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the self. When the individual affliction is identified as one or another spiritual agent, the grounds and reasons for its existence become manifest in the afflicted. Divination externalizes the self. The "inner" experience of possession must involve a division of existence between the self and the power; the diviner then leads a public gathering through an enactment of that division through a ritual of blood sacrifice. Thus the inner division of experience is externally confirmed. A suprahuman agent is recognized and, in the best of hopes, a unity of self is recreatedor perhaps reconfigured is a more appropriate term (see Lienhardt 1961: 15253). |
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The preceding remarks, I believe, are generally applicable in comparative studies of the divination experience in the Nilotic Sudan. The comments and observations that follow offer evidence of one variation on this common theme. |
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In their image of a mythical world, the pastoral Atuot of southern Sudan convey the impression that there were at one time none of the radical dichotomies which now figure as common features of experience. The sky and earth were conjoined; life in its present sense did not exist because there was no death. The general order of existence was an order of unity and completeness. |
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That primordial world was violently transformed when human beings first acted with self-conscious intention, when, in a sense, the individual emerged from the collectivity. A woman who was pounding grain to prepare a meal self-indulgently sought, in a sudden burst of avarice, to make more than was needed. Common instances of personal misfortune are often defined by the same circumstances. An interpretation of what the Atuot see as an essential human proclivity, to seek gain at another's expense or to suffer misfortune because of some other's antisocial behavior, is fundamental to an understanding of Atuot divination. |
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One Atuot myth recounts how, at the moment human greed was first manifested, people became blind to its source. In this story, an avaricious man was speared in his side, and as his blood gushed from his mouth he was unable to see the cause of his demise. The mythical image in some instances closely corresponds to daily experience; it offers a reason for performing and participating in rituals of divination. |
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Atuot certainly do not collectively proclaim a unified philosophy any more than do ordinary folk in any society; each adult is a philosopher of sorts, cognizant of general causes and principles, yet resigned to recognize and act upon the limits of human knowledge. Each adult equally defines his or her philosophy through a process of conjecture and enacts a series of social relationships on the expectation of positive or negative reciprocity. Atuot do, however, share more specific notions relating to misfortune, expiation, and vengeance. These moral and religious precepts, which are defined by their shared knowledge about the source of jealousy and greed, figure in Atuot cosmology as jao. |
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Elsewhere I have described a number of rituals the Atuot perform in association with the spiritual powers (Burton 1980a, 1981). The problem I now wish to address in this context is rather more analytic. I hope to convey an understanding of how |
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