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1975
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Albert De Surgy, « La partition des unités cycliques de temps en pays Evhé (Togo et Ghana). », Journal des Africanistes, ID : 10.3406/jafr.1975.1763
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Résumé
Societies for whom time is neither homogeneous nor linear, but cyclical and qualified diversely according to the cycle and the portion of cycle considered, generally subdivide, with more or less subtelty, every cyclical unit in accordance with their own notion of the structure of totality. Analysis of these cyclical units can, therefore, give us information of the utmost precision concerning the fundamental categories of their thought-pattern. Thus, among the Evhe, the nychthemeron cycle, the four or five day week, the lunar month, the year and a two-year cycle are all based upon the cyclical model of the transformation of the four elements which is the foundation of their system of cognition and divination through Afa. But the more complex partition of the year-whose beginning is determined by observing the Pleiads, and which is divided in 12 or 13 moons numbered from 5 to 14, followed by a vacant period-reflects a more elaborate configuration, resulting from a subdivision of the four element cycle into four similar interconnected cycles ; this configuration bears evidence of an occult course of four categories followed by a manifest course of twelve categories, related to the main geomantic figures ; and the cycle of the Afa initiation ceremonies is also modelled after it.