Biblioteca

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This book collects the papers of Nigel Blackwell,
a minor self-funded African explorer. No
attempt seems to have been made to organize
Blackwell’s work (there is no index for example)
and the topics vary widely. The focus of the
work is on African cults and esoteric religious
practices - the more gruesome or vile the better.
Cannibalism and bestiality are some of the more
comparatively tame practices discussed. The
author treats the blasphemous religious claims
of the various African tribesmen he discusses
with an undue and unexpected degree of
credence. Regions discussed include East Africa
(the Kenya Crown colony and German East
Africa in particular), the Belgian Congo, and
West Africa (especially the Niger River basin).

Solo per chi ha letto tutto il libro

Africa’s Dark Sects is a collection of the writings
of the late Nigel Blackwell (1872-1919?), an
erstwhile African explorer and an epicure of the
bizarre. The contents are primarily drawn from
a series of safaris that Blackwell undertook
between 1902 and 1916, visiting French West
Africa, the Congo, and the Kenya crown colony,
as well as shorter forays into other regions.
Blackwell’s interests focus on marginal or
secretive tribal religions, particularly those
involved in blood sacrifice and other outré rites.
Generally clinical in its presentation and style,
the work outlines the rites and practices
(sometimes from pre-colonial days but more
often focused on the modern era) of numerous
African groups and traces links between these
African religions and cults in the Americas.
Blackwell’s writing style is dense and
frequently refers to other authors’ works
without clarifying commentary or explanatory
discussion of the cited work’s connection to his
topic. These cryptic references reduce the clarity
of the book and reinforce the impression that
this is a raw and unfinished work that would
have been well served by an editor. Blackwell’s
frequently stated fixation was the notion that
Africa, being relatively untouched by
Christianity and Islam, held the keys to the
“truth” about human religion and history grates
on the educated reader as well. The text is
gruesome, unwholesome, and deeply shocking.
A short segment talks about the “Bloody Tongue”
cult based in Kenya. A Mountain of the
Black Wind is discussed, though no location is
given. A marginal note mocks Blackwell’s
limited knowledge of the group.
The book’s spine has been broken open
to a section about a Niger River delta cult’s grisly
necromantic rites designed to raise the dead and
make them into slaves called “zambi.”

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Beyond the reach of the great Abrahamic
faiths, Africa retains the primal truths of
human society and religion; society is as raw
and unformed as the landscape. The Gods are
known by their old names and not prettied up
by hymns and incense. It is here in this great
continent of the Id that Man may truly know
himself. That Man, as a whole, is so brutal and
untamed at his heart, only shocks the
unlettered or those blinded by the false
trapping of the prison we have built for
ourselves in our so-called civilization.
– – – – –
The cult, named in whispers by the natives
‘The Bloody Tongue,’ is supposedly based far
in the interior, but has followers in Mombassa,
Nairobi, and even Muslim Zanzibar. Their
idols are human shaped though surmounted
with a long red trunk instead of a head, and it
is rumoured that more than one missionary has
discovered that when the whites leave, the
natives swap a head topped by a crown of
thorns for one with a bloody ‘tongue’.
– – – – –
As the priestess whirled around the fire-lit circle,
chanting dim words from an ancient spell, the cult
executioners busied themselves with their screaming
sacrifices. As the blood flowed, a chill wind sprang
up, and I felt a flash of fear: the wind had become
visible, a black vapour against the gibbous, leering
Moon, and slowly my terror grew as I comprehended
the monstrous thing taking form. The corrosive stench
of it hinted at vileness beyond evil. When I saw the
great red appendage which alone constituted the face
of the thing, my courage died, and I fled unseeing into
the night.

– – – – –
The sorcerer would then rend flesh from
his own body, usually the arm, and spit the
bloody offering into the mouth of the body
supposed to be raised. A great chanting would
be then undertaken by both sorcerer and his
audience. The words are not in the native
Yoruban. I have attempted to capture them
phonetically: “Hu ning lui mugluwal naf
wugah nagal atzu tuti yok sog tok foo takun.
Atzu tuti fu takun! Hu ning lui. (Compare viz.
Waite and Zimmerman)”