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Africa

The continent south of the Mediterranean, source of ancient Egyptian religion and a wealth of indigenous and diaspora traditions. Ptolemy knew only its northern edge, which he calls Libya and assigns to the southwest quarter and the water triplicity.

Facts
Geography
Latitude
7.2 degrees north 1
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim.
Longitude
21.1 degrees east 1
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim.
Attributions
Tradition
Ptolemy's inhabited world stops well short of the equator, so everything south of the Sahara lies outside the chorography entirely. 2Tradition: Hellenistic astrology
Tradition
The decans, the thirty six ten degree divisions of the zodiac, are an Egyptian construction taken into the Greek system, so the technique owes Egypt far more than its own map of the world suggests. 3Tradition: Hellenistic astrology
Correspondences
Zodiac Rulership
The water triplicity, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, for the southwest quarter, which Ptolemy calls Libya 2Tradition: Hellenistic astrology
Identity
Element
Water 2Tradition: Hellenistic astrology
Origins
Region
The Mediterranean and Saharan north alone: Numidia, Carthage, Mauretania, Gaetulia and their neighbours 2Tradition: Hellenistic astrology
Learn More
Libya, the Southwest Quarter

Ptolemy's fourth quarter, the southwest of the inhabited world, is the one he calls Libya, and he puts it in familiarity with the water triplicity, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. The lands he lists are the Mediterranean and Saharan north: Numidia, Carthage, Mauretania, Gaetulia and their neighbours.

That list is the whole of Africa as the scheme knows it. Ptolemy's inhabited world stops well short of the equator, and everything south of the Sahara lies outside the frame the chorography divides. So the quarter a modern retelling labels Africa covers a strip along the top of the continent, and the great majority of the landmass, along with every tradition that grew up in it, has no place in the system at all.

Egypt is the exception, and it is a large one. Egypt sits in the scheme with sign assignments of its own, and Egyptian material is woven through Hellenistic astrology at a far deeper level than the chorography suggests. The decans, the thirty six ten degree divisions of the zodiac, are an Egyptian construction taken into the Greek system, and the pseudonymous attribution of astrological texts to Egyptian authorities was a standard feature of the literature.

The atlas records both facts side by side, because they pull in opposite directions and both are true. The technique owes Egypt a great deal, and the technique's own map of the world barely sees the continent Egypt sits on.

Sources TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy with A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion

What the Chorography Cannot Reach

The gap described above is not a small one, and it is worth stating what follows from it.

An astrological chorography that stops at the Sahara has nothing to say about the divinatory and cosmological systems of the rest of the continent, and those systems are neither absent nor derivative. Ifa divination among the Yoruba, geomantic practice across West and North Africa, and the many regional traditions this atlas covers under their own entries developed on their own terms. Some of them share material with the Mediterranean world through long standing trade and through Islam, and geomancy in particular has a documented history of movement between North Africa, the Islamic world and Latin Europe. None of them is a branch of Ptolemy's system.

So this entry is deliberately narrow. It records what classical astrological chorography said about the part of Africa it knew, which is a small and specific claim, and it does not extend that claim over a continent. The African traditions the atlas holds are described where they belong, under their own names and their own sources, rather than fitted to a Mediterranean quartering that was never built to hold them.

The alternative, filling the gap with a modern assignment, would produce a table that looks complete and is not. Naming the limit is the more useful record, and it is the one this entry keeps.

Sources Ifa Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West AfricaWilliam Bascom with Recherches sur une technique divinatoire: la geomancie dans l'Occident medievalTherese Charmasson

Connections

Associated With

This source names Africa directly: "in Egypt before reaching Syria, North Africa and Italy."

Source Manichaeism (New Catholic Encyclopedia, via Encyclopedia.com)J. Ries

This source names Africa directly: "dedicated to the arts and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, opened in 2006 to the design of the architect Jean Nouvel and renamed in 2016 for the French president who championed..."

Source Musee du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac (institutional record)Musee du quai Branly - Jacques Chiracthe holders' own account

This source names Africa directly: "nearly 370,000 objects are drawn from Africa, the Near East, Asia, Oceania and the Americas."

Source Musee du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac (institutional record)Musee du quai Branly - Jacques Chiracthe holders' own account

This source names Africa directly: "the reading used across North and West Africa to this day, so a printed Quran in Morocco differs in detail from one in Cairo because of him."

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

This source names Africa directly: "Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province."

Source Divinity Atlas Original Articles, Second Edition

This source names Africa directly: "by the British Institute in Eastern Africa in 2002, is the standard archaeological account of the Nyanga terraced field and settlement complex in Zimbabwe, including Mount Nyangani, based on Soper's..."

Source Nyanga: Ancient Fields, Settlements and Agricultural History in ZimbabweRobert Soper

This source names Africa directly: "Robin Law is a historian of West Africa, and this Ohio University Press book is his standard scholarly history of Ouidah, the West African port through which a substantial share of the Atlantic..."

Source Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving Port, 1727-1892Robin Law

This source names Africa directly: "historian of precolonial Central Africa, combined comparative linguistics with oral tradition and archaeology to trace political history across a region with few written records of its own."

Source Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial AfricaJan Vansina

This source names Africa directly: "its greatest growth in Latin America, Africa and Asia."

Source Pentecostal Resource Page (Pew Research Center, 2006)Pew Research Center

This source names Africa directly: "Faith Mission it seeded in South Africa, the 1914 founding of the Assemblies of God, and Swedish missionary work establishing the movement in Brazil."

Source Pentecostal Resource Page (Pew Research Center, 2006)Pew Research Center
Pisces, Zodiac Signs

Pisces, of the water triplicity, in familiarity with the southwest quarter.

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Africa directly: "the Zion Christian Church, South Africa's largest African Initiated Church."

Source Rafapa, "Popular Music in the Zion Christian Church," Muziki, 2013Lesibana Rafapa

This source names Africa directly: "founders of colonial and postcolonial Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, and the twentieth century's new religious movements."

Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions

This source names Africa directly: "khagans and dynastic founders of Africa, the Americas and Asia whose reigns intersected the traditions this atlas covers."

Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions

This source names Africa directly: "for Mami Wata and Other Divinities in Africa and the Diaspora, edited by Henry John Drewal and published by Indiana University Press in 2008, is an edited scholarly volume on the water spirit Mami..."

Source Sacred Waters: Arts for Mami Wata and Other Divinities in Africa and the DiasporaHenry John Drewal (ed.)

This source names Africa directly: "the Sande women's association of West Africa, published in Bennetta Jules-Rosette's edited volume The New Religions of Africa through Ablex Publishing in Norwood, New Jersey."

Source Sande: The Public Face of a Secret SocietyCarol P. MacCormack
Scorpio, Zodiac Signs

Scorpio, of the water triplicity, in familiarity with the southwest quarter.

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Africa directly: "Sotho and Tswana peoples of southern Africa, spread across South Africa, Lesotho and Botswana."

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

This source names Africa directly: "informants in nineteenth century South Africa, and this 1911 volume is their foundational collection and translation of southern African San oral folklore, recorded in the informants' own words with..."

Source Specimens of Bushman FolkloreW. H. I. Bleek and L. C. Lloyd

This source names Africa directly: "across North America, Europe and Africa."

Source Sufi Service Committee: Own Website (sufiservice.org)Sufi Service Committee

This source names Africa directly: "across the Communion's provinces in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania."

Source The Lambeth Conference: A Global Gathering of Bishops (Anglican Communion Office)

This source names Africa directly: "Dioceses multiplied across British India, Africa, Australia and the Pacific through the nineteenth century, and by 1867 the communion of churches this growth had produced was substantial enough that..."

Source A History of Global AnglicanismKevin Ward

This source names Africa directly: "Azusa Street in Los Angeles, under the African American preacher William J."

Source The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal MovementCecil M. Robeck Jr.

This source names Africa directly: "had begun with the Mother Temple of Africa already on this atlas's map, and it opened to the public the following week."

Source Santiago Baha'i Temple (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
The Berbers, Sources

This source names Africa directly: "a standard scholarly history of North Africa's indigenous Amazigh peoples from antiquity through the modern period, written by two historians with specialist command of the classical, Arabic and..."

Source The BerbersMichael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress

This source names Africa directly: "of Christianity across sub-Saharan Africa, and the documentation itself carries a real bias worth naming honestly: missionary society records structurally foreground the European missionaries whose..."

Source A History of the Church in AfricaBengt Sundkler and Christopher Steed

This source names Africa directly: "The Church Struggle in South Africa, John W."

Source The Church Struggle in South AfricaJohn W. de Gruchy (25th anniversary edition with Steve de Gruchy)

This source names Africa directly: "Apartheid became law in South Africa in 1948, and the Dutch Reformed Church supported the system that institutionalized racial separation and stratification, providing much of its theological..."

Source Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) (South African History Online)South African History Online

This source names Africa directly: "Isidore Okpewho's The Epic in Africa is a foundational scholarly study by a Nigerian literary scholar arguing, against an earlier assumption that epic was a peculiarly European or Homeric form, that..."

Source The Epic in Africa: Toward a Poetics of the Oral PerformanceIsidore Okpewho

This source names Africa directly: "the largest Lutheran body anywhere in Africa, reversing the movement's center of gravity away from the German, Scandinavian and North American establishments this atlas's earlier Lutheranism events..."

Source Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Africa directly: "world and the largest anywhere in East Africa, behind only Ethiopia's Mekane Yesus church among Lutheran bodies worldwide."

Source Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Africa directly: "the continental Mother Temple of Africa in Uganda and a local House of Worship already opened in Kenya."

Source DRC: First National House of Worship Opens Its Doors (Baha'i World News Service)

This source names Africa directly: "rule across the Near East and North Africa into Iberia."

Source The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live InHugh Kennedy

This source names Africa directly: "Robin Horton's 1963 journal article in Africa, is Horton's own dedicated study of the Kalabari Ekine, or Sekiapu, society, the masked water spirit performance institution he wrote on as a long term..."

Source The Kalabari Ekine Society: A Borderland of Religion and ArtRobin Horton

This source names Africa directly: "Thornton is a historian of Africa and the African diaspora, and this Cambridge University Press book is the standard scholarly monograph on Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, the Kongolese prophet who led the..."

Source The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706John K. Thornton

This source names Africa directly: "The Languages and Linguistics of Africa, edited by Tom Guldemann, is a major scholarly reference surveying the continent's language families, their classification, structure and history, written by..."

Source The Languages and Linguistics of AfricaTom Guldemann (ed.)

This source names Africa directly: "carried the church into Latin America, Africa and Asia at a pace its earlier nineteenth century European missions had never matched."

Source The Oxford Handbook of MormonismTerryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.)

This source names Africa directly: "chapter in Protest and Power in Black Africa, edited by Robert I."

Source The Lumpa Church of Alice Lenshina (in Protest and Power in Black Africa)Andrew Roberts, in Robert I. Rotberg and Ali A. Mazrui (eds.)

This source names Africa directly: "Hurewitz's edited volume The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record, Yale University Press, 1975, is a scholarly documentary collection."

Source The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary RecordJ. C. Hurewitz (ed.)

This source names Africa directly: "with San rock art in southern Africa the author researched directly himself."

Source The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of ArtDavid Lewis-Williams

This source names Africa directly: "people into exile, mostly to North Africa, ending Muslim presence in Spain as a living population."

Source Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain, 1492-1614Matthew Carr

This source names Africa directly: "to establish the faith across the African continent."

Source Baha'i Faith In Uganda (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Africa directly: "in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, a Duke University Press journal, 2005, is peer-reviewed academic scholarship."

Source The Mourning of History and the History of Mourning: The Evolution of Ritual Commemoration of the Battle of KarbalaAli J. Hussain

This source names Africa directly: "Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province."

Source Nonstate Violators of Religious Freedom in Nigeria: Fulani MilitantsUnited States Commission on International Religious Freedom

This source names Africa directly: "expansion of organised Islam in West Africa since the medieval Mali Empire."

Source Sokoto Caliphate (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Africa directly: "its actual historical spread into West Africa, working from the order's own documented history and expansion rather than a general survey of Sufism."

Source The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern WorldJamil M. Abun-Nasr
The Tswana, Sources

This source names Africa directly: "Comaroff, International African Institute, Ethnographic Survey of Africa, 1953, is the standard ethnographic survey of Tswana society and religion, covering Modimo, badimo ancestor veneration..."

Source The TswanaIsaac Schapera (Part Two, covering 1953-85, by John L. Comaroff)

This source names Africa directly: "generally higher across sub-Saharan Africa than in South or Southeast Asia, the Middle East or Central Asia, with no single country's figure standing in for a worldwide total since sectarian and..."

Source The World's Muslims: Unity and Diversity

This source names Africa directly: "in the peer reviewed journal Africa in 1960, is a scholarly study of the Ogboni society's religious and political role among the Yoruba of Oyo."

Source The Yoruba Ogboni Cult in OyoPeter Morton-Williams

This source names Africa directly: "22 of 2007, published in the Republic of South Africa's Government Gazette in 2008, is the actual statutory text establishing formal legal recognition and a regulatory council for traditional..."

Source Traditional Health Practitioners Act, No. 22 of 2007Republic of South Africa

Showing 51 to 100 of 112 in Associated With, page 2 of 3.

Contrasts With

Americas, Continents

Africa holds the southwest quarter, at least in its northern strip. The Americas hold no quarter at all.

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Global, Continents

Global is not a landmass. It marks material whose spread crosses the continents rather than belonging to one of them.

Source A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion

Spread Events Here

A diffuse shift across Africa, Latin America and Asia together, away from Europe and North America. The map places this in Africa as the single largest component of the wider shift, a simplification named here rather than hidden.

Source Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian PopulationPew Research Center
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
2. Tetrabiblos
Claudius Ptolemy, W. Foulsham, 1900Book II, on the familiarities of countries with the triplicities and starsView the Source
3. Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune
Chris Brennan, Amor Fati Publications, 2017View the Source
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