As mentioned from the last lecture, Calundu is a healing ritual meant to solve personal and social illnesses. Europeans in the 18th century, with its interaction with Africans, adopted part of the Calundu rituals as a practice for therapy.
- How are religion and healing political?
- Can healing "heal" slavery, is slavery an illness?
- Is healing "risistance"?
- Violent context of King Agaja's rise in the 1720s.
- Agaja persecutes or appropriates healers, diviners, vodun priests, etc - or selling the practice personnels to slavery.
- Healing presented a spiritual threat, and with the enormous followings of healers, spiritual and political power intertwined.
- As a result, diviners and healers were sold into the slave trade by mass, to places like Brazil and St. Domingue.
- Accepted by some, while persecuted by some other Europeans as "fetishers".
In Dahomey, diviners used earthen bowls/pans to call ancestors, turning the vessel upside down, calling ancestors into the bowl, and his/her voice would emerge from underneath. While Agaja could sell diviners into slavery, he could not possibly sell their ancestors (albeit symbolic) into slavery - a power he could never overcome.
- In Brazil, slaves used mining pans turned upside down, as a practice of adaptation. One diviner in Brazil claimed that he was a diviner for the King of Savalu, one of Agaja's biggest enemies.
- Similarly, in St. Domingue, divination with vessels turned upside down and voice beneath to reveal sources of illnesses...
Transformations? Same methods of therapy, but new social context with new clients (including Europeans), new illnesses (slavery?), etc... We could see similarly powerful positions that healers held.
Sakpata, or vodun of the early, was called for healing the smallpox. During the long term warfare in Dahomey. Sakpata priests protected against drought, famine, and small pox - all symptoms of warfare...
- Political power of priests made them targets for slavery.
- Domingos Alvares', who was sold into slavery, continued his Sakpata congregation in Rio de Janeiro, and healing centres (and many others with similar practices back in Africa carried over the divine knowledge and practices). As a result, like how he presented political threat to Agaja, he posed similar threat to his new slave masters and the local government.
Or vodun of the sky, and of life and death. It was often characterised with divining practices using pythons, when Agaja's army took Ouidah, they "killed all the snakes they could see" to ensure the death of this divining practice - though people stopped practicing this ritual, the knowledge was passed on.
Damballah spread from Ouidah to the Americas, via slavery... There were descriptions of Damballah priests in St. Domingue.
Iron altars dedicated to specific ancestos. Originated form Dahomey, and later spread to Brazil. What were the continuity and changes in the history of this practice?
An example of congregation was in Allada, a rivaling region to Dahomey, held great power in the ritual with Asen (and they were thus referred to as aladasen)... For Agaja unable to overthrow the power of these rituals, he chose to appropriate, ban, and exile practices and priests in the newly merged kingdom.
Similar to most African rituals, Asen was used to heal multiple illnesses and social issues (slavery...).