Religious Material Art - Essay Example

Religious Material Art Is it true that ridding a Honda motorcycle portrays status of wealth or the modernity? At a deeper level, the mask represents the Ogun who is the Yoruba god of iron and, therefore, items like the motorcycle that are made from the metals are associated with the change of the violence. There are further illusions that are made and associated with the mystical powers of our mothers that are reflected in the face of the woman in the masks lower register. This mystical power ensures that innovations are done in a way that they are eye-catching as the shiny new motorcycle. In the community of the Yoruba elements of chaotic behavior and ineffable are found to be very significant since they give an inchoate experience. What makes them important is that they are given great recognition in the ritual works and in the divination where people remember, revise and do the work of reconstitution of the various elements of the of the community history to enable them understand and cope with the difficulties that they are experiencing currently so that a better future can be expected. When we focus on the Tabwa divination and the sequence of how various actions follow, they may reveal the revelation of the dynamics of the society and how each situation is perceived and understood to make a decision. As the individual actors try to cope and understand, the ritual work is seen as a business to redress crises of health and social welfare in the society. A lot of people try to reflect on how life is and how it works in moments of performance, they do this so to protect themselves in case they fail to take proper action they may not lead to intense suffering, destruction or even death (Robert 69). This paper seeks to analyze religion and why the material culture is a factor of importance among the Yoruba communities. Interpretation of the religion text continues to be a matter of interest in the modern society. It has acknowledged importance of the bible in the faiths of the Christians, the life of the church and to some greater extent it also looks at the relation between the Christians and the faithful of other religions. Senegal is one of the countries with the most vibrant visual culture where images are painted everywhere some on the billboard or the paste- up posters. Many of these paintings of the picture are far from simple portraits that are deeply devotional and depict saints of the Senegal and through their urgency they pass God’s blessing energies. They therefore are icons that represents and promote a reciprocal gaze between the pious who in the real sense represent an ordinary people and their saints. In the Islamic version the religion is taken to represent the completion of the scripture that communicate and synthesize text as true and final massages to the humanity by the lord. This is only because people of the book recognize the lord as the God of Abraham, Yahweh in Hebrews as the only one and the only god as the same believe with the Muslims since their practice revealed faith based on the divine ordinance and tolerance that is given to them in their societies The same expression of the religion of the book as expressed by the Christianity was rejected by the Catholic Church making preference to the term “religion of the word of the God” this was because according to the teaching of the catholic church, Christianity faith is not only found in the scriptures of the Christians but also found in the sacred tradition of the church. However for the case of other denominations such as the Baptists, Methodists, not forgetting the Puritans and the Shakers have accepted and embraced this term the people of the book. History of the central Africa for example is made up of a very great social diversity with celebrated kingdoms with consolidates chiefdoms that exploit a variety of economic and even the political opportunities. Taking the case of Tabwa cosmology that is made up of a trio of wooden figure that represent an instrumental idiom that is shared among the Bantu speaking communities of the Central Africa. This object was used to protect community and to execute dire imprecations against any person who may wish to disturb the peace of the community. Scholars have believed that Zoroastrianism was founded many years older than the Islam and the Christianity but share a lot of eschatological views with Christianity and Islam that gives recognition of the life after death, existence of Heaven, Hell and the Satan (Robert 136). There are a lot of bible interpretations within the catholic that are varied, the only challenge can be on the side of the Tabwa community since they lack the unified teaching authority that the catholism refers to as the magisterium. Within the Islam there are many schools of thoughts with no single source of interpretation on a disputed point but they have a strong consensus on much of the faith that is similar to the magisterium. In the dominant Tabwa tradition scholars say that the second highest source for interpretation after religion is the Hudith that recognized prophet Mohammad that carries the scriptural authority. Following in the status are the traditions from the Yoruba who are the Mohammad original companions. Beyond that level established scholars have used reasoning to offer guidance when the early sources and the Quran appear to be unclear. Tabwa have a number of divination rituals all of which share the purpose of helping people to discover agents of misfortune (Robert 138). Such a process of divination may imply that history is negotiated and reconstructed until a path backward to the particular incident causing disharmony can be found and agreed upon. When we all look backward in time to help an afflicted person to gain recognition of which past incidents or states of being are considered significant to some misfortune at the present time then we will consider a divination as the only process that will lead to decision making that may not implicate other as the causes of or the solutions of the problems. The divination process may be resumed with a different diviner repeatedly if it is necessary, until the right course of action is found as proven by success in healing, or by the restoration of life to a positive state. Through carrying out the divination process, the individuals that are part of the issue at hand negotiate their history and as they do so, they may solve some of the problems or even exacerbate or create others. This may result into continuation of the affliction despite a prescribed course of action and even how faithfully pursued. There are very many categories of Tabwa divination that different practitioners carry out among themselves for example a situation where afflicted person may decide to choose one type of divination to follow according to experiences in the past with same misfortunes and suspicions about the current problems extent and cause. Tabwa certainly believe that Jesus existed and He is the one in the bible that was born of a virgin and the one who ascended to Heaven. He will continue to be in the Heaven and will come back before the last day to wage war with the non-believers that is anti-Christ, Gog and the Magog. They also believe in many prophets and have similar versions though not identical to the version of the bible stories and the stories in the Quran, as a whole Islam considers the Jewish and the bible scriptures to be a true revelations that should agree with what is happening in the Quran but had a deviation from their original sources as time goes by. For example a lot of bible stories about King Solomon and even Noah are also seen in the Muslim tradition. Tabwa however considered the unfortunate events of the minor importance for example the fleeting illness to be associated with the path or in the current days it is associated with the writings of the God and it can be treated as a matter of fact ( Robert 256). This is what the people of the western countries may explain to be exeptionally good or in some cases represent bad luck this was becouse the Tabwa believes and see it as something that is being done for or a gainst them. In conclusion, a Tabwa person will associate his or her own good fortune as the product of living in peace with the natural forces, neighbors and even with the ancestral spirits. This good fortune can however be suspended by others to be at their own expense for example if one a rises pover and a bove the normal expectations with larger than the expected a verage harvests from a cultivated field that is otherwise similar to the field of the neighbor then this person is treated and suspected to have stolen strength from another person to be able to adsd to his or her own strength. Some of these afflictions may be associated with the nonhuman agents like the earth or the ancestral spirits that may be in need of someones attention and future reverence. When the desire of the spirits are recognized the it masy be attributed to the signs acquisition of the knowledge ans wisdom or the skills to the victim. In some case these spirits are those of the ghost that are seeking to do revenge for what they consider their demises that was unjustified. In the event that they persecute any person or a group of people to their deaths, Tabwa may seek to know what is being done to them so that they decide to persue and take appropriate action. If they wish to bring healing to any person who is wounded or is sick, to increase the a mount of the harvest in a season, to restore and recover what has been stolen and to restore peace and hermony in their lives they will conside divination as the fast thing to do. As they have always believed that any culture that admits the use of the devination and the oracles is taken to have committed a distinction between reality and the appearences. In most communities, devinations have been believed that can allow one to reach behind appearences to another source of the knowledge that help himor her aims at the freedom from the formal conditions of the knowledge. Meaning that someone can seek to be released from the hindering factors of the past as it has been known and the appearences of what life look like at the present. Work cited Allen Robert F. “The social process of the Tabwa ritual performance”. The MIT press p 123-138. Allen Robert F. “Performing cosmology.” The MIT press Allen Robert F. “Icons from the end of the days”. Visual hagiography among Layennes of Senegal, World art, 2013. 3:2, 235-258. Allen Robert F. Fisher of men: religion and political economy among colonized Tabwa”. Edinburgh university press, 1984. Vol. 54, no 2, 49-70. Allen Robert F. “Through the bamboo thicket”. The MIT press, 1988. vol. 32, no 2, 136. Read More