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the diviner, clearly the common process is the accentuated declaration of sexual identity by denial or reversal and then the melding of the two aspects. The dramatic marking of difference, which is then rejected by affirmation of complementarity and synthesis, is a key dynamic in divination. This is also demonstrated by those divination systems which depend on the interaction of male and female halves of the divining apparatus.
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Additional practices may be described to demonstrate how diviners are distinguished from others, all of which contribute to marking the diviner's liminality. As communicators between worlds, they do not fully belong to either realm, as Blier (above) observes about Batammaliba diviners, who are simultaneously inside and outside the society. Many have commented on diviners' marginality, but Middleton's label of "liminaries" is the strongest affirmation of this often permanent stateless status.9 Even more important than the diviner's appearance is the diviner's mental state. This is most obvious when diviners use spirit possession or trance states (see Beattie and Middleton 1969), but any type of divination necessitates a heightening of the diviner's state of consciousness. |
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The location of the divination event in time and space also serves to establish and maintain its liminality. The time of divination is often restricted. The Azande never divine in the heat of day (Evans-Pritchard 1968:281), while in Madagascar divination never occurs at night (Sussman and Sussman 1977:282). The Dagaaba only divine in early morning (Kuukure 1985:106). Both Evans-Pritchard (1968) and Turner (1975) describe the importance of the preparation and placement of the divination session to prevent interference by antagonistic agents. By its very nature, divination participates in liminality because in order to permit transworld communication, it becomes a portal between different realms (Erivwo 1979). Spider divination in Cameroon occurs at the burrow of the ground-dwelling spider, the literal pathway between worlds (Gebauer 1964). Elsewhere divination is situated at the edge of a village or cultivated field, as among the Nuer and Dogon; thus it is neither of the wilderness nor of cultured human space. The ambiguity of attitudes toward divination is reflected in varying restrictions as to whether it occurs in public or in private. |
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Although divination practices vary throughout Africa, we see a significant number of commonalities. The association of negative characteristics (and femaleness) with the left hand and the left side of things (Hertz 1960) has long been considered one of the most intriguing of cultural universals. Because use of the left hand is prohibited absolutely in most cultures, its conscious utilization in some African divination systems is thus significant and obviously contributes to the establishment of divination's liminality. For example, Needham (1973:334, 301 n.24) comments on the use of the left hand by diviners among the LoDagaa of Ghana and the Nyoro of Uganda. |
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Further evidence of divination's creation of difference, which is then mediated, is found in the conscious integration of left and right sides of divinatory configurations. Among some southern Nigerians, the divining chain's right and left sides must corroborate each other by falling in reverse order (Talbot 1926:188); and for the Yoruba, even though the right side is considered more important, the diviner |
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