Sunday, October 24, 2010

Distinctions in Death Penalty Sentencing in Sanhedrin 67


 
Tractate Sanhedrin, folio 67a-b of the Babylonian Talmud contains a discussion of the proper death penalty for a person who is found guilty of inciting others to idolatry and for a sorcerer.

Before going further into this discussion, some background on the death penalty is required.

In ancient Israel, stoning was the customary mode of execution. According to Josef Blinzler, “stoning became the regular mode of execution because the participation of the community was more possible than with any other form of execution.” Blinzler adds that the Old Testament “very often explicitly call[s] for… those who carry out the punishment [to] appear as ‘the whole community.’” It was necessary to involve the community in an execution because the whole community was thought to be responsible to God for the crime committed by the person being executed.

Blinzler, quoting I. Benzinger and Kurt Latte, says, “‘The whole community participates in the stoning as a way of riddling itself with guilt.’ ‘By showing his horror at the deed through casting his stone and dissociating himself from the perpetrator, each individual hoped to escape the vengeance of the gods who could visit unexpiated sins on the whole community.’” Blinzler also points out that it may be that the crime was perceived as directed at all the people, and not only at Yahweh, and therefore must be punished by as many people as possible, in order to “bring home to each individual in a particularly impressive and vivid way the reprehensibility of certain failings.”

According to Rabbi Richard A. Block, there is also “support for the notion that capital punishment was preventative. Since capital punishment was held to expiate the crime, it was also said to be in the interest of both society and the defendant.”

Considering that, according to Scripture, several explicitly mentioned types of incest, homosexuality, bestiality, blasphemy, several types of idolatry, profaning the Sabbath, cursing one’s father or mother, beguiling others to idolatry, sorcery, and being stubborn and rebellious are all deemed punishable by death, it would seem that the death penalty would be administered too frequently to be considered fair.

However, although the rabbis disagree on whether the death penalty should ever be imposed, “the anonymous mishnah, which presents the authoritative position, holds that the death penalty should be imposed infrequently, not never.”

David Novak describes the practice of hatra’ah, or ‘forewarning,’ which consists of the witnesses informing the criminal that he is about to commit a crime proscribed by the Torah, its punishment, the status of the victim, and the criminal telling the witnesses that he is going to commit the crime anyway. This was done to ensure that the criminal was compos mentis. It effectively made capital punishment very rare, as hatra’ah alerted the criminal to the presence of witnesses, and made it unlikely that the criminal would proceed with the crime.

Josef Blinzler explains why, according to Scripture, stoning has to be carried out outside the camp or the city. He quotes Rudolf Herzel in doing so: “[Taking the guilty party outside the house for the stoning] only became natural when, in accordance with the original intention of stoning, there was a desire to give the accused and condemned man the possibility of fleeing.” This explanation is one of several cited by Blinzler, including that people and property may be hurt if the stoning were to take place in the home, and so “the city should not be polluted by the corpse of the executed person.”

There are more specific accounts of execution in Scripture, but it is debatable whether these accounts were written as regulations concerning how the executions should take place or instead as descriptions of how the executions normally take place.

Chapter 6 of Sanhedrin gives an account of execution by stoning in which several steps are taken in a certain order, and each step is only necessary if the previous step does not cause the death of the accused person. The witness throws the accused to the ground, then witness by witness drops a stone on his heart. If this does not cause his death, he is stoned by all the people, after they all place their hands on him.

Chapter 7 of Sanhedrin gives accounts of execution by burning, beheading, and strangulation. To begin either, the people set the convicted “in dung up to his knees,” and then they put “a towel of coarse stuff within a towel of soft stuff,” and wrap it around his neck. They then pull on the ends of the towel.

R. Judah says, “If thus he died at their hands they would not have fulfilled the ordinance of burning.” This means that, as with the procedure of stoning, the burning or beheading is only necessary if the convicted does not die from the strangulation. According to Rabbi Richard A. Block, “Of the four [methods of execution], strangulation was preferred by rabbis because it was the one that did least injury to the body.”

If burning is necessary, two witnesses pull the ends of the towels until he opens his mouth, and a wick, or a strip of lead, is kindled and thrown into his mouth, burning his entrails. According to R. Judah, if beheading is necessary, it is to be done by placing the convicted’s head on a block, and the beheading performed with an axe, as the Roman method of using a sword is “shameful.”

At the beginning of folio 67a-b, Mishnah declares that a person who is found guilty of inciting others to idolatry “is brought to Beth Din and stoned.” Gemara explains that the person is only stoned because he is a layman, and that if he is a prophet, he is strangled. According to the Rabbis, prophet or not, a person who leads people astray is to be stoned and not strangled. The next Mishnah quote says that a sorcerer is liable to death if he actually performs magic, but he is not liable to death if he merely creates illusions.

Next, Gemara goes much deeper into discussion of the death penalty as the phrase “thou shalt not suffer a witch (to live)” is put under much scrutiny.

R. Jose the Galilean says that this phrase’s similarity to “thou shalt not suffer anything that breatheth (to live)” means that the punishment for sorcery is “the sword,” meaning beheading.

If the purpose of the death penalty is to remove from society those who have committed the gravest offenses, why is it necessary that there be a preferred method of execution for different types of people and for different crimes?

Chapter 7 of the Babylonian Talmud tractate Sanhedrin, in listing the four types of capital punishment that could be inflicted by the court, reveals that there is a descending order of gravity for the methods of execution: burning, stoning, strangulation, beheading. This may be a reason for differentiating the methods and a basis for deciding when each method is appropriate.

R. Akiba likens the phrase “thou shalt not suffer a witch (to live)” to “there shall not a hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through, whether it be beast or man, (it shall not live),” so he believes this similarity calls for the convicted to be stoned or shot through.

So why is being “shot through” not viewed as a separate method of execution from being stoned, as different as are strangulation, beheading, and burning?

Josef Blinzler offers the explanation that the phrase “stoned or shot through” unites the two methods of death because, since the stones and arrows are both thrown, and the person “is shot” by both objects. He mentions specifically Exodus 19.13, in which “Going on the mountain was strictly forbidden to everyone. Anyone who transgressed the command could only be got at by throwing stones or shooting arrows at him…”

R. Jose the Galilean contends that R. Akiba’s analogy is false because he wrongfully compares “thou shalt not suffer (to live)” with “it shall not live,” when R. Jose has made an analogy between ‘Thou shalt not suffer (to live)’ written in two verses.”

Because R. Akiba draws an analogy between two verses referring to Israelites, he disagrees with R. Jose the Galilean’s analogy because he believes it compares Israelites to heathens, “in whose case only one death penalty is decreed.”

Does this mean that when a heathen is sentenced to death, it is always by stoning? According to Scripture, “if a heathen committed adultery with a betrothed maiden, he is stoned; with a fully married woman, he is strangled,” so the way a heathen is executed is therefore subject to debate and not restricted to stoning.

R. Judah says of Ben ‘Azzai’s argument, “Shall we, because of this proximity, exclude the former from the easier death implied by an unspecific death sentence changing it to stoning?”, and takes the position that “as the ob and yidde’oni were singled out so that other sorcerers may be assimilated to them,” because they were stoned, all sorcerers are stoned.

This reference to “an unspecific death sentence” makes it necessary to ask when the method of execution is specified. According to Josef Blinzler, when the Old Testament calls for execution for a crime without specifying the mode of execution, it is assumed that the convicted is to be stoned.

On the contrary, Walter Jacob says that, in accordance with new rules, “Strangulation was used for all crimes in which no other death penalty was specified; it was considered the most humane method of execution.”




Bibliography

1. Blinzler, Josef. “The Jewish Punishment of Stoning in the New Testament Period.” The Trial
of Jesus. Ed. Ernst Bammel. Naperville, Ill.: Alec R. Allenson Inc., 1970. 147-161.

2. Block, Rabbi Richard A. “Capital Punishment.” Crime and Punishment in Jewish Law: Essays
and Responsa. Ed. Walter Jacob and Moshe Zemer. New York / Oxford: Berghan Books, 1999. 64-73.

3. m. Sanhedrin 7

4. Novak, David. “Can Capital Punishment Ever Be Justified in the Jewish Tradition?” Religion
and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning. Ed. Erick C. Owens, John D. Carlson, and Eric P. Elshtain. Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004. 31-47.

5. m. Sanhedrin 6

6. b. Sanhedrin 67a-b

7. b. Sanhedrin 57b
8. Jacob, Walter. “Punishment: Its Method and Purpose.” Crime and Punishment in Jewish Law:
Essays and Responsa. Ed. Walter Jacob and Moshe Zemer. New York / Oxford: Berghan Books, 1999. 45-63.


Written in October or November 2007 as a college essay



For more entries on justice, crime, and punishment, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/thrasymachus-support-for-justice-being.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/socratess-defense.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-konkin-schulman-bastiat-and-agorism.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/07/agorism-summary.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2012/08/panarchist-welfare-economics.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2012/12/is-it-time-to-legalize-murder.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2013/09/proposal-for-cooperative-party-of-oregon.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-war-on-drugs.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/02/fourth-amendment-image.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/on-legalizing-heroin.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/15-reasons-to-legalize-marijuana.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/john-locke-roderick-long-and-voluntary.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/social-policies-for-2012-us-house.html

For more entries on world religions and mysticism, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/syncretism-of-and-similarities-between.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/bwiti-religion-nganga-and-tabernanthe.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/sifre-deuteronomy-26.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/11/anarchistic-theocracy.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/02/terence-mckenna-and-novelty-calendar.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/04/materialism-stirner-vs-marx.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2013/07/letter-to-freedom-from-religion.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-piscean-ethic-in-government-ecology.html
at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Thrasymachus’ Support for Justice Being the Advantage of the Stronger

 Greek sophist Thrasymachus of Chalcedon
(ca. 459 - 400 B.C.E.)


In Book I of Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus claims that “the just is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.” Asked by Socrates to explain the statement, Thrasymachus says that in each city that is ruled tyrannically, democratically, or aristocratically, the ruling group is master. He says, “each ruling group sets down laws for its own advantage; a democracy sets down democratic laws, a tyranny, tyrannic laws; and the others do the same. And they declare that what they have set down… is just for the ruled, and the man who departs from it they punish as a breaker of the law and a doer of unjust deeds.” He says, “in every city the same thing is just, the advantage of the established ruling body. It surely is master, so the man who reasons rightly concludes that everywhere justice is the same thing, the advantage of the stronger.”

While Socrates examines Thrasymachus’ point of view, he gets Thrasymachus to say that it is just to obey the rulers, and also that rulers sometimes makes mistakes, setting down some laws correctly and some incorrectly. Thrasymachus agrees that a law that sets down what is advantageous for the rulers is correct, and the law that sets down what is disadvantageous for the rulers is incorrect.

Socrates tells him that, according to his argument, “it’s just to do not only what is advantageous for the stronger but also the opposite, what is disadvantageous”. Thrasymachus defends his statements by saying, “I suppose that each [the doctor and the calculator]…, insofar as he is what we address him as, never makes mistakes.” He says, “The man who makes mistakes makes them on account of failure in knowledge and is in that respect no craftsman.” and “…the ruler, insofar as he is a ruler, does not make mistakes; and not making mistakes, he sets down what is best for himself.”

Socrates and Thrasymachus agree that the doctor is one who cares for the sick and not primarily a money-maker, and that the pilot is a ruler of sailors and not primarily a sailor. They also agree that the art, whether it is medicine or ruling sailors, is “directed toward seeking and providing for the advantage of each”. Socrates says “there isn’t ever anyone who holds any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, who considers or commands his own advantage rather than that of what is ruled and of which he himself is the craftsman; and it is looking to this and what is advantageous and fitting for it that he says everything he says and does everything he does.”

Here, Thrasymachus, rather than agreeing, tells Socrates that he thinks that shepherds, cowherds, and rulers only take care of their subjects as it relates to how they themselves, the rulers, will benefit, and that he thinks that Socrates would disagree. Thrasymachus reasons that “the just man everywhere has less than the unjust man”, and he speaks of situations in which the just man suffers more than the unjust. He says there is more advantage in being unjust than there is in being just, and that “injustice… is mightier, freer, and more masterful than justice”, reiterating that the just is the advantage of the stronger, and adding that “the unjust is what is profitable and advantageous for oneself.” He thinks that injustice rules the just, that people who serve make their rulers happy but do not make themselves happy. Socrates responds to this by suggesting that Thrasymachus thinks of the shepherd as primarily a money-maker and not a shepherd, and argues that “art surely cares for nothing but providing the best for what it has been set over”.

They agree that rulers rule willingly, though not voluntarily, as they demand wages. Socrates says, “the benefit the craftsmen derive from receiving wages comes to them from their use of the wage-earner’s art in addition.” Thrasymachus agrees with Socrates that if the craftsman were not paid, he would derive no benefit from practicing his craft, and so Socrates says that “no art or kind of rule provides for its own benefit, but… it provides for and commands the one who is ruled, considering his advantage – that of the weaker – and not that of the stronger.” He says that decent men rule because they fear being ruled by a worse man were they to choose not to rule, and so they rule out of necessity, and the ruled “choose to be benefited by another rather than to take the trouble of benefiting another.”

Thrasymachus maintains that injustice is more profitable than justice, and says that justice is high-minded innocence and injustice is good counsel. He says that “those who can do injustice perfectly… and are able to subjugate cities and tribes” are good and prudent. He says that injustice is among virtue and wisdom, and justice is among their opposites. Socrates says, “if you had set injustice down as profitable but had nevertheless agreed that it is viciousness or shameful… we would have something to say… But as it is… injustice is fair and mighty, and, since you also dared to set it down in the camp of virtue and wisdom, you’ll set down to its account all the other things which we used to set down as belonging to the just”, and Thrasymachus agrees.

When Socrates asks Thrasymachus whether the just man and the unjust man would want to and would claim they deserve to get the better of each other, he says yes. He also says that “the just man is like the wise and good, but the unjust man like the bad and unlearned.” He says that the good and wise man will want to get the better of the unlike, while the bad and unlearned man will want to get the better of both the like and the unlike. Socrates says, “the just man has revealed himself to us as good and wise, and the unjust man unlearned and bad”, and Thrasymachus uneasily agrees to this.

Socrates says, “if justice is indeed both wisdom and virtue… it is also mightier than injustice, since injustice is lack of learning”. Thrasymachus tells Socrates that justice is not wisdom, and therefore a city that enslaves another does so with injustice, but if justice is wisdom, it does so with justice.

Thrasymachus agrees that injustice produces quarrels, justice produces friendship, and that if a group of people with some common unjust enterprise would be more able to accomplish something if they didn’t act unjustly to each other. Likewise, Thrasymachus agrees with Socrates’ assertion that if injustice should come into being within one man, that man will cease to be of one mind with himself, and he would be an enemy to himself, to just men, and to gods.

Socrates and Thrasymachus agree that there is some work and some virtue that belong to a horse, and to eyes and ears. Socrates asks if things could do their work if their virtue were to be replaced with vice, and Thrasymachus says that they would work badly. They agree that the soul must have some virtue, and that it would not accomplish its work were it deprived of its virtue. Socrates reiterates that the virtue of the soul is justice, and argues that this means that the just man and the just soul will have a good life, and that “it is not profitable to be wretched; rather it is profitable to be happy”, and also that “injustice is never more profitable than justice.” Thrasymachus ends the discussion by saying that he does not know what the just is, nor whether it is a virtue or whether a just man is happy or unhappy.


Originally Written in October or November 2007 as a college essay



For more entries on justice, crime, and punishment, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/social-policies-for-2012-us-house.html

For more entries on theory of government, please visit:
at 1 comment:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Aristotle and Rousseau on the Natural Political Association of Men

    
Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

While Rousseau and Aristotle both understand that labor creates a need for self-sufficiency, the two authors’ views on what is natural, what relationships are natural, how to view natural skills, and the division of labor differ greatly. Rousseau’s arguments are supported better than Aristotle’s.

Aristotle claims that “man is by nature a political animal” “in a higher degree than… other… animals,” and that the political association “completes and fulfills the nature of man… and he is himself ‘naturally a polis-animal.”

Aristotle sees language as a method of signifying perceptions of pleasure and pain, good and evil, and the just and the unjust to one another, and to declare what is advantageous. He believes that associations between people communicating what things they think are advantageous is what “makes a family and a city.” He says that a “final and perfect association, formed from a number of villages” “may be said to have reached the height of full self-sufficiency,” coming into existence for the sake of life and “for the sake of a good life.”

Aristotle’s asserts that “master and slave have accordingly a common interest,” which he supports by saying that an intelligent person whom can exercise forethought “is naturally a ruling and master element” while a person whom can use his bodily power to do physical work “is a ruled element.”

Aristotle agrees with Rousseau that the master / slave relationship is, or at least should be, one that exists for the mutual benefit of both, although Rousseau would not consider such a relationship “natural.” Rousseau believes that our reciprocal dependence on each other is what makes it necessary for each of us to do some work for the benefit of all of society, and that to enslave someone is to create in him dependence on others.

Rousseau thinks that political inequality is established or authorized by the consent of men, whom afford each other different privileges. He believes that slavery did not exist in the state of nature. He says, “since the bonds of servitude are formed only from the mutual dependence of men and the reciprocal needs that unite them, it is impossible to enslave a man without first putting him in the position of being unable to do without another; a situation which, as it did not exist in the state of nature, leaves each man there free of the yoke, and renders vain the law of the stronger.”

We must take into consideration the way our authors think of nature. Aristotle says, “Nature… makes nothing in vain,” and “Nature… makes each separate thing for a separate end; and she does so because the instrument is most perfectly made when it serves a single purpose and not a variety of purposes.” He believes that "every city exists by nature; the ‘nature’ of things consists in their end or consummation.”

Rousseau believes that in the state of nature, “all things move in… a uniform manner… the face of the earth is not subject to those brusque and continual changes caused by the passions and inconstancy of united peoples.” He considers the moment  at which  humans  left the state of nature “the moment when, right taking the place of violence, nature was subjected to law; to explain by what sequence of marvels the strong could resolve to serve the weak, and the people to buy imaginary repose at the price of real felicity.”

People attempt to get out of the state of nature by seeing nature and subjecting it to law, according to Rousseau. He claims that the “first source of inequality among men” is the perfection and deterioration of some individuals whom acquire diverse qualities “which were not inherent in their nature.”

When Aristotle writes that an intelligent master whom can exercise forethought in order to enslave a person suited to physical work, he calls the master a “naturally… ruling… element.” Aristotle thinks the master/slave relationship is a natural one, while Rousseau disagrees. Since, according to Rousseau, we leave nature by subjecting it to law, he would be likely to say that we could end what Aristotle considers “natural” slavery (although Rousseau himself would not share in that designation) by incorporating a system of justice, law, and equality into slavery, and ensuring that neither slave nor master takes advantage of the other without willingly giving something of himself.

If Aristotle thinks that “the ‘nature of things consists in their end or consummation”, then it would be reasonable to expect him to think that the nature of human political society is one that is complete; a polis which is all the villages of the world united. On the contrary, Aristotle thinks that some people are naturally suited to rule, and some are naturally suited to work and be subject to rule. His view that “Nature…  makes each separate thing for… a single purpose and not a variety of purposes” seems problematic because this is to suggest that a person who is born a slave shall never become free or even a master. Aristotle’s view that a master will always be a master and a slave will always be a slave will certainly not bring about a polis of all united villages because there will always be those who claim they have authority over other people, and the master / slave relationship will often be subject to abuses.

Rousseau’s view that men leave the state of nature by observing it and imposing upon it a system of law is better supported than Aristotle’s argument. Rousseau believes that reciprocal dependence makes work necessary, but he does not use this to justify the taking of slaves. He understands that mutual dependence causes people to work together, performing different tasks at different times, so that all tasks may be accomplished simultaneously and the benefits accorded equally to all members of society.

Aristotle’s view of nature suggests that he would not want people to have diverse job training, as “Nature… makes each separate thing for… a single purpose and not a variety of purposes.” Believing in such a statement would seem likely to contribute to disorder and undermine the cause of societal self-sufficiency, because it would make a farmer idle in the winter, as he would have no crops to tend to.




Written in April or May 2008



For more entries on theory of government, please visit:
at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,

The Bwiti Religion, Nganga, and Tabernanthe Iboga


A Bwiti ceremony


Bwiti (or Boeti or Bwete) is a religion practiced by the Babongo and the Apinji (or Metsogo, Metsogho, Mitsogo, or Mitsogho) of Gabon, and by the Fang of Gabon and Cameroon. It is also associated with the Massango (or Massangho) and the Baloumbo. It is the only truly African hallucinogenic plant cult.

Disumba, also called Mikongi, was the original Bwiti cult, syncretizing Fang Bieri and Metsogo Bwiti. Disumba was an adoption and adaptation of the Metsogo ancestor cult by Fang in lieu of their own failing rites. According to Muye of the Fang, the ancestor cult is said to have originated when Eve gave stillbirth to a white ball of gristle and bone, and Adam enclosed it in a bark container and consulted it when the two wished to consult God, for it knows the way to God. Early Disumba was an exchange by Fang of their own ancestor cult for the more dramatic and interesting and apparently effective ancestor cult of a neighboring people. The originator of Disumba is said to have been an itinerant Metsogo named Mbumba.

In the development of Bwiti subcultures, five main religious cultures have been influential: Fang Bieri, Tsogo Bwiti, Miene Mbiri – the curing cult and cult of wealth – and two forms of Christianity. There exist numerous branches of Bwiti, which incorporate various elements of the multiple religious cultures. While modern Disumba retains the songs, dances, miraculous apparitions, and drug-taking characteristic of the old Disumba, its method of making contact with the dead has recently changed.

The Bwiti believe that men should not try to look too far for God, as He is close by in the presence of the ancestral dead. Due to the European perception that practitioners obtained body parts by criminal means, the ritual use of human remains as a means to make contact with the ancestors was largely abandoned after the Second World War. Thus, the ceremonial use of the abum Bieri (or abum Bwiti or ebumba Bwiti) – a stomach containing the cleaned bones and dried body parts of the dead – was supplanted by the use of the abum ngômbi – the stomach of the cult harp, which contains the “sacred voices”. The Ebawga Nganga (or Ebawgo or Eboga Nzambe) branch of Bwiti also utilizes the cult harp, its name itself being pun on the word iboga and a verb referring to the skill with which the instrument is to be played.

Bwiti communities rely upon the wisdom of nganga or n’ganga, the term for the traditional holder of supranatural powers of healing and clairvoyance, as well as hexes and spells. While any Bwiti practitioner could have the ability to penetrate to unseen worlds and to regain the knowledge of the land above, nganga are experts at seeing through to hidden things, and they also possess self-transformative power. Chief dancers in night-long rituals are also nganga, and act as psychopomps, leading men from this life to the next.

Banzie – candidates for either male initiation into adulthood, initiation into the cult of the Bwiti, or people participating in wedding ceremonies – chew several grams of the root bark of the small, yellow-flowered bush Tabernanthe iboga, a relative of the coffee plant, which contains the psychoactive compound ibogaine (12-methoxyibogamine) as a means to induce an altered state of consciousness and to transform themselves. By doing this, they gain access to the wisdom of the ancestors. They believe that iboga frees the soul to leave the body and go on a great journey and to speak with the spirits of animals and plants. The Babongo also use the plant as a stimulant before hunting.

Ibogaine is known more as a powerful aphrodisiac than as a hallucinogen, and in sufficient doses it is capable of inducing a powerful visionary and emotional experience. Terence McKenna theorizes that Tabernanthe iboga’s reputation for being an aphrodisiac could well be partially related to its promotion of pair-bonding, and that iboga may activate a pheromone promoting pair-bonding. At large doses, it is lethal and causes vomiting and ataxia.

During many Bwiti ceremonies, a traditional torch made of bark and tree sap is burned. Musicians playing drums and a traditional Ngombi harp are central to the rites. The nganga and other participants usually dress in red, black, and white cloth, and may wear skirts of raffia material, small shells or beads, and animal skins such as civet cat fur.

Bwiti ceremonies usually begin at night and may last for days as the doses of the drug used in these ceremonies is particularly long lasting. The three-day initiation is used for spiritual and personal development. The iboga is supposed to allow seeing of the true self and visitation of the consequences of past actions. The iboga root may be made into a tea or more often taken in the form of scrapings, which are chewed. The initiate eats the iboga over a period of hours, watched over by his Bwiti father. The visions begin, and the iboga allows him to see into his true self and vividly revisit his past actions and their consequences.

After twenty-four hours, a typical Bwiti village ceremony may have the Banzie taken to the river and lifted into a construction of twigs shaped like a vulva suspended over the water, then washed with water soaked with leaves. Men pull a sapling of the sacred matombi tree from the forest, representing the initiate as a child, and plant it outside the Bwiti temple. Throughout the day the elders feed him small pieces of iboga, and the whole village performs, dancing in vivid costumes, in a way designed to bring on further hallucinations.

In the last phase of the ceremony, the initiate is called upon to see the Bwiti visions. Fire dancers sprint the length of the village to entice spirits from the darkness of the forest. The Banzie must tell the elders what he has seen; this is sacred knowledge, known only to them, and through it he becomes a man. Meanwhile, the villagers plant a forest around the matombi tree to represent the problems to be faced in adult life. Together, the men break up the trees branch by branch to symbolize the removal of all his problems.

During the course of their visions, Banzie meet the mother and father of all mankind, the creator-deities Zame ye Mebege or Nzamba-Kana (syncretized with Adam, Cain, and Jesus), and his sister, mother, and wife Disumba, or Nyingwan Mebege (syncretized with Eve, Abel, and Mary). The Fang call her Eve after evele, or red, the color of her blood, in which all life begins. She is the creative matrix of the world and the primordial source of wisdom.

In the Bwiti religion, Jesus is viewed as a personage who has the potentiality of transformation of character and is believed to have the capacity to intermediate between men and the gods. He is referred to as Eyen Zame (He Who Sees God), as nganga, and as emwan mot, “the child of man”. He saves Banzie by showing them how to tread the path of birth and death in order to reach God. In Bwiti’s Commencement of Life chapels (a Zogo Ebu splinter group), songs and ritual acts celebrate Jesus’s suffering, self-sacrifice, and his having shown men how to face engongol, the state of despair which is a constant preoccupation of Bwiti. His humanness and “everyman” status is emphasized, and he is viewed as but one manifestation of Deity absorbed by the genealogical model into Fang ancestry.

Bwiti practitioners believe that man’s sinfulness condemns him to discontinuity and death. The vertical discontinuity between God Above and God Below provides a tension. One means of obtaining continuity is to postulate the soul’s excursion from the Above to the Below and back to the Above, making the discontinuity into a circularity. The Fang believe that at death, the soul is reborn into the afterlife, and at birth, the soul in the afterlife dies. They also believe that their migration is a search for continuities between themselves and the gods and what they had lost.



Written in June 2009

Originally Published on October 24th, 2010




http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-food-and-drug-administration.html

For more entries on world religions and mysticism, please visit:
at 1 comment:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Syncretism of and Similarities Between Catholicism and Yoruba Traditional Religion

   Although their cosmologies stand in stark opposition to one another, there exist multiple examples of commonalities between Roman Catholicism and Yoruba Traditional Religion. Such examples include numerous instances of conflations between personalities, icons, attributes, and symbols of Catholic saints with those of Orisha (spirits or deities), as well as similar creation myths.
   Yoruba Traditional Religion is a set of rituals practiced by over one hundred million people in the Americas alone. Most of those devotees living in the Americas are the descendants of people who were taken as slaves to Spanish, French, and Portuguese colonies from their homes in what are today southwestern Nigeria, eastern Benin, and as far west as western Ghana (although many Orisha are known to have originally come from the Nupe region of northern Nigeria).
   Yoruba Traditional Religion is known by many names. It may be called Ifa (also one of the names of its divining deity Orula), and it may be called Lukumi or its Spanish variant Lucumí. It may also be called Ocha, which is a contraction of "Orisha," or Regla de Ocha, which means the law, rule, or order of the Orisha. Priests are called santer@s, olorisha, babalosha, iyalosha, and babalawo, among others.
   Cuban Orisha religion is called Santería, a Spanish term referring to its practitioners’ dedication to creating statues and shrines to their saints. The name Santería is often used to connote insult and derision, as such extreme reverence for saints could be construed as bordering on worship, idolatry, or heresy. Other related traditions include the Shango religion in Trinidad (named for a king-deity who wields a two-headed axe), Candomblé in Brazil, and variants in the United States including Oyotunji village.
   Haitian Vodou also contains aspects of Orisha religion. For people of Benin practicing Dahomean religion and speaking Fon, Orisha are called vodou, vodun, voodoo, or voudou, from "vodu," meaning spirit or deity. They may also be called Loa, a term which refers to their law, rule, and order. The Haitian variant of this term is Lwa.
   Those ancestors taken from West Africa spoke Yoruba, Fon, and Ewe. The terminology used by adherents of Orisha religion is "a mix of Yoruba…, Spanish…, a creolized version of Yoruba known as Lukumi…, English, and some Kongolese words."

   Orisha are the focus of ritual attention in Yoruba Traditional Religion. They are secondary deities, the primary deity being Olodumare, the single great god and personification of ashé
, the energy of the Universe, and he whose power was distributed among all the Orisha, Olodumare and Olokun, the Orisha of the depths of the ocean, are the only major Orisha who do not have corresponding Catholic saints.    According to Mary Ann Clark, "[t]he Orisha traditions are often described as a syncretistic religion that combines elements of West African Orisha cults and Spanish colonial Catholic religious practice." Clark describes West Africans as "generally ready to take on new ideas and practices and incorporate them into their lives and cultures," and as having "brought together their own disparate beliefs and practices, [and] also [having] incorporated the images of the saints and other cultural elements from the dominant culture." Clark says that "[p]ractitioners are commonly accused of either corrupting Catholicism with their own cosmology, practices, and language, or of inappropriately assimilating Catholicism into their practice of Orisha worship."

   There are innumerable subsidiary Orisha, though they are often shortened to a group of approximately twenty deities. One of the most important Orisha is Eleggua, also known as Esu, Eshu, Exú, Eleda, Elegba, Legba Ati-Bon, and Elegbara (connoting power, authority, and a status as the personal messenger of destiny). He is called Papa Legba by practitioners in Haiti, New Orleans, and Dahomey, Benin. Also, he is sometimes called Tata Eleggua or Lucero.
   Eleggua is a trickster, a provocateur, and the spirit of divine unpredictability. He is associated with doorways, entrances, roads (especially crossroads), language, communication, travel, and commerce and the marketplace (the latter being shared with Obba, the female river deity). He is a great friend of Orula, the diviner Orisha, whom he aids in making sure that divination rituals are performed correctly and with timeliness. As a figure who is able to communicate in all human languages, he acts as an intermediary between the world of human beings and the world of the Orisha. For this reason, as well as owing to his status as the "alpha and omega," he must be the first and last spirit invoked in all rituals, and he is the only being who can permit humans to communicate with other Orisha. He also interprets for humans the will of the Orisha.
   Across the multiple traditions, Eleggua is syncretized with such Catholic figures as Lazarus, St. Peter, St. Michael, the Santo Niño de Atocha, St. Anthony the Great (also known as St. Anthony the Hermit), St. Anthony of Padua (also known as St. Anthony of Lisbon), the Lonely Spirit of Purgatory, St. Martin, and St. Martin Caballero.
   In Haiti, Eleggua is syncretized with Lazarus due to the function they share as gate-keepers, their association with dogs, their crutches or canes, and the fact that they are both often seen sprinkling water. Elsewhere in the Americas, however, St. Lazarus, due to his infliction with leprosy and skin disease, he is associated with Babalu Ayé, the name of the Orisha Sopona, the god of smallpox and pestilence. Babalu Ayé is also associated with crutches, dogs, and having a status as a messenger for the gods.
   In the Orisa’Ifa tradition among Haitians and people from Benin, Eleggua is associated with St. Peter and St. Michael due to their gatekeeping function and their association with the protection of the domicile. St. Peter is also associated with a patriarchal serpent divinity named Danbala.
In Cuba, Eleggua is associated with Santo Niño de Atocha, the infant Jesus. This may be due to the fact that Eleggua is sometimes portrayed as an infant because he personifies birth. Owing to his status as alpha and omega, he is also often portrayed as an elderly man and also personifies death. He is seen as young and virile in West Africa. Also, both Eleggua and Jesus are known as teachers of humility and compassion.
   In Haiti, Eleggua is associated with either or both St. Anthony the Great of Egypt and St. Anthony of Padua. Both St. Anthonys are prayed to in Catholicism and by some Mayans of Mexico and Guatemala for assistance in retrieving and locating lost and stolen items.
However, there is not a single characteristic shared by Eleggua and both St. Anthonys.
   Like Lazarus and Babalu Ayé, St. Anthony the Great is associated with pestilence and skin diseases. St. Anthony the Great is also associated with basket weavers, and baskets are sometimes used as shrines to Eleggua. St. Anthony the Great is also associated with cemeteries, which somewhat relates to Eleggua’s role as the personification of death. However, a female river deity named Oya has a much more direct connection with cemeteries than Eleggua does.
   St. Anthony of Padua is associated with the elderly, and so is Eleggua in his aforementioned role as omega. St. Anthony of Padua is also associated with travel hostesses, just as Eleggua is so intimately related with travel and roads. St. Anthony of Padua is also associated with the mail, which has to do with language and communication, which are associated with Eleggua. It is a Puerto Rican folk custom for young women coming of age to hang a statue of St. Anthony of Padua upside-down in order to assist them in their search for a husband. This may be the only way St. Anthony of Padua could be construed as performing a function in Orisha religion that is at all similar to the retrieval role that he performs in Catholicism.
   In Cuba, some Santeros identify St. Martin Caballero with Ellegua due to the association with horses, travel, and crossroads. Eleggua is only one of many Orisha who has associations with Catholic saints. According to Clark, "All of the most common and many of the more obscure Orisha are associated with one or more Catholic saints."

   Obatala is associated with Jesus, St. Sebastian, and Our Lady of Mercy. Obatala as well as Osain are associated with St. Joseph. Obatala is likely associated with Jesus due to their holding in common associations with purity, wisdom, wine, white cloths, their reputation as "all that is holy and good," the fact that they are both sons of the one great god, and doves. Obba is also associated with doves.
   Aside from St. Peter’s affinity for dogs and his role as a gatekeeper, characteristics which liken him to Eleggua, St. Peter is also associated with Ogun because St. Peter holds metal keys, and Ogun is a blacksmith, and thus he is associated with iron and metal items. Ogun also has a gatekeeper function in that he uses his razor-sharp machete to clear the undergrowth and to open the way "when people’s lives become overgrown and [they] are blocked from [their] own best destiny."

   Shango, the king-deity who wields a double-headed axe called oshe, is associated with St. Barbara, who is the patron saint of military technology. Also, Shango is credited with helping to construct the first towns, while St. Barbara is also the patron saint of masons and stonecutters. Orula, the Orisha who knows and divines the past, present, and future, and who aided Obatala in the creation of the Earth, is associated with St. Francis of Assisi for unknown reasons. However, Orula, Obatala, and St. Barbara, share relationships to either palm trees, palm nuts, or palm wine, although neither Orula nor Obatala is associated with St. Barbara.
   Besides being associated with St. Joseph, Osain is also associated with St. Sylvester, St. John the Baptist, and St. Anthony the Abbott. Inle, the fisherman Orisha and the deity of snakes, medicine, healing, and protection against witchcraft, is associated with the Archangel Raphael. The deity of twins, Ibeji, also known as Meji or Jimugas in Spanish, is associated with Saints Cosmo and Damien.
   The female deity Obba is associated with St. Clare and St. Kathleen of Sienna. Ochosi, associated with hunting, the bow and arrow, and justice, is associated with Saints Norbert and Hurbert. Another female deity named Oya is associated with Our Lady of Candlemas. The female deity Yemaya is associated with Our Lady of Regla. The important female deity Oshun (or Osun or Ochún) is associated with the Virgin of Charity of Cobre.
   According to Clark, although "the matches made were not exact," "the incorporation of alien elements… was freely undertaken by knowledgeable priests who deliberately chose what of the surrounding culture they wanted to incorporate into their own beliefs and practices," and that choices were made based on "the similarity of the saintly iconography to that of the Orisha," as opposed to a more reactionary explanation of how this incorporation of Spanish and Catholic elements came about. She claims that the color with which the Orisha and the saints were associated appeared to be an important factor.
   According to Clark, "[t]he saints are merely the most widely known examples of syncretism in the Orisha traditions." Other than the numerous instances of conflation between Orisha and Catholic saints, Yoruba Traditional Religion and Catholicism share several aspects related to their origin myths.
   As in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Santería holds that humans were sculpted out of the clay of the earth, and that their first breaths were breathed into them by their creator. However, in Santería, that creator is not Jehovah but Olodumare, the universe and the single great god. In Santería, Olodumare is not the deity who sculpts human beings out of the clay of the Earth. Rather, that role is fulfilled by the favorite son of Olodumare, Obatala.
   Obatala is all that is holy and pure and good, and he is also the oldest and wisest as well as the leader of all the Orisha. Obatala becomes intoxicated on palm wine while making humans from the clay, causing there to exist physical deformities in human beings. He is the protector of children afflicted with such deformities. This stands in contrast to the creation myth of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which depicts the creator as infallible, the creation as fully intentional, and attributes the imperfections of mankind to sins committed against the creator by the first man and the first woman.
   Eleggua also performs a role similar to the god of the Judeo-Christian tradition in that he keeps a watchful eye on humans, acts as a moral guardian, and makes sure that people are sincere and keep their promises.
   While the Catholic Church and la Regla de Ocha share opposing viewpoints on the afterlife, reincarnation, and the location of unseen realms, these differences do not appear to be significant obstacles hindering the success or popularity of syncretism between the two. Nearly all of the major Orisha have corresponding Catholic saints with several similar attributes and / or symbols, and the Orisha and the saints may be prayed to in place of those deities with which they are associated.
A search for similarities between the two religions reveals a willingness of West Africans to adopt new religious ideas, an air of incompleteness surrounding this only partial adoption of Spanish Catholicism, and several similar aspects of the creation myth that pre-date European contact with West Africa by hundreds and perhaps one or several thousand years.

Sources:
1. Clark, Mary Ann. Santeria: Correcting the Myths and Uncovering the Realities of a Growing Religion. Praeger Publishers, Westport, Connecticut. 2007
2. Theard, Dawn. "Papa Legba." Hauntedamericatours.com
. 12 August 2009. 3. Bowker, John. "Vodou." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. Encyclopedia.com. 1997. 12 August 2009.
4. Corbett, Bob. "Introduction to Voodoo in Haiti" ("An Overview of Haitian Voodoo"). Webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/voodoo/voodoo.htm. March 1988. 12 August 2009.
5. Rodriguez, Jose. Telephone interview. 12 August 2009.
6. Corbett, Bob. "Introduction to Voodoo in Haiti" ("An Overview of Haitian Voodoo"). Webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/voodoo/voodoo.htm. March 1988. 12 August 2009.
7. Yronwode, Cat. "Saint Martin of Tours (San Martin Caballero). The "Lucky W" Amulet Archive. Luckymojo.com/saintmartinoftours.html. 12 August 2009.
　
　

Written Between August 1st and August 12th, 2009
Originally Published on October 24th, 2010


　
For more entries on world religions and mysticism, please visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/bwiti-religion-nganga-and-tabernanthe.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/distinctions-in-death-penalty.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/10/sifre-deuteronomy-26.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2010/11/anarchistic-theocracy.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/02/terence-mckenna-and-novelty-calendar.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/04/materialism-stirner-vs-marx.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2013/07/letter-to-freedom-from-religion.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-piscean-ethic-in-government-ecology.html
at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

How to Fold Two Square Pieces of Card Stock into a Box

      This series of images shows how to take two square pieces of card stock (or thick paper), and cut and fold them into two halves of a b...