Esotericism in African American Religious Experience: There Is a Mystery PDF
Preview Esotericism in African American Religious Experience: There Is a Mystery
Esotericism in African American Religious Experience Aries Book Series Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism Editor Marco Pasi Editorial Board Jean-Pierre Brach Andreas Kilcher Wouter J. Hanegraaff Advisory Board Allison Coudert – Antoine Faivre – Olav Hammer Monika Neugebauer-Wölk – Mark Sedgwick – Jan Snoek György Szőnyi – Garry Trompf VOLUME 19 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/arbs Esotericism in African American Religious Experience “There Is a Mystery”… Edited by Stephen C. Finley Margarita Simon Guillory Hugh R. Page, Jr. LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: Untitled, c. 1977 by Martin Green. Graphite and poster paint on poster board 22” × 28” from the collection of Robert Tannen and Jeanne Nathen. Reproduced with kind permission. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Esotericism in African American religious experience : “there is a mystery”... / edited by Stephen C. Finley, Margarita Simon Guillory, Hugh R. Page, Jr. pages cm. -- (Aries book series. Texts and studies in Western esotericism, ISSN 1871-1405 ; VOLUME 19) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-28309-1 ((hardback) : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-28342-8 ((e-book)) 1. Occultism-- United States. 2. African Americans--Religion. 3. United States--Religion. I. Finley, Stephen C., editor. BF1434.U6E86 2014 200.89’96073--dc23 2014033846 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1871-1405 isbn 978-90-04-28309-1 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-28342-8 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Foreword ix Jeffrey J. Kripal Preface xii Acknowledgements xiv List of Contributors xviii Introduction: Africana Esoteric Studies Mapping a New Endeavor 1 Stephen C. Finley, Margarita Simon Guillory and Hugh R. Page, Jr. Part 1 (Pre-) 19th Century 1 Esoteric Writing of Vodou Grimoires, Sigils, and the Houngan’s Notebook 23 Yvonne Chireau and Mambo Vye Zo Kommande LaMenfo 2 Paschal Beverly Randolph in the African American Community 37 Lana Finley 3 The Self Divine Know Ye Not that Ye are Gods? 52 Darnise C. Martin Part 2 Early to Mid 20th Century 4 Working Roots and Conjuring Traditions Relocating Black ‘Cults and Sects’ in African-American Religious History 71 Elizabeth Pérez 5 Spirit is Universal Development of Black Spiritualist Churches 86 Mary Ann Clark vi Contents 6 The Harlem Renaissance as Esotericism Black Oragean Modernism 102 Jon Woodson 7 Mathematical Theology Numerology in the Religious Thought of Tynnetta Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan 123 Stephen C. Finley 8 On the Knowledge of Self and Others Secrecy, Concealment and Revelation in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam (1934–1975) 138 Justine M. Bakker 9 Post-Imperial Appropriation of Text, Tradition, and Ritual in the Pseudonymous Writings of Henri Gamache 152 Hugh R. Page, Jr. 10 Mystery Matters Embodiment and African American Mystics 162 Chad Pevateaux 11 Show and Prove Five Percenters and the Study of African American Esotericism 177 Biko Mandela Gray 12 The “Nu” Nation An Analysis of Malachi Z. York’s Nuwaubians 198 Paul Easterling 13 Sacred Not Secret Esoteric Knowledge in the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors 210 Julius H. Bailey Part 3 Late 20th Century to Present-day 14 Astro-Black Mythology The Poetry of Sun Ra 227 Marques Redd <UN> Contents vii 15 Conjurational Contraptions Techno-Hermeneutics, Mechanical Wizardry, and the Material Culture of African American Folk Magic 246 Stephen C. Wehmeyer 16 Portraying Portraits The Intersectionality of Self, Art, and the Lacanian Gaze in the Nahziryah Monastic Community 262 Margarita Simon Guillory and Aundrea Matthews 17 Those Mysteries, Our Mysteries Ishmael Reed and the Construction of a Black Esoteric Tradition 277 Marques Redd 18 Rockin’ for a Risen Savior Bakongo and Christian Iconicity in the Louisiana Easter Rock Ritual 295 Joyce Marie Jackson 19 Pole Dancing for Jesus Negotiating Movement and Gender in Men’s Musical Praise 314 Alisha Lola Jones 20 Wonder Working Power Reclaiming Mystical and Cosmological Aspects of Africana Spiritual Practices 331 Barbara A. Holmes C onclusion: The Continuing Quest to Map Secrecy, Concealment, and Revelatory Experiences in Africana Esoteric Discourse “There Is a Mystery…” 346 Stephen C. Finley, Margarita Simon Guillory and Hugh R. Page, Jr. Afterword 356 Anthony B. Pinn Bibliography 361 Index 388 <UN> Foreword “Listening to the Esoterica Africana” Jeffrey J. Kripal It is a great pleasure, indeed a delight, to see this volume appear. I cannot help but think that it signals something genuinely new and something truly promis- ing. It is certainly long overdue for the shared and overlapping fields of study that gathered in the twentieth century under the umbrellas of those three heterodox – isms: Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism, or “gem,” as we have come to call them affectionately here at Rice, where a number of these young essayists were trained. It is certainly time for those of us who have labored in these same historical fields for decades now, with little or no awareness of these African religions and these African American esotericisms, to put down our theories and books and ponder what appears in these pages—to listen. It is time to listen to our colleagues, as they move the study of African American religions from the margins to the center of the professional study of religion, and as they liberate that study from the traditional assumptions of denominational history, congregationalist identity, and the Black Church, indeed even from Christian theology, the Bible, and the category of race itself. There are multiple precedents to and ancestors of this project, of course. One thinks, for example, of those distinguished European intellectuals who carved out the new field of Western esotericism for us in the last decades of the last century and the first decade of this one: individuals like Antoine Faivre, Wouter Hanegraaff, and Kocku von Stuckrad. One also thinks of all of those American intellectuals who have pioneered the study of black religion in America, prom- inent figures like Charles Long, who has blazed exactly these sorts of intellec- tual paths in the history of religions and the study of black religion for over four decades now, and my own colleague here at Rice, Anthony Pinn, whose words appropriately conclude the present volume. More on Tony in a moment. The present volume represents the work of the next generation of scholar- ship, as it consists of a collection of essays that are performed, for the most part, by younger intellectuals, many of whom are looking at figures and move- ments that are either poorly known or hardly known at all. As a developing new school of thought, the essayists write against the common assumptions that black religion and the Black Church are the same thing, and that African Americans are more or less equivalent to their socially constructed racial iden- tities. Put more positively, without ever taking their eyes off the crucial con- cerns of race and social justice, the essayists are able to show in exquisite detail how such complex, conflicted human beings also know extraordinary moments
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