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From: eballard@sas.upenn.edu (E. C. Ballard)
Newsgroups: alt.lucky.w,alt.religion.orisha,alt.occult.methods
Subject: Re: Luck Ball and Jack Ball???
Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 10:39:19 -0500
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
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There is a long history of pendulum use among the West Central Bantu
peoples - the Kongo, the mbundu and related cultures. That such a method
should survive in the New World, supported by use both by African
ancestors and readily found in European derived practices as well, is no
great surprise. It exists among Paleros in Cuba and I have recently spoken
with a student of Bantu religion in Brazil who refers to its use there
today.

While circumstances in continental North America did not preserve systems
of divination such as the shell casting of the Yoruba (and others - shell
casting being not a preserve of the Yoruba alone) as the works of Puckett
and Hyatt so richly demonstrate many Congo forms of divination, often
based upon trial, - some test for innocence, guilt, or else the existance
or location of a thing did survive. Also, as is more prevelent among the
Kongo, so did what is for lack of a better term called clairaudiant,
clairvoyant or spiritual divination methods. All of these consist of the
direct contact between diviner and a tutilary spirit either through
hearing, seeing or direct possession. This latter form appears from some
of Hyatts notes and from the common Algiers (the US town -not the African)
term "two-headed doctor" to have still been common among hoodooers and
rootworkers even between the two world wars.

Whatever notions of deity and creation may exist among various Bantu
peoples, deity is invariably distant and disinterested. The ancestors and
other nature spirits are usually the only spiritual forces with whom
humans interact for the Bantu. Even in the most complex forms of bones
divination among the southern African peoples and the related basket
divination of the Congo-Angola-Zambia area, both systems which rival Ifa
for complexity and sophistication, the diviner almost inevitably goes into
possession albeit often a light possession state, during divination.

Eoghan

-- 
+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o
E. C. Ballard

Debajo del Laurel yo tengo mi confianza