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demands special visual acuity by the diviner ("the man who sets in motion intensive seeing," as the Mende say [Harris and Sawyerr 1968:n. 9]) in order to receive and interpret the revealed information correctly. The very goal of the divination session is, in fact, to see better, more clearly, and thereby act appropriately because "re-vision" of the problem has revealed the proper solution. Not only is the diviner endowed with special sight, as among the Igbo (Uchendu 1965:81) and as noted by several essays in this volume, but rituals are performed to further enhance the diviner's special vision. Kalabari Ijo (Horton 1964:6), Jukun (Meek 1931:329), and Zulu (Ngubane 1977:8687) diviners use special medicines to ensure the clarity of their perception. |
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Often the divination apparatus itself must be treated to ensure that its sight is correct. For the Shona, "new hakata [diving bones] are considered completely blind and cannot be expected to see until they have been prepared for contact with the spirit world" (Gelfand 1959:109), a custom found elsewhere in southern Africa (Junod 1927:549; Bucher 1980:116). The broken calabash pieces used in Jukun divination must not come from beer containers or their message will be like "the babbling of a drunken man" (Meek 1931:326). |
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Two other observations may be briefly made concerning divinatory vision. The transcendence of this extraordinary non-normal sight is reflected in its association with human blindness for the Dinka, whose blind diviners are considered especially effective (Lienhardt 1970:68), and for the Mundang, who compare the blindman's cane to divination because both guide the otherwise sightless (Adler and Zempléni 1972). Despite the obvious importance of sight in divination (and the increased use of written materials, usually in symbolic fashion), we must be cautious of referring too readily to the "reading" of divinatory casts or oracular media. In oral cultures, the diviner does not, cannot "read" but looks and listens, sees and hears. This perspective is perfectly expressed by the Xhosa term for books: "a mirror for speaking" (Lévy-Bruhl 1966:369). Bohannan reports that Tiv diviners cock their heads to listen carefully to their divining chains (1975). |
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What is seen and heard is then transmitted by the diviner to the congregation in the session's next stage. Whether the message emerges through spirit possession, a numerical configuration, or a pattern of symbolic objects, it is the diviner's role to translate these esoteric codes. The objects in a diviner's basket, the shells on a chain, or marks on a board are polysemic morphemes from whose multireferent contexts the diviner constructs meaningful metaphoric utterances (see figure).
15 The oracular message is usually ambiguous and too full of meaning (Werbner 1973), and Parkin (above) aptly refers to the diviner's "straightening the paths" as he transforms the communication's simultaneity of images into a comprehensible sequence. |
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Often the speech initially produced, whether through spirit mediumship or mechanical means, is not simply metaphoric or archaic but is intelligible only to the diviner and must be translated. Although the uniqueness of divinatory speech is often observed, seldom have the languages been analyzed. Sometimes glossolalia occurs, or the language of a neighboring people may be heard (see Horton 1969: 29). Elsewhere esoteric speech is employed, as in southern Nigeria, where a dis- |
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