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Divination in Sub-Saharan Africa
Part 2: Luba and Songye

oving from the Azande to the Luba in the eastern sector of the D.R.C. is to enter what could almost be another world. It is an area of forests and rivers; and the Luba, though divided into numerous subgroups, have a historical awareness as a people that seems to be absent among the Azande. The latter appear to live their lives focused on the here and now, with past and future regarded as an extension of the present. This perception may be very much the result of Evans-Pritchard's approach to ethnographic studies, developed when anthropology was concerned with social systems and paid slight attention to a people's historical sensibilities. By the time Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen Roberts pursued their studies among the Luba in the 1980s, there was an understanding of the importance of memory among a people, a vital sense of history. Their research for the exhibition "Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History" (1996) is testimony to the change in anthropological studies, as well as to an appreciation for the acute historical self-awareness of the Luba.

The heartland of the Luba people is in what is known as the Upemba Depression, in the eastern part of the D.R.C. The research of archaeologists clearly indicates that it was occupied along numerous rivers as early as the seventh century A.D. and that there was extensive trading in the region by the seventeenth century. Evidence from grave sites, dating from between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, reveals that some degree of social stratification had developed.29

Oral traditions provide a narrative that associates the origins of the Luba with the establishment of a sacred kingdom. A hunter prince from the east, Mbidi Kiluwe, came to the region and sired a son, Kalala Ilunga, whose care he entrusted to Mijibu wa Kalenga, the first spirit medium. In an epic struggle after Mbidi's death, Kalala defeated his maternal uncle, the tyrant Nkongolo Mwamba, and established a royal court at Manza (which in precolonial times was an important iron-producing district).30 It was Mijibu's counsel that saved Kalala's life and was the basis of his success in instituting the enlightened form of leadership introduced by his father. Thus, it is from Mijibu that the royal Bilumbu diviners derive their authority, an authority that is essential to, and perhaps the warrant for, Luba sacred kingship.31 The third principal branch of Luba royal culture is the Mbudye association. They are "men of memory," who, through rituals entailing spirit possession, are the repository of the precepts and principles believed to have been handed down by Mbidi, Kalala's father.32 Through the ritual use of lukasa memory boards, it is their task to "teach and encode an Ôofficial' history of the Luba state, while at the same time subverting historical absolutism by allowing for transmutation and refabulation with every narrative telling, from one political arena to the next."33 Such is their authority that it is the Mbudye association that initiates the king and royal Bilumbu diviners into their official political roles. Bilumbu diviners must also master the teachings of the lukasa memory board, for they too are "men of memory." Thus, there is a remarkable interweaving of roles and authority in Luba political life.

Like Mijibu, contemporary Luba royal mediums possess an esoteric knowledge and an ability to bring their knowledge to bear upon the concerns of the present (see cat. nos. 11, 46). Bilumbu diviners provide judicial expertise and counsel on war, sorcery, and renewal rites, and assist in the adjudication of conflicts within the realm. Their authority lies in their power as mediums between the realm of the spirits and humans, their ability to be "grasped" (kukwata)—that is, seized by a spirit, which involves "stopping time" and seeing quickly and clearly "the problem amid the 'noise' of lived reality."34 Spirit possession is induced not by chemical substances but through percussive instruments, such as a rattle or hand gong played by the diviner's wife or husband (women may also be royal diviners),35 and through the diviner's chants. The combined sounds provide the stimulus for awakening the diviner's spirit to divination. Once possessed by the spirit, the diviner decorates his or her own body with chalk designs and adorns him/herself with necklaces and beautifully colored headbands of beads and fur, the patterns of the beads signifying the presence and power of the spirit. Animal skins hang from the diviner's waist. When possessed, the diviner "talks, acts, and thinks" as—and, indeed, assumes the identity of—his/her "consulting spirit."36 When a male diviner conducts a divination ritual, his wife will sit at his right and a sculpture of a seated or kneeling female figure holding a bowl will be placed on his left (fig. 2). The carving represents the wife of the diviner's possessing spirit, for among the Luba, women are regarded as vessels of spiritual power.

A consultation proceeds with concerns addressed to the diviner by the suppliants. The diviner in turn speaks to his/her spiritual consultant while shaking an mboko—a covered gourd filled with various items: animal bones, dried beetles, birds' beaks and claws, shells, seeds, seed pods, twigs, caddis-fly cases, beads, tiny iron replicas of tools, and small, carved wood figurines in various postures covered with chalk. It is an extraordinary assemblage of natural and manufactured materials. When the diviner opens the lid, he/she interprets the configuration of objects that have ended up on top. They provide what Roberts and Roberts refer to as "organizing images," which lead the diviner to "a hypothesis concerning the client's difficulty. The process is repeated again and again until a relatively clear understanding of the problem has been formulated."37 The small wood carvings may have relatively fixed meanings, but as with most symbols, they and all the other objects are multireferential. It is in the association of objects that meaning is to be discerned. As Victor Turner observed regarding basket divination among the Ndembu people of northwestern Zambia—who practice a form similar to Luba mboko divination—the diviner's skill is in adapting his/her general interpretation of the objects to the given circumstances of the client(s).38

The form of Luba divination called kashekesheke, which is said to be from before the time of Luba kingship and thus older than spirit possession, provides the ritual context for the creation of small and often exquisitely carved friction devices called kakishi; similar friction oracles, called katatora, are employed by the Songye, a neighboring people to the northeast of the Luba (see cat. no. 20). The devices, in styles ranging from highly representational to abstract, are rarely more than six inches high, have an open body for the insertion of the fingers of client and diviner, and are adorned with a carving of a beautifully coiffured woman's head. It is a form of divination that does not entail spirit mediumship or esoteric knowledge. Rather, in its simplicity of ritual action it is a means for addressing ancestral spirits when an individual is faced with a personal crisis or great uncertainty regarding a future course of action. In this respect, it is similar to the Azande's use of iwa.

Kashekesheke is performed by both diviner and client. Once the diviner (usually a woman) has prepared the friction device with the juices of certain plants and uttered words to invoke the spirits, the kakishi is placed on a woven mat on the ground between the diviner and client. The suppliant addresses his or her question to the kakishi, and then diviner and client insert their first two fingers into the space that constitutes the body of the device. The kakishi moves in various patterns, which signify "yes" or "no" answers or no answer at all (fig. 3 ). The raspy sound of its movement on the woven mat is possibly the origin of the name of the divination procedure.39

The friction devices known as itombwa, used by the Ding, Kuba, Lele, Luluwa, and Wongo peoples to the west of the Luba, often take the form of animal figures, their backs forming the rubbing surface. The animals, such as dogs and bush pigs, are associated with hunting prey or rooting out a plant, thus symbolizing a diviner's quest for knowledge and insight. Other itombwa merge anthropomorphic and zoomorphic elements, combining an animal's body with a human head, or even depict a human body, which functions as the friction device.

CONTINUE

Fig. 2. A Luba Bilumbu diviner prepares to consult his mboko, the sacred gourd in front of him; seated at his right is his wife, and at his left is a female bowl figure, representing the spirit by which he is possessed during the ritual.

Fig. 3. A Luba diviner and her client, performing a kashekesheke divination ritual, jointly hold a friction oracle known as a kakishi on a woven mat on the ground between them.

29. S. Terry Childs and Pierre de Maret, "Re/Constructing Luba Pasts," in Memory 1996, pp. 49–59.

30. William J. Dewey and S. Terry Childs, "Forging Memory," in Memory 1996, p. 62.

31. Roberts and Roberts, "Memory in Motion," in Memory 1996, p. 180.

32. Ibid., p. 126.

33. Ibid., p. 118.

34. Ibid., p. 189.

35. Both men and women may be Bilumbu diviners. Female royal diviners are referred to as Kifikwa. According to Roberts and Roberts, oral traditions suggest that, in the past, "female diviners were more common than their counterparts." Although today most Bilumbu diviners are male, some are female and are held in high regard. Ibid., p. 187.

36. Ibid., pp. 189–94.

37. Ibid., p. 195.

38. Turner 1975, p. 217.

39. Roberts and Roberts, "Memory in Motion," in Memory 1996, pp. 182–85.