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be consulted, the afflicted rubs a coin or a piece of kaolin over his/her chest and between his/her palms while pronouncing the stereotyped wish that the diviner should cast light on the problem and unmask the evildoers. He/she then gives the intermediary object to the kinsman who is delegated to consult the oracle. In the event of a death, just before burial the uncle puts the intermediary object on the corpse and invites the deceased to make known the origin of his/her death through the mouth of the diviner (Devisch 1979:1258). The night before the oracle, the widower or the deceased's elder puts this intermediary object on the grave at the head and takes it back next morning. He shields it from all external influence and confines himself. That same night, he abstains from sexual intercourse; on the way to the diviner he does not sit, speak to anybody, shake hands, or accept anything offered to him. The diviner observes the same rules from the time he receives the intermediary object till the end of the oracle. |
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The diviner's heightened sense of smell is symbolized by a twofold metonymic reference to the sniffing and smelling, also called fiimbu, of the hunting dog, who belongs to the wild forest as well as the domestic village. The diviner is able to unmask hidden sorcery, i.e., antisocial activities, in the same way as the dog is said to detect the spoor of nocturnal meetings of sorcerers. To preserve the effect of this metonymic reference, the diviner scrupulously avoids any ritually unprepared contact with a dog. To further give a metonymic form to his paranormal power of scrutiny the diviner will often sniff at a shell of scented plants during the oracle. |
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Receptive listening constitutes a second level of divinatory scrutiny. By putting the intermediary object in his ear, especially while sleeping, the diviner metonymically "incorporates" and learns the message of the afflicted with whom an olfactory fusion took place already. It is the heart "which sees the dreamlike images" (-mona mundosi, i.e., receives the sonoro-visual and dreamlike message and transforms it into a visual message). The dreamlike images enable the diviner to comprehend or ''en-vision" in a contemplative way the problem first incorporated by the smelling and listening. The diviner's heart is the seat of his sensory and intellectual clairvoyant power. |
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The clairvoyance draws on dreamlike images. During the oracle, the diviner always uses such expressions as "see" or "dream." Questioned about this, the diviners say that the oracle consists in expressing what they have seen or were seeing at that moment in a dream, or what appeared suddenly to them from outside. They describe scenes crossing their vision. The people in these scenes appear vaguely, in a way the diviners describe as "people seen through an open door. You can see how tall they are, whether they are man or woman, what they carry with them, what they do, but you cannot recognize their faces." The diviner translates the "internal voices" that on such occasions may speak to him in a way that is hardly comprehensible. By contemplating these images and messages in his heart and by transposing them to the afflicted individual's problem the diviner establishes a metaphoric link between the problem situation and the initial divinatory interpretation. Many of these dreamlike images are concerned with avuncular |
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