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travel far away for consultations, seek multiple sessions, loathe answering personal questions, and are generally secretive (Horton 1964:68, 1214). Their attitudes find agreement throughout the continent. In eastern and southern Africa, diviners seldom know their clients because "foreign" diviners are intentionally sought to ensure objectivity (Colson 1966).
2 In other areas the diviner is never told (at least initially) what the client's problem is.3 Among the Ndembu, the diviner is intentionally deceived as to the applicability of his diagnosis (Turner 1975:217). Thus, contrary to popular opinion, diviners often have no prior knowledge of their clients' problems. |
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Great care is taken to ensure the quality of divinatory communication. Attention is paid to the condition of the diviner as well as to the divination mechanisms, which are constantly tested. The proper type of divination must be chosen for the specific client and problem. Often multiple sessions are held to ensure that the same conditions remain operative. Finally, much debate characterizes the last stage of the session, when the diviner and client discuss the relationship of the oracular message to the matter under investigation. While the client may never have all the information necessary to make an immaculate decision, he or she strives to gain enough knowledge to take the best action possible. Clients are not simply "flipping a coin" to avoid personal responsibility for making difficult decisions. Divination is approached seriously and cautiously because the quality of the divination process determines the quality of the results and thereby the action taken. |
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Divination never results in a simple restatement of tradition to be followed blindly. It is a dynamic reassessment of customs and values in the face of an ever-changing world. Uchendu's concept of "moving equilibrium" as central to the Igbo world view (1965:12) well describes divination's function in providing the context in which old and new, secular and sacred, real and ideal may be contrasted and resolved. It is through divination that a harmonious balance can be maintained in which a culture's most cherished values are adapted to the real world of continual flux.4 The increased use of divination in urban settings, especially in southern Africa, best illustrates this dimension.5 |
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Although everything possible is done to ensure correct communication, all participants appreciate that there is a fundamental unknowability in the universe, even for suprahuman beings. Diviners can only report what they are told and that may not always be correct (Junod 1927:564; Mendonsa 1976:191). Some divination systems have the element of cosmic randomness built in, as represented by the "changeable man" image in Ndembu basket divination whose appearance can cancel a consultation (Turner 1975:22125) or the presence of the face of Eshu (the Yoruba trickster) on the Ifa divination tray. The frequent association of tricksters, those representatives of disorder, in West African divination systems suggests they have a key role in the reordering of human behavior (Pelton 1980: 261). |
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The central figure in this enterprise is of course the diviner, whose ascribed and achieved characteristics contribute to the separation of divination from normal activities. In some societies, such as the Lobi of Burkina-Faso (see Meyer's essay |
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