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concern the making of new wooden or clay statuettes, iron or brass objects, or pots, detailing numerous possible variations. Wooden statuettes, for example, may show two dozen different gestures and have different facial expressions or hairdos, depending on the thil's command (see Meyer 1981:56118). |
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Thila also demand sacrifices (toopar) and determine who makes them, how, and where (see Meyer 1981:4749). The same is true for the two-day sacrificial feasts (buur), which the thila may entrust to one person or a group. The thila's instructions for these feasts are so vast that several consultations are necessary before all the information is gathered. |
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Finally, the thila may ask (if necessary, force) their owners to become diviners or healers (bibiir), to drive a witch's dart (dudube) from the body of a sick person, to open a market at a certain place and tend it every fifth day, to organize a hunt, or to become sculptors (bateba thel), iron smiths (phuberdaar), brass founders (phusiedaar), or hunters (babaal). In these cases, too, the Lobi who receives such a command from his thil also receives instructions about how he is to engage in the activity. For example, a thil shows his owner just how he should, as a diviner, make the drawing on the floor at the outset of a consultation. |
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As we have seen, the prohibitions and commands issued in Lobi divination can be extremely varied. From a technical perspective, that gives a certain uniqueness to the communicative processes used in Lobi divination. It is probable that few other divination methods used in Africa are capable of conveying the quantity and quality of information brought forth by the Lobi system to describe a prohibition or a command in such a precise and exhaustive way. Different divination systems have varying transmission capacities. It is time to investigate these very different transmission potentials because divination techniques are first of all the means by which the exchange of information between dissimilar beings is made possible (as for the Lobi, between humans and the thila). Such a comparative examination could supply us with important clues to the entire phenomenon of divination. |
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This paper was presented at the 1981 African Studies Association meeting, Bloomington, Indiana. |
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1. Goody (1967:5) called the Dagara Lobr "the LoDagaba" and the Dagara Wile "the LoWiili." |
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2. "Thangba sure tebela wyaa, wa tekha kharaa, wa kukhaa, wa tyiu kha puuwaa; wu do byel!" These interdictions were told to me in 1980 by Kherhim Da in Korhogo. |
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3. According to Bindouthe Da of Wourbira. |
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