The African Traditional And Diasporic Religions Thread (Santeria, IFA, 21 Divisions, Sanse + etc)

IronFist

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I believe I can say, with a great degree of confidence, that the Yoruba term òrìṣà is either 1) a lendword, or 2) a double from a conservative dialect (more than likely 1). Not just that, but òrìṣà is cognate with ciKam/Egyptian /Hr/ "face; sight" (< *head) and /wrS.w/ "the awakened ones" (with nTr.w determinatives). This is due to regular sound-meaning correspondences between ciKam and Yoruba.

I say that òrìṣà is either a loan or doublet because the sound law for Yoruba and ciKam is that /h/ and h-type sounds in ciKam are "zero" in Yoruba. The /S/ in ciKam interchanges and correspondes with /x/, /H/ and /X/. Those sounds are dropped within Yoruba while Yoruba retains /S/ (given as ṣ in Yoruba orthography). Thus:

Yoruba:
orí "head”
rí "to see; find; discover; perceive; behold"; "to be; seem; appear"
arí “one who sees or finds”

ciKam:
Hr "face; sight" [face; sight Wb 3, 125.6-127.14]
HrHr "to guard; to keep" [Andreu/Cauville, RdE 29, 1977, 10; Meeks, AL 77.2819; Lesko, Dictionary II, 135; KoptHWb 569; vgl. EDG 326 f.]
wrS "to guard; to watch" [Pyr 875a; CT I, 287d]
wrS.w "to be awake" [Wb 1, 335.10-18; ONB 493, Anm. 170; vgl. KoptHWb 170]
wrS.w "woken-ones" [Wb 1, 336.11; LGG II, 509]

Yoruba:
õri, orori "sepulcher" (tomb; grave)

ciKam:
HA.t "tomb" [Wb 3, 12.19-21; FCD 160]
Hr.t "tomb; necropolis" [Wb 3, 143.13-19; FCD 175]
xr "tomb; necroppolis" [Wb 3, 323.9-16; FCD 196; Cerny, Community, 4 ff.]
wrs "necropolis" [Meeks, AL 78.1042]

Yoruba:
yọ̀ “rejoice”
ayọ̀ "joy"
õrì, õyì "giddiness"
àríyá "joy; gladness; merriment"

ciKam:
nHrHr "to rejoice"
rHrH "to be glad (of the heart)" [Wb 2, 442.3]
rSw "to rejoice" [Wb 2, 454.1-12; vgl. FCD 153; Lesko, Dictionary II, 71]
rS.w "joy" [Wb 2, 454.13; Lesko, Dictionary, 71; Wilson, Ptol. Lexikon, 592]
rSrS "joy" [Wb 2, 456.5-7; FCD 153]

The semantax in ciKam is that "seeing" is related to "eyes," which are a part of the "head." Thus: head > eyes > see. "Seeing" is the "action of the head." With "seeing" comes "knowing" (being awake). With this said, the word in ciKam /rx/ "to know" is a variant of wrS "to be awake" and Hr "face; sight."

The word orì in Yoruba, meaning "head" and "guardian spirit", is the primary form of the word òrìṣà "head"; "guardian spirits." doubles in the language and òrìṣà cannot be analyzed into two words. Also,you have a very low frequency of the r-ṣ consonant sequence in Yoruba, which imo a lendword.

*************
From Wiki:

"An orisha (spelled òrìṣà in the Yoruba language, orichá or orixá in Latin America) is a spirit that reflects one of the manifestations of the Supreme Divinity (Eledumare, Olorun, Olofi) in Yoruba religion.[1] Orisha are said to have existed in the spiritual world, or Astral plane (òrun) or lived as human beings in the planetary world, or physical plane (ayé). Others are said to be humans who are recognized as deities due to extraordinary feats. Many orishas have found their way to most of the New World as a result of the Atlantic slave trade and are now expressed in practices as varied as Santería, Candomblé, Trinidad Orisha, Umbanda, and Oyotunji, among others."


As I said, it could be a double. E.G in Egyptian, you have /ra.w/ "sun; day" and /rk/ "time." This is a doublet in ciKam and the older form is /rk/. A dialect kept the older form, while /k/ > /a/ was the sound change primarily. A different example is that the /r/ in Coptic was mainly dropped. However, there are a few words which retained the /r/. So having the fuller form of terms doesn't necessarily mean a loan word. One dialect could have just kept the older form. Now, it could have been a loan in some proto-stage.
 
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Guvnor

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Thanks for sharing this brother, winiti looks so interesting and it reminds me of IFA a little.

Also the video has close captioning so people can read the subtitles. This is awesome! I ran into a few where I couldn't understand the language nor did it have close captioning so I couldn't watch it. My only little quarrel is why is it most of the time whites are doing these documentaries. I feel more brothers and sisters need to be behind these things.
 

Guvnor

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Wow, never even heard of this one. It amazes me how much of this stuff is done in the Caribbean. As a person with Caribbean parents all I ever heard about was obeah and how it was bad and something to be fearful of which makes sense because it is kind of dark. Though after awhile I learned about Shango, and shango baptist. Now you posted this which lets me know that as much as people in the caribbean preach against this stuff and what not it's widely practiced and there are more practices out there probably that I don't even know about lol. Even the way how many elders in the Caribbean have a knowledge when it comes to using herbs, that comes from these spiritual practices though some don't embrace them.
 
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Yehuda

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Wow, never even heard of this one. It amazes me how much of this stuff is done in the Caribbean. As a person with Caribbean parents all I ever heard about was obeah and how it was bad and something to be fearful of which makes sense because it is kind of dark. Though after awhile I learned about Shango, and shango baptist. Now you posted this which lets me know that as much as people in the caribbean preach against this stuff and what not it's widely practiced and there are more practices out there probably that I don't even know about lol. Even the way how many elders in the Caribbean have a knowledge when it comes to using herbs, that comes from these spiritual practices though some don't embrace them.

Apparently it's not much practiced outside of St. Thomas parish.
 
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Yehuda

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These few pages touch on Montamentu and the history of Curaçao a little bit. They're from the book Tambú: Curaçao's African-Caribbean Ritual and the Politics of Memory. Tambú is the music that goes along with the religion.

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BigMan

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These few pages touch on Montamentu and the history of Curaçao a little bit. They're from the book Tambú: Curaçao's African-Caribbean Ritual and the Politics of Memory. Tambú is the music that goes along with the religion.

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But montamentu comes from immigrants from DR to Curaçao

Also many curaçaoans and arubans worked in Cuba before ww2 and brought back a lot of Cuban culture including Santeria and Afro Cuban music
 

Yehuda

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Images not available


But montamentu comes from immigrants from DR to Curaçao

Also many curaçaoans and arubans worked in Cuba before ww2 and brought back a lot of Cuban culture including Santeria and Afro Cuban music

I don't know about that, from what I read what's said to have come from Santo Domingo in the 1950's was already being described by the Dutch in the 18th century.

And yeah the book says more than half the males had to go cut sugarcane in Cuba until Shell came to Curaçao in the late 30's.
 

BigMan

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I don't know about that, from what I read what's said to have come from Santo Domingo in the 1950's was already being described by the Dutch in the 18th century.

And yeah the book says more than half the males had to go cut sugarcane in Cuba until Shell came to Curaçao in the late 30's.


In the ABC islands you had brua which is pretty much the same as Latin American brujeria or British Caribbean obeah

Yeah it seems montamentu or a precursor has been around
https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/20718/c9.pdf

Don't know too much but it seems the "modern" form was introduced by Dominicans
 

Yehuda

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