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conclusion, the endagu. It is this verdict which counts as far as the victim is concerned; the victim and the afflicition are defined by the authority of the divinerat least that is how it appears. And insofar as this formulation is accepted and acted upon, an identity is proposed and perhaps accepted by the victim. |
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The consulter's relation to the victim is potentially a dominant one. In this light, it is clear that going to consult concerning one's own affliction is a political act, an assertion of autonomy. It is no accident that this characterizes the clientele of the book diviners, who offer medicinal shortcuts to well-being. |
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The authority of senior relatives and of men can be challenged within the framework of divination, just at it can be asserted and maintained. What is more striking about Nyole divination is its vitality and flexibility as a mechanism for creating privileged definitions of persons and society. |
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The fieldwork on which this essay is based was carried out in Bunyole County, Bukedi District, Eastern Province of Uganda, between February 1968 and April 1971. Because nineteen years have passed, I have used the past tense in relating what I heard and saw then. The work was done together with my husband, Michael A. Whyte; I would like to thank him for his insightful suggestions concerning the present essay. We are both grateful for grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, which supported our research in Bunyole. |
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1. Two diviners kept records of their consultations for me, noting details of all the clients for whom they divined over specific periods of time. A field assistant made similar records for a third diviner who could not write in Lunyole. These journals contain information on about 350 cases in all. In addition to these data, I transcribed four divination seances, attended several more, and interviewed diviners and their clients as part of a more inclusive study of the interpretation and treatment of misfortune. |
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2. Diviners worked with sets of four to eight foreign spirits, of which the majority were said to be Ganda. No two diviners had exactly the same team of spirits, although Mukasa, a Ganda spirit, was mentioned by all six gourd rattle diviners whom I asked concerning the names of their spirit colleagues. Other Ganda spirits mentioned were Nabubi, Kiti, Kirongo, Kitambogwe, Kiwanuka, Jilaiya, Katema Muti, Musokiye, Omulalo Omulagusi (meaning Hima diviner!), Kidali, Luwanuka, and Musisi. Those named as Soga spirits were Musoke, Walumbe, and Gireya. Jilaiya was also mentioned as a Gwere spirit. Masaaba and Lugingo were named as Gisu spirits and Mukambi as a Swahili spirit. |
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3. Trimingham (1964:124) mentions Islamic systems of divination as being employed in towns; certainly they were employed in the countryside as well. Bloch (1968) describes the history and importance of written Arabic in Malagasy systems of astrology, geomancy, and medicine. He emphasizes the early recognition of ''a feature which is still important today. That is, the power, religious, magical, astrological and medicinal, of the written word, both for those possessing the art and those without it. . . ." (283). |
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4. Trimingham (1964:124) mentions Abu Ma'shar al-Falaki as a book of astrology. In 1983 I found this book in use in Tanzania; a copy for sale in a shop in Moshi was printed in Delhi. |
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5. Young (1977) describes the somewhat similar system of awdunigist divination employed by Amhara ecclesiastics. |
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