Battlefield magic
[ by Charles Cameron — Africa, military, witchcraft, need for analysis ]
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From a transcript of yesterday’s CNN News Stream: [h/t @Intelwire]
Rebel fighter Mohammed shows me something else he found on the battlefield, what he says are pages of African witchcraft or black magic designed to protect fighters from enemy bullets. Saturday, he says, he got chills when it appeared to work on an armed Gadhafi soldier casually walking in the open.
Mohammed says he and 10 fellow fighters opened fire on the man from 200 meters.
MOHAMMED, REBEL FIGHTER: We tried to shoot him with different guns — Kalashnikov, 14.5 gun, but no one can hit him. And…
HOLMES: He’s out in the open. You’re putting all kinds of weapons at him, including anti-aircraft guns, and you’re not hitting him.
MOHAMMED: We didn’t hit him and he reached the car. He go in the car and go away.
HOLMES: An obviously unnerved Mohammed says he found these writings in another car next to the one the man escaped in.
This isn’t an area that I’ve been tracking in any detail, so I’d welcome further bibliographic suggestions – but two books I ran across recently might be of background interest, Peter Geschiere‘s The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa and Christopher Taylor‘s Sacrifice as Terror: the Rwandan Genocide of 1994
I’ve mentioned these before, but so might James R Price and Paul Jureidini‘s 1964 Witchcraft, Sorcery, Magic, and Other Psychological Phenomena and their Implications on Military and Paramilitary Operations in the Congo, and Roger D Hughes‘s 1984 Emergency in Kenya: Kikuyu and the Mau Mau Insurrection.
Magical bullet-proofing as a spiritual theme turns up all over the place. The Ghost Dance shirts of the Lakota were supposed to make their wearers impervious to attack, and similar mythic powers were attributed to Johnny and Luther Htoo [picture credit: BBC], the twins who led God’s Army in Myanmar…
It would be useful to have a cross-cultural study of magical weaponry and protection, no?
August 9th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
MEND members subscribe to this as well – with leaves and body paint providing the protection.
August 9th, 2011 at 10:36 pm
Excellent post.
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"Every soldier trusts his luck, but no soldier survives a thousand chances"- Erich Maria Remarque.
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I think you can see this phenomena in all eras and cultures, just lightly disguised in Western ones. I have read an early French king, maybe the Spider King, used to bargain superstitiously with an oddment of religious medallions and icons he habitually carried. The great exception might be the heavily zen influenced samurai whose bushido code encouraged them to mentally prepare as dead men walking, before battle
August 10th, 2011 at 12:13 am
I’d add any book endorsing network centric warfare or a revolution in military affairs to your bibliography. The assumption of network enabled battlefield omniscience providing blanket protection for American military personell is just like trusting in the power of bullet stopping frosted lucky charms.
You might also want to look at the speed- and injected adrenaline powered super jihadis encountered by American infantry during Fallujah II. It apparently often took 20 bullets apiece to slow them down.
August 10th, 2011 at 2:52 am
Joseph, You make an excellent point on our "faith" in technology. I had not heard the 20 round phenomena, but not surprised at the physiological "magic."
Charles, Excellent post!
August 10th, 2011 at 11:09 pm
Don’t forget that this was big with "General Butt Naked" in Liberia as well.
August 11th, 2011 at 12:15 am
Does anyone know if there’s an "invisible shield" or "invincible armor" category in the Aarne-Thompson index of folklore motifs — or any cross-cultural documentation in the anthro lit?