This weeks readings were R.A van Dijk’s ‘Voodoo’ on the Doorstep: Young Nigerian Prostetitues and Magic Policing in the Netherlands as well as Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe. Van Dijk’s essay is about ‘Voodoo’ and the role it played in Nigerian girls being smuggled into Netherlands and put to work in the sex industry as well as the “moral panic’ from the citizens once it became publicly known. Van Rijk explains that knowledge of these girls “being enslaved in the sex industry primarily through and by voodoo rituals cause a major stir in dutch politics and provoked a deep sense of alarm.”(5) The Dutch police established a “voodoo” team in order to combat the trafficking. In the process they uncovered hundreds of cases as well as…
While she did stay in a smaller farming town away from the big city while working in the DRC, the similarity of her experiences stop there. The most striking difference between our two cultures is their lack of reliable electricity, clean water, or licensed vehicular operation. Instead of driving cars, numerous locals would commute atop mopeds and motorcycles with a bottle of whiskey. While a majority of persons in the DRC are Christian, Islam and other “indigenous” religious make up roughly fifteen percent of the DRC’s belief systems. That said, Fleetwood did comment on the influence of Haitain voodoo on the culture of the DRC, although she said that she never witnessed any practice of the religion first…
I found Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola to be an innovative and intimate “ethnographic spiritual biography” exploring the lived realities, material and immaterial, of a Haitian Voudou priestess and her family in New York City from the late 1970’s through the 1980’s. (xiv) Brown’s approach is innovative because she treats her subjects’ as multivocal and fluid. Brown heeds her own advice and contrary to most ethnographic scholars before her, appropriately represents her own, albeit limited, voice, and positionality as similarly multiplicitous and in flux, reciprocally performing “meaningmaking” with Alourdes and family. Brown’s many voices aptly declare numerous interrelated aims, including “to describe as fully and accurately ... Alourdes’ daytoday practice of Haitian Vodou”, to “plant images of quotidian Vodou practice in the minds of thinking people, images that would linger and soften the formulaic association of Vodou with the superstitious and the satanic”, and to portray “Vodou embedded in the vicissitudes of particular lives.” (xv, xiv, 15)…
Some of the elements of the indigenous culture that are being maintained in the book are the story of the Golden Carp, healers and witchcraft, and the Indians burial ceremony.…
An occult is a supernatural, mystical, or a magical belief; for example black magic and witchcraft. A person that’s in a occult usually believes in death and black magic. Something during the occult props are used like Ouija boards, voodoo dolls, and sacrificing living creatures. All these contact the devil or with the dead. Contacting the dead or the devil can reveal secrets and dangers of the future. The occult is a very dangerous thing to join and can cause possession and death. As the occult is man made, not like the paranormal its spiritual.…
Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown was set in the seventeenth century when witchcraft was considered a wholly evil practice that would send the practitioner directly to hell. This sets the stage for the story as Young Goodman Brown meets with the devil in a dark forest and attends what is described as a meeting of the damned where fires blaze and people stand around talking and singing. One might wonder what would happen if Young Goodman Brown found himself in our world today. Witchcraft is no longer considered a soul-endangering, ticket to hell, but is now mainstream entertainment for our children.…
Judith Ortiz Cofer and Ishmael Reed are the same as they have both been judged for their ethnicity. Being predisposed to racism and stereotypes just because the color of their skin. It his the thought that they have the similarity in their pre judgement because they have different American experiences.…
In the old time the African people use some spells to take the sympathy of the bad spirits, so that they did not harm them. Now these spells are using to control the bad spirit. The practitioners of the voodoo magic can control the bad spirits and the souls to achieve their goal. The folk magic spells are the words which were used by the people…
Most of the Haitian population was originally from Africa, which supports the transformation from the Kongo culture to Haitian Vodou. The Encyclopedia of Global Religion reads, “What is distinctive about Haitian Vodou additionally is that it incorporated the powerful systems of the Bakongo [Kongo] peoples in Central Africa.”21 In addition, Paul Gardullo writes in his review of Donald Consentino’s Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, “The roles of various spirit repositories and containers or Paket Kongo are described, as well as their ties to Nkisi, their Kongo counter-parts.”22 The most distinct similarity between these two objects are their relations with the spirits they ‘hold.’ Both minkisi and paket kongos can help someone communicate between the spiritual and living world in each of their respective cultures. They both have a master ritualist that uses that communication with the spirits to assist their clients. And finally, many paket kongos are tied with a crucifix atop the container, shown in figure 2. Not only is this another example of the Haitian Vodou…
Santeria is an old world religion that is derived from Africa but began growing in places like Cuba, Haiti, and Brazil when African slaves were transported there during colonization. In class I was introduced to Ana, my partner, who had a close family friend named Warren. Warren is a social worker who lives in Palmdale and actively practices Santeria, and who was introduced to it by his grandmother. Warren actually didn’t practice Santeria until he became an adult, and kept having visions of his grandmother (who had practiced Santeria) that had passed away. According to Warren, his visions gave him the courage to seek others that practiced Santeria and eventually was initiated into the religion. When beginning the interview with Warren, he defensively made a point to state that Santeria was not voodoo or witchcraft. “Santeria is very pure,” he stated. “Many people don’t understand Santeria and think that making spells or prayers with candles is dark and don’t understand it. Yet, what are we taught on our first birthday? On our very first birthday we are taught that we light a candle and make a wish so it will come true.”…
In this paper, I will explore many aspects of the outbreaks of the witch accusations and witch trials which plagued England and the rest of Europe from approximately 1450 to 1750. Though numerous theories have been provided as to the reasons for these hunts and trials, there are three which are the most prevalent, and able to support themselves. These three theories are the topics of: gender, as a stepping stone towards the oppression of women; social class, as a relief of tension and stress formed by the socio-economic gaps between the wealthy and the poor; and finally religion, as a result of the encouragement to conform more steadily towards one religion. I chose to argue towards the third theory I have stated, that of the religious changes facing England at the time. Throughout the three hundred years that the perceived problems of witchcraft haunted this nation, the religious momentum swayed back and forth many times. My decision to support the religious theories attached to witchcraft may not be as traditional as most student's. It was a decision based more upon the motives and not so hidden agendas that the theorists who were (obviously) not present at the times of the trials. Historical fact has been in debate for as long as history has been recorded, because everything written or spoken is rhetoric, and this impossible to escape from. Therefore, in order to defend my decision to choose religion, I will be adopting a new historicist point of view for the first few paragraphs of this paper.…
With its logo of two triangles and an “S,” Scientology is a popular, yet unknown topic of interest, sparking a mountain of controversy and rumors. This sinister religion is currently spreading like wildfire, with more and more members each day. However, all of it, all of Scientology’s quarrels and conspiracies, everything started with one man: Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. Hubbard once said “I’d like to start a religion… that’s where the money is” (xenu.net), and his vexed movement has developed into a worldwide phenomenon, stemming from Hubbard’s own life & background, discarded Freud approaches towards hypnotism, along with its malevolent wrongdoings and ignominy.…
The history of past views and treatments for abnormal behavior was the most interesting to me in this week’s reading, especially witchcraft and exorcism. I remember learning about witchcraft including the Salem witch trials during high school. It has me curious as to what they would have considered abnormal behavior back then and which behaviors would have you sent to an asylum or hospital. I was surprised by how often the treatments and care of people with abnormal behavior changed, affected by cost of care, religion and prejudices. I found the experimental methods interesting to read, especially the natural experiments because of the recent Hurricane Matthew that affected millions in our country. With warnings that this storm can kill you…
Little was it known for us people living in the 21st Century that witchcraft has a vast and long history. Witches were hated and avoided at. They have been accused of casting evil spells for which they have faced trials that condemned them their deaths.…
Folklore exists in many cultures throughout the world. Folklore in the form of tales, myths and legends is passed from generation to generation through the oral tradition. Folklore in the Caribbean has been drawn from the rich and diverse backgrounds of our ancestors who came from various parts of the world. Our ancestors brought with them their language, culture, religious beliefs and practices, and their tradition of storytelling. The tales of demons, ghosts, zombies and spirits have been fascinating for the young and old alike, and variations of these stories have been told again and again. “Le Loupgarou” and “Ol' Higue” share similar characteristics as they are both based on Caribbean folklore.…