But imagine a whole community like this, in treehouses lined with solar-panels, built from reclaimed wood, stone, bamboo, and recycled glass, metals, perspex and carpet. Trellises of vine-plants growing up the flatter walls, with planter-boxes on the curving ones. Rainwater tanks built from recycled materials perched on the upper balconies, with additional water-turbines on top of them to help generate just a bit more power when the rain comes. Rooftop flowerbeds, and wooden boxes housing native bee colonies.
These structures could be easily adapted to have ramps, making them wheelchair-accessible. Networks of houses connected by bridges so not to disturb the ground below.
Curvy structures are also very good for insulation (that’s why take-away cups are corrugated on the outside), so this kind of building would be a great option for places with extreme climates as well!
“they say she is over 700 years old and had skin like fire. She was one of the last powerful witches in the known world. Her companions she conjured from the earth around her. She was a god.”
Bori is an African traditional religion of the Hausa people of West Africa that involves spirit possession
Bòòríí is a Hausa noun, meaning the spiritual force that resides in physical things, and is related to the word for local distilled alcohol (borassa) as well the practice of medicine (boka).The Bori religion is both an institution to control these forces, and the performance of an “adoricism” (as opposed to exorcism) ritual, dance and music by which these spirits are controlled and by which illness is healed.
An aspect of the traditional Maguzawa Hausa religious traditions, Bori became a state religion led by ruling-class priestesses among some of the late pre-colonial Hausa states.
Priestesses communed with spirits through ecstatic dance ritual, hoping to guide and maintain the state’s ruling houses. A corps of Bori priestesses and their helpers was led by royal priestess, titled the “Inna”, or “Mother of us all”.The Inna oversaw this network, which was not only responsible for protecting society from malevolent forces through possession dances, but which provided healing and divination throughout the kingdom.
In spirit possession all over Africa the gender of the possessing spirit takes precedence over the gender of the possessed. A man possessed by a female spirit for ritual purposes takes the personality of a woman, while a woman possessed by a male spirit takes the personality of a man. This often has no relevance to everyday living. Bori possession cults exist in countries all over Africa under different names. However it is only found in some ethnic groups and is totally absent in most.
In modern Muslim Hausaland, Bori ritual survives in some places assimilated into syncretic practices. The pre-Muslim “babbaku” spirits of the Maguzaci have been added to over time with “Muslim” spirits (“farfaru”), and spirits of (or representing) other ethnic groups, even those of the European colonialists. The healing and “luck” aspects of Bori members performances, almost entirely women, give new social roles for their rituals and practitioners.Bori ritual societies, separated from governing structures, provide a powerful corporate identity for the women who belong to them through the practice of traditional healing, as well as through the performance of Bori festival like the girka initiation ritual.
A collaboration between painter Leonora Carrington and Alexandro Jodorowsky in Mexico, 1957.
“ During a party, Luis Buñuel, seduced by Carrington’s beauty and emboldened by the notion that she had transcended all bourgeois morality, proposed (with his characteristic bluntness) that she become his mistress. Without even waiting for her answer, he gave her the key to the secret studio that he used as a love nest and told her to meet him at three o’clock the next afternoon. Early the next morning, Leonora went to visit the place alone. She found it tasteless: It looked exactly like a motel room. Taking advantage of the fact that she was in her menstrual period, she covered her hands with blood and used them to make bloody handprints all over the walls in order to provide a bit of decoration for that anonymous, impersonal room. Buñuel never spoke to her again.” - Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky: The Creator of El Topo ”“
AV_DEADQUEENS
I continue with the article..
Ms. K. Djeneba: “people find it pretty, but I think its ugly, we are not like others. in the past, when you had a smooth face, you were rejected! I used to like my scars; we used to brag about them. But now, in the city, it is definitely out of fashion. You are called names like ‘torn face’ and it hurts”
#afrika #culture #identity
