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relatively serious but not yet serious enough to concern the entire community. Thus issues of maximum social concern demand public resolution in open village space or on the almost equally open space of the front verandah of a house, while problems of the individual are diagnosed privately by divination in a closed room, and questions defined as being of intermediate social concern are investigated in the intermediate space of the parlor. |
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Temne diviners use a large repertoire of methods of public and private divination. Many of these methods are defined as Islamic. Even those which are not often include Islamic elements, since the Temne are semi-Islamized and diviners have been highly influential in defining Islamic knowledge as powerful and prestigious. Both private and public methods may involve the manipulation of objects, while some use more direct forms of mediation, such as spirit mediumship. In the following section, I will compare the ways in which hidden truths are made manifest in an-bere, a prominent form of private divination, and in the public witch-detecting technique, ka-gbak, of the male ra-Gbenle cult association. |
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An-bere and Ka-gbak: Splitting Truths from Darkness |
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In an-bere divination, small river pebbles are cast and then arranged in an interpretable pattern according to the sequence of odd and even numbers obtained. The "powers" which enable the diviner to interpret this pattern are river spirits, of which the most important is the diviner's patron spirit (a river spirit of the opposite sex), and the diviner-ancestor Konkomusa, the first diviner to have used an-bere. While an-bere diviners use recognizably similar techniques, there is considerable individual variation in the casting and interpretation of the pebbles. I will describe the technique of Pa Biyare of Mafonke village (Bombali Sebora chiefdom), who was temporarily resident in the town of Makeni when he taught me how to use an-bere. |
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A client consulting Pa Biyare first gave a small quantity of money as a "shake-hand" and then explained the problem. Pa Biyare, seated on a Muslim prayer mat on the floor, rubbed the pebbles together in his hands and spoke the Muslim prayer, Bismillahi Rahmani Rahim, under his breath.
3 He then instructed the pebbles to reveal (tori) truly, softly repeated the client's question to them, and cast the pebbles, throwing a handful upward with his left and and catching some in his right hand. Putting those caught down on the mat, he counted them off two at a time until either two or one remained. Finally, he arranged them from right to left, into a pattern which eventually consisted of a variable number of rows, each made up of a line of four single or paired pebbles, so that there were four columns.4 |
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At the first casting, he placed the remaining pebble or pair of pebbles in the top right-hand position to begin the first row. If an even number larger than two remained from out of the pebbles caught in the right hand, he placed them in |
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