The Fantasy Genre has long been dominated by the religions and customs of countries touched on by the Crusades. While this makes sense, with the familiar image of a knight wandering foreign lands being key to the genre itself, there has been stagnation in recent times. As such, I’ve taken it upon myself to look into the cultures of the world and find fascinating details about other mythologies often overlooked by the genre we so love, going on a bit of a tour of world mythologies.

As I continue my little academic journey to learn of new mythologies and find new material around the world, we finally leave the West African region and enter a region where nature has firmly established its dominance – The Congo.

Named for the massive river that runs through it (deepest in the world), the Congo River Basin is one of the three true “rulers” of the African Continent. Along with the Sahara and Kalahari deserts, the lush jungles and wetlands of the Congo region dominate a considerable chunk of land and, to this day, it is one of the largest undisturbed rainforests on the planet. And yet, despite the fact the jungle has clear control of the region, several cultures formed within these lands, each carving a path for themselves and establishing their own unique worldviews.

And all of those have to start somewhere… Continue reading Mythology World Tour: Creation Myths of Central Africa →

The Fantasy Genre has long been dominated by the religions and customs of countries touched on by the Crusades. While this makes sense, with the familiar image of a knight wandering foreign lands being key to the genre itself, there has been stagnation in recent times. As such, I’ve taken it upon myself to look into the cultures of the world and find fascinating details about other mythologies often overlooked by the genre we so love, going on a bit of a tour of world mythologies.

Over the last few months I’ve made it a point to go more into depth about West Africa than I have other parts of the world. I’ve always intended to go back to other parts of the world for more specifics as time goes on, the earlier entries being used as an introduction to things a bit at a time that could then lead into continuing this series indefinitely. And it’s true that there are a lot of variances in other parts of the world that I fully intend to explore. But I felt that, culturally, we owe West Africa a bit more credit than we’ve given it in the past. For a long time the parts of the world that were influenced by European culture have had an impression of what West African culture was like and deemed it to be somewhat inferior more often than not.

So as we reach the last entry for the West African region, I find it appropriate that I end it on the note of a religion most misunderstood from the region. Though we think we know quite a bit about it, the religion we’ve come to know as Vodou has long been represented as some form of dark art with practices that deal with demonic forces. Too often we see the image of the Vodou Witchdoctor who does depraved things to the living and the dead.

But when we look closer, like the rest of the region, it’s easy to see that we got it wrong… Continue reading Mythology World Tour: Defining Vodoun →

The Fantasy Genre has long been dominated by the religions and customs of countries touched on by the Crusades. While this makes sense, with the familiar image of a knight wandering foreign lands being key to the genre itself, there has been stagnation in recent times. As such, I’ve taken it upon myself to look into the cultures of the world and find fascinating details about other mythologies often overlooked by the genre we so love, going on a bit of a tour of world mythologies.

As we wind down through the cultures of the West African region, a lot of similarities show themselves not only to the other cultures in the region but cultures abroad. There are some which have clear parallels to Abrahamic religions with a singular god who sees over many smaller aspects that carry out their will. Others have a similar philosophy to the religions found in South and East Asia. But what becomes clear is that, while all of the details are very different, the human race and what we want to believe about our world isn’t all that different. After all, almost all of these monotheistic religions have one god who, more often than not, just wants the best for us.

Except Abassi, he’s a bit of a dick.

So it comes as no surprise that the Igbo, despite being such polar opposites to the neighboring Efik, aren’t entirely alone in some of their beliefs in their region. Their belief in finding spiritual enlightenment and successfully becoming one with their environment (a very Buddhist mentality) is also shared by another group of people in the Nigerian region. So, while one neighbor may not be too keen on peace and harmony, another neighbor shares a lot in common with them… Continue reading Mythology World Tour: The Yoruba →

The Fantasy Genre has long been dominated by the religions and customs of countries touched on by the Crusades. While this makes sense, with the familiar image of a knight wandering foreign lands being key to the genre itself, there has been stagnation in recent times. As such, I’ve taken it upon myself to look into the cultures of the world and find fascinating details about other mythologies often overlooked by the genre we so love, going on a bit of a tour of world mythologies.

During the quest for some interesting details, going through West Africa, it’s become clear that many major patterns begin to form. Almost all of the West African cultures have a single supreme deity which is supported by lesser spirits. Often times this deity will have a love/hate relationship with the people who worship them, but will (usually) have a soft spot for the people they’ve created. Generally, the idea is that God loves us but is a little disappointed with our life choices.

But outside of the general similarity of all the supreme deities, the differences between the West African cultures stem primarily from how they interact with that God. In some cultures there is a need for houses of worship, in others it’s a matter of self-improvement, and for others still it requires violent retribution. But what is known in almost all cases is that, even in their attempts to appease or communicate with their deity, they cannot do it directly. God is unknowable, untouchable, and beyond human contact without an intermediary. And, in the case of one culture…that requires a great deal of reverence for trees.

Continue reading Mythology World Tour: The Serer →