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Sacred Women Of Africa And The African Diaspora: A Womanist Vision Of Black Women’S Bodies And The African Sacred Feminine, Arisika Razak

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Contemporary U.S. society is full of stereotypical images that marginalize and degrade Black women’s bodies (Bogle, 1994; Collins, 2000; Gilkes, 2001). However, many precolonial, spiritually based cultures of North and West Africa (Badejo, 1996; Gleason, 1987; Jell-Bahlsen, 2008) developed indigenous concepts of the African Sacred Feminine, a term I use to describe African representations of the feminine aspects of nature and divinity, as well as the innate, human and spiritual powers embodied by women. Using artistic depictions from ancient Algeria, dynastic Egypt, and West and Central Africa, this essay explores several iconographic traits of the African Sacred Feminine: nudity or …