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beneficial but sometimes so dangerous for the society and the transgressing individual that he has to withdraw from it. Second, victims are straightened out as a result of having wandered into the wilderness. |
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Linking the two archetypes, we can say that the geographical transition from wilderness to straight paths parallels the individual's movement from social or mental confusion to clarity. As a metaphor of change between personal states, this charcterizes divination among the Giriama and Swahili of Kenya. This movement is evident more from their speech than from their actions. By concentrating on the speech of diviners among the people I have studied, I am able to understand a little more about the thought processes associated with the two archetypes I have described. |
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Diagnosis of problems is arrived at through divination; treatment (i.e., attempted cure) takes place after the divination and at a set place and time. Diviners may be of either sex and are paid between two and five Kenya shillings for their diagnosis. They usually recommend that the patient be treated by a specialist doctor. This treatment is more expensive and is much more profitable than divination. |
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There is a hierarchy within these occupations, which include exorcism of spirits and reversal of witchcraft. It is based on the (sometimes cross-cutting) critieria of sex, age, and ethnic or religious group. Doctors who provide only therapy but not divination are always men. Diviners may be men or women among non-Muslims but only men among Muslims. "Arab" diviners and doctors (who are always men) are generally held to be the best, and are the most expensive; they are regarded as having mixed Arab-Swahili-Mijikenda ancestry. "Swahili" (i.e., Muslim Africans) are usually regarded as the next most efficacious, and "Giriama" (i.e., non-Muslim Mijikenda) as the least (see figure). Oracular techniques vary between these categories, and patients try a range of practitioners. Thus an individual Giriama may in fact achieve exceptional renown. Complicating the matter still further is the fact that non-Muslims say that all diviners must be Muslims, for the spirits that possess them will include "Arabic" (i.e., Muslim) ones. However, claims to Muslim status are graded in East Africa, and those who are most widely acknowledged as ''full" Muslims do distinguish between Muslim and non-Muslim diviners. This practice of grading Muslim status and the inconsistency of the contrast between Muslim and non-Muslim is a result of shifts from partial to "full" Muslim status, which often take more than one generation; it is reflected in the loose hierarchy of divinatory and medical prowess. That is to say, the social is reflected in the ritual hierarchy. |
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Following this Durkheimian line, it might be possible to show how changes in judgments made about diviners in terms of their ethnic group, religion, sex, and age amount to statements about wider, changing social relations. But diviners of all kinds use the idea of moving from a boundless to a bounded realm of existence in their diagnoses. Such archetypal usage seems unaffected by difference of rank and status among diviners. By investigating the diagnoses of a social range of such diviners I think we are able to understand their thematic logic and its relative imperviousness to variations in the social circumstances of diviners. |
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