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The first stage of the consultation concerns the diviner's revealing of the reason for the visit. After the diviner has spontaneously welcomed the clients, he briefly mentions, speaking in his esoteric language, the reason for their visit. Then he applies horizontal stripes of kaolin to his temples at the edges of his eyes to widen his vision and squats in front of the clients. To reach an initial outline of the problem that is submitted without any information, the diviner works through an etiological list of questions which concern the range of different social relationships, afflictions and abuses, and subsequent curses and retaliation on the next generations. He enters into a trancelike state and reacts to his questions with an affirmative or negative answer. He examines them while singing in an esoteric language and tapping on his slit-gong (De Beir 1975:1246). All diviners use a comparable etiological list. In this way, the particular problem is incipiently subsumed into the much wider context of the etiological and axiological tradition adopted by the society. By repeating together the end of each of the diviner's sentences, the clients become involved in the oracle. A solidarity grows among them, since they are all led in a similar way to a kind of self-scrutiny. Now squatted on the slit-gong, the diviner glances in a hand mirror that he holds in front of several shells "to awaken his capacity to bring the concealed into the open." Although he receives no information from the clients, the diviner must now "catch the problem submitted to the oracle" (-kwaata ngoombu). A skilled diviner can usually outline the problem at this initial stage. He proves his clairvoyance by revealing the nature of the case (a death, an illness, a lasting unproductive hunt, an act of sorcery) as well as the places where the events occurred, the family names, and the classificatory positions of the afflicted and individuals that are involved. Satisfied with a relevant revelation, the clients may confirm the first outline of the case, supply minor details, and make an initial payment. |
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The second stage of the consultation, which mainly offers a detailed etiological diagnosis, normally takes place the next morning to permit the diviner's "dreams" on the matter. This second stage first of all summarizes the first phase and then proceeds to complement the material provided by the dreamlike messages, "applying to it an etiological grid" (-ta ngoombu). According to the diviners, their main source of information is derived from their keen sense of smell, their listening as in dreaming, and their clairvoyance. As a matter of fact one has to distinguish between two processes at this stage. First the diviner describes the dreamlike messages by way of metaphoric transferences and metonymic associations rather than by way of causalist reasoning. In the act of contemplating these images "in his heart" and linking them to the afflicted individual's physical problem and his social and supernatural context, the diviner transmits factual elements of the illness or the case in question to the historical conjunction, the reconstitution of which makes intelligible the repetition of the affliction in the life of the afflicted and of the group of the concerned. Second, the diviner applies an etiological grid to the information that was obtained through clairvoyance (the manipulation of this grid is described below). |
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