Africa’s Dark Sects

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Posted on 01.02.2016 by The Keeper | Leave a comment

Tome found from the Ju-Ju House of NY:

AFRICA’S DARK SECTS (ENGLISH)

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Green cloth over paperboard, 6” by 8 ¼”; 328 pages, with the title stamped on the spine. Though the date of publication is listed as being only four years previous (1921), this book is in very poor condition. The spine is broken, the back cover is cracked, and multiple pages are dog-eared. There are also some marginal notes in pencil.

The author is given as one Nigel Blackwell; no publisher is listed. The end paper inside the cover bears a bookplate indicating it belongs to Harvard University’s Widener Library.

CONTENTS AFTER QUICK SKIMMING:

This book collects the papers of Nigel Blackwell, a minor self-funded African explorer. No attempt seems to have been made to organize Blackwell’s work (there is no index for example) and the topics vary widely. The focus of the work is on African cults and esoteric religious practices—the more gruesome or vile the better. Cannibalism and bestiality are some of the more comparatively tame practices discussed.

The author treats the blasphemous religious claims of the various African tribesmen he discusses with an undue and unexpected degree of credence. Regions discussed include East Africa (the Kenya Crown colony and German East Africa in particular), the Belgian Congo, and West Africa (especially the Niger River basin).

QUOTES:

Beyond the reach of the great Abrahamic faiths, Africa retains the primal truths of human society and religion; society is as raw and unformed as the landscape. The Gods are known by their old names and not prettied up by hymns and incense. It is here in this great continent of the Id that Man may truly know himself. That Man, as a whole, is so brutal and untamed at his heart, only shocks the unlettered or those blinded by the false trapping of the prison we have built for ourselves in our so-called civilization.

–

The cult, named in whispers by the natives ‘The Bloody Tongue,’ is supposedly based far in the interior, but has followers in Mombassa, Nairobi, and even Muslim Zanzibar. Their idols are human shaped though surmounted with a long red trunk instead of a head, and it is rumoured that more than one missionary has discovered that when the whites leave, the natives swap a head topped by a crown of thorns for one with a bloody ‘tongue’.

–

The sorcerer would then rend flesh from his own body, usually the arm, and spit the bloody offering into the mouth of the body supposed to be raised. A great chanting would be then undertaken by both sorcerer and his audience. The words are not in the native Yoruban. I have attempted to capture them phonetically:

“Hu ning lui mugluwal naf wugah nagal atzu tuti yok sog tok foo takun. Atzu tuti fu takun! Hu ning lui. (Compare viz. Waite and Zimmerman)”

In honor of late Mr. Elias

Posted on 09.01.2016 by lauri | Leave a comment

Notes of Professor Paynesworth:

Events of the tragic night on friday has left all involved in a startled state of mind. We are trying to figure out reasons for Jackson’s untimely demise, and the violence of it makes us all edgy. I think every one of us is trying to make some sense in to it all.

We met with Jonah Kensington, the head of Prospero House Publishing. He had presented letters and telegrams sent to him by Jackson along his travels, as well as some of Jackson’s notes. We spent the evening trying to piece together the route of Jackson’s travels and the reasons, findings and consequences of his investigations. It was alarming, how nervous and shaken he appeared to be when in London, according to his letter to Mr. Kensington. I think he believed to have found out something alarming considering the Carlyle Expedition.

I contacted Miriam Atwright, the head Librarian of Harvard University, to whom Jackson had sent a telegram from Nairobi, asking for book in their collection, “Africas Dark Sects” by Nigell Blackwell. She told that the book had disappeared from their collection before Jackson asked for it, in an unfortunate event that left part of the library ruined and filled with a foul smell, possibly rats. My further investigation revealed that the cuts in Jackson’s forehead corresponded to a sign known as the “sign of the bloody tongue” in the negro swahili language.

Mr. Matthew Griswold visited the sister of late Mr. Carlyle, and she was generous enough to give us a collection of four book held in dear value by his brother. The volumes were of alarming nature, describing things obviously made up by insane mind. Billy, Shane and Calvin visited Emerson Imports, where Jackson had been asking about company called Ahja Singh. The lead brought them to Harlem, looking for shipments from Kenya to New York that Jackson was looking into, in a curiosity shoppe called “Juju House”, there they found nothing of interest however. Instead, they found out that some of the previous murder victims with the same kind of hideous mutilation with the bloody tongue sign were connected to some missing Emerson Imports shipments from the Kenya. Lawrence did some inquiries of his own, including asking about Jackson from the people at Penhew foundation. In addition, Basil contacted a visiting lecturer from Australia, Professor Cowles, an expert in myths of the aboriginals of his continent. Jackson had been listening to his lecture the night before his ghastly murder.

Everyone of us are trying to get the answer to the questions: what is the story that Jackson was after, a story that cost his life. Before the funeral, we raised our glasses and decided that we would finish the book, writing of which Jackson paid so dearly for.

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