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misfortune has been brought about by a curse pronounced in the matri- or patriline as a means of retaliation for a theft or another abuse. The curse thereby has invoked the support of a cult and its ancestral or spiritual agencies. Or the oracle may attribute the problem to sorcery by agnates and/or uterines. |
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Besides jurisdiction and mediumistic divination, there are more popular forms of etiology and arbitration. The more the etiology of the affliction relies on common sense, the more it brings into play a linear causalist way of thinking. The popular name attributed to some physical discomfort (e.g., yivumu kiviimbiidi, ''the stomach is breeding [an egg]," i.e., a swollen stomach) and the symptomatic treatment evoke an immediate cause: what kind of illness is it, how did it come about, who or what is responsible for it? The popular etiologies, at least in their manifest content and as they are proceeding from common sense, attach great importance to accidents, contaminations, jealousies, sorcerers and fetishes, transgressions, and ancestral sanctions. Paradoxically, however, the more the patient and his/her kin try to act upon the illness's final cause to solve it, the more they will question themselves about the origin and the sense of what has been happening and the more this reflection will give way to a structural causalist way of reasoning instead of a linear one. Structuralist etiology is more hermeneutics than causal inquiry. This type of etiology makes no attempt to analyze the temporal axis of the causal chain but tries to relate the various dimensions, such as physical, social, axiological, and supernatural ones. It is on the basis of such semantic connections that clients, meeting with the whole family in council a few days after the oracle, arbitrate upon the source of the misfortune and interpret its meaning. The divinatory message can make for a complex redefining of the kin relations. It is then the aim of the ritual specialist called for, first, to reverse the process by lifting the curse or bewitchment and thereby the source of the illness, and then to treat the patient by means of the same cult. |
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Several minor divination procedures may be consulted in the case of bad dreams and certain material misfortunes, as in hunting, agriculture, or business, or the death and loss of animals and damage to or loss of tools. For such cases, a successful first rifle shot (mbiimbi), for example, might take on oracular value. In the past, ordeal by fire (ngoombwa luufu) has been used as well as the poison ordeal (phutu). Some people are specialized in a kind of inductive oracle using an adhering horn of a duiker (ngoonbwa n-seengu), or a rubbing stick or rubbing board (ngoombwa n-ti). Because it is thought that these oracle forms can be manipulated by those concerned, the Yaka do not accept their results without skepticism. On the other hand, the mediumistic diviner is consulted in cases of death, serious illness, deformity through birth or accident, lasting social failure of some kind, or failure in hunting and other crucial activities. Otherwise the problem may concern gynecological upsets, such as miscarriage, premature birth, sterility, debility, and so on. On average, an extended family may have to consult mediumistic divination once every two or three years. The divinatory protocol tends to become simpler in the capital of Kinshasa. In the urban context, the oracle is requested by many non-Yaka clients and for problems that are related to cash economy, urban jobs, school education, and outcome of biomedical health care. But the |
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