Ol' Black Joe represents the pure blood African males *fresh off
the boat* who were able to survive to an advanced age. Ol' Black Joe had a completely white head of hair.
He wears tattered and patched slave clothes, is barefoot and smokes a corn cob pipe. Often his head is covered from the sun
with some type of straw hat. He is shown seated because of his advanced age.
He is the symbol of the African Ancestor as lineage
founder and can be linked to a Congo concept of the Great Ancestor N'Zambia, the Yoruba concept of Orisa Obatala, the Afro-Cuban Egun concept
of El Negro José which is also found also in Brazilian Umbanda and the Spiritualism of Mexico.
Ol' Black Joe was a cotton picker a field worker according to the oral
tradition. He was never allowed near the slaveowner's house or his porch. The knowledge of Ol' Black Joe was that of
the African born tribal and clan Nganga's or Griot that secretly saved many African's from extinction by disease and insanity
brought on by the harshness of slave life.
The passing of information in the oral tradition was
two-fold. It was the act of training the youth and it was a process of adaptation of the folklore for
new and hostile conditions. The stories “collected” by Joel Chandler
Harriswere assigned to an Uncle , i.e. a middle aged African American male. This uncle was one of the descendants of
Old Black Joe who had heard these stories and in his turn passed them on to the next generation. In
the archetype of Old Black Joe, was concealed a high level of knowledge of the doctrine of signatures. Man was the caretaker of the Garden of Eden . The Elder Blacks knew man shared with the animals the same basic survival instincts.
God gave a virtue or power to each animal and beast. Animals in
Aesop's Fables talked and interacted with man, but the real communication with an animal totem took place on another level
or part of man's being using non-verbal language. The animals were ancestors. The concept of animal totems in Hoodoo
and in slavery times were viewed as increasing of one's power or virtue by way of knowing the secret i.e. internal nature
of each animal, and forming a link with it that was the point behind the so-called morality" tales of "Uncle" Remus.
The
herbs were ancestors. The stones were ancestors. The kingdoms are "ancestors" & they are the dynamic components of the
root bag. There are four kingdoms and three of them were put under Man's dominion by the Most High as medicine, to maintain,
protect and sustain his life on Earth.
The deceased human Ancestors though
they lived in "another world" and were unseen were still part of the human kingdom and also worked to help their descendents.
Ancestors are the great Mystery of the African Occultism.
