NEUOFFENBARUNGPrimitive inhabitants of South Africa (natives) from a spiritual point of view (May
10, 1847)
Original content summary:
The peoples of South Africa. Fetishists, they have neither king nor chief, but live in hordes, eat raw flesh, and drink blood. Cannibals. No articulated language. They are little good, their simplicity and curiosity. Great difference between these souls and that of the former in the spirit world. On the other hand are they much higher than the previous. The former slavery abomination. Compensation for the slave souls in the beyond. Their Lord 's Incense of Hell. Painful reflection.
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1. These peoples, who inhabits the greatest part of Southern Africa, are first of all, still stuck in all sorts of more than heathenish customs and traditions; their religion is not infrequently even worse than that of the Madagascarians.
2. There are the actual fetishists who worship very natural objects, whether they are of use to them or not, but simply because they have first seen them with their eyes on a certain day of the year; such objects can be a tree-stump, a worm, a crocodile, a bird, a monkey, or even a stone; in short, anything that is called a body can be used as a worshipful deity.
3. These peoples have no king, no queen, in which they are very different from the Madagascarians.
4. They live merely in hordes like the monkeys on the trees, and feed themselves mostly through all kinds of robbery and hunting.
5. They eat their meat completely raw, and from the skins they usually make hammocks for beds, hanging from tree branches.
6. They have only a few fruits; animal milk is almost unknown to them; they prefer to drink the blood of animals.
7. These hordes also often wage war, especially at the time of larger animal hunts, where the hunters, less fortunate in the hunt, usually overthrow the happy ones, and chase them away if possible.
8. The hunters, who have been killed on both fronts, are then also taken by the victorious party as a hunt for hunting, and gets consumed first.
9. But white people are a treat for them; so that they often sneak up to the shores in order to hunt a white clad monkey, as they think, which species of monkey has the most savoury flesh for their palate.
10. The strongest of such a horde is usually the leader, but he has nothing to command but merely to indicate what has to be done; and this indication is usually to instigate the attack, with the whole horde following his example.
11. These peoples also have no articulate language; but they only communicate either by signs with their hands, or by certain clicks with the tongue. – The Europeans call these peoples by the names: Kaffen, Hottentotten, Buschmänner and Rock-climbers.
12. Many of these hordes, of which there are thousands, have been cultivated as much as possible, especially along the coasts; but many more in the interior of the country are still in the old complete animalistic brutality. The only good thing these peoples have is that they have the very least needs of life, and they are very inquisitive; if missionaries come to them, of course, at first, with proper escort, they have an easy game with these peoples, provided that they understand each other, but this is not too difficult, for these peoples, because of their natural minimalistic needs, and few quite natural signs, are initially often easy to deal with.
13. As wild and near completely animalistic these peoples are, are they in the spiritual world far superior to the inhabitants of Madagascar; and such peoples are over all either very difficult, or not accessible at all, due to their internal country-political causes; and these above-mentioned savage peoples are just as easy to reach as the things of the earth, to which they are attached.
14. One can put everything to use, no matter how inconspicuous, if one can only get hold of it; but the glorious things occurring in such places on the earth that cannot be reached and entered into by anybody can be used for nothing, and is as good as if they were not present.
15. More to the western part, on the coast of this world region, there are indeed tribes under a king, also here and there under a queen; these tribes are the most miserable because they are used for human trafficking, and some kings have gone so far as to raise human studs, as you would with animals, to produce more slaves for the trade to America.
16. The strongest and most fertile women are gathered into thousands for these studs, and slept with by the strongest men. If they fall pregnant, they must do their ordinary work; only a few days before the birth, they are driven back to the designated place to give their fruit to the world, which fruit they have to sustain for a year with their breasts.
17. After this time, the children are taken from them and handed over to the public nutrition center. Six weeks after the birth, such a woman must be laid with again, and so on until some of them have not infrequently given birth to 26 children.
18. If such a woman is still strong enough for such a service, she can still be sold as a slave; but if she is too weak, she is expelled, and must find her own food.
19. In addition to this manipulation, however, do these black rulers, wherever possible, let the slaves be kept in confinement in order to be available for trade.
20. Presently this horrible disorder has indeed already been fairly controlled in many places; but in the more remote areas there are still a lot of such abominations.
21. The sold slaves have in this world, unfortunately, a dreadful lot with the Christian peoples and for this reason are they in the hereafter being kept back to be as harmless as possible;
22. But those disgraces of kings and queens are the most terrible carcasses of hell; for their wickedness transcends all concepts, and the hardness of their hearts can crush a diamond.
23. With these, in the spirit-world, nothing else can be done than to use them for the incense of the lowest hell.
24. There are among them queens who want to be worshipped as the actual Godhead, and when such a queen dies, which is certainly a shameful thing for the godhead, and to alleviate the shame, at least a few hundred have to die with the goddess, and some may even be buried alive with her, lest the Queen in the tomb become bored.
25. That very little can be achieved with such people on the other side, and no extraordinary successes can be expected even by a second incarnation, can easily be seen from the fruits which have so far escaped from the numerous attempts at the correction of Satan; but this is really not much.
26. If a potter has a pot which does not want to succeed, what is it if he demolishes it and throws it out into the street, where it may be used as road dirt, if it has already proved itself to be a useless pot or what is it for a musician with a free imagination, if he has played a piece but did not put it to paper? Does he not have the ability to put all the other thousand pieces he have played and lost before on paper, whenever he wants to?
27. Therefore we leave these wayward pots of peoples, and return to another nation.