I was born and raised in Togo and grew up living with my mother and her family including Grand-parents uncle and aunties.
As I was growing old, it was evident for me that all my family members were Christians. I had the free will to choose between Catholicism and Protestantism. However, as I was growing up, I realized that there were some traditional rites in the family which, for me, served as rites to pay tributes to ancestors. Everybody in the household was a believer, however in the family story, my great grandmother- meaning my grand-father’s (father of my mother) mother – was a believer and worshipper of ancestors. Apparently at the time when my mother and her sisters were just kids and would visit her place in her village, she had a room for different divinities.
I heard that my great grand-mother was so involved in the spiritual practices that it somehow turned to what people call witchcraft. I don’t know if these allegations are true, but I just know that she truly had some deep spiritual knowledge and abilities. Here comes the blurry line between tradition and spiritism and let me explain my point of view.
I strongly believe that traditional practices such as voodoo practiced in my country Togo and Benin neighboring country, aim no harm and its believers and traditionalists tend to offer sacrifices to the same almighty God as in different monotheistic religions. However, in many of the rites present in Africa in opposition to Christianity or Islam, the rites are not clear and are fallacious. A lot of people unknowingly are born in practices they don’t know or even understand the depth of. The African spiritual practices are often deadly to the descendants when they do not perpetuate them. In other words, I meant to say that etymologically voodoo is a religion but due to its polytheistic nature, many gods are served leading to the fact that, while the primary aim is to worship God almighty, many other rites do exist for several different gods and entities and divinities. As an example, there is a divinity named “Hebieso” or “Hevieso” the god of rain, thunder and light. When that divinity is invoked it’s more often to help solve a theft problem but not only. Once the divinity is invoked, it will rain, and while it’s raining, thunder will start looking for the perpetrators. Once the thunder localizes them, even if they are hidden in their rooms with doors and windows closed, it will take them out and kill them outside on the spot. There are many other gods, like gods of water, other practices such as tradi-therapy – the knowledge of roots and herbs to heal which my father’s father (second family) practiced though he was a school teacher and had his career, so it was just a hobby or a heritage. Traditional religions have so many ramifications that it’s difficult to draw a line between them and spiritism. People can easily lean into the dark sides of those practices.
The story of my family is one in which the children of my grand-mother (mother side) didn’t understand the depth of what was happening around them. My grand-father had two wives and my grand-mother was the second. The first wife was inclined towards tradition and the practices of her mother-in-law. My grand-mother wasn’t. The great grand-mother according to what we have been told, was a “special character”. Her words towards my grand-mother’s children who mainly had a lot of daughters wasn’t love and I don’t know why, or maybe patriarchy? When she passed away, I think her memory was so negative that almost no one shared anything about her. We grew up with myself and my cousins, with a very vague knowledge of our great grand-mother and her practices. We didn’t know much.
In the family, among the step-brothers of my mother was a pair of twins. From what we understood since our childhood, twins deserved to have periodic rites. So, there was a place in our house (it took years for our eyes to be opened and for myself, my cousins and the grown children of my grand-mother to understand that, that place in the family house, is a real and very strong spiritual altar), where sacrifices were given. So many week-ends, one of my uncles (the child who came after the twins; in the tradition it’s believed that that child is more powerful than the twins), was the one (may be initiated by his mother we don’t know. The family dynamic was in a way that, by then we didn’t know what happened among the children of the first wife and all the resentment they had in their hearts against my grand-mother because of questions related to heritage.) who all the time presented the sacrifice to the altar. I was so young and ignorant and curious; I remember a few times I would follow the uncle to the place where he would chant incantations and offer the beans and gari (made of cassava) and palm oil. After those rituals, we would share some of the offerings meaning, drink the soft drink in one little calabash, taste the beans and the mixture of gari and palm oil and that was it. After that there would be a little party to share the food among family and family friends.
Our family home was known in those times for frequent parties.
Then years later, my grand-mother started receiving the teachings about those practices, this is when she would stop us from taking part in them. Amidst a lot of family quarrels and some tragedies that started happening (we’ve experienced deaths after deaths) and many other things, we finally understood that the family has a very tragic spiritual background. What people would do is to seek the oracles and try to understand what was happening… My grand-mother and her children and us grand-children, we have chosen to be Christians and faithful so we do not engage in such traditions and basically, we have had enough proof that they are not as harmless as they want to make it appear. Many prophecies (from Christian’s men of God) told us that we are under some sort of yoke from the great-grandmothers’ worship and some unknown stuff (basically, the day after I sent out the article, one cousin sister of mine called me from back home because she started a prayer journey and all those were revealed to her through some men of God. She didn’t know the existence of all these; hence she called me to check if what she was told was true. She is an extended cousin and unfortunately as far as she is part of the family tree, at some point she is affected and needs to clean out the “generational curse” if that is the appropriate name). We have lost a lot of family members but now we are free in the name of Jesus. To date none of the daughters of my grand-mother is happily married and among us the grand-children, life was just weird, not as easy as it should be, but to all those who do the work, they now have freedom in Jesus.
Apparently spirits and altar in families want their dues paid even when no one is worshipping them anymore. This is why you should beware of traditional practices. Many foreigners travel to Africa seeking some spiritual and traditional knowledge. We Africans, at least some of us, really want the freedom of Christianity instead because the price to pay when the traditional deities are no longer worshipped by the descents is too costly.
What is my point of view today? All my life to date, I have always been a strong believer in Christ Jesus and his ministry. I’m one of those faithful Christians who have prayed and prayed and prayed a lot due to some exceptional life circumstances. Men of God when I was younger, would tell us things about my future announcing some sorts of hardships luckily, not all of them. Today my heart is divided or maybe confused I should say, not about my faith but about all these predictions. As far as I understand that generational curse might be a thing, these past years, I became interested in questioning myself on how generational curses can be passed on so easily and a group of persons accept that they are cursed and live the effects of the curse. My first cure 10 years ago was my boldness when I decided to travel out to another country in my region to look for job opportunities. That first detachment from family allowed me to explore Christianity to another depth, praying, praying and praying. I strongly believe that the gospel is true, God does exist. That there is a realm powerful that protects us. I have experienced personal miracles but quiet miracles in my life to the point that, I know that I believe in God and Jesus. But what I no longer believe in, is the hypocrisy of the faith of people who call themselves men of God, at least not all of them. Second, the incredulity of us ourselves as people, Africans who tend to accept all verdicts as finals. Disclaimer: I don’t want to discredit the efforts of our families, parents aunties to seek deliverance for us, in Africa, many women are believers and practice Christianity with such a great faith, they give the best of themselves to their children, they fast they pray and this needs to be praised. Even though my statement says that the verdict is accepted, what I mean is deeper. Spiritual powers, evil powers do exist and cause harm to people, but mostly because people believe in them.
First and foremost, let me state that, I’m lucky to be educated and I do not take it for granted and that only is a great advantage because it has allowed me to explore possible solutions under different cultures, read different books outside the scope and environment in which I was born. My problem with the monotheist religions in Africa is that they have destroyed in us anything that has to do with the mental plan. We live in a three-dimensional reality. The spiritual, the mental and the physical. From my personal observations, traditional beliefs practitioners tend more than Christians to operate from the 3 dimensions while us christians we have been encouraged to kill the second dimension through an extreme encouragement to be submissive, not assert ourselves, to stay reserved, humble etc.… But there’s no gain, without a firm and bold faith, a great determination, a high self-awareness of one’s identity. That is the holy grail! However, all the teachings of Christ Jesus placed a great emphasis on that second dimension called the mental plan. Some scriptures to help understand my statement are Matthew 9:27-31, “… as Jesus continues his journey after raising the daughter of Jairus, two blind men follow him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asks : “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They reply,… ” Matthew 17:20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” End of demonstration. It takes practice to live and act from this three dimensional reality meaning, 1- a strong belief in God almighty, 2- A conviction in oneself (high self-awareness) and 3- in one’s actions or daily efforts.
I have observed that traditionalists have a faith sometimes higher in what they worship and themselves than the faith us Christians have in God and ourselves. Most of the time, our faith is hypocritical, shy and very timid. We worship God because we want something out of life and want to be identified as good people but not always because of a strong belief in our identity meaning: who we know that we are. It all stems in slavery period when Africans have lost their sense of self and identity. In a nation like Nigeria for instance, that sense of self and identity was preserved in some tribes. You can easily observe the results it yields to them as a country in many fields. They are extremely bold (mental plan), they know who they are (mental plan), they believe in God (spiritual plan) and anything they do they believe will yield great results (physical plan). For me that’s hypothetically the mantra to break generational curses. Religion has placed a lot of people in Africa under the yoke of poverty and life events, but the worst are laziness and a deep absence of anything related to self-identity. We have decided for instance to accept the final verdict. For instance, because grand-parents or men of God told us that we are under some sort of curse and yoke, we would accept any hardship that we come across in life and blame them for those said curses.
Today, I am a firm believer that in the spiritual realm, there are good and bad entities but above all those entities are the faith in God, the discipline toward a goal in life, and a life commitment to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal which I can conceptualize as conviction in self. I also strongly believe today more than ever that faith and spirituality are the sum of our core believe in God almighty and Jesus (because I’m a Christian) or any other divinity in the religion we choose, second our commitment to do good and contribute to our own life first and the lives of people around us, a high sense of discipline, self-improvements and our mission conceptualized as our ultimate goal. When we do good we are protected, when we love ourselves and others and study the scriptures and the holy books, we receive the tools and knowledge to understand how to navigate life in order to stay protected because there are many bad people who choose not to do good.
When we love ourselves first before others it means that we respect and accept our life mission and want to protect ourselves in the way that allows us to achieve that life mission and help heal the universe. When we love others, it’s proof that we love ourselves and want good things to happen to everyone the same way we want it for ourselves. But hardships are inevitable. Being born in families like mine is inevitable. What we do in life and how much we are willing to commit to, to believe in, to trust and to be determined to achieve is an every day’s decision; and that, no spirit can stop us, as long as we use the instructions written in the Holy books, or the laws of nature and the universe. The Laws and the gospel !
My family members are all believers but as of some extended family members, we didn’t know where exactly their faith stood. It wasn’t firm, but as you might have grasped it, not many recognize that they are believers of traditions, some do, some don’t, others don’t know where they stand and others hide it just out of shame and as long as your beliefs are not firm enough you are vulnerable and can’t materialize enough.
The Bible and some books such as “Outwitting the Devil” and many more, are my references.
Second, can you tell us/me something about your family members’ involvement in traditional religion?
Third, Mbiti argued that magic is not religion (religion is something bigger) but in African (traditional) religions, magic still plays a large role? are you able to comment on this?
I think I have replied to this one in the chat. In Africa the term Magic is not commonly used but one thing I’m convinced of is that: anything Black magic is very dark spirituality with some consequences. It’s like dining with the devil.
May God bless and protect us.
May we remain covered by the Blood of Jesus
Amen!