Sacred Python Swallows Priestess

[icymist]

West African incident prompts questions about the nature of irrationality

A story has been making the rounds of the Ghanaian blogosphere these last few days. It concerns the unfortunate death of a 55-year-old priestess at the shrine of an animist cult in northern Ghana.

She met her end at the hands, or to put it morbidly, mouth, of a giant African python. The python is the central figure of this cult, and is sacred both in its physical reptilian form and as a representation of unseen powers in the spirit realms.

Initially, I dismissed this story as mere fantasy, fabricated as a prank by a bored news editor to wind up her readers.

Now, major Ghanaian news outlets have picked up the story, and from what I read, it is more fact than fiction.

Read the article