Sorcery and Religion in Morocco
​Introduction
This film explores the practice of sorcery in Morocco particularly in relation to religion. I delve into this topic due to its interlinked qualities within the culture which commonly leaves much confusion and misinterpretation from both foreign external stereotypes as well as our own local stereotypes. But before I speak about Morocco itself, the practice of magic is common in many cultures. What makes this different? It's important to note that numerous societies have positive affiliations with witchcraft, for instance, Azande culture in central Africa recognises magic as morally neutral, unlike Morocco where its deemed highly unacceptable and antisocial; it is strictly taboo. The only instance where witchcraft in accepted and practised positively is in the context of religion. This is known as baraka, a God given power to an individual with a supernatural touch that can either heal or destroy; the one with the most baraka is known to have been Prophet Muhammed. In this context, it isn't considered a manifestation of witchcraft in any way but instead as a religious miracle.
Another noteworthy objective of this documentary is to provide a better representative outlook of what Moroccans themselves think compared to the usual outdated and misconstrued Western anthropological literature. For example, one of the most popular studies on witchcraft is Evans-Pritchard's work on the previously mentioned Azande culture (Hart, 1987). He reliability has been widely criticised for inaccurately displaying the Azande people’s true beliefs, he interpreted the meaning of their practices in his own way, making biased conclusions of their traditions and claimed they lacked any real validity. Nevertheless, it's not only Western literature that can be problematic, in the French book Medicine, Magic and Sorcery (1985) by French Moroccan Mustapha Akhmisse. I translate a direct quote in which he writes “I would simply say that in Morocco, the characteristic of the individual still resides in the established point between the imaginary and the real to master the world” (cited by ibid.) In other words, he is implying that the Moroccan belief in magic is ‘imaginary’. It should be noted that there is a lot of European French influence in Morocco and many French Moroccans don't believe in sorcery compared to those who have more traditional upbringings. It is possible that as a French Moroccan, he's concluding his personal experiences into a social fact and while it is a very good read with insightful points, it remains problematic to generalise the Moroccan population as being somewhat delusional. I wanted to conduct this study with the aim of communicating the direct viewpoints of Moroccans without my own personal deductions of the practice, using a camera to try and directly convey that to the best of my ability.
The participants
When speaking to almost any local, most people either possess personal anecdotes related to sorcery or at least know of friends and family stories. While the amount of people's recounted experiences seem endless, it was a challenge capturing this on camera. Therefore to begin, I had interviewed my own mother as one of the first participants. I had especially wanted to document her opinion considering she was initially sceptical on my research topic. She was wary of the representation of Moroccan culture and was cautious of my exploration on something so taboo. Filming her in our home in the UK, I believed she presented an in-depth insight that came from her combined experience of living in England. When it came to choosing my participants, I wanted to provide a range of people to demonstrate the differing sorcery opinions.
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One of the participants was a Moroccan anthropologist named Mourad, I deemed his judgement to be unique and useful, as a mediator between Western anthropological understandings of witchcraft and his own experience growing up in Morocco. As with most participants I had filmed him in his home to protect him from the public reputation of what we spoke of. He did not speak on his own opinion of whether magic exists but instead spoke on the elaborate nature of Moroccan beliefs, which I found to be very valuable.
I had also spoken to a tour guide that I had known through a family friend; given his consistent interactions with individuals from diverse backgrounds, he was more wiling compared to others when speaking about his experiences. Having experienced his own occurrences, he was a firm believer in sorcery. I consider his representation to mirror a large majority of Moroccan speculation; his stories were similar to the to the ones I’ve heard growing up.
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Using an Islamic expert or Fqih ( someone who knows the Quran off my heart) to get the religious perspective, he gave forth a complete opposite view of the tour guide. Using his deep and comprehensive understanding of the Quran, I was interested in what he believed Islam says about witchcraft. Ultimately, he believed it was all superstition, except this is only one opinion, others might say otherwise, this can differ between different Fqihs.
Lastly, I interviewed a sorceress in the area of Sidi Abdelrahman. Since she knew she was being recorded, she asserted her role solely as a fortune teller and denounced any affiliation with sorcery, although this would not be the case if I had come into her workplace without association of the film. This area is known as a magic hotspot and people generally don't like to be seen coming in and out as it's assumed you are there for the propose of cursing others. Instead, she simply claimed to perform magic protection rituals in the name of God, protecting you from evil eye and removing any possible spells placed on you. The cautiousness of their reputation stems from the government's recent strictness on clamping down on any public association with sorcery. While Sidi Abdelrahman is a historical sight and open to all, the private image of it is secretive. A reason the fortune teller was sceptical was due to the presence of ‘spies’ or government representatives, who commonly monitor and shut down any public practice of ‘black magic’; recording her publicly would critically damage her reputation. When filming, I completely hid any camera equipment until reaching indoors and during the recoding period, her mother stood outside to ensure no one would accidentally walk in and see what was happening. While she technically wasn't doing anything wrong, she still wore a mask over her face to protect her identity. She performed a practice known as ‘Ldoun’, melting lead with herbs and pouring it in a bucket of water as it explodes while she recites a verse from the Quran. She then checks the lead and ‘reads’ it, if it comes out black and largely shattered to pieces, it symbolises the presence of evil eye and potentially a curse that has been absorbed out of you into the lead. Most fortune tellers are also very poor, it begs the question of whether they feel spiritually gifted to have this as a job or if it's only a matter of financial desperation.
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Filming Process
The film has continuous clips of a market called Marché Jemaah; this market is known for hard to find, specific ingredients to perform spells. It was especially difficult to film considering the strictness of government policy against it. At least with the fortune teller, the recording was done in private. At certain points people were approaching, asking why we were filming. And surprisingly word got around very quickly, although I had not mentioned any word of the topic. The simple look of a camera had people wary of their ingredients recorded. This unexpectedly turned the situation hostile regardless of that fact I was recording as little as possible. At a particular point, a fqih based in the market came out to keep an eye on us, he embodied an authority figure. Many fqihs may take part in the healing practice known as roqya (the healing practice based off the recitation of the Quran), this is generally not affiliated with any witchcraft. However, as mentioned before, fqih refers to someone who knows the Quran off by heart, they can technically simultaneously practice witchcraft and be a fqih. Although its generally looked down upon, some might visit them as they believe they are more powerful in their sorcery. In our case, the fqih stood close to watch over us and make sure we don’t ask anything suspicious. It is important to maintain their status as well as the impression of Islamic purity in our culture. At a certain point, we understood we needed to leave quickly. When walking across the market, people who hadn't even been there were whispering about us filming in ‘dar Amina’ (Amina's house) which is where the spells are conducted within the market.
Conclusion
Regardless of one's belief in sorcery, it should also be noted how religion and witchcraft exist under the same umbrella of culture. Are these rituals symbols of tradition or magic? The lines that separate the two are often very blurred and each person has a different opinion on where this line is drawn. For instance, as Mourad, the anthropologist mentioned, the use of the hamsa is used to protect against the evil eye but if you go to most Moroccan households, its present regardless of what their belief is. This applies even to myself; I wear eye and hamsa jewellery often as a representation of my culture rather than for superstitious reasons.
Essentially, Morocco is home to an array of opinions when it comes to the topic of sorcery, unlike other countries that take part in witchcraft, where there seems to be a unanimous opinion on what is magically real and what isn't across society. Morocco on the other hand is a ‘country of contradictions’ which may explain the misinterpretation of what people believe truly happens in our society. For this reason, I don't wish to provide a ‘correct’ opinion but instead show that there are complexities to why people might believe in this rather than simply being explained away as underdeveloped third world beliefs. I wish to help change stereotypes and to provide a clearer view of the many different perspectives that subsist simultaneously. It also made me underestimate the level of complexity in how embedded and complicated the topic is. In the future, I hope to delve into it with longer fieldwork as I have barely scratched the surface. Speaking more on the subject of stereotypes and ignorant opinions, I wanted to challenge the Western notion that immediately places the belief of witchcraft as fallacious, this is highly problematic. For example, in Levi-Strauss’ writings on magic, particularly in The Sorcerer and his Magic, he deduces that there is no truth in magic, he believed magic was only real to those who believe it. This gives the impression that the believer is comparatively illusory. This is a very ethnocentric point of view. Myra Hird is characterized the social sciences being as “smug” in a way that “licenses the false impression that natural scientists are largely ignorant of philosophical and social studies of science” (quoted by Tallbear, 2011).
Fundementally, I am not claiming whether sorcery and witchcraft is real, it's up to each individual to come to their own conclusion but we should see other cultures' opinions as valid in their own right. The fact is, 40% of the global population across 95 countries believe witches are real and in Tunisia it's 90% (Gershman, 2022). Therefore, it doesn't make sense to falsify such a large percentage of people's belief, “normal thought always suffers from a deficit of meaning” (Lévi-Strauss, 1963: 181). Ultimately using a relativistic principle of anthropology, we could contend that people believe in magic because it is effective rather than vice versa. If it wasn't productive, people wouldn't believe in it.
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Literature Bibliography
- Gershman, B. (2022) “Witchcraft beliefs around the world: An exploratory analysis,” PLOS ONE, 17(11). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276872
- Hart, D.M. (1987) “Review: Magic, Witchcraft and Sorcery in Morocco: The Sociology of Evans-Pritchard and the Ethnography of Mustapha Akhmisse, M.D.,” British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, 14(2), pp. 183–193. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13530198808705465.
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- Lévi-Strauss, C. (1963) “The Sorcerer and his Magic,” in Structural anthropology. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
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- TallBear, K. (2011) “Why interspecies thinking needs indigenous standpoints”, Society for Cultural Anthropology. (https://culanth.org/fieldsights/why-interspecies-thinking-needs-indigenous-standpoints.)
Archive audio and photo bibliography
- Esfahani, H. (1300~1500). “Kitab al-Bulhan” (Book of Wonders). (https://michelkoven.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/kitab-al-bulhan-or-book-of-wonders/)
- SergeQuadrado. (2022). “Arabic Prayer” and “Islamic Way”. Pixabay. (https://pixabay.com/music/mystery-islamic-way-109185/) (https://pixabay.com/music/world-arabic-prayer-13403/)