Abstract
“Magic” has become shorthand for using invisible supernatural power to affect people and events in the visible and tangible human world. Although in the West it tends to equate with fortune-tellers at funfairs, teenagers dressed in black with pentagrams around their necks, or more sinister groups practicing blood rituals, the contemporary remit of “magic” is in fact much broader. Most mainstream religions include ritualistic practice intended to invoke supernatural powers, be it through prayer, communion, sacrificial offerings, or incantations. Religions and belief systems that have captured a space close to the political power center tend to become more sanitized and their rituals less explicit, whereas belief systems that have not been awarded official status are often more devolved and less doctrinal in addition to maintaining more explicit rituals. “Magic” usually falls into the latter category, even though the type of beliefs behind practices are not fundamentally dissimilar from its more organized and centralized kin in cathedrals, mosques, and temples around the world. For all belief systems where supernatural power (or power not explicable through the laws of nature) plays a central role, the application of that power could be referred to as “magic.” While there are important substantive differences between the beliefs of a Vodun practitioner in Benin and a Sunni Muslim in Lebanon, it is important to not separate types of religion too strictly lest we build artificial boundaries that obscure more than they clarify.
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Notes
Although it is important to note that in medieval Europe magic was not a clear-cut conceptual arena either, and the nature of supernatural, or “unnatural” power was sometimes considered as ambiguous as in the African context. Witchdoctors or the “cunning folk” often treaded a fine line between white and black magic, and they were often accused, at some stage in their career, of witchcraft. However, going in the other direction, accused witches could buy time as well as prestige by offering their services as witch finders. As in Africa, the occupational space at the edge of science and the border of religion offered cures for illnesses—some of which worked and some of which did not—and explanations for phenomena for which no other explanations were available. At times these were welcomed by society and at times condemned. See Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft, Second edn. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).
In many cases other religious practices, notably Christian and Muslim, have also stepped in to fill this need—often in combination with traditional practice. Parallels could perhaps also be drawn with the resurgence of fundamentalist strands of Islam in the Middle East and Asia in the past couple of decades, also in response to both rapid social change and a perceived lack of tangible reward. See e.g., Mary Ann Tétreault and Robert Allen Denemark, Gods, Guns, and Globalization: Religious Radicalism and International Political Economy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004)
Peter Geschiere has separated the two purposes of witchcraft in Cameroon as “levelling” and “accumulation”—both tied to the distribution of wealth. Peter Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1997) 1–25.
Adeline Masqueher, “The Invention of Anti-Tradition: Dodo Spirits in Southern Niger,” in Heike Behrend (ed.), Spirit Possession, Modernity and Power in Africa, 34–50 (Oxford: J. Currey, 1999).
The Azande live in what is today the border region between Sudan, Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Pritchard undertook his studies in the area in the 1920s and published his findings in Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande in 1937. E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Eva Gillies, Witchcraft, Oracles, andMagic among the Azande (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976).
J. D. Krige, “The Social Function of Witchcraft,” in Max Marwick (ed.), Witchcraft and Sorcery (London: Penguin Books, 1982) p. 274.
Mary Douglas has compared witchcraft to infectious disease to illustrate this power of the hidden: “Infection and occult harm are both hidden from observation: a carrier can transmit disease to others without showing any signs of infection: a witch looks like anyone else. From their hiddenness both forms of harm afford the same kind of opportunity for accusation and exclusion.” Mary Douglas, Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory (London: Routledge, 1992) p. 83.
Stephen Ellis and Gerne Ter Haar, Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa (London: Hurst, 2004) p. 2.
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© 2009 Nathalie Wlodarczyk
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Wlodarczyk, N. (2009). “Magic” In Contemporary Africa. In: Magic and Warfare. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230103344_2
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