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forest presages a successful kill the next day. In recognition of their power, oracular dreams are consciously sought out and conditions favoring them are created. The hunter should respect his fathers, should have no thoughts of the village, and should talk only of things of the forest. |
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A man may also decide to let the kind of dream he has, auspicious or inauspicious, determine for him whether to embark on a trip or hunt. Dreams are thought to be sent by the ancestors, and the ancestral spirit shrine serves as its medium. One informant described this shrine as a radio, a medium through which the living and their "fathers" communicated. |
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Of the consultative oracles, the rubbing-stick oracle diwa was most frequently employed. One afflicted with illness or with a lack of reproductive, hunting, or gardening success may consult the oracle owner, an elderly man famed for his powerful medicines, who will, for a fee, put the question as to the source of the affliction to the oracle. While he addresses the oracle, he rubs two flat, palm-sized, smooth-bottomed boards together with a water and medicine mix between them. Going from the general to the particular, he asks the oracle if the cause is the anger of the fathers. If the boards stick or seize (gboke) while he addresses them, he knows that he has identified the cause. He then asks the board who is angry with the afflicted. The recital of names accompanies the rubbing together of the two boards until they stick together, thereby identifying the particular source of affliction. A remedy may or may not be suggested. If in reply to his initial address the boards continue to slide effortlessly against one another, then he moves on to other causes of affliction, such as witchcraft or sorcery. |
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Other uses of the oracle include not only diagnosis of the cause of the affliction but also the selection of the appropriate remedy. In one case I watched as a dying woman's neighbors and kin brought their combined stores of curative medicines to be given to the patient. Each was carefully tested by grinding it in a pestle, mixing it with water, and rubbing the mixture between the boards with the accompanying address: "If the medicine is strong, show us; if the medicine is good, show us." Only those medicines which made the boards seize were judged powerful and given to the dying woman. |
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The verdicts of the rubbing-board oracle, owned as it is by a few old men, are suspect. In my village of residence, the character of its operator was frequently referred to as grounds for disbelieving its judgments. The man was a child of a Pagibeti mother seized in Pagibeti-Buan warfare; he had returned to his mother's village following her death. He was feared for his knowledge of Buan medicines and, though frequently consulted for his divining skills, was suspected of using his sorcerer's powers for personal gain. Many villagers stated that he had introduced diseases not previously known to the village, such as the drying up of the breasts of nursing mothers. Those seeking a cure commonly paid him twice, once for the divining of the disease and once for the purchase of the remedy. |
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The poison oracle, on the other hand, was widely respected though rarely used. Its judgment is final. The name of the poison, benge, is the same as that noted by the Tanghe among the Ngbandi to the north and by Evans-Pritchard among the Azande much farther east. During my eighteen-month field study among the |
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