Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Allah, who stays aloof in heaven and orders the affairs of human beings on earth. He is not even per-
sonified; He can be neither confined in shrines and fetishes nor excluded from everyday happenings
on Earth. It is considered foolish to have shrines erected to God as He is part of all creation. Man
is viewed just as an immanent ray from the Supreme Being and therefore the illusory problems of
death, birth, and living do not arise. “We have always been here” is a common response given by the
ancestors to explain their existence on Earth. Death is not seen as an irretrievable separation from
life but a mere retraction of the soul to the reservoir of power, the Supreme Being. The deceased is
not considered “dead and gone” in the strict sense of the phrase. He or she is still recognized as an
important member of the community with real presence, affected by the actions of the living and
participating in their lives by his or her wisdom and advice. This belief that the dead are an integral
part of the community is essentially responsible for the elaborate funeral rites observed by various
African tribes.
Like most other human communities, the Africans have various myths concerning the origin of
life on Earth. They believe that God created the earth and made man and woman from clay. He gave
them the breath of life and the power of the spoken word. The actual location of the site of creation
varies according to the tribe. One version, popular among the tribes of northern Africa, claims that
the seat of creation is in the Nile Delta, while the Yorubas of western Nigeria trace human existence
to Ile-Ife, and south of Zambezi River, the creation of man is located within the ruins of ancient
Zimbabwe. There are also various legends to account for man's fall from God's grace. A common
feature is that God once resided on Earth and had to shed his human form when he was annoyed by
the action of a woman. A Congolese tribe has a legend that claims that the woman's continual nag-
ging became so intolerable that God lowered her down from heaven in a basket; the Nigerian story
traces the fall to the woman who annoyed God by striking the sky with her pounding stick.
The reason for the fall from grace may vary, but there is a convergence of views on the belief
that God and man once lived together on Earth and communicated directly. After the fall, God
changed form and shed his human personality. There is no myth of a possible return to “paradise.”
In
African philosophy, man is trapped by his very nature to a cycle of birth, death, existence in the
spirit world, and reincarnation. Each stage is seen as a phase in man's continual existence, and the
need for heaven or hell does not exist. Life itself is but a breath imparted by the Supreme Being,
a ray of light from a universal beam. All creation originates from the same source, and death is
viewed as mere shedding of the physical form. At rebirth, one may assume any form to reenter the
earth. This is the root of all being; each life on Earth is only a part of a collective consciousness. It
is for this reason that killing of a fellow human being, even one's enemy, is considered taboo, which
demands elaborate ceremonies and acts of expiation and self-cleansing before the killer is allowed
to reintegrate fully with the rest of the community (even if the killing occurred during war).
For the source of healing power, Yoruba (Nigeria) legend has it that God sent one of his foster
sons (or messenger or angel), Orunmila, to Earth to teach human beings the secret of spiritual heal-
ing, which was coded in long verses and recited as incantations. These Ifa incantations are specific
for various types of diseases.
A brother of Orunmila, Osanyin, was also sent to Earth to teach people the more mundane art
of herbalism. Among the Yorubas, Orunmila is the divinity for spiritual healing, while the gift of
herbalism is traced to Osanyin.
hEaLING, a GIFt OF thE SPIrIt
Perhaps no aspect of African culture has received so much criticism from Western-oriented
minds as the practice of traditional medicine. The main objections to the therapy of the tradi-
tional healers, or “witch doctors” as they are derisively called, are based on the false assumption
that African medicine relies exclusively on magic, witchcraft, and necromancy. Others charge that
