Is there astral travel in African (Afruikan) spirituality?

People practicing various African belief systems, Vodun included, sometimes experience phenomena westerners may describe as astral projection.

However, generally, it is not an experience one would seek on purpose without good reason. The idea of just wandering around without one’s body is not a palatable one in African spirituality because we have thousands of years of warnings about what is out there, and reports from people who’ve been to the “land of bones” and back, including Kemetic books of the dead/rebirth, and various papyri and other texts and oral traditions from people who must go into trance or are taken their by their work. There are bigger fish out there than flimsy anchored humans.

This is not to say that a practitioner of Vodun or another stream of African spirituality could not or would never do astral projection on purpose. People do all sorts of things. It’s just that the question would be why they would want to.

In west Africa, something like astral travel is described in the legends of Adze which is associated with antisocial witchcraft by many. Partial astral projection or extension of a non material appendage or harmful impulse is described in central African tales and accusations of antisocial Kindoki. Most of these are stories made up to scare people into Christianity and/or scare children into behaving.


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About K. Sis. Nicole T.N. Lasher

Sis. Nicole T. Lasher (Sheloya) is the female king of Ile Baalat Teva, an African diaspora spirituality group in northern Israel.

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