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A fetish is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent non-material value, or powers, to an object. Talismans and amulets are related. Fetishes are often used in spiritual or religious context.
The word fetish derives from the French fétiche, which comes from the Portuguese feitiço ("spell"), which in turn derives from the Latin facticius ("artificial") and facere ("to make"). [2] The term fetish has evolved from an idiom used to describe a type of object created in the interaction between European travelers and Native West Africans in the early modern period to an analytical term that played a central role in the perception and study of non-Western art in general and African art in particular.
William Pietz, who, in 1994, conducted an extensive ethno-historical study [3] of the fetish, argues that the term originated in the coast of West Africa during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Pietz distinguishes between, on the one hand, actual African objects that may be called fetishes in Europe, together with the indigenous theories of them, and on the other hand, "fetish", an idea, and an idea of a kind of object, to which the term above applies. [4]
According to Pietz, the post-colonial concept of "fetish" emerged from the encounter between Europeans and Africans in a very specific historical context and in response to African material culture.
He begins his thesis with an introduction to the complex history of the word:
My argument, then, is that the fetish could originate only in conjunction with the emergent articulation of the ideology of the commodity form that defined itself within and against the social values and religious ideologies of two radically different types of noncapitalist society, as they encountered each other in an ongoing cross-cultural situation. This process is indicated in the history of the word itself as it developed from the late medieval Portuguese feitiço, to the sixteenth-century pidgin Fetisso on the African coast, to various northern European versions of the word via the 1602 text of the Dutchman Pieter de Marees... The fetish, then, not only originated from, but remains specific to, the problem of the social value of material objects as revealed in situations formed by the encounter of radically heterogeneous social systems, and a study of the history of the idea of the fetish may be guided by identifying those themes that persist throughout the various discourses and disciplines that have appropriated the term. [5]
Stallybrass concludes that "Pietz shows that the fetish as a concept was elaborated to demonize the supposedly arbitrary attachment of West Africans to material objects. The European subject was constituted in opposition to a demonized fetishism, through the disavowal of the object." [6]
Initially, the Portuguese developed the concept of the fetish to refer to the objects used in religious practices by West African natives. [5] The contemporary Portuguese feitiço may refer to more neutral terms such as charm, enchantment, or abracadabra , or more potentially offensive terms such as juju , witchcraft , witchery, conjuration or bewitchment. The medieval Lollards issued polemics that anticipated fetishism. [7]
The concept was popularized in Europe circa 1757, when Charles de Brosses used it in comparing West African religion to the magical aspects of ancient Egyptian religion. Later, Auguste Comte employed the concept in his theory of the evolution of religion, wherein he posited fetishism as the earliest (most primitive) stage, followed by polytheism and monotheism. However, ethnography and anthropology would classify some artifacts of polytheistic and monotheistic religions as fetishes.
The eighteenth-century intellectuals who articulated the theory of fetishism encountered this notion in descriptions of "Guinea" contained in such popular voyage collections as Ramusio's Viaggio e Navigazioni (1550), de Bry's India Orientalis (1597), Purchas's Hakluytus Posthumus (1625), Churchill's Collection of Voyages and Travels (1732), Astley's A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels (1746), and Prevost's Histoire generale des voyages (1748). [8]
The theory of fetishism was articulated at the end of the eighteenth century by G. W. F. Hegel in Lectures on the Philosophy of History . According to Hegel, Africans were incapable of abstract thought, their ideas and actions were governed by impulse, and therefore a fetish object could be anything that then was arbitrarily imbued with "imaginary powers". [9]
The use of the concept in the study of religion derives from studies of traditional West African religious beliefs, as well as from Vodun, which in turn derives from those beliefs.
Fetishes were commonly used in some Native American religions and practices. [10] For example, the bear represented the shaman, the buffalo was the provider, the mountain lion was the warrior, and the wolf was the pathfinder, the cause of the war. [10]
Katō Genchi (1873–1965), a Shinto priest and scholar of comparative religion, applied the term "fetish" to the historical study of traditional Japanese religion. He cited jewelry, swords, mirrors, and scarves as examples of fetishism in Shinto. [11] In rural areas of Japan, he said he could find many traces of animism, totemism, fetishism, and phallicism. [12] He also maintained that the Ten Sacred Treasures were fetishes and the Imperial Regalia of Japan retained the same traits, and pointed out the similarities with the Pusaka heirlooms of the natives of the East Indies and the sacred Tjurunga of the Central Australians. [13] He noted that the divine sword Kusanagi no Tsurugi , which was believed to provide supernatural protection ('blessings'), was deified and enshrined (at what is now the Atsuta Shrine). [13] Akaruhime no Kami, the female deity of Hiyurikuso Shrine , was said to have originally been a red ball before transforming into a beautiful woman. [13] The jewel around Izanagi-no-Mikoto's neck was deified and called Mikuratana-no-kami . [13]
The Anglo-Irish diplomat and scholar William George Aston (1841–1911) also maintained that Kusanagi no Tsurugi could be seen as an example of fetishism. Originally an offering, the enshrined sword became a mitamashiro (lit. 'spirit representative', 'spirit-token'), more commonly known as the shintai (lit. 'god-body'; a sacred object containing the kami or 'spirit'). [14] Aston observed that people tended to think of the mitama ('spirit') of a deity first as the seat of his or her real presence, and secondly as the deity itself. In practice, the distinction between mitama and shintai was fluid, and shintai even came to be identified as the god's body. [14] For example, the cooking furnace ( kamado ) itself was worshiped as a deity. [14] Given the vagueness of such distinctions – further accentuated by the restricted usage of images (e.g., in painting or sculpture) – there was a tendency to ascribe special virtues to certain physical objects in place of the deity. [14]
In modern times, the American linguist Roy Andrew Miller (1924–2014) observed that the pamphlet of the nationalistic Kokutai no Hongi proclamation (1937) and the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) were also often worshipped as "fetishes", and were respectfully placed and kept in household altars ( kamidana ). [15] [n 1]
In the pre-colonial Philippine context, Anito fetishes were central to the animistic beliefs of the early Filipinos. These objects, often human-made, served as physical representations of spiritual entities or ancestral spirits. Their role in rituals, worship, and daily life illustrates the rich spiritual tradition of the early Austronesian peoples who inhabited the Philippine archipelago. Anito fetishes refer to objects imbued with spiritual significance, often crafted to house or represent spirits collectively known as Anito. These were usually Ancestor Spirits also called Anito The souls of deceased relatives who provided guidance, protection, or blessings to their descendants. Anito fetishes were typically carved from wood, stone, or bone, and they served as both a focus of worship and a conduit for spiritual energy. Anito fetishes were placed in shrines or sacred areas where offerings such as food, drinks, or animal sacrifices were made. These offerings were meant to appease or gain favours from the ancestor spirits and spirits of the dead and deities and celestial beings called Diwata. The term Anito is deeply rooted in Austronesian linguistic heritage, with similar terms found across related culture Proto-Malayo-Polynesian: qanitu (spirit of the dead) Proto-Austronesian: qaNiCu (ancestor spirit) Indonesian and Malaysian: Hantu or Antu (spirit or ghost) Polynesian: Atua or Aitu (ancestral ghost or spirit) [17] [18] [19] [20] Anito—widely understood today by Filipinos in the Philippines in contemporary as referring to ancestor spirits or spirits of the dead, evil spirits and the wooden idols and fetish that represent them. [21] [22] [23] [24] Anito In Philippine mythology, refers to ancestor spirits, spirits of the dead, evil spirits and the wooden idols that represent or house them. In contrast, within the context of folk religion [25] [26] [27]
Made and used by the BaKongo of western DRC, a nkisi (plural minkisi) is a sculptural object that provides a local habitation for a spiritual personality. Though some minkisi have always been anthropomorphic, they were probably much less "naturalistic" or "realistic" before the arrival of the Europeans in the nineteenth century; Kongo figures are more naturalistic in the coastal areas than inland. [4] As Christians tend to think of spirits as objects of worship, idols become the objects of idolatry when worship was addressed to false gods. In this way, European Christian colonialists regarded minkisi as idols on the basis of religious bias.
The foreign Christians often called nkisi "fetishes" and sometimes "idols" because they are sometimes rendered in human form or semi-human form. Modern anthropology has generally referred to these objects either as "power objects" or as "charms".
In addressing the question of whether a nkisi is a fetish, William McGaffey writes that the Kongo ritual system as a whole,
bears a relationship similar to that which Marx supposed that "political economy" bore to capitalism as its "religion", but not for the reasons advanced by Bosman, the Enlightenment thinkers, and Hegel. The irrationally "animate" character of the ritual system's symbolic apparatus, including minkisi, divination devices, and witch-testing ordeals, obliquely expressed real relations of power among the participants in ritual. "Fetishism" is about relations among people, rather than the objects that mediate and disguise those relations. [4]
Therefore, McGaffey concludes, to call a nkisi a fetish is to translate "certain Kongo realities into the categories developed in the emergent social sciences of nineteenth century, post-enlightenment Europe." [4]
Animism is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and in some cases words—as being animated, having agency and free will. Animism is used in anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of many Indigenous peoples in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organized religions. Animism is a metaphysical belief which focuses on the supernatural universe: specifically, on the concept of the immaterial soul.
Kami are the deities, divinities, spirits, mythological, spiritual, or natural phenomena that are venerated in the Shinto religion. They can be elements of the landscape, forces of nature, beings and the qualities that these beings express, and/or the spirits of venerated dead people. Many kami are considered the ancient ancestors of entire clans. Traditionally, great leaders like the Emperor could be or became kami.
A Simbi is a Central African water and nature spirit in traditional Kongo religion, as well as in African diaspora spiritual traditions, such as Hoodoo in the southern United States and Palo in Cuba. Simbi have been historically identified as water people, or mermaids, pottery, snakes, gourds, and fire. Due to the forced removal of Bantu peoples from Africa to the Americas, the veneration of simbi exists today in countries, such as the United States, Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti.
Orishas are divine spirits that play a key role in the Yoruba religion of West Africa and several religions of the African diaspora that derive from it, such as Haitian Vaudou, Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican Santería and Brazilian Candomblé. The preferred spelling varies depending on the language in question: òrìṣà is the spelling in the Yoruba language, orixá in Portuguese, and orisha, oricha, orichá or orixá in Spanish-speaking countries.
Candomblé Bantu is one of the major branches (nations) of the Candomblé religious belief system. It developed in the Portuguese Empire among Kongo and Mbundu slaves who spoke Kikongo and Kimbundu languages. The supreme and creative god is Nzambi or Nzambi a Mpungu. Below him are the Jinkisi or Minkisi, deities of Bantu mythology. These deities resemble Olorun and the other orishas of the Yoruba religion. Minkisi is a Kongo language term: it is the plural of Nkisi, meaning "receptacle". Akixi comes from the Kimbundu language term Mukixi.
The Kongo people are a Bantu ethnic group primarily defined as the speakers of Kikongo. Subgroups include the Beembe, Bwende, Vili, Sundi, Yombe, Dondo, Lari, and others.
Nkisi or Nkishi are spirits or an object that a spirit inhabits. It is frequently applied to a variety of objects used throughout the Congo Basin in Central Africa, especially in the Territory of Cabinda that are believed to contain spiritual powers or spirits. The term and its concept have passed with the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas.
Indigenous Philippine folk religions are the distinct native religions of various ethnic groups in the Philippines, where most follow belief systems in line with animism. Generally, these Indigenous folk religions are referred to as Anitism or the more modern and less ethnocentric Dayawism, where a set of local worship traditions are devoted to the anito or diwata, terms which translate to Gods, spirits, and ancestors. Many of the narratives within the indigenous folk religions are orally transmitted to the next generation, but many have traditionally been written down as well. The Spanish colonizers have claimed that the natives did not have religious writings, but records show otherwise. Accounts, both from Chinese and Spanish sources have explicitly noted the existence of indigenous religious writings. There are also Spanish records of indigenous religious books and scrolls, along with indigenous statues of gods, being burned by colonizers. In some sources, the Spanish claim that no such religious writings exist, while within the same chronicle, they record such books being burned on their own order. The writings were written on native reeds and leaves using iron points and other local pens, similar to how things are written on a papyrus, and fashioned either as scrolls or books. Some were written on bamboos. 0.23% of the population of the Philippines are affiliated with the Indigenous Philippine folk religions according to the 2020 national census, an increase from the previous 0.19% from the 2010 census.
Hantu is the Malay and Indonesian word for spirit or ghost. In modern usage it generally means spirits of the dead but has also come to refer to any legendary invisible being, such as demons. In its traditional context the term also referred to animistic nature spirits or ancestral souls. The word is derived from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *qanitu and Proto-Austronesian *qaNiCu. Cognates in other Austronesian languages include the Micronesian aniti, Lio language nitu, Yami anito, Taivoan alid, Seediq and Atayal utux, Bunun hanitu or hanidu, Polynesian aitu or atua, and Tsou hicu among the Formosan languages. In terms of concept and place in traditional folklore, it is most similar to the Filipino anito.
A nganga is a spiritual healer, diviner, and ritual specialist in traditional Kongo religion. These experts also exist across the African diaspora in countries where Kongo and Mbundu people were transported during the Atlantic slave trade, such as Brazil, the southern United States, Haiti and Cuba.
Spiritualism is a metaphysical belief that the world is made up of at least two fundamental substances, matter and spirit. This very broad metaphysical distinction is further developed into many and various forms by the inclusion of details about what spiritual entities exist such as a soul, the afterlife, spirits of the dead, deities and mediums; as well as details about the nature of the relationship between spirit and matter. It may also refer to the philosophy, doctrine, or religion pertaining to a spiritual aspect of existence.
A yorishiro (依り代/依代/憑り代/憑代) in Shinto terminology is an object capable of attracting spirits called kami, thus giving them a physical space to occupy during religious ceremonies. Yorishiro are used during ceremonies to call the kami for worship. The word itself literally means "approach substitute". Once a yorishiro actually houses a kami, it is called a shintai. Ropes called shimenawa decorated with paper streamers called shide often surround yorishiro to make their sacredness manifest. Persons can play the same role as a yorishiro, and in that case are called yorimashi or kamigakari.
In Shinto, shintai, or go-shintai when the honorific prefix go- is used, are physical objects worshipped at or near Shinto shrines as repositories in which spirits or kami reside. Shintai used in Shrine Shinto can be also called mitamashiro.
Gedatsu-kai, or Nirwana Association, is a Japanese new religious movement founded in 1929. The number of adherents exceeded 200,000 in the 1990s. It is a syncretic movement, with influences drawing from traditional Shinto and Shingon Buddhist teachings. Its central deity is Gochi Nyorai (Mahāvairocana). Gedatsu is the Japanese term for moksha or enlightenment. Gedatsu-kai is a non-sectarian study, having no firm affiliation with any existing religious groups.
Bantu religion is a system of various spiritual beliefs and practices that relate to the Bantu people of Central, East, and Southern Africa. Although Bantu peoples account for several hundred different ethnic groups, there is a high degree of homogeneity in Bantu cultures and customs, just as in Bantu languages. Many Bantu cultures traditionally believed in a supreme god whose name is a variation of Nyambe/Nzambe and ancestral veneration. The phrase "Bantu tradition" usually refers to the common, recurring themes that are found in all, or most, Bantu cultures on the continent.
Nkondi are mystical statuettes made by the Kongo people of the Congo region. Nkondi are a subclass of minkisi that are considered aggressive. The name nkondi derives from the verb -konda, meaning "to hunt" and thus nkondi means "hunter" because they can hunt down and attack wrong-doers, witches, or enemies.
William Pietz is an intellectual historian and political activist. He is known for his scholarship related to the concept of fetishism.
In the culture of the Bunun of Taiwan, a hanitu or qanitu is a spirit. The concept does not exactly equate with similar myths from other cultures.
Anito, or anitu In Philippine mythology, refers to ancestor spirits, spirits of the dead, evil spirits and the wooden idols that represent or house them. In contrast, within the context of folk religion, Anito encompasses a broader meaning. It refers to ancestor spirits, nature spirits, and deities venerated in Indigenous Philippine folk religions from the precolonial era to the present. The specific interpretation of the term varies depending on the ethnic group.
Kongo religion encompasses the traditional beliefs of the Bakongo people. Due to the highly centralized position of the Kingdom of Kongo, its leaders were able to influence much of the traditional religious practices across the Congo Basin. As a result, many other ethnic groups and kingdoms in West-Central Africa, like the Chokwe and Mbundu, adopted elements of Bakongo spirituality.
The dictionary definition of fetish at Wiktionary
Media related to Category:Religious fetishism at Wikimedia Commons