Week 7 Essay: Magic and the Supernatural

This week's essay topic: 

Magic and the Supernatural. Magic and supernatural elements are important for many mythological and folktale traditions. What examples of magic and supernatural elements did you see in this week's stories? What kinds of characters used magic? What did they use magic for? Were there supernatural characters or events in this week's stories? What role did these supernatural characters or events play in the plot of the stories? Would you say that magic and supernatural motifs were dominant elements in this week's readings?  

Shia LaBeouf Magic Gif

Found on Gifs of Things 

This week's readings came from the Tales from the Congo unit, which were taken from Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort by Richard Edward Dennett (1898). Themes of magic and the supernatural had a heavy presence in this week's readings, and was even featured in the story I chose for this week's storytelling assignment. They featured "fetishes" which are spirits as well as physical objects infused with their powers. Stories featuring these include The Fetish Sunga, The Fight Between Two Fetishes, and The Fetish of Chilunga.  In The Fetish Sunga, a female fetish gets involved with the narrator's uncle and makes him a huge meal which he has trouble interpreting and says the smell alone satisfies him. However, when she presses him to eat and drink, he only drinks the wine which hurts her feelings so she deprives him of his ability to speak. In The Fetish of Chilunga, a male fetish named Boio who speaks both human and bird. One day, when a woman is out and about, she tells Boio to quiet down, angering him. He binds her hands in invisible rope, this leads to a strange practice of binding the hands of women who are sold as brides to ugly men until they consent to he marriage. They also involved women with powers of vision through dreams, guidance, and necromancy. The stories also feature gods and goddesses with supernatural powers. It seemed that all sorts of objects could be imbued with magic or supernatural powers, also many different types of characters could use magic. Characters like regular wives, gods/goddesses, and animals could all have powers. Many used their powers for good, it did not really seem that there were many stories involving a lot of black magic or evil-doing associated with those powers. Sure, some tomfoolery went down and some bad was done, but overall I felt like the stories this unit used magic and the supernatural to add to the fun of the story. It was great.