Degree in Magic

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Toyin Falola

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Oct 3, 2023, 5:58:03 PM10/3/23
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David Agogo

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Oct 3, 2023, 7:15:50 PM10/3/23
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There is need to make program offerings contemporary and timeless, so kudos to Exeter. I’d like to know if they have a focus on Repaircraft which is my positive coined matching term for the near opposite of witchcraft, which is typically evil by connotation. 



On Tue, Oct 3, 2023 at 5:58 PM Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
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Harrow, Kenneth

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Oct 3, 2023, 9:47:42 PM10/3/23
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Witchcraft is evil by connotation to a western, christian, scientific epistemology; not to most of us in the humanities who understand and reject that reading of the term. I am thinking of maybe the most significant scholar on the topic, peter geschiere, whose works, and whose field, rises above the negativity. 
I want to add that the last section of my last book, African Cinema in a Global Age, dealt largely with the elderly—with old people. Many many of the elderly were unjustly accused of witchcraft, sometime so that they might be stripped of their lands or goods, that would devolve onto their children. We all know of famous films dealing with that topic, like The Witches of Gambaga. In my section i saw these tragic figures presented often as victims but also heroic. 
I used the term trash in an earlier book so as to reverse the prejudices against african culture and film. The term witchcraft could be used in a similar manner, defiantly; not in submission to an outsider's prejudices, not in submission to a religious program that damns traditional african religious beliefs.
Ken
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Degree in Magic
 

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Oct 4, 2023, 2:31:15 AM10/4/23
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Beautiful.

Is it a degree in magic or a degree in the academic study of magic?

On Tue, Oct 3, 2023, 10:58 PM Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

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David Agogo

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Oct 4, 2023, 9:34:53 AM10/4/23
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I understand, Ken. You speak of reclaiming a term used pejoratively against the African cultural establishment. Let’s call it ‘The N word maneuver “.

Only one question as a post academic utopia pro capitalist realist, does that approach work? 

Repaircraft and witchcraft. Solves that issue. 



Harrow, Kenneth

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Oct 4, 2023, 11:00:06 AM10/4/23
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Hi david,
Solutions are often partial. It might be a question of which group of speakers we are talking about. Perhaps your focus is the general public? Even there, think about how much the terms for Black people have shifted. In my lifetime, colored and Negro (and the pejorative N word) to Afro-American to African American, and Black, as well as Afrikan.
We had Gypsy for most of my life, becoming Roma or Rom. Many other pejorative terms, or terms (like Gypsy) that became pejorative. Another is “girl” used for woman, a term that keeps shifting.
The use of Trash or Garbage Cinema became a defiant usage in Brazil, long before i played with it. Another major filmmaker who used it was John Waters, using it mostly for undermining anti-Lesbian or queer. And the term Queer itself, shifting radically from pejorative to commonplace.

In intellectual circles or arts communities the language used is often at odds with the common usage. It signifies a defiance of values, at least in my case. A way to shake up established prejudices. 

That was exactly Senghor and Damas and Cesaire’s point in settling on the term Negritude, based on the pejorative term nègre. Another long email could be written just on this fascinating choice. Irele would have had lots to say.
Ken
Sent: Wednesday, October 4, 2023 7:05:54 AM

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Oct 4, 2023, 11:50:41 AM10/4/23
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"The term witchcraft could be used in a similar manner, defiantly; not in submission to an outsider's prejudices, not in submission to a religious program that damns traditional african religious beliefs."
Ken

That is the orientation of modern Western witchcraft in relation to witchcraft ideas in Western culture, reclaiming the term in developing one of the world's fastest growing religions, according to the Wikipedia article on it, if I recall correctly.

It's true, though, that the Africans themselves have been primary aggressors against the equivalence of witchcraft beliefs in their own cultures, well before the emergence of  Western influence in the form of Christianity.

The demonization of old women seems  a common feature of pre-Christian African anti-witchcraft conceptions and similar orientations in Western history.

"Witchcraft " is an English world and is used in reference to beliefs in older African spiritualities in an effort to find  equivalences in the African languages, although it's true that significant semantic convergences can be found between Yoruba ideas of "aje" and "Iyami osoronga", for example,  those being the ones I am more acquainted with, and Western  witchcraft conceptions, correlations that incidentally embody both the older negativisation of the term in Western culture in relation to referents within the culture and the newer valorization of the term in Western thought as a feature of Western culture.

Nigerian Benin "azen" conceptions also demonstrate a similar complexity.

In a story from the Yoruba branch of Ifa, Orunmila, travelling from orun, the world of primal origins, to aye, the Earth, gives the aje a ride in his stomach, only for the ungrateful and bloodthirsty creatures to feast on his intestines during the journey.

Yet, the Ifa corpus in it's multivalence also has a story in which it is declared that the deity Oshun, erotically potent beauty and master of esoteric arts without whom the activities of other primary spiritual powers are impotent, is aje, as all women are aje.

Contemporary aje discourse struggles to reconcile these constructions which suggest, to me, orientations of different oral composers at different points in time and space, orientations eventually conflated in the culture.

I would like to learn about the inspiration and meaning of the term "repaircraft". What is being repaired and what are the tools of repair?

While eager to learn about "repaircraft", I remain excited about the positive restructuring of the term "witchcraft" beceause of it's historical freight of the uncanny, the numinous, the feminine mysterious, of reality restructurings at the intersection of the human and the non-human, just like I love the term "wizard", such fictional wizards as Gandalf of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Stephen Strange of Marvel Comics, Sylvester Turville of Lion and Thunder comics, among othe depictions, introduced me to the world of magic, inspiring my unwittingly beginning my magical career by employing Stephen Strange's spells in pretending to try to transform a fellow secondary school student into a frog, such transformations prominent in Western fairy tales at the hands of bad witches or mysterious fairies.

One of the best accounts known to me of what would be known as a witch in the Western context is Toyin Falola's account of his mentor Iya Lekuleja in his autobiographies A Mouth Sweeter than Salt and Counting the Tiger's Teeth, even though her spiritually is only incidentally aligned with that of Western witchcraft ideas, and she is not explicitly depicted in terms of "aje" and "Iyami osoronga" references in the books.

One conception of witchcraft in the modern Western sense might be a nature centred and magical spirituality, in which the witch, through employing powers innate to nature and to the human being as part of nature, seeks to  understanding and shape reality,  Leku, the short form of her name, could be understood as a witch in the modern sense .

Such a description has intercultural value in emphasizing the manner in which Falola's depiction of Leku embodies classic features of depictions spiritually powerful people outside conventional religion, the zone of activity of the witch and wizard.

For me, she joins in my thought world the succession of memorable  images of spiritually powerful women in liminal spiritual spaces, in fictional and factual depictions, the imposing naked woman Orunmila encounters in the forest, feasting on his sacrifice of uncooked animal entrails as she explains to him the hidden workings of the universe, as described in Ifa literature,  the witches of Deborah Harkness'  A Discovery of Witches, spanning ancient and modern knowledge systems in Western history as visualized in novel and film, Morgaine Le Faye of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, a positive reworking of a villain of many Arthurian narratives in terms of pre-Christian English nature spirituality, Agatha Harkness of Marvel Comics, and many more.

Thanks

Toyin


Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Oct 4, 2023, 11:50:41 AM10/4/23
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Edited

"The term witchcraft could be used in a similar manner, defiantly; not in submission to an outsider's prejudices, not in submission to a religious program that damns traditional african religious beliefs."
Ken

That is the orientation of modern Western witchcraft in relation to witchcraft ideas in Western culture, reclaiming the term in developing one of the world's fastest growing religions, according to the Wikipedia article on it, if I recall correctly.

It might be true, though, that the Africans themselves have been primary aggressors against the equivalence of witchcraft beliefs in their own cultures, well before the emergence of  Western influence in the form of Christianity.

The demonization of old women might be  a common feature of pre-Christian African anti-witchcraft conceptions and similar orientations in Western history.

"Witchcraft ", as an English word, is used in reference to beliefs in the older African spiritualities in an effort to find  equivalences in the African languages, although it's true that significant semantic convergences can be found between Yoruba ideas of "aje" and "Iyami osoronga", for example,  those being the ones I am more acquainted with, and Western  witchcraft conceptions, correlations that incidentally embody both the older negativisation of the term in Western culture in relation to referents within the culture and the newer valorization of the term in Western thought as a feature of Western culture.

Nigerian Benin "azen" conceptions also demonstrate a similar complexity.

In a story from the Yoruba branch of Ifa, Orunmila, travelling from orun, the world of primal origins, to aye, the Earth, gives the aje a ride in his stomach, only for the ungrateful and bloodthirsty creatures to feast on his intestines during the journey.

Yet, the Ifa corpus, in it's multivalence, also has a story in which it is declared that the deity Oshun, erotically potent beauty and master of esoteric arts without whom the activities of other primary spiritual powers are impotent, is aje, as all women are aje.

Contemporary aje discourse struggles to reconcile these constructions which suggest, to me, orientations of different oral composers at different points in time and space, orientations eventually conflated in the culture.

I would like to learn about the inspiration and meaning of the term "repaircraft". What is being repaired and what are the tools of repair?

While eager to learn about "repaircraft", I remain excited about the positive restructuring of the term "witchcraft" beceause of it's historical freight of the uncanny, the numinous, the feminine mysterious, of reality restructurings at the intersection of the human and the non-human, just like I love the term "wizard", such fictional wizards as Gandalf of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Stephen Strange of Marvel Comics, Sylvester Turville of Lion and Thunder comics, among othe depictions, introduced me to the world of magic, inspiring my unwittingly beginning my magical career by employing Stephen Strange's spells in pretending to try to transform a fellow secondary school student into a frog, such transformations prominent in Western fairy tales at the hands of bad witches or mysterious fairies.

One of the best accounts known to me of what would be known as a witch in the Western context is Toyin Falola's account of his mentor Iya Lekuleja in his autobiographies A Mouth Sweeter than Salt and Counting the Tiger's Teeth, even though her spiritually is only incidentally aligned with that of modern Western witchcraft ideas, and she is not explicitly depicted in terms of "aje" and "Iyami osoronga" references in the books.

One conception of witchcraft in the modern Western sense might be a nature centred and magical spirituality, in which the witch, through employing powers innate to nature and to the human being as part of nature, seeks to  understand and shape reality,  Leku, the short form of her name, could be understood as a witch in the modern Western sense .

Such a description has intercultural value in emphasizing the manner in which Falola's depiction of Leku embodies classic features of depictions of spiritually powerful people outside conventional religion, the zone of activity of the witch and wizard.

For me, she joins in my thought world the succession of memorable  images of spiritually powerful women in liminal spiritual spaces, in fictional and factual depictions, the imposing naked woman Orunmila encounters in the forest, feasting on his sacrifice of uncooked animal entrails as she explains to him the hidden workings of the universe, as described in Ifa literature,  the witches of Deborah Harkness'  A Discovery of Witches, spanning ancient and modern knowledge systems in Western history as visualized in the novel and the film, Morgaine Le Faye of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, a positive reworking of a villain of many Arthurian narratives in terms of pre-Christian English nature spirituality, Agatha Harkness of Marvel Comics, and many more.

Thanks

Toyin
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P

cornelius...@gmail.com

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Oct 4, 2023, 3:57:17 PM10/4/23
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Some of the magic of music :


Jimi Hendrix and The Band of Gypsys


Okay Temiz & Johnny Dyani : Witchdoctor's Son

Harrow, Kenneth

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Oct 4, 2023, 3:57:17 PM10/4/23
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What a wonderful reply, toyin. Many thanks. Here is a footnote on this: when i first came to cameroon in 1977, i had some students over to my apartment, and as they opened up to me and my wife wife liz, one student mentioned his bitterness that when the christian teachers and authorities came to cameroon, they told the non-believers that their ancestors were burning in hell. He was bitter over that. I never forgot it, either. 
I cannot imagine any religious authority saying to other people such a horrible thing, and yet that was the common notion that accompanied colonialism, colonial discourse. 

Of course many people accepted that; and the same rhetoric is used to burn witches today in africa. This certain needs “repairing” in any way possible
Ken
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 4, 2023 11:01:27 AM
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David Agogo

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Oct 4, 2023, 5:42:11 PM10/4/23
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Fascinating replies and education on the subject. 

The coinage of repaircraft is yet to be formal enough for me to attempt a clear definition of it in the company of this rich scholarship on Aje, witching and wizardry. Further study is needed. 

However, repaircraft will have to do with building the sort of barriers against witchcraft or its outcomes that empowers individuals against witching and its negative effects. Regular human evil which is carried out daily may also require repaircraft barriers. The role of Santeria as a means to managing mental health in the communities that practice it heavily comes to mind. Or consider the production of protective spells which may repair the effects that witchcraft, in its normal practice, creates. 



Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Oct 5, 2023, 8:06:32 AM10/5/23
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Thanks David,  Ken and Cornelius.

When reference is made to repairing the effect that " witchcraft, in it's normal practice creates" I wonder how that normative summation is arrived at.

Who are these witches and how does one ascertain what they do and how they do it?

In my exposure to witchcraft ideas in Nigeria, to those from  other parts of Africa about which I admittedly have much less exposure and to pre-modern witchcraft ideas, from the West, I consider those beliefs to be largely superstition. A lot of smoke but little fire.

I'm of the view that of the  witchcraft beliefs known to me, the only ones  representing significant factuality are those of  modern Western witchcraft, the history, central figures, variants, beliefs and  practices of which are well documented since Gerald Gardner's founding of Wicca after the 20th century repeal of the English Witchcraft Act, which had banned calling anyone, including oneself, a witch, thereby contributing to stemming the horrible witchcraft persecutions that had erupted in Europe, resonating with those in the US, most infamous of which are the Salem Witch Trials. 

That illegalization of witchcraft talk and growing Western modernity put an end to the pre-modern witchcraft belief culture in England, enabling Gardner's creation of Wicca, his version of what may be called modern Western witchcraft, and it's explosive growth into varied but ultimately correlative schools, in which the misogynistic orientations and negative images of old women that often characterized pre-modern Western witchcraft beliefs are replaced by female valorizing spirituality in the unity of men and women and a valorization  of the  female life cycle in terms of the image of the maiden, the mother and the crone, each stage in that cycle representing a unique stage of maturation ultimately leading to a synergistic unity.

The second movement that may be seen as gradually developing a coherent and clearly trackable development of a correlative body of beliefs to witchraft is the development of Yoruba aje/Iyami spirituality in the Americas by Yoruba spirituality devotees who, realizing the tremendous power in the constellation of varied and possibly contradictory ideas it represents in it's original oral renditions, are working at distliing the insights they suggest and creating a workable system from it. 

The Yoruba spirituality devotees in the Americas are taking a lead in this, likely beceause they are freeer from the traditional fears attending such beliefs on account of their own Western location, the combination of location within Western modernity and assimilation of traditional Yoruba beliefs enabling their greater freedom. 

Mercedes Morgana Bonilla/Reye's  efforts along these lines demonstrates it's challenges and promise.

Do iyami/aje exist? If so, what's their mode of existence? How is the human women/Oshun female deity/ aje conjunction to be understood? How should the combination of destructively bloodthirsty aje characterizations, complemented by their paradoxical interpretation in terms of maternality( "awon iya wa" "our mothers") to be interpreted?

Mercedes, a name implying Latino identity, where it seems Yoruba spirituality might be very strong, combined a grounding in Iyami aje lore,  sensitivity to modern Western witchcraft and a powerful artistic culture, in creating an Iyami aje initiation system, fed by a superb network of Facebook accounts, rich in images of related traditional Yoruba spiritual cultures, such as Gelede, centred on Iyami, and an eclectic selection of images from various cultures, including her own art, in creating an imagistic kaleidoscope of the mysterious and the fascinating,  constituting what may be seen as her own prism into the Iyami aje universe, a picturation ultimately given focus by  compelling images of herself in action in the Iyami aje initiation grove she had created.

This structure began to crumble on accusation of her having plagiarized Teresa Washington's books on Iyami aje, books coming out of Washington's University of Ife PhD on the subject, Our Mother's, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Aje in Africana Literature and The Architects of Existence, books that deeply valorized traditional Yoruba Iyami aje lore, Our Mothers, for example,  describing gory images of Iyami feasting on human parts, as depictions of a form of creative justice by iyami, within the context of their role as generative and creatively punitive powers of the cosmos, an orientation I understand as more of an effort to subsume misogynistic orientations within a positive frame than frontally confronting the constitution of Iyami aje lore by different voices that need distengangling in relation to the question of the degree to which the composers of those oral narratives are reporting facts and the degree to which they are engaging in imaginative construction and the degree of coherence between these diverse voices as well as the question of what use can be made of this diversity of images, an assessment that has made it difficult for me to complete reading Our Mothers, even though I will need to read it all and also read Architects.

 Both books are very rich in Iyami aje literature, their power amplified by Washington's analyses, a treasure of knowledge Mercedes could be argued as having drawn upon without giving credit to her source, while also seeming to claim direct link with human iyami aje in Nigeria, while such self identifications can't be said to exist in Yorubaland, her methods of making this claim as well as accusations of prioritizing money for initiation fees over follow up training, in addition to the accusation of plagiarism leading to her withdrawing from her Iyami aje activities, as far as I can see on Facebook, her primary public platform.

A sad development bcs she had correctly grasped the elements of developing a coherent spirituality  from a largely unsynthesized background and could have honestly acknowledged her sources, avoided making unrealistic claims of legitimacy and instead simply presented herself as inspired by an ancient, esoteric  tradition, hitherto understood only in confused and partly garbled form within which some illuminations yet shine, a hidden wisdom which she was giving open, exoteric shape for the first time by drawing on various exoteric sources, inspired as she was by her communication with the unseen spiritual presences of Iyami or more prosaically and more basically factual, simply describe herself as inspired by Yoruba Iyami aje lore in giving concrete shape to the spirituality.

Others, such as Ayele Kumari, also develop varied interpretation of Iyami, Kumaris's being striking in it's interpretive  expansiveness and correlation with other female centred spiritualities from various cultures, if I recall correctly, but I am not aware of anyone trying to create Iyami aje initiations, such initiations, however, being possibly a necessary step in developing a vitalistic spirituality, in which the human person aspires to share more intimately in the nature of spirit and it's privileged embodiments.

Thanks

Toyin




Harrow, Kenneth

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Oct 5, 2023, 4:42:55 PM10/5/23
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Thanks a lot toyin for your thoughts on iyami aje. I know nothing of these modern practices, and it is pretty wonderful to see your open mindedness about new directions.
I want to imagine that the traditional, conventional, old ways of yoruba or igbo or other practices have shifted and changed over space and time. You are looking at their spirituality, and that gives you an enormous comparative field to consider, which i’ve seen you doing over and over. Admirably.

The peter geschiere books i’ve read are quite different; not about spirituality, or about the historically wretched history of proselytizers or missionaries (mostly christian, but at time muslim as well) that posited their god/allah as true and other people’s god or gods as false. Geschiere looks at the modern political systems, their intercalation with economic issues, and ways that people are shaped by the drive to enrich themselves, at times by claiming to be witches, or by accusing others of witchcraft. 
He wrote The Modernity of Witchcraft,  and Witchcraft, Intimacy and Trust (a really wonderful study), that i thoroughly recommend. It focuses on his area of study, southeast cameroon. It would be of some interest to compare it with nigeria; but also ghana where i read another book dealing with the very widespread practice people had of making small payments of protection money against evil practitioners.

Lastly, i hope people are still somewhat familiar with sembene's films that were generally infused with the images of debunking charlatanism (sembene was a marxist, also debunked religion and the practitioners or believers--until we get to the wonderful imam in guelwaar). His film Ceddo, about the nefarious imam who brought islam to senegal was banned by senghor.
Ken
Sent: Wednesday, October 4, 2023 9:05:47 PM
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cornelius...@gmail.com

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Oct 6, 2023, 3:32:43 AM10/6/23
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Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,


That’s quite an interesting discussion unfolding between you, Kenneth Harrow, and David Agogo. 


And where does superstition fit into the scheme of things ?


#  Magic is explicitly forbidden in the Torah


# According to the Hebrew Bible,  Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live


# Vayikra 20:27 (  Leviticus 20:27) is also explicit about the death penalty for that kind of practice. Paradoxically, some of Jesus’s opponents accused him of being a wizard


It’s not clear whether or not the so-called “New Testament” abrogated those laws found in The Tanakh and whether or not Paul & Co had the authority to do so , had the authority to abrogate anything at all; which does not mean that there are no modern day apologists, pleading innocence on behalf of witches, witchcraft, magic, Beelzebub, and wizardry. 


However, nota bene with regard to time past and the future and /or no time at all,

 The Almighty Himself is referred to as “The Ancient of Days” 


So,  I have kept away from magic,  as far away as possible. I know that there have been people like Franz Bardon, and you have occasionally mentioned  Aleister Crowley ( I read his novel “Moonchild” and that was more than enough


I don’t know whether or not you have jumped from the crucible or frying pan of theory into the scorching fire of practise in which case my question to you as to whether in your opinion/ experience there's a tenuous relationship between magic and witchcraft will be answered from the vantage point of first hand  experience and not mere hearsay 


“We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.” ( Marcus Garvey ) 

I intuit that Atiku will soon be writing to Congress or bribe-ing his scribe to do so for him.


We blame so much on colonialism / mental slavery, post-traumatic stress caused by various forms of mismanagement and oppression - of relevance: I have been listening to this lecture: Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary: Post Traumatic Slave Disorder

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Oct 6, 2023, 3:32:44 AM10/6/23
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Thanks for these expansive insights Ken.

Will keep Geschiere in mind.

Thanks

Toyin


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