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Nilotic Cosmology and the Divination of Atuot Philosophy |
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This essay is concerned with a universal human dilemma as experienced and interpreted by a particular cultural and linguistic community, the Atuot in southern Sudan. The problems the Atuot address through the means to be described below are universal in the sense that personal misfortune is a perpetual rather than an extraordinary element of human existence. In the Nilotic Sudanthe homeland of the peoples known as Shilluk, Anuak, Dinka, Nuer, and Atuota common source of misfortune is believed to be possession of a person by one or another jok, which these people regard as a suprahuman spirit. The remedy is sought in divination. The closely related Shilluk and Anuak languages use the term jok (plural, jao) to refer to a refraction of the creator divinity, while in the Nuer, Dinka, and Atuot languages jok typically connotes a lesser or earthly spiritual agent that either possesses or is owned by a mortal human being. Permutations of this conception are evident not just in the Nilotic Sudan but throughout Nilotic Africa (see Ogot 1961). |
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Given the ubiquity of possession by a jok and of the use of diviners to resolve the problem, an understanding of this element of life in the Nilotic Sudan entails an understanding of both phenomenological and spiritual realities. When one examines social facts recorded for the Shilluk, Anuak, Dinka, Nuer, and Atuot, one is inevitably engaged in a study of regional variations on a theme. Unfortunately, both the quality and the quantity of firsthand accounts of possession and divination among these peoples are uneven. A careful review of published studies suggests that further research among the Shilluk and Anuak peoples on this topic would surely be welcomed and would amply reward the efforts demanded. Nevertheless, enough research has already been conducted in Dinka, Nuer, and Atuot communities to allow a number of general conclusions. |
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In Dinka, Nuer, and Atuot cosmology, an ordered and consistent division of the moral and suprahuman world is imagined. The terms Nhialic, Kwoth, and Decau connote a creator divinity that is omnipotent, though generally removed |
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