Transcription
The tool of religion, now in my opinion, religion is the most powerful tool that has ever been invented by man. And just like any other tool, a tool can be used for destructive things and also constructive things. But what we're going to talk about in this video is some of the destructive ways that this tool has been used. And more specifically, um, provide examples in West Africa.
And so, what we're going to be doing is reading, uh, from this book here by Dr. Eugene Mendoza. This is West Africa: An Introduction to Its History, Civilization, and Contemporary Situation. And Dr. Eugene Mendoza is a student from Cambridge University, and he went and did, um, many trips over there in Africa and lived among the people and examined exactly how it worked and talked to many of the elders and talked to many of the people who over there so he can get much insight on how it's working. So let's get into this book and let's, let's see what, what, what we can unveil.
Myth in West African religion acts as a legendary injunction to establish and maintain the moral order. Basically, it acts as a way to create boundaries around how people act and behave. That's the way it can be used. And you can see this also when you go into the biblical narrative. The first five books are creating the boundaries around how the priests of that society want the, the, um, adherence to behave, right? And it's, it's very clear when you look through and read it.
And so he's saying that these myths are used as a way to establish morals rather than life adjusting to myth. It is often the other way around. Myth makers and storytellers continually adapt myth to political and material realities in life, bringing the legends into balance with such lived experience. The myth is adapting to life, so they're adjusting it. And I think this is pretty good on a good way to to approach myths as it adjusts in life because things change, the societies change, the, the, the social norms change, many of these things change. And if you can change the myths to reflect that, I think that makes sense, um, versus having a myth that's it's just stuck the way it is and it can't be changed because the times change.
And we see that in a lot of the other religions today where the books are written how they're written with certain things in there that are outdated. And the churches and some of the, uh, religious organizations, they'll adapt their interpretations of their doctrine. But the thing is, they won't be honest about what the thing really is, what the, the, the text really are, right? And that's the, so that's just the point of contention there. They won't be honest about it, but they will make adjustments. You'll see it today, some things that don't align with certain things that are in the text, but they'll make exceptions for within the organization. Because if you don't, religions will die out, right? They have their births and their deaths, and they have to keep adapting and meeting the demands of the, the current people, or else they die out like many other religions have died out in the past and many more in the future, right? So I think this is important for to to get that context in the West African, um, narrative that they adjust and adapt their myths to match their lives. Okay, so that's understandable.
And now that we've gotten that out of the way, it's getting ready to get spicy. City states did arise, but through control by royals of three forces: imagined realities, or religion. One way that people are able to control is through imagined reality or religion. This is what we have to understand. Imagined realities or religion. Let's turn the key one more time. City states did arise, but through control by royals of three forces: imagined realities, or religion. And that's why you have a thousand different religions out here because it's coming from a thousand different people's own, or thousands of people's own different imaginations. So obviously, people imagine different things. The means of destruction or the military and trade or commerce, as they did in Ur.
State-supported priests develop cosmologies and rites to bolster the power of rulers in the eyes of the people. Well, now, who did the developing of the imagined realities or the religion? It's the people who are the priests that are sponsored. That's who's creating it. These are regular, these are not regular people. These are people who have insight and they're specialized in creating stories and myths to reflect whatever they, in this case, to provide power to the ruling authorities. So they can construct the cosmology and remodel it in a way to to allow power to be, um, given to the ruling class. These ideational forms became part of the structure of domination. Who's the ruling class? Ruling over other people. That's who they're ruling over.
And notice when we go through many of these videos that the rulers are going to be the ones who's doing this because they're in positions where they can make things like this occur. The small person who doesn't have much power, they can have all the imagination they want, but they don't have the ability to put it in practice. Rulers do. That's the big difference. And when a ruler gets a characteristic and a trait of greed or any one of those, um, selfishness, if that is an expression of those, uh, rulers, then they find ways to allow that characteristic to express.
Yes, ritual centers such as Ilé-Ifè and Yorubaland became focal points of ethnic unity and housed a priesthood charged with the role of creating and maintaining social cohesion through a shared theology. So they had a specific area in Yorubaland where they housed the priests. The priests are sticking together and they spend most of their time, uh, constructing it. Just like any, any of you guys who work in corporate, you get together, you have meetings, you're working towards a common goal. This is the same thing that the priests are doing, working together towards a common goal. How do we construct it to where it makes sense? These are highly intelligent people when it comes to constructing myths. So it is with many of the other religions. They're highly intelligent people in myth-making.
The king also kept many diviners and priests who maintained mytho-ritual linkage with the earth and the ancestors, using traditional animistic means of communicating with the spirit world. Such magical religious activities gave supernatural backing and therefore legitimacy to the king's claim to rule. Now, it says the king kept many, not some and not a few, he kept many of the diviners and also the priests because he's using them as a tool. A tool to do what for him? To set himself up to rule, right? So it says communication to the spirit world as well. When we go back, it says that he's using them to create these mytho-ritual links from the earth to the spirit realm and using these communicating, uh, communications to the spirit world.
Now, let's find out a little bit more about these, uh, communications to the spirit world. Divination is a means of contacting the spirit world. There are two main forms: mechanical and by possession. In its mechanical form, diviners use some physical means to ascertain messages from the occult realm. They throw lots, read the movements of animals in the sand, or interpret sequences of coded objects. There are many ways diviners do this in West Africa, but the end result is the receipt of a message from the divine world to instruct the living how to act. Possession has the same end, but the method involves a spirit entering the body of the diviner and a trance state. The diviner then communicates with living clients.
Right, so we see that there's two ways where there's communication to the spirit world. One is saying that it's casting lots and also checking, uh, observing the movement of animals and then from there determining a certain message that's supposed to be received off of that observation. Okay? Then you have the possession where it's supposed to be letting some entity or some being take hold of the vehicle, and from there, it's supposed to be able to, uh, deliver some message.
In mechanical divination, diviners could manipulate the outcome of oracular sessions so that their innovations appeared to come from the ancestors. Using Vang divination among the Sisala, it became possible for an elder to present new ideas as sacred as the pronouncements of the ancestral spirits. That's what the elders are doing. Who are the elders? Here we go. Leaders of the communities. Again, the elders are taking that and they're manipulating the ones who have that manipulative type of energy on them and characteristic on them. They're doing that.
Religious ideas can be useful to politicians. I bet they can be. I'm, I'm quite sure that they can be, right? Absolutely, they can be. Politicians who have their hands greasy like this, obviously, and they're not trapped into the doctrine, obviously. They can rub their hands like, yep, I know I can use this. Let's find out.
Most systems of social control and political power reinforce the mandates of political leaders. We've seen them do this throughout the world, right? They came and did it in the Spanish Inquisition, during slavery over here in the United States, even over here in West Africa when you're doing it to people who are within their own, um, tribes, you're using it as a form of social control. Why? Because it works. Why does it work? Because people are susceptible to it. A form of social control by the politicians, greasy-handed politicians, right? We got this thing. Hands are super greasy, right?
Most systems of social control and political power reinforce the mandates of political leaders with religious precepts. You can take pieces of religious scriptures, use that to reinforce whatever ideology it is somebody has. They found you can find it in there, believe me. You can, you can find it in there to reinforce whatever it is you want to reinforce. Slavery, you can find things, right? You can find things. They found a way, obviously, the Pope with the papal bulls, he was able to find reason to justify slavery because it's throughout the, the, the text in the biblical text, right? "Slaves, obey your masters." That's one of the scriptures. You can find it, pull it out and reaffirm whatever it is you have on your mind. Because when they wrote, when they had, um, written many of those texts, especially the biblical one, it's very vague to where it could be applied to many different scenarios, which makes it a great tool, especially when you introduce and God said. Powerful tool, right? Powerful tool for a greasy-handed, right? Hands are super greasy, you know.
So this is interesting to see. It's very interesting to see and, um, to take note of because it's important to see how you can use these systems as a tool of oppression. And it's not that everybody's going to use those tools in that fashion, but the point is that show that it's been used in many different cunning and manipulative ways. And this just shows an example. We can go through many different other civilizations to show the same exact type and form of use. You just see it repeated, just with different people from different ethnicities and backgrounds. And so, like I said, this is not to say that all the people in West Africa are are using it to to to to manipulate, but it's a lot of it that was happening, right? Enough for him to take note in various parts in this, um, in this book here, right? It's a pretty thick book, so various parts.
Now, I always had some inkling about there's something funny and fishy about the religion business, asking questions and not getting proper answers growing up. And the thing is, what made me want to even make sure to get all the way out of there is to know that people do use it in these type of ways, right? And the thing is, no one's telling anyone that it is used this type of way. So you're, you're, you're almost walking as a blind person in there, and you don't be a, you're not, you're unable to really see how it how it functions until you're really on the outside of it. And then you can see, like, oh, I remember, I can see this, I can see this here, right? It's almost like being in a relationship sometimes. When someone's telling someone in a relationship, like, oh, you know, that person doesn't love you or that person is doing some funny stuff, the, the person in the relationship may not be able to see it. And most of the times they can't see it because they're immersed in the relationship. It's not until that person removes themselves from that situation, then they can see. Everything becomes clear. That's why they say hindsight is 20/20 when you look back at something, right? And that's what I recognized too, dealing with the topic of religion.
So I mean, it was a struggle to get out of this thing. And that's why I, I can say that it's the most powerful invention that man has ever made because it's so hard to escape. So hard to escape. So I make these videos to help people who are on that path because everybody doesn't want to be subjugated, right? Everyone doesn't want to be subjugated and walking around like a blind person. Some people want to climb themselves out, right? And I, I think that these videos will be helpful for people to ask questions because you're going to have to question yourself out of it. If it's someone who's stuck in there, you have to question yourself out to get out. You have to ask a lot of questions and search for the answers, and then be sincere. And a lot of the answers that come may be totally different from what you expect, right? And that's just part of the process, right? Because if you knew the answer, then you wouldn't be asking for it. So sometimes the answer is way in a different direction, right? And that's what I had come to learn, right?
And so my name is Brooklyn St. Michael, and I make these videos to give out keys that you can take and you can unlock doors for yourself, right? You have to walk yourself into the free world because nobody can do it for you. I can give out all the information. Nobody can walk anybody into the free world. Everyone has to walk into them by themselves. So to give out the keys to help people get, get into the free world. And then some who get into the free world join the Her Poise community, a non-racial community where we focus on the mind, on our morals, and developing a community of people who are aligned in the same goals and objectives and instilling values and and morals and a worldview in the offspring of that we have so they can have the best chance of making it in society. Because I can promise you, that's what people who are in the free world, whether they're good or evil, however you want to call it, that's what they're doing.
So I want to thank you for watching the video and, um, I'll see you on the next one.