Mythological Africans Podcast

Hello to all new subscribers and followers! Welcome! Please read this . Meanwhile, life is life-ing so this week’s episode features a short story reading and a light-hearted discussion of the magician archetype. Hope you enjoy! Can’t Get Enough? Miracles of Another Kind! Still Can’t Get Enough? The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Cent...

It’s April, friends, and we’ll spend the month focused on the Jungian archetype of the Magician. We’ll go over what Jung (and Jungian scholars in general) have to say about the Magician, set it in the African context, and then examine specific examples of the patterns of behavior, circumstances, images and ideas which allude to the Magician archetype as they show up in African myth, folklore and l...

Hello Friends! We close the series with a short reflection on what this might all mean for us as people living in today’s world of chaos and contradictions. Virtually everything depends on the human psyche and its functions. It should be worthy of all the attention we can give it, especially today, when everyone admits that the weal or woe of the future will be decided neither by the threat of wil...

Hello Friends! New to Mythological Africans? Welcome! Read this . Meanwhile, we’re still talking about the images, symbols, and patterns of behavior or circumstances associated with rulership in African myth, folklore, legend, and history. This week, we linger in that sliver of space where the perception of “good” or “bad” rulership bends to the will of the beholder. Arraweelo of Somalia is a part...

Hello Friends, In this week’s episode, we examine the archetypal symbols, patterns and motifs from the story of Chief Shemwindo, a case of bad rulership from the legends of the Nyanga of the Democratic Republic of Congo. I also reflect on how this ties to the persistence of bad rulership on the continent in current times. The way I see it, bad rulership is not new to the African continent. What ha...

Hey Friends We’re on the fourth episode of the MA deep dive into Jungian archetypes in African myths, legend and folklore. We’re remaining focused on the rulership archetype for the month of March and the plan is to look at it from different angles. In this week’s episode (and to honor Women’s Day!) we’re going to talk about rulership in African mythology and folklore from the perspective of women...

Hello Friends! This week’s episode is a bit experimental. We tell a story. Not a folktale, legend or myth. Just a story about a Malinke boy who has a very interesting dream. Then, we talk about the dream and tease out some archetypal images, patterns and symbols which, in the context of West Africa’s Mande-speaking people, might allude to the rulership archetype. I hope you like it! References * J...

Hi Friends! In week three of our Jungian archetypes meets African myth and folklore series, we start on the story of Sundiata (AKA Son Jara) Keita, arguably one of the major figures from African legends about good and courageous rulership. Sundiata is to the Manding people what Arthur of Camelot is to the British. We preface things with a bit more contextualization of rulership as an archetype and...

We are still at the very beginning of our year-long exploration of Jungian archetypes as expressed in African mythology and folklore. In the first episode from last week , we defined some foundational concepts we will encounter over and over as we move along. These include the collective unconscious as well as archetypes and stereotypes. We also talked a bit about why we are looking at African myt...

Black/African people spend an incredible amount of energy, time and resources on countering negative stereotypes. Stereotypes are oversimplified, rigid, and, too often, biased perceptions people have of others. Black/African people have been locked in an all-out war against negative stereotypes for longer than is reasonable. The culture wars that perennially rage on social media could be called th...

The average human in the modern context is largely cut off from deep and transformative encounters with the natural world. The reasons are manifold. Some people live in places where access is nonexistent or limited. Others have access but no time, buffeted as they are by their obligations and efforts to earn a living and take care of their families. Even when access and time are present, awareness...

Last week, we started our analysis of Libyan writer Ibrahim al Koni’s “The Bleeding of the Stone .” We met Asouf, the young Tuareg man who is the book’s main character. We also encountered one of the major conflicts that drive the book’s plot: the sun’s eternal vendetta against the desert and the unfortunate creatures, humans among them, that call the desert home. That episode includes a reading a...

You meet three of the main protagonists and hear a central conflict in Libyan writer Ibrahim al Koni’s “The Bleeding of the Stone” in the first sentence of the book. “ Evening was coming, ” he writes, “ the flaming disk of the sun sinking slowly down from the depths of the sky as it bade farewell, with the threat to return next morning and finish burning what it hadn’t burned today, and Asouf plun...

It‘s hard to believe its December already, but here we are! We’ve spent the bulk of the year talking about land form myths from across the continent so I figured we could zoom in and look at things from another perspective: how these myths influence daily life. However, I don’t live on the African continent and the MA annual budget cannot support travel at this time, so my best bet is to do anothe...

I ran into a bit of a problem while doing the research for the first section of my book: “ The Watkins Book of African Folklore ”. That section is titled “Creation Myths and Foundations Legends” but it was originally supposed to be titled just “Creation Myths.” The problem I ran into was that many stories classed as creation myths in the African context are actually foundation legends. They are no...

We are still looking at African creation myths this month. This week, we examine a version of the creation myth of West Africa’s Mande-speaking people. I’m very excited to spend time on this story because it is one of the best documented and analyzed myths from the African continent. It is also rich in symbolism and communicates so much about how the people who claim it as theirs understand their...

If you were raised Christian like me, your head probably threatens to explode at the thought of there being more than one version of a creation myth. In the Christian worldview, the Genesis account is it. However, even the Christian biblical canon as we know it was compiled and legitimized over almost a thousand years and after a great many meetings or councils as they were known. Similarly, in ju...

Hi Friends! We’re looking at African creation myths this month on the Mythological Africans podcast (Listen to part 1 here ). In this episode, we examine stories of creation by emergence from underground. In these accounts, all that exists seems to emerge from under the earth or a body of water. Emergence accounts sometimes intersect with Ex nihilo accounts where an all powerful being makes creatu...

Creation myths are the first geological myths in the true sense of the word, even when the accounts speak of eggs rather than rock. Creation myths address the most fundamental question of human existence: how did we get here? And as they answer this question, creation myths also provide reason for the other fundamental question of human experience: why we are here? This way, they structure the exp...

Hello Friends! We’re at the end of our month-long examination of how different African peoples have fought back against extractive and exploitative industrial and commercial practices, often at the hands of multinational companies. In the first episode, we discussed Kenya’s Chonyi people’s successful bid to preserve their land and the caves to which they go to commune with their ancestors . In the...

Hello all! In the last episode, we examined the case of Kenya’s Chonyi people’s fight and ultimate victory in preventing a cement plant from being established on their lands . We ended that episode with a question: How should modern Africans navigate a future which will continue to demand land and other natural resources to support much needed economic development? Here’s another question: What at...

To those who still look and listen, the majestic beauty of the African continent’s diverse landscapes thrums with life, animated by the spirits who inhabit them. Each forest grove or tree, river, mountain, oasis, cave or shoreline is a portal to connection. It is to these liminal places that people go to forge and maintain relationships with the larger-than-life forces that define their lives. To...

We are at the end of our month-long series about the intersection of mythology, folklore and psychology in the African Context. But it wouldn’t be much of a series about mythology, folklore and psychology if we didn’t discuss the denizens of the spirit world as understood and experienced across the African continent and so that is what we will end our exploration on. I decided against including a...

We are in week three of the Mythological Africans Podcast September series on how mythology and folklore from the African continent intersects with psychology. This week, we tackle yet another phenomenon common to the African continent: the incidents of mass panic which seem to take hold of certain communities for days, weeks or even months at a time. Such incidents are curiously common on the cam...

I’m very excited about this week’s episode of the MA Podcast because I get to talk with my mother, author and poet, Susan Nde . This is not her first time on MA! Back in 2022, we got to chat with her about her short story collection, The Mirror and Nine Other Short Stories . We talked menstrual taboos, girlhood culture and more! She joins me today to talk about what I call the “My Village People”...