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010 _a28010547
040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aBL
100 1 _aTalbot, Percy Amaury,
_d1877-1945
245 1 0 _aSome Nigerian fertility cults
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2026
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
500 _aRelease date is 2026-05-14
508 _adeaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
520 _a"Some Nigerian fertility cults" by Percy Amaury Talbot is an ethnographic monograph written in the early 20th century. It examines fertility-focused beliefs, symbols, shrines, and ceremonies among the Ibo, Ijaw, and neighboring peoples of Southern Nigeria, especially the Earth Goddess Ale (Ala) and the Thunder God Amade Onhia, Mbari/’Mgbe temples, and great drums such as the Ikoro. Based on field observations made during colonial administrative work, it links sexuality, agricultural plenty, ancestor veneration, and social control through detailed ritual and iconography. The opening of this study sets its scope and sources in Degama Division, then moves to vivid case studies: a rebel episode around a blood-smeared “great drum,” the Ikoro war drum with headhunting rites, and its carvings (serpent as phallic emblem, tortoise as feminine symbol, crescent moon of growth, crocodile, horn, dog, and a lingering double‑axe motif). It introduces Mbari houses at Omo Dim and elsewhere—complex, frescoed temples explained locally as ancestral but read by the author as shrines to Ale and Amade Onhia—detailing their secret construction by selected men and women under priestly command, nocturnal clay-gathering from termite mounds, strict taboos, and public rites to “release” the workers, all credited with boosting crops and human fertility. The narrative records explicit fertility tableaux, the ape Ogbango as the form of wicked souls and a sexual aggressor in lore, an Otaminni river-spirit Mbari, and widespread moon and rainbow symbols, including a Mbolli yam shrine with blood running over moon-shaped hollows. It describes twin houses for Thunderer and Earth Mother at Obogwe, the “big woman who cooks” nurturing moon-faced boys and star-marked girls, and juxtaposes sexual license in ritual with everyday prohibitions (no intercourse on earth or in daylight, modesty rules, and severe taboos). Notes on neighboring practices—bestiality tests, homoerotic clubs like Obukere tied to magical increase, camwood-smeared sacred groves, and clustered phallic shrines—broaden the fertility theme. Further vignettes show Thunder God iconography (white figure with rattles, rainbow, storm-time trumpets), guardian figures, ordeal customs, “palms of the Thunderer,” and a priest dining amid seed-yams and a king-yam emblem to charge fertility. The section on Sky and Earth unpacks the blending of Igwe and Amade Onhia, a pilgrimage to Ozozo with “thunderstones” and rainbow signs, sacred-grove taboos, Ale’s grisly Ewawfe shrine with bronze manillas, and burial prohibitions during Ale’s holy times (and related Okrika/Ibibio rules). It then opens a chapter on Ibudu, the male and female genital shrines central to granting children, with examples ranging from peg-marked pillars for marriages to a bell-shaped feminine form with tortoise symbol, before breaking off mid-description. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cOxford: Oxford University Press, 1927
653 _aPhallicism
653 _aCults -- Nigeria
653 _aNigeria -- Religion
856 4 _uhttps://archive.org/details/b29980227
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78684
999 _c119402
_d119402