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must ''read" both sides for a complete understanding (Bascom 1969:40; see also Peek 1982). What is most common is not simply the distinction of left and right but the concentrated mediation of the two sides of the divinatory cast.
10 This is also true of sikidy divination (Sussman and Sussman 1977). Kaguru practice underscores the symmetrical meld desired: "In divination . . . it is said that the signs must appear on both the right and left before the prognostication may be regarded as complete" (Beidelman 1986:32). |
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While divination creates, through its use of liminality and norm reversals, a shift to nonordinary cognitive processes, it also insists on bringing these oppositions together. It might be said that divination creates a dialectic in order to accomplish the necessary synthesis which is the solution to the problem brought to the diviner. Just as divination stands between worlds, so it centers itself in other symbolic ways. The use of left/right duality in divination has as its goal a resolution in complementarity; both sides are necessary for completeness. We will pursue this mediation of right and left momentarily when we consider the split-brain phenomenon. |
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The choices of animal imagery in African expressive behavior are highly informative of different world views. The creatures affiliated with divination appear to be selected for their anomolous characteristics (another reference to liminality), their exceptional sensory abilities, and/or their associations with the other world and thus their ability to facilitate transworld communications. Among the Lele, the bush pig is "the Diviner's animal" because it frequents the marshy sources of streams where spirits reside (Douglas 1984a:28). Creatures, whole or in part, in symbolic or in actual physical form, contribute to the diviner's regalia and divinatory paraphernalia, and may serve as the agents of divination. A well-known example is the ground-dwelling spider used for divination by the Kaka Tikar in Cameroon because of its proximity to the ancestors living below the earth. After the spider has crawled through the specially marked wooden cards placed next to its burrow, their positions are interpreted by the diviner (Gebauer 1965).11 The Dogon, in like fashion, interpret the tracks of the pale fox after it has moved through the diviner's symbolic grid prepared on the ground at the edge of the village (Griaule and Dieterlen 1986). The fact that the fox is also the Dogon trickster figure further intensifies the ambiguous, liminal nature of divination.12 |
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Divination apparatus often incorporate elements of creatures, possibly primordial, which have special sensory abilities or are somehow extraordinarily endowed. Tortoises are associated with divination in southern Nigeria because of their wisdom (Peek 1982; Cole and Aniakor 1984:73). In Zaire, dogs are linked to divination because of their powers of detection (Huber 1965). Kongo rubbing oracles have dogs' heads facing opposite directions; because the village of dogs lies between the villages of the dead and the living, they can inform each village/world of the other (Thompson 1985:12). Zoomorphic Kuba divination instruments represent deep forest dwelling creatures who are emissaries for the ngesh, forest spirits with whom diviners must communicate (Mack 1981). Powers of detection and memory are heightened for southern African diviners by use of vultures' hearts in their medicines (Junod 1927:566; Gelfand 1959:115; Marwick 1965:91). |
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