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to cause social disruption. Private diviners who do reveal names are said to accrue an-hake, "sin," an Islamic-derived concept denoting an external force sent by God (K-uru or Allah) which will sooner or later bring about the exposure of the miscreant's wrongdoings. Rather than making specific accusations, private diviners use euphemistic language and veiled innuendos. If a diviner "sees" that a woman client's co-wife is a witch who is attacking her children, for instance, she may be told that "in your house, there is a woman who is a bad person," "bad person" (o-wuni u les) being a euphemism for "witch.'' She will usually be told to make a sacrifice which will cause the witch's an-hake to "fall upon her," bringing her witchcraft into the open by, for example, making her spontaneously confess her hidden deeds. |
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This is in marked contrast to the witch-finding procedure of ka-gbak, in which the calling of a public divination performance is itself an acknowledgment that social relations have already been disrupted. This may have been occasioned by a diagnosis of witchcraft given to a senior man consulting a private diviner, by some event, such as a sudden death, or by a dream involving a naked person, the cooking and eating of meat, or an attack by a wild animal, all of which indicate witchcraft. No an-hake falls upon those who divine publicly, since they are called in to restore peace by accusing individuals and making their guilt directly visible to the community. |
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Ka-gbak is conducted by the male ra-Gbenle cult association, which in eastern Temneland is primarily responsible for chieftaincy ritual, especially the coronation and funeral ceremonies of chiefs (see Dorjahn 1959; Dalby and Kamara 1964). The secret activities of witches can be seen by ra-Gbenle's "masked" spirit embodiments, ma-neke, who in this instance are not masked by the covering of the face but by their concealment from view behind a mat hung over the doorway of the house in which witches are thought to be active. Being spirits, ma-neke are able to see into and enter the witch world, ro-seron, to investigate those suspected of witchcraft. While on this journey into ro-seron they can be heard singing songs in eerie nasal voices by those gathered outside the house. |
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On the verandah, the suspects are interrogated one at a time by ma-neke and by o-Gbenle, the head of ra-Gbenle, who holds the association's bowl of liquid medicine. This interrogation involves a highly elaborate and specific use of language, in which people and past events are redefined in detail. For example: "This boy is a friend of the other boy. Together, they have a witch-gun.
6 When they shoot, they never miss. These boys are only small in no-ru but they are very powerful, and both always work together." Suspects are directly accused of being witches ("You are a witch, not so?"), and if they deny this they are usually cursed with the words "your foreskin" or "your clitoris," indicating that, like the uncircumcised, they are not full human beings. If they continue to assert that they are not witches, they are challenged to pay a large sum of money7 in order to take an ordeal which consists of touching the mat over the door, the barrier separating the human beings outside from ma-neke inside, after drinking the medicine; their witchcraft is made visible by involuntary defecation upon doing so. Most of these accused cannot afford this sum, however, and eventually confess to being witches, |
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