
Conviction of three Angolans on child cruelty charges raised concerns about exorcism practices among some African communities
Belief in witchcraft has spread rapidly in some parts of central and southern Africa over the last few years, says Dr Richard Hoskins, senior research fellow in sociology and religion at King’s College, London.
‘Ndoki’ was said to target children [...]
SOURCE : Part ll-Bakongo In Georgia and Florida
The coiled shape of the conch shell, seen over and over again in north Florida cemeteries, sybolized to the Bakongo people the daily passage the sun makes from the world of the living into the world of the dead. But, similarly, the shell represent the circular passage the [...]
SOURCE : EPISTEMOLOGICAL DUALISM AND THE PRIMAL OTHER
That the Bantu word for being can only be performed as a copula and that within this schema the Cartesian cogito cannot be translated is probably the most radical way of stating that the essence of African ontology, usually adumbrated in the expression “I am because others are, [...]
SOURCE : Bantu Philosophy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tempels argues that the African philosophical categories can be identified through the categories inherent to language. According to Tempels, the primary metaphysical category in the thought of Bantu-speaking societies is Force. That is, reality is dynamic, and being is force… “‘Force’ is not for Bantu a necessary, [...]
SOURCE : Placide Tempels
The purpose of this website is to make available a number of documents related to the life and work of Placide Tempels, author of the widely discussed Bantu Philosophy.
