osogbo eyó

Katastrophen in der Vorstellungswelt des afrokubanischen Ifá-Orakels

Abstract

The article presents a religious approach to notions of disasters as found in the Afro-Cuban Ifá and Ocha Rule - better known as Santería. Disasters usually involve deities that represent personified forces of nature and unite natural, supernatural and human qualities. This corresponds to a way of thinking that does not consist of the conventional separation of the natural and the supernatural world and adopts analogous ethical codes for nature and culture. In order to demonstrate this some narratives from the Ifá text corpus are presented, which are actually used to interpret figures in oracle sessions. These narratives prove an intermeshing of natural, supernatural and social events, which also has consequences for the formation of metaphors. Apart from the fact that metaphors represent linguistic constructions and are culture-specific, the thinking of the Ifá and Ocha Rule tends not to confuse but to mix the real state of affairs with the transferred image.