Africa · Corrections
Practice · African Traditions○
The Zar
A spirit-possession healing practice found across Ethiopia and Sudan, typically led by women for the benefit of women.
What it isOne anthropologist documented the practice's theatrical dimension in detail from 1930s fieldwork, while another, writing the same year, proposed reading the entire cult as a form of group psychotherapy — two very different scholarly framings published almost simultaneously.
Person · African Traditions○
Harry Middleton Hyatt
An Episcopal clergyman who recorded roughly 1,600 interviews with Black hoodoo practitioners across the American South and published them as a five-volume archive.
Who they wereThis remains the largest primary archive of African American folk magic in existence, and most modern hoodoo publishing quietly draws on it. It is, plainly, a white collector's transcription of Black informants' knowledge — a fact worth stating alongside the archive's genuine scholarly value.
Person · African Traditions○
Nongqawuse
A young Xhosa prophet whose 1856 vision led to the mass killing of cattle in the belief that doing so would drive out colonial forces and restore abundance.
Who they wereThe resulting famine killed tens of thousands of people. Historians still genuinely debate whether the prophecy originated with her alone, was shaped by adult advisers, or was influenced by a real cattle disease already devastating herds at the time under severe colonial pressure — the causes remain a live historical question, not a settled one.