We may feel that it is a uniquely Western neurosis, especially one afflicting people who've spent too long in psychotherapy, to go on and on about one's relatives and their contribution to one's unhappiness, to be 25 or 62 and still turning over in one's mind how mom or grandpa have been responsible for spoiling one's relationships or ruining one's life.
But in case we thought this approach was irritatingly modern and self-indulgent, we should keep in mind that every traditional African society has entertained comparable thoughts.
From the Yoruba of West Africa to the Oromo of Ethiopia and the Hutu of Rwanda and Eastern Congo, the patterns are always the same.
One's parents or relatives die, and one then has to handle their ghosts or spirits with immense care or face grave mischief.
In Yoruba culture, those whose minds have been giving them difficulties have traditionally gone to visit a highly revered therapeutic figure known as a diviner or babalawo.
The assumption is that mental troubles must be the result of some kind of discord in our relationships to one of our dead ancestors, who inhabit an invisible but active spirit world, as distinct from the tangible everyday realm.
In a spiritual consultation, a diviner will take a measure of a sufferer's particular history, and to do so, will make use of a highly prized object called an iroke ifa, a stick-like divination tapper, which they will start to beat rhythmically on the ground.
The sound of this tapper creates a special atmosphere that separates the session from the day-to-day and helps to relax the sufferer, rendering them more responsive to the babalawo's interventions and focused on perturbing ancestors above.
Appropriately, the tapper's designs typically show a solemn kneeling figure representing the sufferer, on top of whose head is carved a divine kind of bird with the power to fly into the spirit world and there connect with the dead.
The babalawo doesn't merely speak about a given ancestor with their client.
