SECRET SOCIETIES.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 248, 19 October 1908, Page 2

SECRET SOCIETIES.

... _ 4 Sir Harry Johnston's, admirable work (recently published) on the history and romance of the Congo region contains a most interesting account of the native secret societies known as the Ndembo and Nkimba. A young person of Either sex wiio is to be initiated into the Ndembo Guild applies first of all to the ' Nganga (medicine man or wizard) of the community. The would-be initiate, at a sign from the medicine man, feigns death or a swoon in some public place. A funeral cloth is laid over the novice, who is borne away to a stockaded settlement in the bush called vela." It is usually pretended then that the young person is dead. When one case of this fictitious demise occurs it is usually followed by'a number of others, till it may develop into a regular wave of hysteria. After a period, which may vary from three months to three years, the

medicine man pretends to bring about their resurrection by builU"Smg up their bodies anew on the single bone that he has kept. When the initiates have beeri conveyed to the vela, it is stated that their bodies are decomposing, and eventually become a single bone, which the medicine man takes charge of. On the initiates' return home they, state that they have come from a " spirit world." and they profess not to know their friends, or even their own mothers, or how to ea.t. During their stay in the vela they are taught a "mystic language." In these West Central African mysteries is there any connection with the -Egyptian mysteries? __ In the mysteries of Isis, an initiate, Apuleius (Met., Book xi.), in relating his experience of admission to the rites, says (inter alia): ."I approached'the confines of death, and, having trod on the threshold of Proserpine, I returned therefrom, being borne through all the elements." The Isiac Mysteries were, apparently, the first degree amongst the Egyptians.