Evocation of Spirits in Abyssinia.

— James Bruce, in his Voyage aux sources du Nil in 1768, narrates what follows concerning Gingiro, a small kingdom situated in the southern part of Abyssinia, to the east of the kingdom of Adel. It concerns two ambassadors whom Socinios, king of Abyssinia, sent to the pope around 1625, and who had to cross Gingiro.

“Then,” said Bruce, “it was necessary to inform the king of Gingiro of the caravan’s arrival and to request an audience of him; but, at that moment, he was occupied with an important operation of magic, without which this sovereign would never dare to undertake anything.

“The kingdom of Gingiro may be regarded as the first on this side of Africa in which the strange practice of predicting the future through the evocation of Spirits and through direct communication with the devil became established.

“The king of Gingiro thought he ought to let eight days pass before receiving in audience the ambassador and his companion, the Jesuit Fernandez. Consequently, on the ninth day they obtained permission to proceed to the court, where they arrived that same afternoon.

“Nothing is done in the country of Gingiro without the aid of magic. By this one sees how greatly human reason is degraded but a few leagues away. Let no one come and tell us any longer that this weakness ought to be attributed to the ignorance or the heat prevailing there. Why would a hot climate induce men to become sorcerers, rather than a cold climate? Why does ignorance extend man’s power to the point of making him pass beyond the limits of common intelligence and giving him the faculty of corresponding with a new order of beings inhabiting another world? The Ethiopians, who surround almost all of Abyssinia, are blacker than the Gingirians; their country is hotter and, like these, they are indigenous to the places they inhabit, since the beginning of the ages; nevertheless, they do not worship the devil, nor do they claim to establish any communication with him; they do not sacrifice men upon their altars; in short, among them not the slightest trace of this revolting atrocity is to be found. “In the regions of Africa that communicate directly with the sea, the trade in slaves is a practice that has occurred since the most remote ages; but the king of Gingiro, whose dominions are enclosed almost in the center of the continent, sacrifices to the devil the slaves he cannot sell to man. It is there that this horrible custom of shedding human blood at all solemnities begins. I do not know,” says Mr. Bruce, “how far it extends to the south of Africa, but I regard Gingiro as the geographical limit of the kingdom of the devil, on the northern side of the peninsula.”

— Had Mr. Bruce seen what we witness today, he would find nothing astonishing in the practice of the evocations used in Gingiro. In them he sees only a superstitious belief, whereas we find their cause in the facts of manifestations falsely interpreted which there, as elsewhere, took place. The role that credulity makes the devil play has nothing surprising about it. First, it is to be noted that all barbarous peoples attribute to a maleficent power what they cannot explain. Secondly, a people sufficiently backward to sacrifice human beings cannot draw superior Spirits into its midst. The nature of those who visit it cannot, then, but confirm it in its belief. Moreover, it must be considered that the peoples of that part of Africa have preserved a great number of Jewish traditions, later mingled with some rudimentary ideas of Christianity, the source from which, in consequence of their ignorance, they imbibed the doctrine of the devil and of demons. [1] Abyssinia — In Portuguese and generally outside Ethiopia, the country was also historically called Abyssinia, derived from Habesh, an Arabic form of the Ethio-Semitic name Habaśāt, today Habesha, the native name for the inhabitants of the country (while the country was called Ityopp’ya). In a few languages, Ethiopia is still referred to by cognate names, such as Abyssinia, for example, to the Arabic word Al-Habashah, which means land of the Habasha people.

[2] [Voyage aux sources du Nil, en Nubie et en Abyssinie: pendant les … — Google Books.]