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of extra vision for consultants that it is actively encouraged in children who will be consultants through the use of special medicated waters for bathing and drinking. The development of this deep vision is seen to be important not only for consultants but also for family advisers, certain health care practitioners, great hunters, and extraordinary singers. |
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Consultants use their extra ''sight" in the course of their contact both with the deceased family members and with their animal companions during the course of consultation. It is these past elders and animal companions who provide background information on the problem that is being discussed. The animal companions are important because they are associated with in-depth knowledge of the natural world, in particular as it concerns medicine. The role of the deceased elders is also critical because these persons provide knowledge about the past. Thus the extra sight associated with consultants enables them to see more deeply into the problems that are brought for resolution. Such people in this way are believed to be able to view problems at the deepest level. They see things in a problem that the average person cannot see. This extra sight accordingly serves to further distinguish the consultants from other members of the community. |
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Another way that the consultants are distinguished is by the consultation materials, which they carry wherever they go. This equipment consists of a consultation club and cowries (traditional money) carried in a leather bag (today a cotton one may serve instead). This distinctiveness is reinforced further in the case of female consultants, for they wear the clothing of menshorts rather than skirts. Furthermore, as Yafuata Tano noted, |
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Only women who consult have head rests and stools. These women also carry axes, knives, and leather sacks. They need these things because they are consultants. If they do not carry these things, we will not know that they are consultants. They are women, how else would you know that they can do consultations? (12: 509) |
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Such women marry and have children. Ordinarily, however, they do not begin to have an active consultation practice until after they are past childbearing age. |
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Consultants are also distinguished from other men and women in the community by the series of interior journeys which they take in the course of acquiring the necessary knowledge of consultation. We recall that the consultation deity, when it first enters children who will be consultants, is thought to make them feel dizzy as it journeys inside them. Similarly, during a consultation, the consultant is said to take a journey within in the course of seeking a solution. This same idea of a journey is a central focus of the major actions performed during the transition that marks one's becoming a consultant. This journey takes place around the age of twenty, often in association with a period of increasingly bizarre behavior. Such behavior is said to be a signal to these persons that they are ready to become consultants. According to one consultant, this behavior is related to the fact that the mind is pushed to the side, causing the soul to become agitated and leave |
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