IN U.S. $21.95 IN CANADA $37.91 "Discovering a deep�y meuninpjitl Ajhcan myth is like jinding an old snajJshot 1 !l myse{(in a place long forgotten .... These myths are more than just folk tales or .fables .... Ilere are epics as grand as G'ilgamesb, heroes as hardy as Hercules, beroines as ve.xing as Venus. " And yet., as Clyde Ford discovered, the great myths of Africa were left out of the key works of modern myl'hology, missing from the sacred stories of world culture. Taking it as his mission to reclaim this lost treasure, he has written a fascinating and important hook--one that both brings to life the ancient. tales �Jnd shows why they matter so much to us today. THE HERO WITH AN AFRICAN FACE African myths convey the perennial wisdom of humanity: the cre-J.tion of the world, the hero's journey, our relationship with nature, death, and resurrection. From the Ashanti comes the moving account of the grief-stricken Kwasi Benefo's journey to the underworld to seek his beloved wives. from Uganda we learn of the legendary Kintu, who won the love of a goddess and created a nation from a handful of isolated clans. The Congo's epic hero Mwindo is the sacred warrior who shmvs us the path each person must travel to discover his true destiny. Many myths reveal the intimacy of human and animal spirits, and Ford also explores the archetypal forces of the on��bas-the West African deities that were carried to the Americas in the African cliaspora. (Continued 011 back llap) tHE HERO WltH AN AFRICAN FACE THE HE �0 WlTH AN AF�lCAN FACE Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa CLYDE W. FO�D BANTAM BO OKS NEW YO RK TO RONTO LONDON SY D NEY AU C KL AND THE HERO WITH AN AFRICAN FACE A Bantam Book I January 1999 All rights reserved. Copyright© 1999 by Clyde W. Ford BOOK DESIGN BY TANYA PEREZ-ROCK No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ford, Clyde W. The hero with an african face : mythic wisdom of traditional Africa I Clyde W. Ford. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-553-10544-2 (he) 1. Mythology, African. 2. Africa-Religion. 3. Spiritual life. I. Title. BL2400.F67 1999 299'.6-dc21 98-24162 CIP Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BVG 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface vu Acknowledgments xv A Map of the People and Myths of Africa xvt Guidelines for the Pronunciation of African Words xtx List of Watermarks xxt List of Illustrations and Table xxiii Voices of the Ancestors 1 2 The Hero with an African Face 16 3 Myths of Death and Resurrection 35 4 The Soul's High Adventure 52 5 The Heart of the Sacred Warrior 68 6 The Way of the Master Animals 95 7 The Goddess in Africa 114 8 Orishas: Mysteries of a Divine Self 142 v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 9 Myths at the Beginning and End of Creation 170 1 0 Closing the Sacred Circle 192 Endnotes and Permissions 201 Bibliography 211 Art Credits 215 Index 217 About the Author 228 P�EFACE Little dreams, say the Elgon forest dwellers of central Africa, are of no great account, but if a person has a "big dream," the entire com­ munity must be gathered and told. How then does an Elgonyi know a big dream? Upon waking there is an instinctive feeling about the significance of the dream for the community-and the thought of keeping such a dream secret never occurs. This book began as just such a "big dream" for me. My interest in traditional African sacred wisdom, especially as it is reflected in African mythology, was an unlikely outgrowth of my efforts to understand the relationship between personal and social healing. As a chiropractor and a therapist I sought answers to how individuals and groups, particularly African Americans, might heal from long-standing trauma and pain. I knew that a turning point in the individual healing process often came when the "personal sto­ ries" of trauma shifted from litanies of victimization to legends of empowerment, and I felt that something similar must be true about social healing, though it was harder to grasp what those "social sto­ ries" might be. When I looked at the historical experience of African Americans, I saw a series of episodes, one slowly dissolving into the next: "Cap­ ture in Africa," "Monstrous Transport Through the Middle Pas­ sage," "The Horrors of Slavery," "Whispers of Rebellion and Revolt," "Promises of Freedom Broken," "The Entrenchment of Racism," and "The Ongoing Struggle for Freedom and Justice." What I failed to see was the larger story into which these episodes might fit. It would be easy to place them in an account of victimiza­ tion focusing on the atrocities of racism and oppression, and just as vii vm PREFACE easy to fit them into a narrative of denial claiming that these events happened a long time ago and so should not affect us now. But in pondering how to portray the historical and present-day experiences of African Americans in a story that transcended victim­ ization and denial, I asked myself, "If a single person had lived through all these experiences, how would I describe that person's life?" I realized that this series of episodes reminded me of the epic journey of a hero or heroine, and it was this notion of African Amer­ icans' "heroic journey" that first pointed me toward mythology. For the heroic journey is the quintessential story of mythology through­ out the ages: the quest of a hero or heroine who willingly or unwill­ ingly ventures beyond the known boundaries of the day, meets and defeats spectacular forces, then returns with some hard-won, pre­ cious gift. "There is a balm in Gilead," says an African-American spiritual, and when the African-American experience is viewed in the heroic terms of mythology, we can find that "Gilead" where the trauma of our history may be healed. Yet mythology seems anachronistic. In today's common par­ lance, the term myth refers to unwarranted falsifications rather than unceasing truths. The gods and goddesses, heavens and hells, devils and demons, heroes and heroines of myth have long since yielded to the microscopes, telescopes, and intellects of modern humans. Dim reminders of our mythic past flash by only occasionally now-on the motion picture screen, in recollections of our deepest dreams, or in the eyes of a child fretting over what lies waiting beneath a crib or bed. It's true that grasping the finite realm of space and time is best left to science; this has never been mythology's goal. But pursu­ ing the infinite, timeless, spaceless realm of the human soul is where mythology shines, for the hero's public journey through myth has long been a marvelous metaphor for the soul's private journey through life. Traditionally, this public telling of myths provided an anchor for both individuals and groups. Myths are, in fact, the "so­ cial stories" that heal. For myths supply more than the moral tag lines we learned early on to associate with nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Properly read, myths bring us into accord with the eternal mysteries of being, help us manage the inevitable passages of our lives, and give us templates for our relationship with the societies in which we live and for the relationship of these societies to the earth we share with all life. When trauma confronts us, individually or PREFACE IX collectively, myths are a way of reestablishing harmony in the wake of chaos. Still, we have few guiding myths in Western civilization, whether African American or otherwise, beyond those of Judaism and Chris­ tianity, and even here we commonly read (misread?) the mythology of Western religions as historical fact, rather than mythological truth. Some African myths did survive the era of slavery and have become part of the folklore of African Americans, but these were adapted more to our survival during those brutal times than to our present­ day circumstances. And so I wondered what we might reclaim from the mythology of traditional Africa that would be of use in the world today. But the literature on African mythology is not welcoming. West­ ern mythologists, including the late Joseph Campbell, write sparsely and often derisively about African mythology, demoting African con­ tributions to the level of folktales rather than including them in the ranks of the "higher mythologies" reserved for oriental and occiden­ tal cultures. Campbell, in particular, is enigmatic concerning Africa. During his lifetime, he did more than any single individual to pro­ mote popular interest in mythology, yet Africa is mentioned only rarely throughout the broad range of his scholarship. Admittedly, I have been influenced by his thoughts on mythology, even though he said little about Africa's important role.