|
|
|
|
|
|
|
situation where infringement was cursed. For the oracle, the final responsibility does not lie in the fault for which an individual in his free decision is held responsible. The oracle does not look for a guilty person but for those responsible for the social reciprocity that needs to be restored. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Divinatory oracles, like trials and cults, make clear that the Yaka do not see the human life and affliction as deterministic, inevitable, or unintelligible and meaningless. It is in divination that the Yaka seek the answers to crucial existential questions. Indeed, so critical is this system that we might ask if Yaka society shorn of divination would still remain Yaka society. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The research for this study was conducted from 1972 to 1974 in the Taanda territory, about 450 kilometers southeast of Kinshasa, encompassing thirteen Yaka villages. My data on divination stem from participant observation and numerous lengthy conversations with eleven diviners; more than two hundered oracles were noted in detail (some audio-recorded during the divination, others rendered faithfully by a diviner or one of the clients). I also witnessed the trance and subsequent seclusion of a diviner-to-be. The data I gathered confirm in detail the observations of Huber (1965) and of Father De Beir (1975:3133, 11138), who observed divinatory practices in the regional chiefdom of N-nene (Taanda territory) between 1938 and 1945. My annual sojourns, since 1986, of seven weeks among the Yaka in Kinshasa allow me to say that divination remains very crucial in town. The research among rural and urban Yaka has been financed by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research. A few sections of this paper previously appeared in Devisch (1985b). I gratefully acknowledge editorial help from Filip De Boeck. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
1. At the very beginning of the oracle, the diviner discloses the core message of the oracle, i.e., he defines the reason for the consultation: the young woman died primarily because the younger brother of her father turned his curse against her by bringing up the bridewealth, a substitution of the woman herself, with the sphere of the effect of the curse. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2. According to the clients, this factual detail of the suitcase and the divining of proper names and residences of those involved proves the diviner's extraordinary insight. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3. The prohibitions mentioned here are the normative formulation of curses uttered against related sorcerers. Since the related forebears have handed down prohibitions, they are also in some way at the root of Suuta's death. Further on the oracle will reveal that Toonda is one of Suuta's classificatory fathers. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4. The oracle points to the fact that Suuta's bridewealth should not have been in the hands of those cursed, because this implies the danger of the curse being turned against Suuta. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
5. By connecting Suuta's illness with sorcery, the oracle indirectly links the illness with a transgression of the sorcery prohibition which was transmitted in the maternal line to Suuta's classificatory fathers and to Suuta herself. By this curse, Suuta's father reinforces the prohibition, so that any transgression would of necessity have fatal consequences. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
6. Such a removal of his curse was necessary in order to prevent Suuta's coming under the curse, on account of her being related to Mbela who by wronging his brother had turned the curse against himself and Suuta. |
|
|
|
|
|