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thereby contributing to the public redefinition of their identity by this performative statement. |
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This process is termed "splitting a divination," ka-gbay ma-then. Ma-then, which is only used of public divination, denotes all specific verbal accusations and manifestations of a person's guilt, and specific predictions about the future (usually involving sudden deaths or fires). The expression ka-gbay ma-then was explained to me as follows: "The divination is like a box that you split and reveal the truth." The image of the box here is significant. Boxes are used by lineage heads and by ordinary individuals to contain stones inhabited by lineage or personal spirits; they are also used by cult associations to house their most sacred objects. In southern and eastern Temneland the head of the former chief, for instance, is kept in one of the living chief's sacred boxes; likewise the spirit of an-Poro, the major male cult association, is carried through the town ceremonially by an-Poro officials in a gold box wrapped in white cloth (Lamp 1981). |
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Power, Truth, and Divination |
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In the complementary spheres of private and public divination, then, we find encapsulated the related contrasts of predominantly revelatory/predominantly analytical ritual and "truth as enigma"/legalistic, performative truth. Although not all methods of private divination involve the construction of a material microcosm, common to all of them is the spirit-inspiration, the minimal and euphemistic use of words and the location in a private room, behind a closed door, which characterize an-bere divination. Likewise, common to all forms of public divnation as well as ka-gbak is the strong "classificatory" element, the construction of sharp definitions. Through its sifting of evidence in its reconstruction of past events, as well as its performative use of specific verbal categorizations, ka-gbak is highly "analytical" in Turner's terms, despite its close resemblance to spirit mediumship, which is often assumed to be a less "rational" form of divination. |
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The contrasts outlined above are, furthermore, connected to the ways in which power and authority both constitute and are constituted by the two aspects of divinatory truth explored here. In a previous paper (Shaw 1985), I describe the interrelation of gender and divination. The majority of private diviners' clients are women, usually with sick children or reproductive problems, and are thereby regarded with suspicion by men, who see them as liable to make use of the negative ethical potential of diviners' knowledge. Moreover, just as the notion of an-hake makes the specific accusation of individuals ineffective and usually pointless in private divination, for a female client to use such an accusation in order to effect the redefinition of a co-wife would be impossible, not only because she has no authority to do so, but also because such a course of action would be unthinkable. Public divination, on the other hand, is monopolized mainly by senior men, since only a household head is entitled to call a public divination. It is consequently he who gives those who conduct the divination performance his own construction of events and individuals, which is usually in accord with his own interests, and |
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