6 Apr 2026
The Magician
It’s April, friends, and we’ll spend the month focused on the Jungian archetype of the Magician. We’ll go over what Jung (and Jungian scholars in general) have to say about the Magician, set it in the African context, and then examine specific examples of the patterns of behavior, circumstances, images and ideas which allude to the Magician archetype as they show up in African myth, folklore and legend. We will necessarily touch on the topic of witchcraft in the African context but only peripherally and as relevant to the topic.
In today’s episode, we’ll see how Nuer (Sudan) prophet, Ngundeng Bong, embodied the Magician archetype to catalyze change.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
- Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke), English science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, and invento (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke)r.
References
* The Collected Works of Carl Jung (https://archive.org/stream/the-collected-works-of-carl-jung-complete-digital-edition/The%20Collected%20Works%20of%20C.G.%20Jung%20-%20Complete%20Digital%20Edition_djvu.txt).
* The Fate of Ngungdeng’s Dang (https://riftvalley.net/news/sudan-and-south-sudan/fate-ngungdengs-dang/).
* Kelsey, Darren. "The Archetypal Magician. (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-93660-0_2)" Storytelling and Collective Psychology: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Life and the Work of Derren Brown. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022. 21-40.
* Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. The Nuer:: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford University Press. 1940. p185.
Can’t Get Enough?
* Tenets of Kikuyu Witchcraft and Religion (https://hingesoftime.substack.com/p/tenets-of-kikuyu-witchcraft)
Still Can’t Get Enough?
The Watkins Book of African Folklore contains 50 stories, curated from North, South, East, West and Central Africa. The stories are grouped into three sections:
* Creation myths and foundation legends (including the story of Tin Hinan, Founding Mother of the the Tuareg!)
* Stories about human relationships and the cultural institutions they created
* Animal tales (with a twist…the folktales are about some of the most unlikely animals!)
I thoroughly enjoyed digging into the historical and cultural context out of which the stories, their themes, and protagonists emerge. There is something for everybody!
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