Aaron Angel

Professor Katsanos
Global Religions
1 May 1, 2017

Of Water and the Spirit Review

1. Grandfather Bakhyes mortuary ritual is an Ideological ritual because by reinforcing

this rite of passage ritual, the community benefits from the successful transition of the
deceased into the land of the ancestors who can then continue guiding the community
from the land of the ancestors. He is leaving one group, to go to another. In doing so,
he has to shed himself of his previous group, the living and undergo a transformation,
at the end of which he is incorporated into the new group, the ancestors. Grandfather
Bakhyes death ritual represents the transition from life to death. When he undergoes
this transition, he goes through three stages of the Rite of Passage. They are
separation, liminal, and incorporation. During the separation stage he is separated
from his previous group, the living, which is represented by death. In the next stage,
liminal, he is a part of neither the living nor the dead. His soul must cross a river to
the land of the ancestors, which takes three days and nights to swim across. The tears
of the grieving village represent the water through which the soul swims. The
swimming is symbolic of a journey from one group to another. There is a parallel in
Christianity of this in-between stage between the time that Jesus died on the cross and
was resurrected, he spent three days and nights stealing the keys of Hell from Satan.
The liminal stage is important because one is in a state of limbo, they are waiting to
be accepted into the other group. In the liminal stage, the village has a responsibility
to grieve for the recently deceased. The tears of the village are what the soul of the
deceased must swim through to get to the other side. The final stage, incorporation, is
represented by the soul of the deceased crossing the river of tears at the end of the
three days and being accepted into the land of the ancestors. They are essentially
reborn into the new group. Funerals, in my experience, are not events that are
attended by the whole community, because in most cases in the Western World,
people only know a small fraction of the community. There is no set time of grief
either such as the three days of grieving in the Dagra tradition. In my, Protestant,
experience, there is no liminal stage where the soul of the deceased must swim across
a river to get to where they are going. The soul goes directly to either Heaven or Hell
in protestant tradition.

2. Somes traditional education was represented by his grandfather and when is

grandfather died, his traditional education ended. In this traditional education, Some
 learned that the relationship between grandfather and grandson was similar to
brotherhood and the relationship between grandmother and granddaughter was
similar to sisterhood. Some learned about herbs and medicines from his grandfather.
During one medicine session, Some inhaled a herb and went into a hallucinatory state
which reoccurred at later times in his life, through which he was able to communicate
with his deceased grandfather. The seminary education he received was heavily
infused with the French language. He had to learn to read and write this knew
language. He could not mix languages like with Creole in the United States. It was
considered a sin to mix French with his tribal language. The seminary education
imparted Christian doctrines into these young boys so that they could then take this
Christian doctrine to their villages and evangelize the indigenous peoples of West
Africa. In the seminary, Some had to go to confession and confess sins even if he had
none to confess. He had to learn how to beat the system that was rigged against him
by compiling a list of randomized sins from which to confess. My traditional
education is mostly of a religious sort. I have grown up in Protestant churches so part
of my education as a young child was to learn scripture from the Bible such as Psalms
23, the Genesis story, the story of Abraham, and most importantly, the story of Jesus
Christ. During Christmas service we would take communion which represents the
shed blood of Jesus. During Easter we would read the resurrection story. Before every
meal we would give thanks to God for providing food. When I visited my
grandmother, she would dress me up and take me to church, so at a young age I
understood that attending church was an important occasion. One part of my
education was Baptism which represents the death of ones sinful self and the
resurrection of a new, pure self. My formal education has been my school education.
It consists of math, English, science. The most significant difference between it and
my traditional education was the introduction of macro-evolution which goes against
everything that I had been taught as a child. In the eight-grade, when I first learned
the topic, I wouldnt do any of the work associated with evolution because I felt like it
was sinful just to participate in learning about evolution. Like with Somes
experience, my traditional education often conflicted with my conventional
education.

3. Malidoma must go through initiation because initiation is a big part of becoming an

adult in the village and of becoming accepted by the village as a member of the
community. The elders were concerned that Malidoma was no longer innocent since
he had already learned to read and write. Reading and writing was associated with
colonialism and its negative effects. The elders believed that the knowledge of
reading and writing was occupying the space in Malidomas soul that initiation was
supposed to occupy. This initiation is a Rite of Passage. It is a Rite of Passage
because before the initiation, the person is considered a child who needs a blessing
from the elders and to do this, these persons must undergo a transition into an adult.
The first stage of the initiation, separation, occurred when the families took the
 initiates to the drop-off location and said their goodbyes. The initiates took off their
clothes and gave them to their families. During the liminal phase, Malidoma went
through an exercise where he stared at a tree until he hallucinated and saw a green
woman who spoke to him. In another experience Malidoma went through, he jumped
through a light-hole which sent him to another world. When he came out of the light-
hole, he could sense things that he could not sense before such as the movement of
small insects and plants and he could hear the trees communicating. In a separate
experience, Malidoma jumped into an endless, shallow pool of water in which he
could breath like a fish. This was like undergoing rebirth, where the old self died and
a new self, with different perceptions about reality and other worlds, was birthed. In
this way these experiences are of the womb=tomb type of experience. In the final
stage, incorporation, Malidoma came back from the initiation and his whole village
welcomed him back. He took a ritual bath and put on traditional clothes.

4. Malidoma has met his destiny as a voice for his people, the Dagra, in the outside
world, or the wilderness as the Dagra call it. His future involves living in the city, not
in his village. Now that he understands the value of his culture and its connection to
the other worlds, he is responsible for aiding the outside world in understanding the
value of his culture. It is valuable because everyone goes through initiation and we
are all looking to be accepted into another group, to be accepted as part of a
community. As a global community, that is encountering initiation-like trials, we have
to come together, in unity to successfully complete initiation and be incorporated.
Ancestors are spirits that guide the living on the correct path or destiny. Like with
Grandfather Bakhye, after he became an ancestral spirit, he continued to show up in
Malidomas visions at the seminary to guide him and remind him of his proper place,
in his village with the Dagra.