African Traditional Religions: Functionaries

Sources

Religious and Political Leaders. The heads of the West African traditional religions are often powerful kings. Among the Yoruba, for example, the Ooni of Ile-Ife in Nigeria, the traditional religious center of the Yoruba people, is believed to be the political as well as spiritual head of all the Yoruba. The Yoruba religions trace the common origins of their beliefs to the same god, who is believed to have created the first humans. The secret power of all creation, the fount of divine knowledge, is invested in the Yoruba sacred book, the verses used in Ifa divination. The Ooni is considered an authoritative guardian of the Ifa, including the clerical system. A similar hierarchical system also existed among the Fon and the Igbo . The high priest of Vodon, Da Ayido Hwedo, is also the political leader of the Fon people. Among the Igbo , where monarchies are rare, the Onyishi, the oldest member of the council of elders, is also invested with religious authority. In consultation with the council, the Onyishi sets the religious calendar for the community and ensures that the necessary sacrifices are made at the appropriate times. The Onyishi is thus regarded as the religious and spiritual father of his clan or the village, and as such he is responsible for its political and spiritual welfare. He is also obligated to attend all public religious ceremonies.

Priests. Priests are regarded as intermediaries between other humans and specific deities. A priest serves a particular god or spirit and watches over the behavior and needs of its adherents. An elder member of a lineage group may be the priest of the clan’s ancestral cult. A secret society may have its own priest, and a priest may also serve the guardian spirit of a compound or village. Yoruba Babalawo and Igbo Dibia serve both as doctors and as ascertainers of the unknown. They employ magical techniques to determine the causes of misfortune, illness, or death, and they sometimes call on spirits to give them knowledge about a life situation or guidance in the execution of an important office. Their magical techniques often involve the “throwing” of objects such as bones or beads and “reading” a message from the patterns in which they fall. Another form of divination involves killing a chicken and examining its entrails to obtain the information sought. In some cases diviners also have extensive knowledge of herbal remedies, which they use in treating illnesses. Divination often requires rigorous training—sometimes up to ten or fifteen years. In some societies women diviners serve as midwives, using their herbal knowledge and magical resources in the promotion of conception, the treatment of infertility or other ailments, and the delivery of babies.

Rainmakers. Other important functionaries include the rainmakers. In agrarian societies, where rain is important for good crops, the rainmakers’ task is to use their herbal and magical knowledge not only to insure sufficient rainfall throughout the year but also to stop the rains if flooding threatens. Their services may also be called on to help a patron who has scheduled an important outdoor function, such as a coronation, funeral, or wedding ceremony. Rainmakers seek to manipulate the environment in meteorologically consequential ways (such as burning wood) or through more occult techniques involving sacrifices to a god or spirit thought to bring rain or stop rain. These activities may be performed at shrines, but most often they take place in the location threatened by drought or flooding.

Sources

Wade Abimbola, ed. and trans., Ifa Divination Poetry (New York: NOK, 1977).

Andrew Apter, Black Critiques and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

Ulli Beier, ed., The Origin of Life and Death:African Creation Myths (London: Heinemann, 1966).

Norman R. Bennett, Africa and Europe: From Roman Times to National Independence, second edition (New York: Africana, 1975).

Herbert M. Cole, Mbari: Art and Life among the Owerri Igbo (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982).

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J. B. Danquah, The Akan Doctrine of God: A Fragment of Gold Coast Ethics and Religion, second edition (London: Cass, 1968).

Basil Davidson, West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A History to 1850 (London & New York: Longman, 1998).

Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origins of Civilization: Myth or Reality, translated by Mercer Cook (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1974).

Diop, Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology, translated by Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi, edited by Harold J. Salemson and Marjolijn de Jager (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Lawrence Hill, 1991).

Diop, Precolonial Black Africa: A Comparative Study of the Political and Social Systems of Europe and Black Africa, from Antiquity to the Formation of Modern States, translated by Salemson (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1987).

Jacob U. Egharevba, The City of Benin, Benin Law and Custom, Some Stories of Ancient Benin, [and] Some Tribal Gods of Southern Nigeria (Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprints, 1971).

Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, Le Mythe Cosmogonique (Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie, 1965).

Joseph E. Harris, Africans and Their History, second edition, revised (New York: Meridian, 1998).

Constance B. Hilliard, Intellectual Traditions of Pre-Colonial Africa (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998).

John Iliffe, Africans: The History of a Continent (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Edmund Ilogu, Christianity andIgbo Culture (Leiden: Brill, 1974).

Arthur Glyn Leonard, The Lower Niger and Its Tribes (London & c New York: Macmillan, 1906).

John Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion (London: Heinemann, 1975).

John D. Murphy and Harry Goff, A Bibliography of African Languages and Linguistics (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1969).

P. Amaury Talbot, Life in Southern Nigeria: The Magic, Beliefs, and Customs of the ibibio Tribe (London: Macmillan, 1923).

Rems Nna Umeasiegbu, The Way We Lived: Ibo Customs and Stories (London: Heinemann, 1969).