Prevalence of Sorcery Among the Songhay of the Republic of Niger in Africa

This article is about witchcraft and its different varieties of practices in different cultures. This article explains how witchcraft exists and plays an essential part in structural and functional aspects of a society. It also sheds the light on the journey of witchcraft from being profane and wicked to acceptable part of a culture.

The chapter “The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate Events” describes how Evans-Pritchard observed and analysed the world of witchcraft among the Azande tribe in Sudan. With his fieldwork in 1937 he wanted to look at how they used spirits, oracles, magic and witchcraft to explain unfortunate events and how they connected death these events to witchcraft (Eriksen, 2010, p.242). In the first part of this chapter Evans-Pritchard writes how witchcraft plays an important role in everyday life among the Zande. He highlights that witchcraft is the root to any failure and misfortune.

Adam Ashforth’s Madumo, a Man Bewitched presents a personal ethnographic account of witchcraft, religion, and culture among the Soweto people in South Africa. In the book, Ashforth recounts his adventures with his Sowetan friend, Madumo, who, after a series of misfortunes, believes he has been cursed by witchcraft and is in search of a cure. Madumo seeks the aid of both a traditional healer (inyanga) and the Zion Christian Church (ZCC), formed form the syncretism of African and evangelical beliefs. Madumo’s quest for healing presents the reader with an intimate glimpse into the psychological and sociological factors that influence religion in Soweto. From Ashforth’s account, us westerners can begin to understand the nature and causation of

Religion: Though both cultures have different beliefs, their belief for the cause of sickness and healing are the same. They believe that sickness or the mental are a result of anger, envy, or witchcraft.

Many traditional Native medicines and healing practices were discouraged with the advent of Western medicine, but now there is a movement to return to traditional ways (Zubek, 1994, p. 1924). Modern Western medicine treats the symptoms to cure a diseased state when the body is out of homeostasis. Native American healing traditions do this as well with herbs and plants suited to the purpose. These Native healing traditions also include sacred rituals, chants, and purification rites to help bring the spirit and mind of the afflicted back into balance. In effect, treating the whole person, not only the disease. A blending of these two healing practices could bring about better prognoses for today's patients. The purpose of this paper is

Traditional African-American health beliefs consist of a holistic approach, where the body and mind is seen as being intertwined (Huff & Kline 2015). There is a constant battle within to maintain the balance. Prayer is their go to when it comes to dealing with illness or any problems that may encounter. Traditionally they are very spiritual and rely in prayer, rituals, magic and seek treatment from herbalist (Huff & Kline 2015). As for me, I do not believe in the ritual or magic but I am a strong believer in prayer and some of the natural treatments that are used for certain illness. One time I remember being very sick and I went to the doctor after two days, because it was the weekend. When I got there he told me I had strep and he asked what was I doing to treat it. I told him that I was gargling with warm salt water and vinegar. He told me to continue what I was doing and that it was working. I left his office without any other alternative treatment plan. From that day going forward whenever my throat would get a little sore I would gargle with warm salt water, vinegar, pepper or hot sauce.

Black magic’s influence within African cultures is no surprise when taking a look at the culture itself. Known as Vodou in Haiti, which later evolved into the practice known as Voodoo in the United States, along with Conjuring, also known as the practice of Hoodoo which evolved from West African countries such as Ghana, the practice of black magic persistently played a role in African culture constantly following the dispersal of Africans worldwide throughout the past centuries. Throughout a multitude of societies in the world, specifically places with backgrounds connecting to African heritage, it is evident that forms of black magic have played a role in their past. While examining the history and trade of black magic through a multitude

African Americans have traditional health and illness beliefs. They also are known to use folk medicine; the folk healers are root workers. Some African Americans, particularly of Haitian background, may believe in sympathetic magic. Sympathetic magic assumes everything is interconnected and includes the practice of imitative and contagious magic. Contagious magic entails the belief that once an entity is physically connected to another, it can never be separated. This type of belief is seen in the practice of voodoo, when an individual will take a piece of the victim’s hair or fingernail and place a hex, which they believe will cause the person to become ill (Campinha-Bacote, 2009).

African- Americans had an immensely different experience dealing with disease and illness opposed to white masters. With fewer resources, in some cases, the slaves developed medicine or treatments that were more helpful and advanced than those of the white physicians. For example, the Burdock root was used as a treatment for diabetes. It was also used by herbalists for treating dropsy, gout, blood disorders, rheumatism and fungal infections. (Fitzgerald 2) Back then, the slaves would also use certain methods of healing that didn’t involve injesting a medicine. It was very common for the slaves to believe in using charms and magic for their remedies. Often those considered to be advanced healers would also be considered very skilled with

In this case study on cross cultural medicinal beliefs and practices, Anne Fadiman addresses the rift between Hmong spiritual and medicinal customs and the culture of American biomedicine by telling the story of a young Hmong child, Lia Lee. Lia’s journey started when she was three months old and she suffered her first of many epileptic seizures. Over the next few months she continued to suffer from her seizures and made at least three emergency room visits. Like most cases of epilepsy, the cause of her grand mal seizures was unknown, however, her parents, Nao Kao and Foua Lee, believed it to be the result of her elder sister slamming the door and scaring Lia awake, allowing a dab, or evil spirit, to steal her soul. After her first visit to the Merced Community Medical Center, it became clear that the language barrier would not allow for an accurate patient history to be recorded. As Lia’s condition worsened, this barrier would further prevent the Lee’s from understanding exactly what was happening to their daughter as well as follow the treatment the doctors were implementing. This eventually lead to the doctor’s believing that Nao Kao and Foua

These practices were similar to that of the Native Americans. As the black men and women were subjugated and confined into harsh labor on the Plantation in North America, they continue to practice domestic medicine, rituals and ceremonies which involved calling on supernatural forces to cure and heal the sick. African-Americans approached to health and healing was in the context of communal health. In curing for the sick, African-American healers drew healing powers from the understanding of spiritual vision from which the power of the ancestors played a central role. They incorporated ritual practices and ceremonies to gain knowledge, power, energy, and strength that enabled herb doctors to secure herb combinations to cure an ailing

Western, Native American, and American enslaved styles of healing and treatment are not usually thought of as very similar. Early colonists believed in forms of science, humoral theory, and bad humors. Native Americans, on the other hand, often believed their afflictions to be of a more spiritual cause, using rituals as cures. Black American Slaves often understood their illnesses as mysticism or magic practices. One can safely argue that all these peoples believed disease to be linked to a spiritual entity or deity, but the nature of understanding illness differed.

2 diabetics in Nigeria (Yusuf, Obe, & Joseph, 2007). .3 Though they are not considered as a major factor. However, African immigrants that have been exposed to a different way of treating disease find it difficult to accept modern medicine. A key reason is that the patient’s culture is often seen as a problem, causing a barrier to care. In my community where I grew up, I was raised using herbs, plants, roots and other alternative methods in treatment of illnesses. However, in the States one has to see a physician to diagnose and prescribe medications, which is something African immigrants finds difficult to get used to. Personally, I have always been cautious about the side effect and cost of

Traditional medicine, also known as conventional medicine, relies on scientific principles, contemporary technologies as well as scientifically proved methodologies for purposes of preventing, diagnosing, and treating adverse medical conditions (Treweek &Heller, 2006). Health care professionals within conventional medicine believe that diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms such as viruses

The Enlightenment and the emerging of modern rationalism have paved the way to a worldview where the suspicion of witchcraft is not needed to explain the mysterious phenomena of this world. This is not the case in Africa. The belief in the existence of witches, evil persons who are able to harm others by using mystical powers, is part of the common cultural knowledge. Samuel Waje Kunhiyop states, “Almost all African societies believe in witchcraft in one form or another. Belief in witchcraft is the traditional way of explaining the ultimate cause of evil, misfortune or death.” The African worldview is holistic. In this perception, things do not just happen. What happens, either good or bad, is traced back to human action,