Art and Oracle: A Scholarly Resource of African and Rituals of Divination | Explore & Learn

Divination in Sub-Saharan Africa
Introduction

ituals of divination are found throughout sub-Saharan African cultures, from west, central, and east Africa and the Sudan to South Africa and Madagascar.1 Sharing the universal concern for human suffering, Africa's peoples have developed many such rituals to deal with a variety of difficult conditions: bodily affliction and dying; social conflict; the seemingly arbitrary destructive forces of nature; an individual's uncertainty, ignorance, and moral perplexity in making decisions that will affect his or her future or that of an entire community. They also use rituals of divination to discover a context of meaning for their lives and, sometimes, to discern a personal destiny.

Africa's peoples are not alone in employing rituals of divination (see Divination in Other Cultures). The throwing of coins or sticks, resulting in a pattern or configuration catalogued and interpreted in the I Ching (Book of Changes), has its origins in China during the twelfth century B.C. or earlier; this method of divination is still employed today by many people in Asia, Europe, and the United States to help them understand the significance of their experiences and to obtain guidance for the future. Astrology—interpreting the lives of individuals and predicting events according to the changing configurations of the sun, moon, planets, and stars—flourished in ancient Near Eastern, Hellenistic, and Asian cultures, underwent a revival in Europe during the Renaissance, and remains popular today in many societies. Shamanism was once an important part of the religious life of Northwest American Indians and still is among Tibetan Buddhists. Though severely criticized by Jewish, Christian, and Islamic authorities, the divination rituals of prophecy, selecting random passages from Scripture or Psalter as augury, casting lots, and speaking in tongues were widely practiced and continue to flourish among certain groups. Whatever the form, all divinatory practices reveal the human quest for a larger context of meaning, a means by which to understand and respond to the many faces of suffering and uncertainty. Inherent in all these practices is the assumption—or faith—"that the world order in its totality is, could, and should be a meaningful 'cosmos.'" 2

For most sub-Saharan African peoples, divination rites are an essential part of daily life. An individual casts pieces of a kola nut or addresses questions to a friction oracle in the morning in order to determine what to do to make his or her way successfully through the day; a family consults a diviner to learn why death is repeatedly taking a mother's newborn children or to know the will of the ancestors for resolving conflicts within the household; a king seeks the knowledge of his diviners to make his position of authority secure. Diviners are also the agents of memory, the preservers of a people's history, or, in times of crisis, the creators of a "past" or a "vision" by which the living may endure. A person's status is often determined by what is revealed in rites of divination at the time of birth, coming of age, marriage, investiture to priestly or royal office, death, and other critical events.

The number and diversity of divination rites in Africa are enormous, varying in form among ethnic groups and even within the cultural life of a particular people. Among the Dogon peoples of the Bandiagara escarpment in Mali, village elders study fox tracks that cut across the pattern of squares they have inscribed in a field outside their village for indications of future events, especially such fundamental matters as births, marriages, harvests, and deaths.3 The Azande, who live in the southern Sudan and the northern portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (D.R.C., formerly Zaire), employ the poison oracle (benge) to address serious questions such as accusations of committing adultery or practicing sorcery, and use the friction oracle (iwa) to find out if witchcraft is being practiced against them or to determine whether to proceed with a journey.4 In the eastern part of the D.R.C., a friction oracle is also used by the Luba and Songye peoples.5 Among the Luba the rite is known as kashekesheke, and the friction device is called kakishi (the Songye equivalent of which is katatora; see cat. no. 20), a small, carved wooden object held jointly by client and diviner and whose movements provide answers to the client's questions. The Ding, Kuba, Lele, Luluwa, and Wongo in the central areas of the D.R.C. use the itombwa (see cat. no. 21), often in the form of a beautifully carved image of an animal (most commonly a crocodile, bush pig, or dog), the back of which is rubbed with a small handheld bulbous piece of wood; the movements of the latter provide "yes" or "no" answers to questions asked by a suppliant through the diviner.6 Sometimes, the jaw of a crocodile is substituted for the itombwa.

Among the Luba and Songye there is also a more elaborate form of divination, featuring the sacred gourd (mboko), in which the diviner tumbles a variety of natural and manufactured objects and then interprets the configuration formed by the objects that end up on top.7 Spirit possession, which is usually associated with this form of divination, appears to be of even greater importance among the Yaka (who live in the southwestern part of the D.R.C.) than among the Luba or the Songye.8 The Chokwe of Angola employ basket divination — a comparable method of interpreting the pattern formed among a group of objects (see cat. no. 23)—and spirit possession. In one Chokwe form of divination involving spirit possession, the reflective surface of water or a mirror enables the diviner to see the source of a client's affliction.9

Among the Lobi, who live in the southern part of Burkina Faso, a diviner sits next to his client and places small sculpted figures (bateba) on the ground in front of them.10 The bateba serve as witnesses to the divination, in which diviner and client join hands and address questions to the figures; the rising or falling motion of their clasped hands indicates positive or negative responses from the spirits (thila) represented in the sculptures. In northern Côte d'Ivoire, a similar rite is performed by Senufo female diviners known as Sandobele, 11 who use male and female sculpted figures to communicate with the powerful bush spirits and/or ancestors (madebele). In Banyang villages in Cameroon, a form of divination rarely seen today is the Basinjom masquerade, in which an individual wearing a wild, otherworldly mask and costume is endowed with clairvoyant powers capable of identifying people who have powers of witchcraft (see cat. no. 33).

Along the upper west coast of Africa, there are several types of divination that rely on "sixteen signs." Ifa divination among the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria and its probable derivative, Fa, among the Fon of the Republic of Benin, has been the most fully studied of these.12 It was brought to the Americas during the mid to late eighteenth century, at the height of the slave trade. The casting of sixteen palm nuts or cowrie shells continues to be widely practiced today by Caribbean and Brazilian people of West African descent in New York and other metropolitan centers in the United States, and is therefore the best known of African divination systems. The "sixteen signs" type of divination may have its origins in Islamic sand writing (khatt ar-raml), and its traces are found not only in Ifa and Fa but also in divination systems in the Mande cultural zone in Mali, in Madagascar, and among the Shona in southern Africa.13 While all the different versions of the "sixteen signs" have certain basic elements in common, the particular interpretation of the signs is almost entirely determined by the cultural values, oral traditions, and social experiences of the people who practice the divination rite.

Two other forms of divination involving the consultation of signs are mouse divination, employed by the Baule and Guro of Côte d'Ivoire,14 and spider divination, which is prevalent among the peoples of Cameroon.15 Here, the signs are not the result of human actions but are formed through the random movements of a mouse or a spider—the mouse scampering over bats' or birds' bones or sticks that a diviner has laid out parallel to one another, and the spider emerging from its nest in a hole in the ground and dislodging small, distinctively shaped cards that have been cut out of the rigid leaves of the "African plum" tree and placed neatly around the hole—in each case creating new configurations. These signs too must be interpreted by a diviner, one capable of "reading" the patterns of bones or leaves. While the procedure in every instance may seem random or accidental, the signs that appear are considered not at all random—and incapable of human manipulation—since they are directed by spiritual powers who communicate to the living by this means.

In all these societies, there is more than one system of divination. In addition to mouse divination, the Baule have the ritual of the "trance dancers," in which certain individuals—after being "chosen" by a nature spirit (asye usu) and a deity known as Mbra and trained in the performance of trance dancing—identify the causes of public and private misfortunes and then recommend solutions. As Susan Vogel has noted, "The largest, oldest, and most elaborate Baule figure sculptures are made as the loci for gods and spirits that possess their human partners and send messages through them in trance states."16 Among the Tabwa, in the southeastern sector of the D.R.C., the Luba friction oracle (kashekesheke) is employed; and in extreme cases, shamans (tulunga) are called on, for they know and can control the powers of sorcery.17 In neighboring Kenya, prophets (iloibonok) among the Samburu and Maasai have the power to "see" past, present, and future by using containers (enkidong)—usually gourds—filled with divination objects, and they also have the ability to cure misfortunes and practice sorcery using special substances (entasim). Though sought out for protection, the tulunga and the iloibonok are often feared and mistrusted and therefore occupy an ambiguous status in society.18 In addition to friction oracles of the itombwa type, nkisi figures and certain masks among several Kongo peoples have divinatory status, since they confer on those who utilize them the power to see hidden things.19 All these divination systems are largely concerned with understanding the present in terms of the past—near or distant—and its implications for the immediate future, as well as with healing or protection against witchcraft and sorcery. However, divination among the Dogon of the western Sudan and the Malagasy of Madagascar addresses questions pertaining to the future. The Malagasy want to know about matters of destiny and how what one does in the present determines what will occur, but whereas Dogon elders study fox tracks across patterns inscribed in the sand, the Malagasy often employ written texts and astrological calculations.20

Faced with the variety of divination rites, one might be tempted to try to create a typology that would place them in some coherent scheme. Plato distinguished between two types of divination: augury and prophecy 21—a distinction that many scholars have adopted and that has the virtue of simplicity but often leads to oversimplified reductions that do little to help one understand divination in the lives of particular peoples. E. M. Zuesse distinguishes among "intuitive divination," in which the diviner spontaneously "sees" or "knows" reality or the future; "possession divination," in which spiritual beings are said to communicate through intermediary agents; and "wisdom divination," in which the diviner decodes seemingly random patterns found in nature.22 His discussion makes helpful distinctions and recognizes subtypes within each of the major categories, thereby seeming to provide a basis for pursuing cross-cultural studies. However, as with all typological analyses, it removes one from the particular, from life situations, from the cultural world and idiosyncratic experience of people; indeed, Zuesse acknowledges that a specific type may often be combined with other types and/or be understood in a markedly different way in varying cultural contexts.

Rather than impose typological categories or other abstractions on the living, perhaps the best way to provide a basic understanding of divination among the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa is to limit the discussion to a few specific peoples and to focus on the relationship between their cosmologies and their systems of divination and on the role of ritual artifacts in the lives of diviner and client. In the brief survey that follows—describing and analyzing divination practices among the Azande, Luba and Songye, Yaka, Yoruba, and Malagasy—an attempt has been made to convey the distinctiveness of thought and ritual life of peoples geographically separated, but whose religious and aesthetic responses to human suffering and the quest for meaning have much in common. Keep in mind, however, that Africa's peoples have never lived in isolated, tightly structured cultural worlds and have always maintained contact with one another through trade, marriage, and warfare. They have constantly experienced change over time due to the forces of nature, social and political circumstances, and technological innovation, and they continue to do so. As people move by choice or necessity, their ideas, practices, and objects move with them, are adapted and/or adopted, or are abandoned within their new cultural context. Also keep in mind that the information presented here and its interpretation—in common with the varying approaches of numerous scholars of African systems of divination—must rely on theoretical systems reflecting Western conceptual frameworks for understanding African and other non-Western cultures.

CONTINUE

1. I wish to express my appreciation to Alisa LaGamma and Lorenz Homberger for their invitation to write this essay. It has provided the opportunity to pursue further the problem of cross-cultural studies among Africa's peoples and to analyze more fully the relationship between African art and rituals (see also Pemberton 2000). To address such questions is to have to face the extent to which one's thinking is informed by one's own cultural situation. Since the eighteenth century, the Western intellectual tradition has been shaped by the disciplines of the sciences and an approach to art in terms of a privileged class of objects set apart for contemplation. To study African systems of divination and African art and ritual artifacts is to have one's presuppositions called into question and to seek to understand anew the nature of knowledge and the definition of art.

2. Max Weber, "The Social Psychology of the World Religions," in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. E. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 281. Weber used this phrase in reference to "the core of religious rationalism"—that is, to the theodicies articulated by "religions of salvation," such as Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For Weber, it was what distinguished religions of salvation from "primitive" types of religion whose cosmologies entailed a plurality of references, a multitude of spirits and gods for the explanation of suffering. In each religion of salvation, there is a single "fault" marking humankind, as in the Puritan declaration "In Adam's fall we sinneth all," and there is a single solution: the Path of the Buddha, the Law in Judaism, Christ in Christianity, and the Koran in Islam. Weber's distinction between the two types of religion is too restrictive, revealing his inadequate knowledge of religions beyond the four "world religions" and his Western intellectual propensity to think in terms of a single referent—what Jacques Derrida would later call "the onto-theological" habit of mind. Africa's religious systems are far more complex and more fully articulated than Weber was aware.

3. Griaule 1937; Geneviève Calame-Griaule, Words and the Dogon World (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1965/86), pp. 523–27.

4. Evans-Pritchard 1937, pp. 258–386.

5. Mary Nooter Roberts and Allen F. Roberts, "Memory in Motion," in Memory 1996, pp. 180–85.

6. Marc L. Felix, in Marc L. Felix, Charles Meur, and Niangi Batulukisi, 100 Peoples of Zaire and Their Sculpture (Brussels: Zaïre Basin Art History Research Foundation, 1987), pp. 30–31, 62–63, 74–75.

7. Roberts and Roberts, "Memory in Motion," in Memory 1996, pp. 185–204.

8. René Devisch, "Mediumistic Divination among the Northern Yaka of Zaïre," in Peek 1991, pp. 112–32.

9. Sonia Silva, "The Birth of a Divination Basket," in Chokwe! 1998, pp. 140–51; Manuel Jordán, "Art and Divination among Chokwe, Lunda, Luvale, and Related Peoples of Northwestern Zambia," in Pemberton 2000.

10. Piet Meyer, "Divination among the Lobi of Burkina Faso," in Peek 1991, pp. 91–100.

11. Glaze 1981, pp. 54–74.

12. Abimbola 1976; Bascom 1969.

13. Louis Brenner, "Muslim Divination and the History of Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa," in Pemberton 2000.

14. Kunst der Guro 1985, pp. 23–26; Lorenz Homberger, "Where the Mouse Is Omniscient: The Mouse Oracle among the Guro and Baule," in Pemberton 2000.

15. Paul Gebauer, Spider Divination in the Cameroons, Public Museum Publication in Anthropology, no. 10 (Milwaukee, Wis.: Public Museum, 1964).

16. Baule 1997, pp. 221–25.

17. Allen F. Roberts, "Difficult Decisions, Perilous Acts: Producing Potent Histories with Tabwa Boiling-Water Oracle," in Pemberton 2000.

18. Eliot Fratkin, "The Loibon as Sorcerer: A Samburu Loibon among the Ariaal Rendille, 1973–87," Africa 61, no. 3 (1991), pp. 319–21.

19. Wyatt MacGaffey, entries for catalogue numbers 64 and 65 in Kings of Africa 1992, p. 310; Marc L. Felix, Art & Kongos: Les peuples Kongophones et leur sculpture Biteki Bia Bakongo (Brussels: Zaïre Basin Art History Research Center, 1995), p. 36.

20. John Mack, "Telling and Foretelling: African Divination and Art in Wider Perspective," in Pemberton 2000.

21. Plato, in his Phaedrus (a dialogue between Phaedrus and Socrates), has Socrates speak of "a madness which is a divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men. For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona when out of their senses have conferred great benefits on Hellas, both in public and private life, but when in their senses few or none. And I might also tell you how the Sibyl and other inspired persons have given to many an one many an intimation of the future which has saved them from falling." Socrates goes on to distinguish between "prophecy, which foretells the future and is the noblest of arts, . . . an inspired madness" (and which, he notes, only differs from the Greek word for "madness" by one letter), and "augury," compared to which, "prophecy is more perfect and august . . . both in name and in fact, in the same proportion as the ancients testify, [as] madness is superior to a sane mind, for the one is only of human, but the other of divine origin." Quoted from The Dialogues of Plato, trans. and with analyses and introductions by B. Jowett, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 396, 449–50. See also Plato's Phaedrus, trans. and with introduction and commentary by R. Hackworth (Cambridge,: Cambridge University Press, 1952), pp. 56–57.

22. Evan M. Zuesse, "Divination," in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 375–82.