ABSTRACT
In her review of the Anglo-French dialogue on African systems of thought, Audrey Richards (1967) drew attention to a number of important issues in the study of myth, ritual, symbol, and cosmology. Have the Bantu no cosmologies, only symbols (1967, p. 278)? Turner found that 'the Ndembu have a paucity of myths and cosmological or cosmogonic narratives. It is therefore necessary to begin at the other end, with the basic building blocks, the "molecules" of ritual' (1969, p. 14). Do elaborate cosmologies go with elaborate social structures, fragmentary sets of symbols with segmentary structures? Are consistent systems c;>f ideas universal, and have we already enough material to start mapping those areas of Africa in which elaborate cosmologies exist and to study the social mechanisms for transmitting them (Richards, 1969)?
