African Concept of Curse. A spiritual one

I dare say that there is no African home where, during discussions of family and social matters, the word “curse” has never cropped up. In my mother tongue “curse” is “kiumo” and in Kiswahili it is “laana.”

But what is the meaning of curse? One dictionary describes “curse” as, “a word or phrase or sentence calling for the punishment or destruction of something or somebody.” In African concept of “curse”, it is a term strictly applied on human beings. When the dictionary says “curse” can be used on something; hence you can curse an animal or bird; obviously that becomes the diversion of the western perception of curse from the African perception of curse. An African can only abuse an animal or call it names but not curse it because. In this case, a human curse over an animal is infective. In the western concept you can say, “Squirrels are a curse to the farmer” but not in the African sense.

The African sense of curse is strictly spiritual. It is an evocation delivered by a desperate and humiliated person to the causer of the humiliation. It is commonly applied by parents who have been awfully molested by their own children. For example, it is applicable when a mature child decides to abandon his or her desperate parent. It is applicable when that child uses constant heartbreaking words on the parent. It is applicable when the child uses violence on the parent. It is applicable if a son rapes his mother; and so on.

A parent is a god to the child. For the child to fight against his or her parents is tantamount to a human being fighting against God. As the proverb says that the curse of the chicken has no effect on the eagle, one can say that a child’s curse has no effect whatsoever on the parent. The parent is the originator and causer of the child. The child can only be subject to the parent.

The effect of the curse is that the victim runs into all kinds of destructive misfortunes, some of which may be fatal. Or the life of the victim falls into eternal calamities and even his or her thoughts become destructive.

The curse is claimed to be effective only when it is founded on truth. The curse of an irrational parent to the child has no effect whatsoever on the child. There is a claim that a helpless child or person can deliver effective curse upon the molester. The public can also deliver an effective curse on the victim. In other words, the effect of curse is founded on God, the equalizer.

But is there any truth at all in the claim that a curse can be effective, or is the effect of any curse a matter of superstition? Is there any scientific explanation to prove that a curse can be effective?

First and foremost, scientific methods applied on the ground to address this matter are based on biases. Those biases are based on empirical circumstances. That is, only that which can be seen and touched can be true. This claim is commonly used by atheists who say, “If you want me to believe in the existence of God use scientific means to prove to me God exists.”

Science, as we have commonly known it, becomes a poor tool of search when it is taken to address the metaphysical world. Yet it is a matter of common sense to know that the world or life is divided between the dynamism of two opposing sides: between the visible and the invisible. Physics versus Metaphysics. Metaphysics falls within the spiritual world while physics (science) falls within the empirical sphere.

In the past and particularly in the western world whose world is founded on the culture of physics (science), the metaphysical world has been given a raw deal in addressing the human understanding of the dynamics of life. Indeed it is stupid for anyone to conclude that, that which we can’t prove with the instrument of physics (science) doesn’t exist. The force of Relativity had always been there even before Ein Stein discovered it.

In an attempt to apply physics in order to find out whether there is potency in praying, a Japanese professor divided water into two parts and put each part into a different container. He put aside one of the containers and brought the other one to a group of people who believed in prayers. He put the container between them and begged them to join hands over the water and pray for it. They did that faithfully. When the professor took the waters to the laboratory and examined them, he was astonished that the two waters looked different in that the one which had been preyed upon looked different from ordinary water. He used physics (empiricism) to prove the potency of metaphysics. In other words, empiricism cannot explain away the potency of metaphysics. If anything, both are the two equal sides of the coin of life.

The human body is governed by the two sides. The body is an active transmitting and receiving station of the information from the cosmos. Anyone who sits near fire feels the radiation of the fore from the central point. The heat, traveling in waves, reaches out agents surrounding it. No human eye can see the waves; but they are there. Simple physics tells us that any living thing generates energy expressed in waves. They were those radiating waves which caused the Japanese praying people to change the composition of the water. The power of waves is not limited to human beings. It extends to other things from plants to objects.

Just as it is in material things which have positive and negative magnetic forces, similar elements can be traced in human beings. The eel can give us an excellent illustration in this argument. The eel is a sea long snake like fish which, when it wants to kill a prey, it rubs its body against the prey and the touch generates 450 watts that kills the prey instantly. But the fact that it is a creature of its own kind among many creatures of the world, should leave us with the appreciation that creatures of all kinds are armed with different degrees of electromagnetic forces. When the skunk wants to send you away it produces a sickening stench.

Back to the human body. At various levels of survival the human body can produce electromagnetic waves of various degrees. But, as in nature, elements of what we are differ from one person to another. What is commonly described as telepathy is simply waves transmitted and received. If you are properly tuned to someone in frequencies, you can easily communicate with each other telepathically. Twins are known to be the best persons tuned in frequencies. That is why they surprise many people with regard to their accurate telepathic communication.

The story about how genetic codes have been used in identification of relatives cannot be over emphasized here. Genetically, you are more tuned to your relatives than to other people. The electromagnetic waves of your relatives reach you faster than they would reach people unrelated to you in blood. In other words, you are closer to them telepathically. However, elements of different people are endowed with varying frequencies and sensitivities. There are those who are superior and there are those who are inferior. It is just as easy to charm those with whom you share frequencies as it is to hurt them.

Just as it happens when you throw a stone into a pool and watch the waves, obviously something happens to the quality of the electromagnetic waves of a disturbed human. In human intercourses there are both positive and negative waves produced, depending upon the causer. There are those which can be healing (blessing) and those which can be destructing.

The electromagnetic bond between a child and his or her parent is very powerful, although that force is not visible. However, the central point of that force is in the parent. The child is blessed when those waves are positive. However, what happens when those waves are negative?

Extraordinary negative electromagnetic waves explode from the parent when he or she is hurt by child deeply enough to cry out a curse. Like fire, the waves burn the positive spiritual channels of the child. In the course of burning, the waves create new negative receptive antennas in the victim’s course of life. Hence, they throw the victim into a course of destruction. The explosion and its effect on the victim is comparable to a brick out of firing stove kin which the composition of its soil changes eternally. So is the being of a cursed person. Those who know history of cursed people know that the curse is irreparable even by the person who caused it.

When Christianity was introduced to Africa by missionaries, particularly the Catholic Church made kill among African delinquents when the Priest said, “The Bible says however bad your sin can be it can be forgiven by God.” That, of course, included cursed persons. They found solace in going to Church on Sundays whereby they confessed their sin and the Catholic Father’s word to God cleansed them and sent them home as absolutely innocent born again persons. Did that really work on the ground?