Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
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218
In the same vein, special rituals take place before cutting trees
down, for the latterare conceived of as a place of special signifi-
cance for the communicationbetween people and God. It is there-
fore fair to conclude from this that,in the Africancontext, people
do not conceive of themselves as separatedfromthe cosmos but as
being completelyintegratedinto a universethatis muchlargerthan
any of them and yet is centeredaroundthem.
In the same respect,thereis no majordifferencebetween death
andlife. Both areperceivedas differentmodes of being. In the Afri-
can universe,Elungu told us (1987) that "dansl'homme, le corps
n'est pas l'antithesede l'ame; le presentest chargedu passe et gros
de l'avenir.Dans l'univers,le ciel et la/ terrese rejoignentet la vie
naltde la mort[thebody is not the antithesisof the soul or mind,the
present is filled with the past and carryingthe future.In the uni-
verse, the sky and the earth meet, and life is born out of death]"
(pp. 23-24). Life is infiniteandknowsno end, andthereforedeathis
simply anotherform of existence, a rite of passage thatallows one
to gain anotherexistentialstatus,thatof ancestor,thatis of a purely
or almost purely spiritualbeing. As should be expected, in such a
world there can be no waterproofseparationbetween the world
REFERENCES