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Diviners' diets reflect similar associations.
13 Myriad creatures are employed in African divination systems and close inspection of each cultural system will reveal that very exacting choices have been made. |
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We now see that there are numerous elements which come together in the act of divination to ensure that a non-normal mode of cognition is established and maintained. All these factors aid in the creation of a state of non-normal consciousness for the diviner and clients, and all contribute to the main activity of divination, which is communication. To ensure that accurate communication between worlds occurs during divination, all of the diviner's senses must operate in supersensitive fashion. Because divination deals with non-normal sources of knowledge, not only must the correct question be addressed properly to the correct source, but the diviner must also be able to receive and recognize the correct information. |
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Perhaps the most obvious instance of non-normal sensory activity is when the diviner functions through spirit possession, or altered states of consciousness (Bourguignon 1968; Beattie and Middleton 1969). We still understand very little about altered states, and Western prejudice against entering non-normal states has hampered serious research in this area. These heightened states may be induced by inhaling fumes, as in northern Ghana (Field 1969:7), or by a combination of shaking gourds and chewing the possibly psychoactive ojo bulbs, as Lugbara diviners do (Middleton 1969:225, 1971:271). Another mechanism is sound: the classic relationship of trancing shamans and percussion is found in the "auditory stimulus" of the Mandari diviner's rattle (Buxton 1973:300), and throughout southern Africa diviners are known by names ending in the common root for drum, -goma (Hammond-Tooke 1980:350). For most diviners a variety of factors contribute to their heightened awareness: "At divinations, the physiological stimuli provided by drummings and singing, the use of archaic formulae in questions and responses, together take him out of his everyday self and heighten his intuitive awareness: he is a man with a vocation" (Turner 1972:43). These intensifying activities facilitate communication between worlds by permitting direct participation of suprahuman entities in this world through their possession of the diviner. |
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Even in such little-understood systems as olfactory sensing, where the diviner remains in a relatively normal state of consciousness, the nature of the divinatory enterprise clearly demonstrates the heightened abilities of the diviner. Especially in southern Africa, diviners commonly "smell out" witches and lost objects (see, for example, Buxton 1973:315).14 Yaka divination begins with olfactory sensing (see the essay by Devisch above), and the association with dogs has already been noted. Intriguingly, recent research has proven that our olfactory sense is among the earliest developed abilities and that we continue to remember smells long after we have forgotten other sensory memories (Weintraub 1986). Tactile communication also is encountered in several divination systems in which diviner and client hold hands, as among the Lobi (Meyer, above), the Senufo (Glaze 1981:64), and the Bena Lulua, who term it "hand-shaking-muscle-reading" divination (McLean and Solomon 1971:33). |
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The primary senses utilized in divination are vision and hearing, and their enhancement is manifest throughout the divination process. Divination's liminality |
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