Fetichism in West Africa : $b forty years' observation of native customs and superstitionsNassau, Robert Hamill
Philosophy
Fetichism in West Africa : $b forty years' observation of native customs and superstitions
Nassau, Robert Hamill
Ethnology -- Africa, West; Fetishism -- Africa, West
(3) Another set of witnesses will say that, besides the personal soul and
the soul of the body, there is a third entity in the human unit, namely, a
dream-soul. That it is which leaves the body on occasions during sleep,
and, wandering off, delights itself by visiting strange lands and strange
scenes. On its return to the body its union with the material blunts its
perceptions, and the person, in his efforts to remember or tell what he
has seen, relates only the vagaries of a dream,--a psychological view
which, under the manipulation of a ready pen, could give play to fantasies
pretty, romantic, not unreasonable, and not impossible.
Some who are only dualists, nevertheless, believe in the wanderings of
this so-called dream-soul, but say that it is the personal soul itself
that has gone out and has returned. Both dualists and trinitarians add
that sometimes in its wanderings this soul loses its way and cannot find
its body, its material home; should it never return, the person will
sicken and die.
(4) A fourth entity is vaguely spoken of by some as a component part of
the human personality, by others as separate but closely associated from
birth to death, and called the life-spirit. Some speak of it as a
civilized person speaks of a guardian angel. Regarded in that light, it
should not be considered as one of the several _kinds_ of souls, but as
one of the various _classes_ of spirits (which will be discussed in a
subsequent chapter). To it worship is rendered by its possessor as to
other spirits,--a worship, however, different from that which is performed
for what are known and used as "familiar spirits." Others speak of the
vague life-spirit as the "heart." The organ of our anatomy which we
designate by that name, they call by a word which variously means "heart"
or "feelings," much like our old English "bowels," the same word being
employed equally to designate a physical organ and a mental state.
Considering the organic heart as the seat (or a seat) of life, the natives
believe that by witchcraft a person in health can be deprived of his
life-soul, or "heart"; that he will then sicken; that the wizard or witch
feasts in his or her magic orgy on this "heart," and that the person will
die if that heart is not returned to him.
II. NUMBER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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