A personal reaction to the Chief Rabbi of Israel referring to Black People as "Monkeys"

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

I had always thought that " Kushi" was interchangeable with "Nigger" 

Bearing in mid this phase of the discussion about NIGERIA'S LITERATE ZOMBIES :

"Reduced to its essentials racism is one person or people using their power and privilege to deny or recognise the full humanity of another person or people because of a feeling of inherent  superiority rationalised by religion, culture or even pseudoscience." Zalanga

Good try- but you have to add another component in your definition: the  physical,

"biological"  component. In Apartheid South Africa you could have the same religion and culture but your skin colour  and physical appearance determined whether or not you would be included  in the club. That history is too recent to be  falsified and forgotten. In the US  segregation also followed that line. It still applies to some extent. Ethno- regionalism is discriminatory, and should not be tolerated,  but it is not synonymous with racism. ( Professor Gloria Emeagwali, Professor of History)

# Chief Rabbi of Israel refers to Black people as monkeys

This is a very serious matter and should be taken seriously by

We the people who are darker than blue . I am being very kind here and not at all aggressive ( like HAMAS or Islamic Jihad) ; I could have approached the whole matter very differently. In any case, I have now taken a few steps closer to Baba Kadiri's position about religion, especially organised religion , tempered by what a dear friend ( Jewish) wrote to me recently, about Jörgen I Eriksson's book review of which he said,

” Like Rabbi Abulafia, I am against the practice of magic. I think man's first duty is to find his divine Self, in silent meditation, without trying to grasp anything. Just be, watch inside and feel. No books are needed for that, no rituals, no dogmas” To which I replied, “ Yes indeed, magic is strictly forbidden.”

( I'm a little cautious about magic, considering the first part of Aleister Crowley's / takes on magic , his definition of magic as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will" for which reason I have never said the 12th Blessing of the Amidah with total intentionality of the heart because I don't know which of my near and dear including my own dear self, could fit in to that category. The 12^th Blessing goes, “ As for the slanderers, let there be no hope, and may all wickedness perish in an instant, and may all Your enemies be cut down speedily, the wanton sinners, may you speedily uproot, smash , cut down and humble, speedily in our days, Blessed are You HASHEM, Who breaks enemies and humbles wanton sinners.” ( As to will, I remember listening to Guru Maharaji in Copenhagen in 1973 , in semi-deep meditation , but his voice was droning on and at a certain point my irritation increased and eventually a bolt lightning flashed from my forehead and temporarily stopped him in his tracks ( I think that he just took some of that my energy ( smile)

My friends final word on magic : “It is not a question of forbidding anything. It is simply unimportant  - a waste of time - compared to the main thing : feeling the presence of the divine within you.” Well, well well, some people ( I suppose all the rabbis included) have been stationed there for quite a while , even while doing a lot of wrongs

The Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel who ought to know better, referring to Black People as “monkeys” is an insult and a matter of great concern to any Black People who would otherwise take him seriously, not just the Black politicians, from South Africa, through Nigeria to Libya from the United States to China. Does this not just give more grist to the mill of those who talk about an “apartheid Israel”? Do such disgusting and wholly unhelpful words not increase racism and antisemitism in the world ? For just a moment, imagine the kinds of fireworks you would hear from all quarters, if (God forbid) His Holiness the Pope ( Francis) or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Supreme Leader of Iran (God double forbid) or the Mufti of Mecca or the King of Saudi Arabia were to say such a terrible thing?

Well, here is the very last sermon of the prophet of Islam : in which he said,

“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor does a black have any superiority over a white except by piety and good action.“

Yes, I know all about Kiddush Hashem, but the chief rabbi's remarks leads even the heathen to ask, “ Is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob a racist?” Many people are aghast at the rabbi's remarks, are still reeling in shock and wondering, is that what his GOD , the creator of Adam and Eve told him, that Black people are “monkeys”, or is this a man- made judgement to be found in his holy books, the Torah and Talmud? Is the chief rabbi a monkey or a human being? Am I a monkey?

During the much demented and regretted and regrettable Shoah/ Holocaust, people (the suffering servant of Isaiah 53) were identified and then dragged to the gas ovens to be crucified, en masse. The emphasis is PEOPLE , not animals...

Was it not King Solomon (who built the temple) that said in his Song of Songs, “I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem ?

השְׁחוֹרָ֤ה אֲנִי֙ וְֽנָאוָ֔ה בְּנ֖וֹת יְרֽוּשָׁלָ֑יִם כְּאָֽהֳלֵ֣

קֵדָ֔ר כִּֽירִיע֖וֹת שְׁלֹמֹֽה:

“I am black but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem! Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon.”

אַל־תִּרְאֻ֨נִי֙ שֶֽׁאֲנִ֣י שְׁחַרְחֹ֔רֶת שֶׁשְּׁזָפַ֖תְנִי 

הַשָּׁ֑מֶשׁ בְּנֵ֧י אִמִּ֣י נִֽחֲרוּ־בִ֗י שָׂמֻ֨נִי֙ נֹֽטֵרָ֣ה 

אֶת־הַכְּרָמִ֔ים כַּרְמִ֥י שֶׁלִּ֖י לֹ֥א נָטָֽרְתִּי:

“Do not look upon me [disdainfully] because I am swarthy, for the sun has gazed upon me; my mother's sons were incensed against me; they made me a keeper of the vineyards; my own vineyard I did not keep.”

https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16445

Victor Jara : El Arado ( in Spanish ) Nice lyrics about being black

Cornelis Vreeswijk : Plogen  ( in Swedish), ditto

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Correlating Abraham Abulafia and Aleister Crowley at the Intersection of Magic and Mysticism

Thanks for the sublime evocations here, Cornelius, particularly the fine blog you linked to and the  supposed distinction between magic and mysticism, particularly an inwardly contemplative mysticism, since mysticism can also be outwardly contemplative, your post invoking the great names of the Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia and  the Western mystical magician Aleister Crowley: 

” Like Rabbi Abulafia, I am against the practice of magic. I think man's first duty is to find his divine Self, in silent meditation, without trying to grasp anything. Just be, watch inside and feel. No books are needed for that, no rituals, no dogmas” To which I replied, “ Yes indeed, magic is strictly forbidden.”

( I'm a little cautious about magic, considering the first part of Aleister Crowley's / takes on magic , his definition of magic as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will"

...

My friends final word on magic : “It is not a question of forbidding anything. It is simply unimportant  - a waste of time - compared to the main thing : feeling the presence of the divine within you.” 

Divergence and Convergence of Magic and Mysticism in the Western Esoteric Tradition 

An absolute distinction between magic and mysticism, the latter described in those lines as finding the divine Self within one, would not exist if one were to better understand the scope of magic, in the Western tradition, to which Crowley is central, and in Tibetan Buddhism and Tantric Hinduism, to mention  spiritual traditions of related aims and methods.

    Crowley as Mystical Magician

As is evident from his descriptions of his goals and methods in his autobiography, in his poem "The Legend of the Serpent, Hummingbird and the Ibis" in his Book of the Heart Girt With a Serpent, as Israel Regardie interprets this poem in his  The Tree of Life: A Study in Magic, Crowleys'  depiction in his autobiography of his experience with a ritual he helped to make famous, The ritual of the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, his opening summations on Yoga in his magnum opus Magick, Liber ABA, Book 4,  along with the ideas of such a relative contemporary as Dion Fortune and the Golden Dawn school from which they both drew inspiration, the GD being the foundations of Crowley's magical training,  Crowley was fundamentally what is better known as a mystical magician, the 'change' he referenced in his definition of magic being fundamentally change in consciousnesses, shifts or transformations in perception  enabling the magician gain awareness of and work with entities beyond the scope of conventional knowing, from nature spirits or elementals to angels and demons, contrastive but correlative aspects of existence, culminating in an intimate relationship with the divine aspect of the self, which Crowley, using the Abramelin language, describes as the Holy Guardian Angel.

As Fortune is at pains to point out in such books as The Training and Work of an Initiate, Sane Occultism and Applied Magic, what the mystic strives to achieve through contemplation alone, as described in your quote, is also pursued by the mystical magician, although she does not conjoin the two terms, focusing her analysis on describing magic as centred in the use of tools, whether imaginative, verbal or physical, or all working in tandem, enabling expansion of perception of and of relationships with various forms of being, climaxing in the integration of everyday consciousnesses and the divine consciousness represented by the essence of the self, what she calls the divine spark.

The purely contemplative mystic, on the other hand, centres themself in  what one perspective describes as a relationship between  the 'alone', the human being, and the 'Alone', God. 

   The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram as a Facilitator of Mystical Contemplation

Ironically, within the scope of my exposure to various mystical and magical systems, one of the best methods I have encountered for creating the contemplative frame of mind priceless to contemplative immersion in oneself so as to listen to the inward rhythms your quote evokes is a foundational Golden Dawn ritual, the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram particularly as it is lucidly explained in  Regardie's  Tree of Life,  one, which, in harmony with Crowley's celebration of the ritual, may be seen as integrating the totality of the mystical quest within the framework of the Kabbalistic cosmology to which Abulafia is central, a ritual that projects the unity of  the wholeness represented by the essence of being and the disjunctions demonstrated by material reality, the latter exemplified by the moral fragmentation expressed by human society and the coexistence of creativity and destruction in nature, an aspiration for wholeness at the core of strategic achievement  of Isaac Luria  as Kabbalistic theorist.

The Pentagram ritual pursues this unification  through visualizing and enacting through a few simple actions the unity of cosmic structure and the human form represented by the cosmographic and anthropomorphic interpretations of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the image of the cosmos as a tree, its roots in the Unknowable, Ain Soph, its branches the expressions of that transcendental plenitude in terms of the correlative variations that constitute the structure of the cosmos and its crown in the convergence of these possibilities in the material cosmos, Malkuth, the primary point of awareness represented by the terrestrial existence within which this cosmological scheme is developed.

   The Tree of Life as Cross-Cultural Cosmic Picture

This picture I have drawn inverts the conventional depiction of the crown of the Kabbalistic cosmic tree as being the Unknowable, Ain Soph, and the roots as the material universe, Malkuth, but I wonder if that conventional picture does not obscure the clarity and force of an image  based on the ready accessibility of the logic of nature imagery represented by the fact that the life of a tree is ultimately sustained by its roots though the leaves play a central role in the synthesis of light and water that sustains the tree as it draws nutrients from the earth.

The abstractions in terms of which the Kabbalistic Tree of Life is developed are better appreciated as one end of a spectrum ranging from the earthy and concrete, the origin of the image in ancient observation and veneration of trees across cultures, a motif evident in   African cosmological tree motifs as described in John Mbiti's African Religions and Philosophy, for example  to the tree with its sixteen branches as big as houses, under which the students of Orunmila, the founder of the Yoruba origin Ifa knowledge system saw him sitting under at the conclusion of their journey from earth, aye, to orun, the world of metaphysical origins, the number of the tree's branches constituting the sixteen fundamental  divisions of cosmic possibility  known as odu ifa,   as described in Wande Abimbola's An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus, to an image of the cosmic tree in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita to what is perhaps the most  elaborate development  of the more imagistically concrete and narrative visualization of this image,   the Norse Yggdrasil, at the roots of which are Mimer, the well of well of wisdom and the three Norns representing past , present and future who spin the threads of human life, its branches the structures of existence on which the god Odin hung for days in ritual ordeal after sacrificing an eye into the well of Mimer in order to gain supernal wisdom, from this transformative experience developing the runes which are a central code for gaining esoteric knowledge in Norse culture, if I recall correctly the account of the mythic origin of the runes.

Representing related conjunctions of the magical and the mystical, the shamanistic and the contemplative, the signal magical initiatives of Crowley's career, actions his theorisation and execution of which presaged or inspired later developments in Western magic, such as his dogged work on the Abramelin ritual, his account of invoking  the demon Choronzon in the Sahara Desert, both described in his autobiography,  were pursued in aid of his mystical quest, the Abramelin ritual meant to culminate in intimate relationship with the aspect of the self that mediates between the individual and the divine, the Holy Guardian Angel  , the Choronzon invocation described as a means of gaining knowledge of the  chaotic conditions represented by the Abyss, an intermediary  zone of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life in the formulation Crowley worked with,  a zone that constitutes the division between the ultimate spheres of  existence, the primary manifestations of the ultimate creator, and the sequence of creation  consummated or culminating in the  material plane.

Western magical schools coming after Crowley's seminal labours have either either fragmented the holistic vision he pursued, such as cultivating relationships with the demons meant to be invoked by the magician after reaching the climatic point of the Abramelin invocation in order to seal the ritual, relating with these demons as a means to achieve goals unrelated to the primary purpose of the ritual, the ensuing literature rich in accounts of cautionary tales from such endeavours, or taken such transgressive spiritualities to new heights centered in mystical goals, such as the occult order Dragon Rouge's development of a demon centred mysticism, relating with the demons described as the opposite side, the qlippoth, of the divine structures of the cosmos, the sefirot,  as conceived in the adaptation of Jewish Kabbalah known as  Western or Hermetic Kabbalah, these demons embodying and ruling over the opposites of the divine centres embodied and ruled over by angels, in the name of understanding, equilibrating and transcending the chaotic aspects of the self to which the demons and their metaphysical domains are related, reaching beyond the limitations of conventional cosmology, "the ideal order in religion and myths", as described in the group's website,  to 'the dark side representing the "wild overgrown infinity thatr hides behind the limits of order",  climaxing in a form of the divinisation of the self, as its founder Thomas Karlsson develops its central ideas engagingly in  conceptions  arising from his PhD thesis-correlations of  magical practice  and scholarly culture based on formal education being also highlighted by Crowley's example, his work benefiting significantly from his experimental BA at Cambridge, studying modern literature at a time when that was unconventional in England, along with a grounding in classics, these literary and philosophical cultures shaping his magical work-or relating with Lucifer or Satan, described as the prince of demons,through such contemplative, almost mystical spiritualities as in one approach to  Satanism, to more aggressive, more basically magical forms of Satanism, developments summed up by Neville Drury in Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic. 

   Demonic Mysticism as a Form of Mystical Magic

The example of Dragon Rouge represents what may be seen as an extreme form of the convergence of mysticism and magic, trying to take advantage, not only of such predecessors as Crowley in his boundary breaking magical experimentation but of such speculative fiction as the work of Howard Philips Lovecraft, an absolute master  in dramatizing the tension between the allure of the metaphysical unknown and the dread of encountering possibilities beyond the capacity of the mind to cope with, summing up the exhilarating bleakness  of his fantastic magical universe in the opening  of his story "The Call of Chthulhu" :

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden aeons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things—in this case an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor. I hope that no one else will accomplish this piecing out; certainly, if I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous a chain. I think that the professor, too, intended to keep silent regarding the part he knew, and that he would have destroyed his notes had not sudden death seized him". 

Dragon Rouge valorises knowledge depicted in such terms representing the shattering of the certitudes of conventional mysticism, though not necessarily literally in terms of how Lovecraft works out his vision in his stories.

 

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Toyin Adepoju,

Many thanks!

At a first glance when I saw the length of your commentary I thought that live and direct the dear rabbi was in for an extended Black Power verbal lashing in addition to some unholy voodoo juju denunciations from an Ifa priest, transmitted in time and place cyberspace, through you, some kind of I Am A Cowboy In The Boat Of Ra

It's just that some of the “holy” people , and among the circumcised, the holier-than-thou who believe that God has only spoken to them, have the tendency that the rest of physical humanity are living on a much lower spiritual plane, hence the spiritual Tarzan's idea of monkeys ..

In this he is not alone. For example, there was a time when I sincerely understood Quran : al-An`am 6:91 to mean “Say “Allah” and leave them to their idle chatter “ ( like the idle chatter of monkeys) and I know that you are about to remonstrate , “But to characterise Noble African people as “monkeys”?

Now, the Chief Rabbi in question Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef is the son of the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who was also not a stranger to controversy . Very important : We should take note that for saying what he said about Black people he was called to order by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis of the UK who I have been following on Facebook since he took over from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who as everybody knows, could never use the monkey epithet about a fellow human being (although I don't know what kind of derogatory nouns and adjectives he could have in reserve for e. g. Saddam Hussein

All said and done, that kind of zealous language sometimes goes over the top , just as you will hear Muslims the world over ritually looking down on “the kuffar”, will think that the Rasta-man is “lost”. So, my Pakistani friend will insist that the Hindus are irredeemable polytheists who worship cows and drink their urine religiously as a sacrament and a medicine. What kinds of names do you not think that Palestinians and Muslims gave Netanyahu and his countrymen, during their latest little war with Hamas, in Gaza? I was once explaining the meaning of my son's name Nathanael to the prayer leader at the Mosque at 146 Park Road in London when he branched out, grabbed my arm and conspiratorially, expecting perfect agreement, said, “Whereas Netanyahu, is the gift of the devil, isn't he !”

In Sierra Leone, there are members of one tribe who call members of another tribe “Cannibals” ( Vegetarians eat vegetables and humanitarians eat other human beings? )

And what do you think that the irate Zionists say about the Jihadists every time there is a terrorist attack in Israel? “ Animals !” (of course) , and most times, figuratively speaking, something much stronger or lower than the evolutionary status of “monkeys”.

Take this as a perfect example of innocuous, intentional language : “I noticed a particular trend growing in this group. Roughly, it goes like this:
Person 1 NT is false.
Person 2. Can you prove Torah isn't false? 
Person 1. What?
Person 2. We must cover all bases. What evidence do you have that Torah is true?
Why this is occurring is irrelevant. 
The fact is, if the axiom of the group "Torah vs New Testament" isn't "Torah" is the starting point and all must flow from it, then this group has become just another religious discussion group. Then it will just be a matter of time before atheists, Muslims, Hindus and everyone else will feel free to add their 2 cents. Personally, it doesn't matter to me which direction this group goes. As the old saying goes, "It's not my circus and they're not my monkeys.” (https://www.facebook.com/groups/431887316884852/

More seriously, to the rest of your erudite concerns, I'm afraid that I am not and have never been a practitioner of “ magic” by whatever definition ( such as the miracle of turning water into wine or gross metal into gold ( not even in the alchemist's sense) When I was in the third form of secondary school we had a classmate by the name of Edward During who sometimes entertained us with his magic arts when we had a free period; from two white chicken eggs he would producer a couple of pound notes and Leone notes from under a handkerchief, from under his hat or from just thin air. The class was thrilled. He would say, “ Appear One! Appear two ! “ - and voila - Pounds notes ( Sterling ) probably from the Bank of England or the Central Bank of Sierra Leone and in those days two Sierra Leone Leones were going for £1 ( Sterling). I don't know what happened with the money. If only he could have produced more of them from nothing, then we would all still be rich. (This is the year we spent 18 months in the third form as the school year was being adjusted from January – December to September - June ( needless to say, the guys who were in the fifth form and in Upper Sixth achieved remarkable results by spending such a long time preparing for their O and A levels.) Apart from that I have witnessed some really horrifying Nigerian magic shows with tongues being cut out and thrown into the air. And quite a few illusionists in various parts of the European continent., Merry England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales...

In my early days in Stockholm I knew some astrologists such as Gabriel Marcel, Gunnar Ankoff , studied a little of Hindu Astrology but have never been interested in the occult. And nowadays , perhaps the most informed occultist I know ( I dare not give his name) and I believe that he is a disciple of Franz Bardon

Toyin, I am more of a practical person; I guess that it's just as you say the prerequisites for your occult pursuit would be the kind of visualisation practised in Tibetan Buddhism and the breathing and ideation of Yoga and other Sufi disciplines. I'm no good at theory - hell, I only learned on Friday that when I don't play with a plectrum, I have more of a flamenco approach to the guitar as the guy at the shop told me on Friday in his desperate attempt to shield his precious five thousand dollar Spanish concert guitar from any scratches when he came rushing over at the first sound of my attention seeking, opening e-minor flourish ( last week when he came rushing over, I had thought, racism ! So I'm getting a pedagogue to teach my grandson the rudiments of guitar, the classical way so that he does not have to evolve from Soukous etc my ( unconventional) way...

Apart from reading his Moonstone many decades ago, I know next to nothing about Crowley and I'm not really interested in endless theoretical postulations and explanations about drinking water - which means that much of what you have said and is too difficult to comprehend and will have to go unread. Can't strain my brain. I daresay that by Crowley's looks alone he certainly fits into one of Lombroso's criminal if not Satanic categories, especially when he says, “ I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff”. Like some politicians So, I would be very careful, if I were you, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju.

About these matters, for me the last word is Faith and Folly : The Occult in Torah Perspective by the illuminated Rabbi Yaʻaḳov Mosheh Hilel

PS. At the Mile One Market in Port Harcourt, I was amazed at the extent of the interest shown in the occult  : Seals of Solomon, special chalks , pentagrams, incenses, holy waters, talismanic crucifixes  ledaing to the quesdtion which you have also heard before : Why don't Africans  harness some of this " Supernatural" power for material development ?

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Thanks, Cornelius.

That essay was written significantly for my own benefit. Its a way of integrating my own understanding for later sharing. Ideas I hope to build on later.

I did not comment on the rabbi who forgot the murderous  demonisation of his people across the centuries in Europe, climaxing in the Holocaust, bcs I saw you as doing justice to it. You have reinforced that conviction with your latest comments. 

Magic, in its cognitive and spiritualist sense, as different from stage magic, of which I am not informed,  is not as recondite as may be believed. Such magic, particularly the Western variety and its convergence with  practices in various religions,   rests on foundations in daily human activity. 

Imagination, verbal affirmations, intuition, creativity, make believe,  the intersection of the inhabiting of alternative realities enabled by art in harmony with the discrimination between aspects of reality, may be seen as summing up this form of magic.

 'When does shrewdness become intuition and  intuition become vision?', as Western magical theorist Dion Fortune would ask on the blending of conventional and unconventional perceptions of reality. 

In this context, a lot of creativity, particularly in the arts, is a form of magic. Some of the best texts on magical theory and practice are works of imaginative literature, particularly from the West, fantasy children's literature being amongst my favorites along these lines.

Crowley does much sensationalist talk about the devil, even calling himself the Beast 666, the incarnation of the enemy of God in the Biblical book, Revelations, but in his actual magical theory and practise, he does not describe himself as a Satanist.

Even Satan has been voided of evil by some schools of Satanism. In their eyes, he embodies nonconformity to dogma, to the dictatorship of self declared representatives of the divine, not the effort to lure anyone to hell or to encourage harming anyone or anything. 

Africans are working at harnessing supernatural power, to survive in a harsh environment, as demonstrated by Pentecostalism,  and to gain access to power to triumph in such an environment, as in its use by politicians. The recent magical curse placed by the Oba of Benin and his ritual specialists on traffickers seem to be bearing fruit as spiritual specialists working with traffickers are reported as sending out a call to their victims to come and collect their underwear and pubic hair from the shrines where they are kept as means of blackmail.

To what degree do these practices demonstrate efficacy, and to what degree is such efficacy, if any,  due to supernatural activity, to natural activity that seems supernatural bcs its mode of operation is not adequately understood or simply to human motivation through faith? Adapting  Fortune, may all these coalescence, and if so, how does one identify the point of coalescence? 

thanks

toyin

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[Kenneth Harrow]

With a little bit of imagination, we can take toyin’s words below, and see how the same qualities of “magic” also apply to art. And I would venture, to the art of fela, and of great musicians and artists, of theatre and of film, as well. Especially performing artists have all the qualities you celebrate.

 

Remember socrates’s notion of the magical intuition that sparked his thought, the gift of the gods. A slight shift, and you have figures like eshu, playful, without limits, and above all creative.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday 24 March 2018 at 21:50
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A personal reaction to the Chief Rabbi of Israel referring to Black People as "Monkeys"

Imagination, verbal affirmations, intuition, creativity, make believe,  the intersection of the inhabiting of alternative realities enabled by art in harmony with the discrimination between aspects of reality, may be seen as summing up this form of magic.

…

 

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

well put, Ken

toyin

On 25 March 2018 at 03:56, Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:

With a little bit of imagination, we can take toyin’s words below, and see how the same qualities of “magic” also apply to art. And I would venture, to the art of fela, and of great musicians and artists, of theatre and of film, as well. Especially performing artists have all the qualities you celebrate.

 

Remember socrates’s notion of the magical intuition that sparked his thought, the gift of the gods. A slight shift, and you have figures like eshu, playful, without limits, and above all creative.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday 24 March 2018 at 21:50
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A personal reaction to the Chief Rabbi of Israel referring to Black People as "Monkeys"

Imagination, verbal affirmations, intuition, creativity, make believe,  the intersection of the inhabiting of alternative realities enabled by art in harmony with the discrimination between aspects of reality, may be seen as summing up this form of magic.

…

 

In this context, a lot of creativity, particularly in the arts, is a form of magic. Some of the best texts on magical theory and practice are works of imaginative literature, particularly from the West, fantasy children's literature being amongst my favorites along these lines.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Dear Kenneth and Oluwatoyin and dear Jorge Luis Borges and Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Marquez, many thanks for expanding the scope of what may be deemed magical, for your contributions to magical realism, for One Hundred Years of Solitude, also thinking of Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri for The Famished Road – for Oluwatoyin 's explorations of some of the magic in the mystery, and Kenneth's ken , in particular ( like Particulars Joe) the genre of cinematic magic and its latest blockbuster Black Panther

Over here, it's magic in the air ! Such a beautiful day today, all of eight degrees Celsius plus, you would think it's the beginning of the Magical Swedish Spring, wild tussilago suddenly shooting up from nowhere, birds (both the human and those other furry, fluffy little things) chirping, whilst my Better Half says that she will only know for sure that Spring is finally here when she hears the motorbikes start roaring off to somewhere...Oooooo ooooooooo Oooooooooo

sun is shining, the weather is sweet

(makes you want to move your dancing feet)

I met my neighbour Bengt-Arne at the doorway and said to him, “Even the Vikings are smiling and happy today” - he was also on his way out , told me that today I probably shouldn't need a hat – true, true, sun shining on some other bald patch, shining from up there just as the Almighty is always shining everywhere ( one of the reasons why I wear a hat, but he probably doesn't know that (that the Almighty is always everywhere and that's why I wear a hat, because that's part of the glory of being the Almighty – He can see through glass, looking glasses, stone, blankets, hats, He causes the sun to shine and the phases of the moon to appear and disappear as regularly as He wills it, who can deny this ? “ So happy just to be alive – on this new morning, New morning, New morning , with You...."

Soon we will all be singing and humming The Currage of Kildare

“Long time has passed

and the summer's come at last

the small birds are singing in the trees

Their little hearts are glad...etc. etc.

Toyin, my understanding is that the magician aims at playing God i.e. controlling the elements that Franz Bardon talks about, such as when the Almighty caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and then stole one of his ribs out of which he made Eve, such as when the Almighty split the Red Sea / Sea of Reeds, controlled the wind and the waves - a little different perhaps from quotingJeru The Damaja :

“Melodies, that flow like the breeze
Through the trees, like my forefathers, command the wind and seas
With my jungle music”

Or ( instant magic) quoting what said Aaron to Moses when he came down from the mountain:

“I threw the gold into the fire and up popped the calf”

The day before yesterday it was the magic of Elijah ascending to Heaven – thus giving birth to Chariot mysticism ( they too want to fly) - faith can move mountains, Jesus turns water into wine, Jesus walks on water “and Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water”, next chapter Jesus became an astronaut or a cosmonaut, when he ascended through space to sit at the right hand side of His Dad - will probably return the same way that he departed through space)

With regard to the question of what are Africans doing to harness their supernatural powers to help develop Africa, and Oluwatoyin's rejoinder that the Oba of Benin's curse on the practitioners of witchcraft is having its own special effect, is this not what the former Pope Benedictus Erectus was complaining about :”Africa, he declared, had to cure itself of witchcraft and the practices of magic”.

One of the cures that we ought to all have in mind( and I'm sure that Baba Solomon Kadiri will agree with me here) is that we instead of producing professors of electricity who produce darkness only, we should make more rapid strides in science and technology to redeem us all from the demons of the superstitions that still enslave us

There are still a few people around who think that Nigger

Is the name of people who come from Nigeria.

Don't you think that they would show some respect for us all if we sent up a few monkeys into space?

Was it Karen Blixen that tells of a brave Kikuyu summoning the courage to touch a lantern that he was seeing for the first time – in the dark, because he thought that it was a star that had fallen down ? Almost cerain, in Jesus' day ( flash in the pan) if he had used a tape recorder or a camera, that would have impressed even the Pharisees...

The Curragh of Kildare

The Lily of the West

On Sunday, 25 March 2018 13:37:56 UTC+2, Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju wrote:

well put, Ken

toyin

On 25 March 2018 at 03:56, Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:

With a little bit of imagination, we can take toyin’s words below, and see how the same qualities of “magic” also apply to art. And I would venture, to the art of fela, and of great musicians and artists, of theatre and of film, as well. Especially performing artists have all the qualities you celebrate.

 

Remember socrates’s notion of the magical intuition that sparked his thought, the gift of the gods. A slight shift, and you have figures like eshu, playful, without limits, and above all creative.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday 24 March 2018 at 21:50
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A personal reaction to the Chief Rabbi of Israel referring to Black People as "Monkeys"

Imagination, verbal affirmations, intuition, creativity, make believe,  the intersection of the inhabiting of alternative realities enabled by art in harmony with the discrimination between aspects of reality, may be seen as summing up this form of magic.

…

 

In this context, a lot of creativity, particularly in the arts, is a form of magic. Some of the best texts on magical theory and practice are works of imaginative literature, particularly from the West, fantasy children's literature being amongst my favorites along these lines.

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[Kenneth Harrow]

Magic in the words.

Love Apart by Christopher Okigbo

The moon has ascended between us,
Between two pines
That bow to each other;

Love with the moon has ascended,
Has fed on our solitary stems;

And we are now shadows
That cling to each other,
But kiss the air only.

 

 

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTnTL7szGtM

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