by VorJack
I’ve occasionally complained about the spread of magical thinking and belief in angels and demons. It seems to me that such ideas, which were once unfashionable, are becoming more widespread in America, particularly among the Pentecostal sects.
I think the very extreme end of this spectrum are visible in parts of Africa. Graeme Wood at The Atlantic has the story, which he gave the punny title of Hex Appeal:
By some estimates, about 40 percent of the cases in the Central African court system are witchcraft prosecutions. (Drug offenses in the U.S., by contrast, account for just 12 percent of arrests.) In Mbaiki—where Pygmies, who are known for bewitching each other, make up about a tenth of the population—witchcraft prosecutions exceed 50 percent of the case load, meaning that most alleged criminals there are suspected of doing things that Westerners generally regard as impossible.
[...]
The classic study of witchcraft in Africa occurred among the Azande, who inhabit the eastern edge of the Central African Republic. The anthropologist Edward E. Evans-Pritchard found that the Azande attributed a staggering range of misfortunes—infected toes, collapsed granary roofs, even bad weather—to meddling by witches. Nothing happened by chance, only as an effect of spell-casting by a wicked interloper. That sentiment remains widespread among Central Africans, who demand that the law reflect the influence of witchcraft as they understand it.
[...]
I asked how one determined guilt in cases where the alleged witches denied the charges. “The judge will look at them and see if they act like witches,” [Bartolomé] Goroth said, specifying that “acting like a witch” entailed behaving “strangely” or “nervously” in court. His principal advice to clients, he said, was to act normally and refrain from casting any spells in the courtroom.
If you really want to see frightening scenarios, read about some of the African nations where missionary Christianity has merged with tribal superstition to produce brutal, barbaric witch hunts. We’re talking about parents dousing their own small children in petrol and setting them on fire, little girls getting beaten to death by villagers, brutal, vicious murder with “Christian” priests leading the hunts.
None of this, except perhaps the presence of the petrol, did not long pre-date the arrival of Judeo-Christianity. Such murders– along with the performance of mass human sacrifices to bloodthirsty gods– unfortunately appear to have always been part and parcel of religion from Meso-America, across Africa, India, South-East Asia, and across the islands of the South Pacific, probably as long as humans have inhabited those regions.
What is truly alarming is that, while the Salem Witch Trial debacle in Massachusetts in 1692 generally marks the waning if not outright extinction of such witch mania in Europe/North America, it is only now– as European-North American Christian missionaries enter regions where centuries of European colonial infrastructure has long ago dissolved, where the first waves of idealistic nationalist fervor in the wake of WWII have degenerated into an increasingly fragmented and contracting ethnic map based on tribal affiliation, a return to “traditional” cultural practices, and rising levels of crime, instability and organized violence– that such primitive theories (and inevitably their barbaric praxes) are re-entering Euro-American society.
What better example than when black African “missionary” Thomas Muthee– who boasted of having driven witches from their homes in his native land of Kiambu, Kenya– laid his hands on Sarah Palin in her own church in Alaska and invoked divine protection from witchcraft and evil upon her as she began her climb up the political ladder to state Governor… and beyond?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/the-witch-hunter-anoints_b_128805.html
(YouTube video included, see @ 6:55– “Let us pray for Sarah!” Watch, listen, and vomit.)
Does anyone have a short answer as to why the witchcraft mania finally collapsed in Europe? Ran out of spare women? Ran out of trees to burn? Somehow I doubt it was that scientific reasoning filtered down to the general population.
The Pentecostal vogue for witchcraft makes even less sense than the African- in a village context, if a “witch” is eliminated the survivors might get some of the witch’s goods. In the US, you can’t eliminate the “witch,” and you get nothing.
In Britain it mostly didn’t happen. Witch burnings here were incredibly rare. Except in Scotland. Guess they needed the warmth up there.
Once again, Monty Python was ahead of the curve. “She looks like a witch! …well, we DID do the nose…but she turned me into a newt!…well, I got better…”
Why not use science to determine a suspect’s witchiness?
If the suspect weighs as much as a duck….
I have to admit that I find it terrifying to see such beliefs gaining traction here in the U.S.
Just keep posting that video of Sarah Palin being prayed over by the African witch-hunter.
I’m half-African and have heard my African family accuse my non-African mother of witchcraft after my father died.
Most of the time the witchcraft label is a convienient slander to plant on someone if you’re embroiled in a romantic, personal and more popularly, a property dispute with another person you really detest. Because generally Africans have higher levels of religiosity many of them do take it seriously it goes around the community and that person is ostracised because of it. Do the accusers believe in it? Well they can, but a lot of the time it appears it’s wishful thinking on behalf of them, i.e. they want it to be witchcraft so they can spite their adversary, so they might fabricate it or trick themselves it happened. Some people not embroiled in it might believe supernatural events actually occured, but from what I’ve been told, many of them get involved in the them versus us mentality and thrive in ostracising someone. It reminds me of my time in the Caribbean whereby in Jamaica they accuse people of being gay (regardless of their orientation) as malice and to ostracise them. People love to get caught up in the witchcraft/homosexuality allegations. Some of them might not even strongly believe in witchcraft. If you want to wreck someone’s life in central and parts of western Africa, just call them a witch. It’s a malicious practice mainly, they do it only when they know they can get away with it. For example you almost never hear of African migrants in England accusing others of witchcraft.
From what I’ve seen, it does vary in some countries and some areas of it. In the cities you’d be less likely to secure conviction from it, but in the rural areas then the lax judicial system could return a conviction.
With regards to the Pygmies, in many countries were Pygmies exist, they get the short end of the stick. Due to the stereotypes, if one of the non-Pygmy ethnic groups want to take land from them or for another reason, it’s very easy to do harm your own property in an ambiguous manner as part of an elaborate scheme and then blame Pygmy ‘juju/obeah’. The courts are all too keen to send a Pygmy down for it.
I hope this helps in understanding it. It’s an awful practice and quite embarrassing too.
I just watched the documentary on HBO entitled “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” a few weeks ago, and it was truly frightening.
http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/saving-africas-witch-children/index.html
That so many children and tortured and sometimes killed in the name of religion should not exist in the day and age of the internet. And worse, they are making movies on how to spot the witches, it’s a freakin’ epidemic in Africa!