Magic. A somewhat purposeless and unpredictable power that is believed to alter the outcome of events in a person’s life. We may all believe in some kind of magic, especially when we feel we need it the most such as during dangerous situations, even though they are not proven to increase our probability of a specified event. George Gmelch and Richard Felsen released an article pertaining this subject. The article, entitled “Can a Lucky Charm Get You Through Organic Chemistry”, gave the general public a somewhat easy-to-read article, which provided an experimental result about how many people believe in magic and what they believe about it.…
Haiti is a Caribbean country that is found in the island of Hispaniola. It has a population of 10.6 million people. Its main languages are French and Creole. The Haitian Revolution started in 1789 and ended in 1804. The main religions found in Haiti are Voodoo and Roman Catholicism.…
Voodoo is a system of spirit worship brought to Haiti by slaves from Africa. In 1791, leaders of a slave revolt against France held a secret voodoo meeting in a mountain above Cap Haitian at which they dedicated their country to evil spirits. After their victory over Napoleon’s armies in 1804, they attributed their success to voodoo. As recently as 2004, then President Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, renewed this vow. People who practice voodoo believe that everything, good or bad, happens at the whim of spirits.…
The Sub-Saharan long distance commodity and slave trade as well as the syncretic interweaving of Islamic culture and traditional African culture accounts for Africa’s major influence as a superpower from the first until fifteenth centuries. Traders from all over the world were drawn to Africa’s riches in gold, ivory, and human beings. The fact that Africa was rich in resources posed influence in itself. Considering that a great number of the visiting traders were Muslims and they begin to intermarry and form relationships with the West African people – economic and political alliances were formed and the adaptation of Islam was widespread.…
We have chosen to set our production of Macbeth in southern Africa during the 12th century. The similarities between the culture of tribal Africa and the original text written by Shakespeare are easily found. Although the power systems of the tribes in these cultures differs slightly from those found in the text, we can see a clear likeness between the two. Africa tribal culture was typically governed through a system of fear and power. The most powerful person in the land became the ruler and they would rein their tribes largely through fear.…
As with any genre or form, fairy tales provoke a certain kind of thought when approached. The ideas of magic and adventure, marriage and loss, and more jump to mind. One technique in particular relies on a fairy tale’s established environment: “normalized magic” (Bernheimer). The fairy tale itself exists in a uniform world, one with rules and laws different from reality. Magic exists in varying forms, sometimes grandiose and sometimes subtle.…
It is important to establish the view of the Zande, the background behind their belief and how they were formulated. The Zande live in north central Africa with a concentration in Sudan of nearly half a million people with sources indicating a total Zande population to be nearly two million, the Zande have settled as craft workers in and around the lower Nile-Congo River gap.(Everyculture.com, 2016) As a distinct tribe in the heart of Africa, the Zande have encountered a fair share of adjustments to neighbours. Like numerous different encounters of incorporations, the Zande have seen trouble in framing collective set of ideals amongst its people.…
African societies flourished despite having no contact with Europe. They achieved things such as trade by sea, a sufficient judicial system, in many places high levels of education, and forms of art. Africa's abundance in certain resources such as gold and salt made it a key area for trade, allowing the empires to become rich and powerful. Despite being isolated from European countries, the African Empires and civilizations did not suffer from it. They adapted on their own, created their own forms of government, and became powerful.…
In the eyes of strangers to the religion, Santeria may only resemble Voodoo rituals, with no eternal purpose for the Santeros. So what exactly is the perennial goal for Santeros? And how is that goal reached? The purpose of Santeria is to obtain three levels. Each level requires a separate ceremony be performed and results in different degrees of protection, power, and knowledge.…
Grijspaarde’s article addresses how practices of witchcraft influences Sierra Leone’s politics, economy, and poverty alleviation. One observation noted in this study was that the practice of witchcraft rose proportionally with the rise of capitalism. While western media have conditioned our minds to conjure witchcraft as a satanic ritual, part of the qualitative data reveals that witchcraft was used to fill in the “uncertainties reflecting unresolved social conflict over norms”(Grijspaarde 2012). It was interesting to read the gravity of influence in which witchcraft played in a community setting. According to the article, even educated judges believed in witches.…
Many cultures are influenced by religion. However, Old Mali was influenced by two key religions: Traditional African Religion and Islam. Traditional African Religion was the dominate religion in Mali but Islam was slowly catching fire. Islam was introduced to Africa by traders and was largely the religion of the merchant class. In Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali you can see the influences of both Traditional African Religion and Islam and how they change the readers’ view of Sundiata as a king.…
Wicca frequently uses the god and goddess to perform magical acts. Wicca is one of the true forms where witchcraft is practiced by the ancients. Wicca is where it honors both the god and goddess and the changing of the seasons also known as the Wheel of the Year. They believe in a law that they call the Wiccan Rede where Harm None is their belief. Witches are concerned folk healers as well as mediators who do practice folk magic.…
Movie Review: Practical Magic The story begins by involving a family that has had witches for 300 years and because of an ancient curse the husband’s will die with the signal of the death watch beetle serving as their advanced warning to avoid the heartbreak that comes with love. The film Practical Magic is based upon the book written by Alice Hoffman in 1995. The character Sally, played by Sandra Bullock, attempts to thwart the curse by casting a spell creating a man she feels does not exist, but meanwhile her sister, Gilly, played by Nichole Kidman becomes involved in an abusive relationship but cannot summon the death watch beetle with marriage because she does not love him so he is given an overdose of a sedative Belladonna and killed.…
through the empowerment of fertility (Oboler 2010). The interplay of masculine and feminine magical energies is said to perpetuate the power within Wicca and comes from the individual practitioners which are viewed reverently and thus given an equal standing within the religion; the freedom from persecution and oppression within it in accordance with Wicca’s matriarchal form gives it egalitarian solidarity (Oboler 2010). A woman’s worth is too often dictated by their ability to have children and continue lineages, they are often viewed as disappointments to their families and friends that see them as “selfish” or “unfulfilled” due to their absence of an heir. Though Dianic Wicca views the woman’s womb as the metaphorical and occasionally literally…
However, because Evans-Pritchard focuses only on one case study, his theory would not be able to explain Levi-Strauss’s study of magic and his findings about magic would be limited to the Azande people and not be valid for any other cultures, revealing a drawback to Evans-Pritchard’s approach to the study of…