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to see the suffering individual at all. But he did need to examine the afflicted person's relations to spirits and people in consultation with someone who knew them intimately. Together they cast a "divinatory gaze" upon pathologies of relationship, defining a social identity for the suffering person. |
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Nyole regarded diviners as specialists who could tell them something they themselves did not know. Yet the specialist model of misfortune differed from the folk model only in that the specialist was aware of more detail. A diviner knew more techniques of sorcery, more names and characteristics of little spirits. But the basic structure of the explanatory models held by client and specialist was identical. This contrasts with the Fipa situation described by Willis (1973:370) in which the "scientific" theory of specialists elaborates more causal categories than the "lay" theory. And it is very different from the relation between biomedical expert and layman in that the former has knowledge and interpretations of pathologies which the latter does not share. With the intensification of the medical gaze made possible by X rays, CAT scans, and lab tests, a doctor can identify pathologies of which the patient is unaware, but a Nyole diviner must rely upon his client for knowledge about the state of a suffering person's relationships to spirits and other persons. In this matter of personhood, the specialist has no monopoly upon knowledge. As we shall see, this leads to a rich flow of communication during the divination seance. |
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Divination (ohulagula) was a distinct function performed by specialists (abalagusi, abafumu), who were paid a standard divination fee (omuhemba)in 1970, two shillings. The divination (endagu) consisted of a diagnosis and a prescription for treatment. Most diviners specialized in some form of treatment as well. Some called themselves abagangi (from ohuganga, "to treat"), emphasizing their functions as healers in dealing with little and foreign spirits and administering herbal medicines. Some were also known as abang'eng'a, from the verb meaning "to protect"; through countermedicine they were thought able to guard people and homes against sorcery, and they were usually said to sell sorcery medicines too. |
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At the time of our fieldwork, there were two principal methods of divination in Bunyole: spirit possession and examination of Arabic books. "Those of the gourd rattles" (ab'esaasi, ab'enyengo) had a working relationship with teams of spirits who possessed them and spoke through them to reveal the causes of a client's misfortune (see figure). Lamuli performed calculations and consulted books of geomancy; although their technique was relatively new in Bunyole, they manipulated the same etiological model of misfortune used by the gourd rattle diviners. Both men and women could be diviners, but of the thirty-eight concerning whom I obtained information, fewer than one-third were women. Nearly half of the spirit diviners (ten of twenty-three) were women, but none of the twelve book diviners were women. This Arabic form of divination has become increasingly popular |
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