Journal of Religion in Africa
April 14, 2026
Robert Launay
Belief in the reality of mystical powers has proved remarkably tenacious, in Africa and elsewhere. While “culture” may explain the form such ideas take, it cannot account for individual convictions that such powers are efficacious, not to mention dangerous. One example from Korhogo, Côte d’Ivoire, suggests mechanisms by which such beliefs are effectively sustained. The case concerns a curse...
Journal of Religion in Africa
2011
Tony Perman
12 citations
In the Ndau communities of southeastern Zimbabwe people are born with a variety of spirits, thus spirit possession itself is a public manifestation of this relationship that is profoundly affected by local understandings of the Ndau self. There has often been an implication in the study of African (and Zimbabwean) spirit practices that the spirits themselves are actually something else,...
Journal of Religion in Africa
2011
Tracy Luedke
6 citations
Abstract In the context of Mozambican prophet healing, spirit-host relationships unfold between intimacy and alterity. The interweaving of spirits’ and hosts’ biographies in possession is enacted bodily in the form of pains, postures, and punishments, and often pits their wills and well-beings against one another. Spirit possession is an intimate exchange, a bodily and social confluence that...
Journal of Religion in Africa
2001
James Smith
AbstractThis article analyzes a case of possession by spirit familiars (majini) among female students of a primary school in the Taita/Taveta District of Kenya. I explore the symbolic and historical significance of majini among the people of Taita (Wataita), examining in particular the homology among local conceptions of majini and local conceptions of money. I argue that the idea of majini has...
Journal of Religion in Africa
February 1, 1996
Adeline Masquelier, Jean-Marie Gibbal
9 citations
The river Niger, a source of life and danger for the people in impoverished eastern Mali, is also the origin of elaborate mythology. From his travels through Mali and down the in a dugout canoe, Jean-Marie Gibbal has created a personal documentary of the cultures of the region. The result is at once an ethnography of cultures in crisis and a evocation of the environment and people he...