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others in order to advance their own selfish interests. At the same time, vengeance through a power can be unintentional, as evidenced by the brother of the hungry guerrilla. Retribution for what is perceived to be insult and greed can be more direct and consciously intended, as suggested by the case of Akoi, the wife who sought children denied by a curse of her own brother. |
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In either of these situations the decision to accept the veracity of the diviner is a reflective exercise. He speaks publicly as a medium. Persons hearing him have the option of considering any number of alternative interpretations. However, once a truth has been agreed upon, or in the Atout's own words, when "a word has been seen," there is no recourse to an alternative interpretation. The facts of the matter have been too plainly evident. The word of the diviner may be cited as an axiom, upon which future divinations for the causes and implications of moral dilemmas are founded. |
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Were it possible to compile a complete inventory of this type of data over an extended period, it would indeed be possible to speak in definite terms about an Atuot philosophy. I propose that each datum would entail the same transformation of order into its opposite. More specifically, it is possible to observe that the immediate result of divination is a public disclosure of personal animosity, a process that is mirrored in the mythical world. People are still blind to the immediate cause of misfortune, as imagined in a world that was long ago transformed by the behavior of self-motivated people. In the situation of divination Atuot attentively reflect upon how misfortune may be both the cause and the result of intention. Collectively, these suppositions are the beginnings of an unfolding philosophy.
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An earlier version of this essay appeared in 1982 in the Journal of Religion in Africa 13(1):110. Philip M. Peek, Peter Rigby, and L'Ana H. Burton offered helpful suggestions for this final draft. Anthropological field research among the pastoral Nilotic-speaking Atuot of southern Sudan was made possible with funds awarded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the Social Science Research Council, whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged. Additional support for preparing the results of research for publication came from a National Endowment for the Humanities stipend and a grant from the Mellon Foundation. |
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1. The power of psychic transformation is known as ring. I have discussed it elsewhere (Burton 1979, 1981). |
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2. The present comments pertain specifically to possession by a jok. There are terms in the Atuot language which can be glossed by the English words witchcraft (apeth) and sorcery (roadh), and both offer a means of accounting for misfortune. A somewhat different concept, one that is more relevant to this discussion, is implied by the word ayuio. Kulang Takping explained: "Ayuio is said to be a jok in some people. It is jealousy. A person with ayuio may want to own something very much, even though it is not his, nor could |
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