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Category: RITES CEREMONIES
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Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman
Category : RITES CEREMONIES
Author : Malidoma Patrice Some
ISBN : 0140194967
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Description : Born under the shadow of French colonial rule in Upper Volta, West Africa, the author was taken from his tribe and virtually imprisoned by a Jesuit priest in a seminary. He lived there for 15 years, abused and intimidated into forgetting his tribal past and accepting the white man's god and religion. At 19, he ran away and walked hundreds of miles back to his own people, the Dagara, where he received a mixed welcome. He could not remember enough of his native language to speak to his own parents, and many feared he had been contaminated by the white world. His only hope for reconnecting with his people was to risk death by undergoing the traditional Dagara tribal initiation ritual. This month-long ordeal in the wilderness with the magical forces of the supernatural forms the core of the story.
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Added on : Jul 26, 2002 by sunhawk
hits: 1160
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The Victim and Its Masks
Category : RITES CEREMONIES
Author : Abdellah Hammoudi
ISBN : 0226315258
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Description : Each year, in a solemn Sunni Muslim feast, the Ait Mazine of northern Morocco reenact the story of Abraham as a ritual sacrifice, a symbolic observance of submission to the divine. After comes a bacchanalian masquerade which seems to violate every principle the sacrifice affirmed. Costumed men sing and dance and torment villagers, their wild activities centering around a mute figure sewn into the skins of sacrificed animals. This character is attended by several others who keep up a constant patter that mocks the social order, especially marriage, women, older men, and the Qu'ran. Because of the apparent contradiction between sacrifice and masquerade, observers have described the two as entirely separate events. Abdellah Hammoudi's study reunites them as a single ritual process within Islamic tradition. Working with metaphors of stage and play, Hammoudi details the festival from the rituals of makeup and costume through the final spectacle. Each part of the ceremony denies and at the same time conjures up the other. The contradictions inherent in social and religious life are vividly enacted; sacrifice and masquerade appear.
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Added on : Jul 10, 2002 by sunhawk
hits: 1048
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