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The Black Serpent Who Opened the Eyes of Man
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Extract
“Few African Gods have attracted the attention of travellers as has Dangbé, the Good Serpent,” writes Pierre Verger in the introduction to the chapter he devotes to the Dahoman Python. At the end of the 17th century Guillaume Bosman attributed to the Serpent the rank of “divinity.” He describes the “House of the Serpent” (the Temple of the Serpents which still exists in Ouidah); the offerings that are brought to him; the pilgrimages that the Kings of Fida (Ouidah) made there every year and the punishments meted out to Europeans or Africans who failed to pay him due respect. In the preface to his Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais the Reverend Father Labat relates how this “great Serpent” came out of the ranks of the army of Ardres (Aliada, south of Abomey) to enter those of the army of Juda (Houéda, from which Ouidah). He describes the Serpent as being one and a half arms in length, or seven and a half feet long, with a very beautiful skin “ marked by wavy stripes in which yellow, blue and brown combine in a most agreeable way.” The animal, quite innocuous as are all pythons is “ extremely patient and never attacks people.” He concludes: “The Serpent is in Ouidah a superior and excellent Divinity. He looks after and into everything, everybody appeals to him for advice, for rain, for good weather or in case of sickness or war, for trade, for harvest, for weddings.” It is possible to perceive already in this confusion of heteroclitic attributes the divinity that in our time has come to symbolize, and is said to procure fertility, fecundity, good health, wealth, peace, wisdom and happiness.
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- Copyright © 1966 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 This article summarizes the essential parts of a work, to be published soon under the title of Dangbé, du Python sacré dahoméen au mythe universel du Serpent. In order to return to the sources of a tradition picked up in Ouidah, the authors, Merlo and Vidaud, were led to examine the mythic analogies of the Python, first in Black Africa, then in the whole African continent and finally everywhere in the world where the Serpent basically resembles the initial exemplar. Since such a subject is too wide to be exhausted in a review, this article represents only the sapiential aspect of the problem.
2 Pierre Verger, "Note sur le culte des Orisa et Vodun à Bahia la Baie de tous les Saints, au Brésil et à l'ancienne Côte des Esclaves" (Mémoires de l'Institut français d'Afrique noire, No. 51, IFAN, Dakar, 1957), pp. 511-522.
3 Guillaume Bosman, Voyage en Guinée (Utrecht, 1705), p. 394.
4 Rev. Fr. Labat, Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais en Guinée, isles voisines et à Cayenne (Paris, 1730), 2nd vol., pp. 165-178.
5 Guillaume Snelgrave, Nouvelles relations de quelques endroits de Guinée et du commerce des esclaves qu'on y fait (Amsterdam, 1734), pp. 12-15.
6 Robert Norris, Mémoires du Règne de Bossa-Ahadée, Roi de Dahomey (Paris, 1790), p. 81.
7 Charles de Brosses, Du culte des Dieux fétiches (Paris, 1760), p. 25.
8 Pruneau de Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie (Amsterdam, 1789), p. 195.
9 Lacépède, Histoire naturelle, comprenant les cétacés, les quadrupèdes ovipares, les serpents, les poissons, nouvelle édition précédée de l'éloge de Lacépède par Cuvier, avec les notes et la nouvelle classification de M.A.G. Desmarets (Paris, 1775), pp. 385 and seq; le Daboie.
10 Gourg, Mémoire pour servir d'instruction au directeur qui me succédera au Fort de Juda, 1791 (Paris, 1892).
11 P. Labarthe, Voyage à la C6te de Guinée (Paris, 1803), p. 130.
12 J. A. Skertchely, Dahomey as it is, being a Narrative of Eight Months' Residence in that Country (London, Chapman and Hall, 1875), p. 54.
13 John Duncan, Travels in West Africa (London, 1847, 2 vols.), t. I, pp. 124 and 195.
14 Frederick E. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans (London, 1851), t. I, p. 108.
15 Dr. Répin, Voyage au Dahomey, Tour du monde (Paris, 1863), p. 71.
16 Rev. Fr. Borghero, Quatre années au Dahomey (1860-1864), 1881.
17 Richard F. Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahomey (London, 1893, 2 vols.), t. I, p. 59.
18 Abbé J. Laffitte, Le Dahomé, souvenirs de voyage et de mission (Tours, 1872), p. 123.
19 Abbé Pierre Bouche, La Côte des Esclaves et le Dahomey (Paris, 1885), p. 385.
20 A. B. Ellis, The Ewe speaking Peoples (London, 1890), p. 54.
21 Paul Hazoumé, Dahomey, 50 ans d'apostolat, souvenirs de Mgr. Steinmets (1942), p. 41.
22 Malville J. Herskovits, Dahomey an Ancient West African Kingdom (New York, 1938, 2 vols.), t. I, p. 179.
23 Geoffrey Parrinder, La religion en Afrique occidentale (Paris, Payot, 1950), p. 206.
24 A. Villiers, Les serpents de l'Ouest africain, Initiations africaines (Dakar, IFAN, 1950), p. 34.
25 Wilfrid Hambly, "Serpent Worship in Africa, Field Museum of Natural History," Anthropological Series, vol. XXI, No. 1 (Chicago, 1931), p. 71.
26 "Dessiller: découdre les paupières d'un faucon. Séparer les paupières qui étaient jointes (on écrit aussi déciller)." (Larousse) We used the last spelling to translate: to separate the eyelids which were closed.
27 We usually employ the alphabet of the International Association of Pho netics, which will be simplified here because it requires a particular typography. The tilde which indicates the nasalization of the vowel is sometimes replaced by the circumflex accent, but this creates ambiguities for open vowels (ê, ô). Some times dots are placed under some letters to mark either the opening of the vowel, or peculiarity of the consonant. Learned Dahomans know these different signs and they sometimes use them together with French phonetics, as the reader will see in the various transcriptions they provided. In order to simplify, we suppressed the variotonic accents since they are not needed here.
28 Casimir Agbo, in Notes Africaines (Dakar, IFAN, July 1946), No. 31, p. 24.
29 Casimir Agbo, Histoire de Ouidah du XVIme au XXme siècle (Avignon, Les Presses universelles, 1959), p. 16.
30 Paul Hazoumé, "L'âme du Dahoméen animiste révélée par sa religion," in Présence Africaine (1957), No. special.
31 According to this version the beneficiaries of the unsealing of eyes are the Gounou (Ogoun, Ogounou, Goun or Gounou are the inhabitants of the region of Porto-Novo). The hymn of Mama Dangbénon in ancient Houéda says, Ogonou, Being of Flower, Being of Praise, which is one of the "sacred names" of Dangbé. The variant Ogonou is explained either by faulty hearing—the old hymn would no longer be understood, sign of the decline of the cult of Dangbé—or by political and religious reaction—since Houéda immigrants had brought Dangbé to the Gounou, their princes disdained this recently imported cult, while the priests and the initiates were the beneficiaries of the "civilization" revealed by the Python-god, as the text seems to imply.
32 Anonymous articles, but in reality written by the Rev. Father Kitti, published with the title: "Le culte du Serpent-fétiche au Dahomey et à Ouidah en parti culier" in La Reconnaissance africaine (Cotonou et Lomé, July 1, 1927), No. 40, pp. 3-5.
33 Ibid., No. 38, May 1, 1927, pp. 2-3.
34 Rev. Fr. Joseph Huchet, "Le Serpent-fétiche," in Tams-tams (Lyon, Missions africaines, 1960), pp. 56-57.
35 Information graciously provided by the Reverend Father Jacques Bertho, specialist of the Houéda.
36 Rev. Fr. Coquard de Mesques, Handritten annotation of this member of the African Missions of Lyon, on the margin of a copy of the work of the Rev. Father Baudin, Fétichisme et féticheurs (Lyon, 1884).
37 Bernard Maupoil, La géomancie à l'ancienne Côte des Esclaves (Paris, Institut d'ethnologie, 1943), p. 75.
38 Eva Meyerowitz, The Sacred State of the Akan (London, 1949), p. 197.
39 Rev. Fr. D. Storms, "La notion de Dieu chez les Baluba du Kasai," in Bul letin des Missions, Abbaye de Saint-André-lès-Bruges, t. XXVI, Nos. 1 and 2, 1st and 2nd trim. (1952), p. 96.
40 Ibid., pp. 98-100.
41 A. Gavoy, "Note historique sur Ouidah (1913)," in Études dahoméennes XIII (1955), p. 71.
42 Maupoil, op. cit., p. 21.
43 Ibid., p. 89.
44 Hambly, op. cit., p. 11.
45 Parrinder, op. cit., p. 73.
46 Théodore Monod, L'hippopotame et le philosophe (Paris, 1943), p. 340.
47 Hambly, op. cit., p. 18.
48 It is true that in the third book of Genesis 4, 5 and 7 the opening of the eyes is the consequence of chewing the vegetable, while Dangbé himself unseals the eyes with a vegetable medicine. Approximations like these favour syncretisms. However it is possible that Africans imagined and staged the episode in their own way. In any case, we never heard any mention of good and evil, as related by the Abbé Bouche.
49 Gavoy, op. cit., p. 71.
50 Kitti, art. cit., No. 40, July 1, 1927, pp. 3-5.
51 Abbé Pierre Bouche, in Contemporain (December 1874) quoted by Verschueren, op. cit., p. 18.
52 Amaury Talbot, The Peoples of Southern Nigeria (London, 1926), vol. II, p. 92.
53 Bernard Maupoil, op. cit., p. 58.
54 J. B. Danquah, The Akan Doctrine of God. A Fragment of Gold Coast Ethics and Religion (London, 1944), p. 85.
55 Herskovits, op. cit., vol. II, p. 160.
56 Talbot, op. cit., vol. II, p. 192.
57 J. Verschueren, La République d'Haïti, t. III, Le culte vaudou en Haïti (Paris, 1948), p. 63.
58 Katherine Dunham, Les danses d'Haïti (Paris, 1954), pp. 64-65.
59 R. S. Rattray, Ashanti (Oxford, 1923), p. 48.
60 Pierre Verger, op. cit., p. 535.
61 Rev. Fr. Jacques Bertho, Unedited typewritten note, kindly provided by the author.
62 Jacqueline Rouméguère-Eberhardt, "Sociologie de la connaissance et con naissance mythique chez les Bantu," in Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, vol. XXXV, 10th year, July-December 1963, p. 120.
63 Labat, op. cit., p. 185.
64 Pierre Verger, op. cit., p. 562.
65 Parrinder, op. cit., p. 62.