TIME IN BLACK-AFRICA - CONCEPT, COMPUTATION AND MANAGEMENT

There are correspondences between the order of time, the order of society, and the order of nature. If sacred time is evaluated in relation to the origin and the ancestral traditions; it also is the intense present in the rite of spirit possession and the future of messianisms. In everyday life marked by work, there is a compensation between lunar and solar year. Events are kept in memory and divination aims at controlling a possible disorder. The time schedule changes with the seasons and depends on social and individual occurrences. In social institutions, time marks the stages of life, the modifications of status. Through ritual, time can be decoded, modified, or stopped.