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4 The Intersemiotics of Obeah and Kali Mai in Guyana FREDERICK IVOR CASE The notion of intersemiotics as discussed in this article has two primary written sources. Firstly, it is inspired by Abdelkebir Khatibi’s La Blessure du nom propre (1974) and it also takes into account Daniel Patte’s use of the term “intersemiocity ” in his work on semiotics and faith (1982). In the particular case of Obeah and Kali Mai Puja, the analysis of intersemiotics is concerned with the intersection of the codes of two different cultural and spiritual traditions that contribute to the creation of a dynamic of ritual and belief. In this article, we have focused primarily on those elements of Kali Mai Puja that have become an integral part of the ritual and cultural discourse of Obeah. We recognize that the term “culture ” and its derivatives are problematic, and we therefore use this term in its Vedic sense of elements that are spiritual, having “roots in the inner life, the life of the spirit” (Siddhantalankar 1969). In the Caribbean context, it is often necessary to redefine or invent terms to describe social and spiritual phenomena because the European languages that name these elements are inadequate to the task. While such redefinitions can be kept to a minimum, there is a certain basic vocabulary that has to be established from the beginning of this study. The definitions that we propose in this chapter are heuristic hypotheses and are in no way to be considered as the semantics of an established Caribbean epistemology. A number of Arabic terms will be used throughout: the word āyat signifies seme, phrase, sign, and discourse; dı̄n means service to God, spiritual service; z .āhir indicates what is apparent, visible, manifest, or exoteric; and bāt .in, that which is hidden, discrete, refers to the esoteric aspects of āyat or dı̄n. The polysemy of the Arabic language makes its use appropriate in a context in which we are attempting to establish what occurs when two manners of living and being in the world come into dynamic contact. The social and political appropriateness of Arabic is obvious since it is a sacred language with which African and Hindu systems of dı̄n have come into close contact in Africa, India, and Guyana. Arabic is therefore used to provide us with semantic and conceptual tools and is in no way a philosophical or theological determinant. On the contrary, the polysemic dimensions of the terms adopted will lead us to a greater sensitivity and a deeper understanding of the processes of intersemiocity described below. For what we witness in Guyana is an unstructured polysemy in which āyat are hardly attached to the z .āhir but are deeply rooted in notions of the esoteric. 41 The Intersemiotics of Obeah and Kali Mai in Guyana In this reflection on Obeah and Kali Mai Puja, we are concerned with the cultural aspects of belief originally expressed, separately, by two different ethnic groups united in their poverty and political impotence. Obeah in Guyana remains the spiritual resource of the dispossessed seeking inner and physical healing as well as the experience of nearness to God. The literature on Kali Mai Puja confirms the same social class bases of those who practice this form of dı̄n (Bassier 1994; Karran 1996). Whatever the ancestral origins of these two systems, in Guyana they have been similarly stigmatized and ostracized. They have both fulfilled similar social and psychological roles and have sustained the inner life of those who, in their quest for God, adhered to their beliefs. The two axiological systems are compatible as the class motivations are ethically and ideologically shared and as both peoples have been obliged to forge a new imaginative process based on changed circumstances of place and time. In this intellectual recreation of the sacred, they have enshrined the concept of myth in a positive manner as a “symbolic expression of original and universal realities” (Arkoun 1982: 10). In Trinidad, the phenomenon of Kali Mai at the Catholic shrine of La Divina Pastora in Siparia is evidence of Kali’s versatility (Sirju 1996). The creative imagination of Kali devotees who have recognized in Mary, Mother of Jesus, their own Mother Kali is a transcendence of La Divina Pastora. The Hindu devotion in Siparia is not merely an acknowledgment of the universal principle of motherhood ; it is the recognition of Mary as a principle of...

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