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Then followed another long chorus of songs, and the goat that had been tethered for sacrifice was brought back inside the house. |
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The following night people gathered again. After the standard chorus of songs, the tiet announced "Arum!" and all became silent. |
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Father: We want to know what is giving sickness. |
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Jok: The land is confused. |
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Mother: The sickness has been here for months. |
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Jok: The land is confused, it is confused by all the human beings. There is Nuer over therethey kill people. People who live in the forest, the Anya nya, have also confused things. [Both statements vaguely recall the original world where unity and harmony were the norm, before a violent transformation into opposites.] This is what I will tell you. The ox was killed by your son with a gun. Do you understand? This is why the word came to the tiet. This is what brought Abiel. This was done by your brother. |
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Father: He is my brother, I cannot deny this. All the things that happened, all those things, were not done by him alone. How did it come, when so many cattle were killed by the Anya nya? No one knew that it was going to fall on him alone. |
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Jok: It is jok belonging to your people of Luac here. It is your own jok that is bringing this. The day you sacrifice the goat, that is the day I will give the name of the man. People of this land are hating themselves. |
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My wife and I left Atuot country before we learned the results of this process of divination, though I doubt whether this fact diminishes the import of the text. A person may or may not recover from possession and the malignancy it often entails. What is more significant, it seems to me, is that Atuot assume diviners possess an insight into underlying causes which common folk do not claim to perceive directly. That powers exist and affect individual experience is a proposition young children come to accept, sitting as they do on the sidelines during the associated rituals. |
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The real problem was revealed by the father in the dialogue: "Everything comes because of the feud. Long ago when there was a fight. . . . No one knew it was going to fall on him alone." Thus, one interpretation of the myth cited earlier would be that at the moment the individual is conscious of identity and individuality, enmity is inevitable. Some person will inevitably suffer the consequences of some other's action. |
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As I understand it, Atuot are indirectly positing an underlying order of phenomena through the process of divination. What one person wants another already has. A third person can complicate things all the more. The rare individual who calculates his relations with others so that none suffers is, in a sense, blessed. Far more commonly, individuals seek their own ends and the transgression of the rights or expectations of another occurs. Of course there are those among the Atuot, as in any society, who seek just this end, to disrupt the affairs of |
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