African Divination Complimentary Ways of Knowing
African Divination, Complimentary Ways of
Knowing
Junious Ricardo Stanton
“Spirituality
centered wisdom stands for both justice and dignity and it cannot be
trivialized. It emphasizes philosophies of connectedness, coexistence,
belongingness, love, and compassion in education. In the light of this
understanding of spirituality, the African renaissance and pedagogy should be
grounded in spirituality centered wisdom, cultural identity and consciousness..
As asserted by Palmer (1999), involving spirituality in pedagogy is ‘reclaiming
the vitality of life’” African
Ways of Knowing and Pedagogy, Constantine Ngara
For the
past several weeks we have been examining African cosmology in a general observation
and overview. At its core African cosmology, regardless of the tribal or ethnic
origin, is based upon the belief the universe is both SPIRITUAL and physical in
nature. Africans’ perception of reality posits our physical reality is
interpenetrated by an omnipresent spiritual reality that impacts and influences
our lives and environment all the time.
For
Africans and indigenous people who see themselves as an integral part of a vast
spiritual universe, SPIRIT provides additional means of knowing as well as providing
insight, information and guidance to help address life’s vicissitudes. When
one’s reality is a spiritually dynamic universe, one employs spiritual means to
discern the invisible causes behind life’s happenings and also to glean insight
and direction for important decisions and courses of action.
Indigenous people routinely call on
the spirits, ancestors, healers and diviners to help them unravel life’s
challenges and to provide wisdom and information. Divination, contrary to
popular misconception, is a universal tool used by most of humanity in some form
or another.
In Africa, divination is a universal method of learning and
discerning. “In Africa, divination sessions are
instances of consulting the Gods or the ancestors. These are
not metaphysical constructs, but real living beings that interact with the living.
As a means of communication with the village of the ancestors, divination
reinforces the belief in the reality of the world of the spirits and the
ancestors. Indeed, in African worldview, ‘the Dead are not dead.’” Encyclopedia
of African Religion page 206
Divination
is an essential source of knowledge and makes absolute sense in cultures who
believe energies, spirits; forces and intelligences are omnipresent and play a
vital role in community and personal life.
But because most of what we know about Africa
was given to us by non-Africans who disparaged Africa
and Africans, we too denigrate and disparage our cosmological heritage and
roots. We were conditioned to be ashamed of our African heritage and we were
taught to hate everything African! As Malcolm X said “We didn’t want anyone to
tell us anything about Africa, much less call us an African and in hating the
African and hating Africa we ended up hating
ourselves without even realizing it because you can’t hate the roots of a tree and
not hate the tree. You can’t hate your origin and not end up hating yourself.”
Malcolm X, The Roots of Black self-hatred. But that is changing now.
Many
different forms of divination exist and we are familiar with them such as:
crystal ball gazing, tarot cards, the I Ching, fortune telling as well as occult
(hidden or secret) practices like palmistry, numerology and astrology.
Africans have been using rituals
and varying forms of divination for eons. In his book Of Water and the Spirit Malidoma Patrice Some’ shares the details
of a ritual that takes place a few months prior to the birth of a child to
determine why this particular child is incarnating at this time.
“The pregnant mother, her brothers,
the grandfather and the officiating priest are the participants. The child’s
father is not present for the ritual but merely prepares the space. Afterward
he is informed about what happened. During the ritual, the incoming soul takes
the voice of the mother (some say the soul takes the whole body of the mother, which
is why the mother falls into trance and does not remember anything afterward)
and answers every question the priest asks. The living must know who is being
reborn, where the soul is from, why it chose to come here and what gender it
has chosen. Sometime, based on the mission of the incoming soul, the living
object to the choice of gender and suggest that the opposite will better
accommodate the role the unborn child has chosen for him or herself. Some souls
ask that specific things be made ready before their arrival-talismanic power
objects, medicine bags, metal objects in the form of rings for the ankle or the
wrist…” ibid page 20
Some’ is sharing Dagara ideas about
reincarnation, destiny, life mission, spiritual protection, spiritual power and
the purpose of being. All of this is consistent with African cosmology, philosophy
and the idea that knowledge about the unseen and unknown can and must be obtained
from SPIRIT since SPIRIT is the parent reality.
A vast reservoir of information is
available to us via SPIRIT. We can access it through prayer, meditation,
divination and ritual. This is the African/indigenous way. It is part of aboriginal
people’s genius now called Indigenous
Knowledge Systems (IKS) by the West. The more we learn about African cosmology
the more profound, powerful and practical it becomes.
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It's Time For Real Change
It’s Time for Real Change
Junious Ricardo Stanton
Many
Westerners are coming to the inescapable conclusion their culture is creating a
psychological malaise that is rapidly metastasizing throughout the society, stifling empathy, enthusiasm and any sense of
meaning, purpose or real fulfillment in our lives. We find ourselves like
laboratory mice or hamsters on the proverbial treadmill going nowhere fast,
depleting our energy and finances with nothing to show for it but tons of planned
obsolescence stuff and suffocating debt.
There was even a mindset propagated in
the 80's and 90's that said the measure of one's worth material possessions at
life's end. They said "greed is good" which fueled consumerism,
materialism and a dog eat dog, winner take all mindset. If the measure of your
being, your self-worth and success are based upon the amount of gizmos and
gadgets you have, what happens if you lose them, they become obsolete or you
can no longer afford them?
Wealth inequality, homelessness, depression
and despair hang over this country like a thick fog while many are succumbing
to various addictions as a way of numbing their misery and frustration. Opiate
prescriptions are at an all time high in America and the suicide rate is the
highest it has been in thirty years!
Many thinkers, philosophers and reformers have warned that America is about
to plummet into a societal abyss of depravity. Social engineering is real,
social programming and mind control is real. The US government has been working on
them for decades. Do some research on
the CIA's MK ULTRA, Operation MONARCH and other mind control programs and then look
into what is going on at the Pentagon at its Department of Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA). It will blow your mind. Then ask yourself what is the impact of five
conglomerates controlling almost everything we see on TV, the movies,
streaming, books, magazines and newspapers? Is this representative of free and
open markets or is it more in line with monopoly consolidation?
American history is fraught with moral
contradictions, blatant discrepancies between their professed creed and their
actual deeds. How do you talk about
"life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" while aggressively engaged
in policies and programs of genocide, extermination, slavery, dehumanization
and ecocide?
The continuing consequences of the sins of the
"founding fathers" are still being visited upon successive
generations as the ruling class attempts to keep their criminogenic culture (a
system, situation or place causing or likely to cause criminal behavior) intact
and expanding its reach on a global level.
The
ruling class and their minions have more weapons at its disposal today than
ever before. Today they have a pervasive technological network that manufactures
a reality that dumb us down, disorients and discombobulates us, they poison us
with GMO Frankenfoods, pump us with pharmaceutical and illicit drugs to numb
our minds and push us towards stultifying addiction.
All this is designed to discourage
resistance to their nefarious agenda. As a result America faces a psycho-spiritual
crisis of enormous proportions. We have
no real strategies to save ourselves other than foolishly coupling our hopes to
a Democratic Party that has sold us out time and again. Neither political party
has our best interests at heart we have to realize this and act accordingly.
What can we do to improve ourselves
and our situation? We have to build
values producing institutions: create and support our own schools, develop our
own pedagogical theories and practices, expand economic networks and capital
formation groups. Most importantly we must formulate a cosmology to replace the
decadent Western values of selfish alienation, materialism, war and hedonism.
We can do this. We already have the
model, traditional African values and cosmology. We already have the concepts,
models and action of Sankofa, going
back to retrieve that which is good, bringing it forward and adapting it to
present realities. We were the first
humans to do all this. We have done it many times in the past in our history;
we can begin to create a brighter future for ourselves and our children.
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Reality As Seen Through Traditional African Cosmology
Reality As Seen Through
Traditional African Cosmology
Junious
Ricardo Stanton
“Though
the (African) cosmologies appear to differ according to geography and regional
histories, the degree to which they coincide in fundamental principles and
function defines them as multiple expressions of a single cultural/cosmological
construct.” The Sankofa Movement
ReAfrikanization and the Reality of War by Kwame Agyei and Akua Nson Akoto
page 166
Last week we addressed the idea of African
cosmology. I said it was formulated in antiquity by our wise and talented ancestors
who grappled with the deepest existential issues facing humanity, who were committed
to cultivating and developing their peers’ highest potential. The origins of a
unified and common African cosmology go way back into antiquity to the early
development of humans.
“Cosmology refers to worldview and
myths in general or, more specifically, to the cultural and religious imagery
concerning the universe. African cosmology, which often takes the form of oral
narratives, describes the web of human activities within the powerful spiritual
cosmos; it transmits the beliefs and values of African peoples. African
cosmology, then, is an attempt to describe and understand the origin and
structure of the universe, how humans relate to the cosmos, and how and to what
extent their thoughts and actions are shaped by it.” Encyclopedia of African Religion edited by Molefi Kete Asante and
Ama Mazama page 178
In ancient KMT (Egypt), Djehuty
was deified and worshipped as the god of wisdom, science, medicine, magic,
mathematics and measurement. Notice how Djehuty’s persona reflected the same
holistic African perspective we find throughout the continent. Djehuty was
envisioned as esoteric as well as practical combining: wisdom, science, and magic
with useful day to day physical endeavors like healing, communications, mathematics
and measurement. This is the utilitarian essence of continental African cosmology,
philosophy and metaphysics, blending the spiritual with the mundane to enhance
the lives of the people.
Throughout the continent and in the ancient
world African cosmologies emphasized the nexus between SPIRIT and material
temporal world as the true reality. Africans and aboriginal people, unlike Neanderthals
and Caucasoids, are a deeply spiritual people. We knew intuitively a self
existing divine consciousness was behind all creation and this consciousness also
animated and invigorated the universe with an omnipresent energy, pulse,
purpose, order and symmetry.
This energy is called animatism.
“Animatism, not to be confused with animism, is the belief in a supernatural
power that animates all living things in an impersonal sense. It is therefore
not individualized or specialized in terms of a particular object, such as one
finds in animism, but is a rather more generalized belief in an invisible,
powerfully impersonal energy that is everywhere… Derived from the same Latin
root as animism, the term animatism was meant to differentiate the individual
spirit in animate and inanimate objects from the more generalized belief in the
active spirit of the universe. One cannot grant any ethical or moral quality to
this active spirit because it is neither good nor evil, neither right nor
wrong, but everywhere present and therefore inherently dangerous if it is
violated. Some have described it by the electricity metaphor; it is everywhere
and it can bring harm, but it is not moral or immoral; it is amoral. Although
one may find animatism and animism in the same culture, they must be distinguished
as concepts. Animism may be said to have personality Animatism and animatism is
impersonal; whereas animism shows us individuals with special spiritual
characteristics or traits, animatism simply exists as a force in the universe
in a generalized sense” Encyclopedia of
African Religion edited by Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama pages 57 and
58
Unfortunately most of what we know
about Africa and Africans we have received from non-Africans who had/have a
bias and hostility towards Africa and its people. The good news is more and
more warrior scholars are coming to the rescue and providing the truth about Africa, its genius and accomplishments. When we view Africa and its people through the lens of historical
truth we see not only are the people ingenious and innovative they set the bar
extremely high for the rest of humanity.
Africans defined their reality,
their origin and the beginnings of the cosmos as an expression and extension of
a divine mind or consciousness with an intelligence and energy pulsating within
an unlimited range of frequencies containing male and female attributes often
in seeming contradiction but which are in fact the ultimate cause of the
universe’s existence, being and sustainability. These ideas are essentially the
same in every African ethno-cultural system. “Each of the traditional cultural
systems nonetheless provides for a single creator who is a singularity and
multiplicity simultaneously.” The Sankofa Movement ReAfrikanization and
the Reality of War by Kwame Agyei and Akua Nson Akoto page 167
As we mentioned last week one of
the essential principles of Hermeticism (an ancient African cosmology) is the
principle of polarity; it states, “Everything is dual,
everything has poles and everything has its pair of opposites; Like and unlike
are the same; Opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree;
Extremes meet; All truths, are but half-truths; All paradoxes may be reconciled.”
The Kybalion
In his book
Person, Divinity and Nature A Modern
View of The Person and the Cosmos In African Thought, Chukwunyere Kamalu
says it this way, “More important from the point of view of the structure of
the African worldview is the fact that ancient and traditional African beliefs
incorporate all the concepts of monotheism (belief in one god) polytheism (belief
in many gods/forces/spirits) and animism and pantheism (belief that the supreme
being resides within everything and that therefore everything has some form of
spiritual being or consciousness) African beliefs cannot therefore be described
as being exclusively monotheistic, polytheistic or pantheistic.” page 146.
There is no
shame or confusion in the African cosmological game. It is the essence of what
the late scholar Mzee Jedi Shemsu Jehewty aka Jacob Hudson Carruthers, Jr. referred to as African deep thought!
Indeed it is profound and insightful as the West is reluctantly discovering. It
is real. In effect ancient African notions of reality based upon underlying,
interpenetrating, interconnected codependent spirituality are being proven
despite the benighted and strictly materialistic leanings of others.
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