Poems (Novelty Trading Co in association with Sangster’s Book Stores Jamaica, 1966), 218-19.
55 Rex Nettleford, Preface, Ibid., 16-17.
56 Baker, Jr, ‘There Is N o More Beautiful Way: Theoiy and the Poetics o f Afro-American Women’s Writing’, in Baker and Redmond, Afro-American Literary Study In The 1990s, 135-6.
felicitous.57 Baker insists that the image o f the conjure woman denotes female metaphysical power and the ability to override patriarchal ideologies and conflate empowering spiritual narratives:
The powers o f conjure to provide guidelines, controls, motivation, and remedies for a black vernacular community grow out o f the ancient, authentic African origins o f its practices. These powers are mightily enhanced, however by the poetic image o f conjure in Afro-American culture. The image is most scintillating and liberating when it appears as the Mambo, priestess, or conjure woman rising...
Here, Baker recognises the healing and restorative powers o f conjure but ignores its ability to curse at the same time. This dual propensity is very much embedded in the powers o f conjure and can be traced back to its ancient origins in West Africa.
Indeed, Zora Neale Hurston points to this duality as she enumerates the formulae o f Hoodoo doctors in Mules and Men.59 She illustrates their work with subtitles like “For Bad Work” and “To Kill or Harm”, recognising both the restorative and the adversarial dimensions o f conjuring. The significance o f conjuring and the ways in which its dualities were expressed in spiritual practices and imaginative literature in the Americas differ in regional variety, but are fundamentally similar in terms o f their ancient origins and the dominance of female esoteric figures. Since the nature o f their configurations and powers depended on transformations in particular slave societies, it is necessary to begin this exploration by looking at female
57 Ibid., 154.
58 Houston A. Baker, Jr, Workings o f the Spirit: The Poetics o f Afro-American Women’s Writing (Chicago: T heU o f Chicago P, 1991), 93-4.
metaphysical figurations in the context o f African society generally.
The Female Metaphysical Figure In Africa And The New World
The example o f female metaphysical figurations to be cited stem from the Y oriiba community o f Nigeria. This area o f Africa has been selected for the following reasons. A very high percentage o f New World slaves were transported from this region and spread throughout the diaspora, in areas such as Cuba, Haiti, America and Brazil. Intense activity concerning slavery took place in the nineteenth century, largely due to internal wars and large numbers o f Y oriiba were imported into the diaspora. Furthermore, under the system o f indentureship in the Caribbean, tens o f thousands more arrived in the New World. Even where the descendants o f Y oriibas were numerically outnumbered by other tribes, their religion, based on the veneration o f the ori$a> had a great and lasting impact. Most importantly, the Y oriiba people afford an example o f metaphysical female power from which the diasporic configurations, both real and fictive, largely stem.
The correlation that this thesis attempts to make between the metaphysical powers embodied in the female metaphysical figure in Y oriibaland and the diaspora are therefore appropriate and valid. The Y oriiba definition o f a “witch” focuses on the ambiguity o f her ethical position and the divine source of her metaphysical power. Awolalu, in Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites, argues that ‘‘witches” are real rather than imaginary and that they act in concert.60 So great is the female metaphysical figure’s power that an anti-non-felicitous metaphysical figure group, the Ay d a l a, punish their excesses. Awolalu states that these powerful non-
felicitous female metaphysical figures operate irrationally and select their victims indiscriminately. It is not unusual therefore for them to practice infanticide and their aim is to suck the blood o f their victims. The Y oriiba believe that female metaphysical figures can change their shape, usually taking on that o f nocturnal birds such as owls. This ability to metamorphose and the formidable power wielded by these beings, ensures that they are feared and held in awe. Their nocturnal gatherings by the banks o f rivers, at crossroads and at the foot o f certain trees, are, as Awolalu explains, called AJq and is evidence o f then* organisational ability.
A bim bQ la, arguing horn another standpoint, emphasises the divine origin of these beings who will henceforth be termed O loju M eji, a Y o ru b a term reflecting the female gender and the dual nature o f the metaphysical being.61 He states that the O loju M eji were present before the creation o f humans, along with the deities, but that they constituted a separate group outside the jurisdiction o f the latter. In his examination o f sixteen poems o f Ifa, he reveals die Aje, as he calls them, or
O loju M e ji as cunning female deities whose linguistic dexterity is so great that in
one o f the poems they manage to outwit Q ru n m lla , the deity o f divination. Indeed, A b im b p la ’s analysis suggests that the O lojd M eji do not hesitate to attack the deities. In lfa’s text, Q rd n m ila himself states; “Only my O ri will save me from the hands o f the witches!”62
All-powerful and with gifts to create mischief bestowed on them by the Supreme Being, O lo d um a re, the O lojd M eji are, according to the verses, centrally opposed to human society. A b im b p la asserts that Y oriiba society has a value system
61 Wande A bim bpla, Sixteen Great Poems o f Ifa, trans. Wande A b im b gla (S.I. UNESCO, 1975), 292-4.
dependent on o w o (money), qjtiq (children) and a ik u (long life), the last being key to the successful accomplishment o f the other two. The I y a m i (Our Mothers), A j 4 or
O loju M eji as they are called, are eternally opposed to a ik u and can take the form of E14y$ (bird people) in order to carry out their deadly missions against it.63
Traditionally then, the O loju M eji have always challenged both secular and temporal authority. Even Q ru n m ila , when threatened, had to appease them with eese (the liver and intestines o f animals). These beings love palm-oil, animal and human intestines and liver. As A b im b g la states:
When used for sacrifice against the ajg, palm-oil is believed to be a substitute for the blood o f the supplicant. The aje are believed to like sucking blood but if palm-oil is offered to them for sacrifice, they may accept it instead o f human blood.64
Awolalu asserts that these beings rub an ointment on their skins to render themselves invisible and A bim bQ la states that palm-oil is sacred to them.65 Indeed, the O loju
M e ji’s association with gastronomy is not incidental and contains coded
ethnobotanical information (exploited to a deadly degree by enslaved Africans in the diaspora), usually associated with poisonous substances:
The anvil became so old and worn-out that it’s size was reduced to that of a needle.
The needle-sized iron became old and so worn-out that it was reduced to the size o f a horse’s tail hair.... I passed through seven forests,
Seven wildernesses.
I met one old, worn-out woman.
She put boiled and crushed yam in palmoil on her right.66
Horse’s hair, when mixed into food and consumed, acts like needles and lacerates the insides. It is significant that the code regarding poisons immediately precedes the
63 Ibid., 292-4. 64 Ibid,, 294.
65 Ibid., 294 and Awolalu, Yoruba Beliefs And Sacrificial Rites, 85. 66 A bim bgla, Sixteen Great Poems o f I f a, 119.
appearance o f the O loju M e ji in the verses. Additionally, because salt is regarded as an orderly and lucky substance and used in Y oriiba rituals to protect, it is anathema to the O loju M e ji and can disable them. Furthermore, because the beings can “eat raw liver without vomiting”, salt is all the more vital as a protective device against their attacks.
The O loju M eji then must be outwitted, appeased and courted because of their great powers and deep knowledge o f herbalism, and their ability to affect both physical and spiritual ernes. Hemy and Margaret Drewal state that the O loju M eji attack at night, causing stillbirths, infertility, and false pregnancy.67 In combating them, the society protects itself but, as the Drewals acknowledge, to obliterate them is never the aim:
According to Yoruba belief, the concentration o f vital force in women creates extraordinary potential that can manifest itself in both positive and. negative ways. Terms such as oloju meji, “one with two faces”, abaara meji “one with two bodies,” alaaw o m e ji, “one o f two colors,” aptly express this duality and allude to the alleged powers o f transformation attributed to certain women. ...68
These elderly women and priestesses are considered neither antisocial nor the personification o f evil. Rather they form an important segment o f the population in any town and tend to be shown much respect and affection.
In attempting to explain the source o f this duality, the Drewals argue that among the Y o ru b a women are believed to harbour innate metaphysical properties and the O ldju M eji exemplify this “female suzerainty” during the
67 Drewal, Thompson Drewal, G$l$d§: Art and Female Power among The Yoruba, 74. Louis Brenner makes the point that the “welfare o f the living community”, depends on what he terms an “appropriate relationship”, with these metaphysical forces. Very importantly, he states that the community must fulfil certain obligations to them but the human community can also manipulate them. Louis Brenner, f The Esoteric Paradigm’, ts, School o f Oriental and African Studies, London, 1993, n.p.g.
performance/ritual o f G$l$d?. This is a multimedia spectacle but is ultimately what the Drewals term “a celebration o f female power”. In this spectacle the O loju M eji are seen to be “the owners o f the gods” and their propensity to change shape is emphasised, as are their powers o f flight.69
Karin Barber corroborates this idea of female power and explains that in Yoriiba society women are seen as innate channellers o f esoteric forces o f which “possession5 is a supreme expression,70 But it is Janice Boddy who attempts to link women's socio-economic marginality and their dominance o f possession cults.71 She has argued that women's marginality in these areas makes them prone to illness, and because illness in Africa is often accorded a spiritual causation, women are more prone to make contact with the esoteric world. In his turn, Edward Ardener, when considering the mermaid deity possession cult o f Cameroon, highlights the centrality o f the illness-initiation complex among African women.72 He argues that the cultural concepts underpinning female ideologies have been ignored by largely male ethnographers. Ardener insists that this has led to distortions regarding women’s spiritual agency and a hiatus in the representation o f their views. He argues that the mermaid cult o f Cameroon affords women greater autonomy, due to the cult’s freedom to formulate laws o f its own, and the status that membership o f a spiritual body confers.
Furthermore, Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb in their essay on
69 Ibid., 7-11.
70 Karin Barber, ‘Orlkl, Women And The Proliferation And Merging o f Ori?a’, in Africa 60:3 (1990), 328-30.
71 Janice Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan (Wisconsin: T heU o f Wisconsin P, 1989), 141-2.
72 Edward Ardener, ‘B elief and the Problem o f women’, in Perceiving Women, ed. Shirley Ardener (London: Malaby P, 1975), 1-17.
concepts surrounding the African female body, argue that it harbours ethnoastronomical properties.73 For instance, they insist that the female African body harbours innate metaphysical properties which allow it to be responsive to possession- trance and other altered states. Frederic Lamp underlines this argument by presenting a picture o f Temne women o f Sierra Leone which contradicts Western concepts o f the female body. For example, his perception that the African female body’s biological functions, such as menstruation, are affected by the motion o f the cosmos, principally the moon.74 Along with John Blacking, he argues that this body harbours “inner forces” and that transcendental states are privileged in such societies.75 These arguments point to the duality inherent in the female African body and to its particular ability to accommodate the metaphysical. They also recall the O loju M e ji’s ability to articulate a dual discourse, one evident (the secular) and one clandestine (the esoteric).
What is important for the purposes o f my thesis is to determine how the combination o f women’s spiritual power and social standing translated into the various slave communities in the Americas and how well the spiritual powers o f female esoteric figures were put to use and transformed. It is easy to surmise that the
O lojd M e jH somatic discourse would have been intelligible to vast numbers of
enslaved Africans. Her flight pattern, her tracking o f victims in the community, her sucking o f human blood and her ability to metamorphose into birds and other nocturnal animals and metaphysical beings would have been familiar to millions of Africans captured and sold into slavery in the New World. Even more important
7j Thomas Buckley, and Alma Gottlieb, ‘A Critical Appraisal o f Theories o f menstrual Symbolism’, in
Blood Magic: The Anthropology o f Mensti'uation, eds. Thomas Buckley, and Alma Gottlieb
(California: U o f California P, 1988), 34-47.
74 Frederick Lamp, ‘Heavenly Bodies: Menses, Moon and Rituals o f License among the Temne o f Sierra Leone’, in Ibid., 210-31.
75 John Blacking, ‘Towards an Anthropology o f The Body’, in The Anthropology o f The Body, ed. John Blacking (London: Academic P, 1977), 7 and 13.
would have been the secret knowledge o f her second face, her oppositional stance to authority and ability to metamorphose in order to evade capture. Also, her knowledge o f poisons, her ability to disrupt the reproductive organs o f the female body, and her knowledge o f discourses concerning infanticide, rebellion, self-definition and determination would conceivably be common knowledge among African women in the diaspora.
Extemporisations on the O loju M eji found in the Americas are different yet related figurations who acted as mediators between enslaved Africans and their hellish environment.76 In the physical and cultural discontinuities o f diaspora experience these female esoteric figures mediated between displaced deities and displaced communities. They also mediated between lost homelands and the new territories and, most importantly, between dehumanised individuals and more powerful metaphysical beings and realms. Present in the slaves' past but very much a being o f the contemporary situation, the refigured O lojd M eji was conversant with her inheritance but knew that she had to deploy her skills in the new exacting environment o f the diaspora.
Here the revised figures, along with their oral literature, were circumscribed not only by strictures contained in slave laws such as the Code Noir, but also by the socio-economic circumstances o f the diaspora.77 They had to adapt in order to survive and metamorphose into new metaphysical configurations capable o f deflating racist ideologies and conflating African-derived systems o f resistance in order to initiate resistance. The O lojd M eji were therefore transmuted to challenge the officially-sanctioned doctrine o f white supremacy and systematic exploitation o f
76 The Soucouyant and Rider are female metaphysical figures found in the oral literature o f the