West African Religious Tradition
The work of both Karade and Doumbia support the stance that the concept of force or spirit is a shared underlying theme among the spiritual traditions of the Sudanic cultures (i.e. those west of Cameroon and south of the Sahara). Karade asserts that, in the Yoruba tradition of Nigeria, force is called ashe. He further posits that the task of a Yoruba practitioner is to contemplate and/or ceremonially embody the various deities and/or ancestral energies or profundities in ways analogous to how chakras are contemplated in kundalini yoga. In other words, the deities represent energies, attitudes, or potential ways to approach life. The goal is to elevate awareness while either in or contemplating any of these states of mind such that one can transmute negative or wasteful aspects of their energy into conduct and mindsets that serve as virtuous examples for oneself and the greater community. Doumbia and Doumbia echo this sentiment for the Mande tradition of Senegal, Mali, and many other regions of westernmost Africa. Here however, the force concept is represented by the term nyama rather than ashe.
Divination also tends to play a major role in the process of transmuting negative or confused feelings or thoughts into more ordered and productive ones. Specifically, this process serves as a way to provide frames of reference such that those who are uncertain as to how to begin an undertaking and/or solve a problem can get their bearings and open a dialectic with their highest selves concerning their options on their paths.
Read more about this topic: African Folklore
Famous quotes containing the words west, african, religious and/or tradition:
“God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas’ mysterious routes back to his native Guinea.
Meanwhile, the feast continued. The peasants were forgetting their misery: dance and alcohol numbed them, carrying away their shipwrecked conscience in the unreal and shady regions where the savage madness of the African gods lay waiting.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“A few years ago, the liberal churches complained that the Calvinistic church denied to them the name of Christian. I think the complaint was confession; a religious church would not complain.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead.”
—Allan Bloom (1930–1992)