Had I Not Observed A Similar State Of
Affairs Regarding Sasabonsum, A Totally Different Kind Of Spirit On
The Windward Coast, I Should Have Had Even Greater Trouble Than I
Had, In Finding A Key To What Seemed At First A Mass Of Conflicting
Details Regarding This Important Spirit O Mbuiri.
There is one other very important point in M'pongwe Fetish; and that
is that the souls of men exist
Before birth as well as after death.
This is indeed, as far as I have been able to find out, a doctrine
universally held by the West African tribes, but among the M'pongwe
there is this modification in it, which agrees strangely well with
the idea I found regarding reincarnated diseases, existent among the
Okyon tribes (pure negroes). The malevolent minor spirits are
capable of being born with, what we will call, a man's soul, as well
as going in with the man's soul during sleep. For example, an Olaga
may be born with a man and that man will thereby be born mad; he may
at any period of his life, given certain conditions, become
possessed by an evil spirit, Onlogho Abambo, Injembe, Nkandada, and
become mad, or ill; but if he is born mad, or sickly, one of the
evil spirits such as an Olaga or an Obambo, the soul of a man that
has not been buried properly, has been born with him.
The rest of the M'pongwe Fetish is on broad lines common to other
tribes, so I relegate it to the general collection of notes on
Fetish.
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