Togo’s Akodessewa Fetish Market is recognized as the largest fetish market in the world, a place where Voodoo practitioner can find anything they need for their rituals. The practice of voodoo began in West Africa, before being taken to America by slaves, and in countries like Togo, Ghana, or Nigeria the religion is very much alive. Many people believe healers using animal parts and strange talismans can invoke spirits with their bizarre rituals, and solve their problems. And if there’s one place where voodoo priests can stock up on their creepy supplies, it’s the Akodessewa Fetish Market, in Togo’s capital city, Lome. Just think of it as an outdoor pharmacy where various animal parts, bone statues and herbs take the place of conventional medicine.
All posts tagged rituals
Wedding ceremonies from around the world
Wedding ceremonies are among the happiest ceremonies in all cultures and it is not just a bright, great, and memorable event, but also an ancient ritual. Because of that you can find out a lot about some ethnic group and culture just by looking at their wedding rituals. Here are some amazing shots showing wedding celebrations from different parts of the world. I like comparing the traditional and modern rituals, it’s really funny. Enjoy!
Ritual masks of Africa
Recent interpretation of rituals supplements Émile Durkheim’s views that rituals are formalized and symbolic rites—controlled and repeated behavior in the presence of the sacred—which enact society’s separation of the sacred and the profane. In the work of Edmund Leach and Mary Douglas, rituals constitute a system of symbolic actions that communicate values about society. The Manchester School of Manchester University’s Department of Social Anthropology championed a processual view that interprets rituals as a symbolic mechanism in which form, content, meaning, and a dynamic process guides, confirms, and reorders individual as well social experience and practices. Victor Turner argued that in Ndembu rituals and rites of passage, symbols are employed to stabilize individuals and society, create new social locations, and anticipate transformation by establishing a communitas, or fellowship. Jean Comaroff has argued that rituals reenact the historical and social practices of a community.
