The philosophical operative conditions of healing shrines in Igbo-African worldhood

Abstract

This paper has studied the philosophical operative conditions of healing shrines in Igbo-African societies. The concept of philosophical operative condition is introduced into the study of Igbo-African healing shrines with the purpose of pointing out the philosophical principles behind the activities in these shrines. This philosophical dimension of African healing shrines is possible because of the nature of the relationship between religion and philosophy. This work, therefore, studied healing and healers in traditional African societies and the place and nature of healing shrines in Igbo societies. Though so much has been written about healing shrines and sacred places in traditional African societies, there is a seeming insufficiency of documents or literature on the Igbo-African healing shrines and the roles they played in restoring well-being to the people. More so, there is hardly a literature that focuses on the philosophical spirit behind the activities in Igbo-African healing shrines. This is the gap in literature that this present work fills. For the purpose of this study, this piece adopted the phenomenological, hermeneutic and historical approaches. This study is a qualitative research that has used both primary and secondary sources of data. It discovered that there is an inescapable element of philosophy in every dimension of African religion.