Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa

John Beattie, John Middleton, John Beattie, John Middleton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136527722
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Gathering together under a single cover material from a wide range of African societies, this volume allows similarities and differences to be easily perceived and suggests social correlates of these in terms of age, sex, marital status, social grading and wealth. It includes material on both traditional and modern cults.

EAST AFRICA

SPIRIT MEDIUMSHIP IN BUNYORO

© John Beattie

Elsewhere I have given some account of initiation into the spirit mediumship cult of the Banyoro, a Bantu people of western Uganda, and have discussed some of the cult’s social aspects, and some individual possession ceremonies (Beattie, 1957,1961, 1964b, 1966). Here I present a general account of the cult and of its social and cultural significance.

If, following Raymond Firth, we distinguish between spirit possession, spirit mediumship and shamanism, Nyoro culture can be said to exhibit all three, but spirit mediumship, that form of possession in which the possessed person ‘is conceived as serving as an intermediary between spirits and men’, is the most strongly institutionalized, and I deal chiefly with it here.

First I consider some of the kinds of spirits which, Banyoro believe, can affect living people, why and how they are thought to do so, and how their activity is diagnosed. I then describe how and by whom spirit activity can be dealt with. And finally I discuss the cultural and social context of spirit mediumship in Bunyoro: why do people still practise it so widely, and what are its more important social implications?

Nyoro traditional religion does not centre on an ancestral cult, like that of many Bantu peoples, though ancestral ghosts may be important. It is concerned with the worship of a pantheon of hero-gods called the Cwezi. In Nyoro traditional history these were a wonderful race of people who came to Bunyoro many generations ago, ruled the country for a few years, and then mysteriously disappeared, some say into Lake Albert. They are said to have been fair-skinned (a Nyoro historian suggests that they may have been Portuguese) and to have possessed marvellous wisdom and miraculous powers. It is said that when they vanished from the country they left behind them the spirit mediumship ( mbandwa) cult, of which they themselves are the objects, through which the Nyoro people still retain access to the magical power and wisdom which they represented.

There are said to be nineteen of these Cwezi spirits (nineteen is an auspicious number for Banyoro). Even today almost all are believed to be potent forces in everyday affairs, and the names of most of them are known to everybody. As well as being linked as quasi-historical figures with the early beginnings of Nyoro society and culture, some of them are also associated with certain elemental aspects of the environment, like the early Greek gods. Thus Rubanga is associated with thunder, Kagoro with lightning, Kalisa with cattle; Kazoba and Kiro respectively with the sun and night (the ordinary terms for which are izoba and ekiro). It has been suggested that the Cwezi gods are in fact no more than personifications of certain natural forces, and it is evident enough that whatever else they are, at least some of them are this.

Particular Cwezi are loosely associated with the small, more or less localized agnatic descent groups in which the Nyoro community was traditionally organized. Banyoro say that in former times these groups were very much larger than they are now, and every such group was associated with one, perhaps two, of the Cwezi spirits, depending on the clan to which its male members belonged. This spirit was called the ‘household spirit’ ( mbandwa or mcwezi w’ eka), or sometimes ‘the trusted thing of the household’ ( omwesigo gw’ eka), and one member of the group concerned was its initiated and accredited medium.

These Cwezi mbandwa, in their role as ‘household’ spirits, were supposed to be concerned primarily with the well-being, health, prosperity and, especially, fertility of the agnatically centred groups with which they were associated. It was believed that if they were neglected they might bring illness or other misfortune on the members of the group. Even today diviners sometimes attribute such a misfortune as a woman’s miscarriage to the neglect of her traditional ‘family’ or group spirits, especially in the case of mission-educated Banyoro. But so long as possession ritual is performed periodically in the spirit’s honour, appropriate sacrifices made, and a spirit hut or shrine maintained, the household spirit’s influence is thought to be wholly beneficial. These Cwezi mbandwa are distinguished from all other spirits as ‘white’ mbandwa ( embandwa ezerd); for Banyoro the colour white symbolizes purity, virtue and suspiciousness, as it does for other peoples. These white mbandwa, they say, come to purify (or ‘whiten’; the verb is the same, okweza) the homestead and to give it blessing, so that its members may be healthy, prosperous and fertile. The auspicious aspect of the traditional cult is also evident from the requirement that the household medium should be a gentle and well-behaved person ( muculezi), preferably initiated into cult membership as a young girl (or less often a boy), and he or she is treated with deference by all the other members of the household, even by the household head ( nyineka), who traditionally wields supreme authority in the home.

Though the number of ‘white’ Cwezi spirits, mediated through the traditional Nyoro ‘group’ cult, remains constant, there is in addition a large and increasing number of ‘black’ mbandwa ( embandwa eziragurd), which are not the objects of the traditional cult, but which are rather thought of as ‘catching’ individuals more or less haphazard. These are thought on the whole to be inimical rather than beneficial. All of these ‘black’ spirits are said to be of foreign origin. Some of the older ones, like Irungu, the spirit of wild animals and the bush, are believed to have come from the regions north of the Nile; others, like Kapumpuli or Kaumpuli, the spirit of plague, from neighbouring Buganda. But an even larger number derive from the context of social change and culture contact, which during the past three-quarters of a century or so Banyoro have undergone with more rigour than most African peoples. Such modern spirits include Kifaru, the mbandwa of military tanks ( kifaru is the Kiswahili word for rhinoceros); Ndege, the mbandwa of aeroplanes; Njungu, the mbandwa of ‘Europeanness’; Mpolandi, the mbandwa of ‘Polishness’, and many others (for a fuller list see Beattie, 1961). The last is of particular interest: during the last World War a considerable number of expatriate Poles were accommodated for a time in a large camp near Masindi in Bunyoro. So large a concourse of Europeans was a new and alarming phenomenon to Banyoro (who like other East African peoples feared that the Europeans’ ultimate object was to eliminate them and take their land for themselves), and it was not long before it became assimilated to the traditional mbandwa cult.

It is worth stressing that the words Mpolandi and Njungu denote abstract concepts (‘Polishness’, ‘Europeanness’) and not actual Poles or Europeans, the terms for whom are Mupolandi and Mujungu. Mediums possessed by these mbandwa are not thought to be possessed by actual individuals; mbandwa spirits are not people, though they are imbued with quasi-human attributes. What they are possessed by is the generalized force or power by virtue of which Poles, or other Europeans, are thought to be what they are.

But as well as mbandwa spirits, both black and (decreasingly) white, the ghosts ( mizimu, sing. muzimu) of dead people may, Banyoro believe, affect the living, and they too can only be dealt with through spirit possession and mediumship. Like most other spirit agencies, the activity of ghosts is thought to be generally inimical (though there are exceptions: see Beattie 1964b, 128). It would be surprising if it were otherwise: for Banyoro, as for most people, recourse to the supernatural is usual only when things go wrong. Strictly, Banyoro cannot be said to have an ancestral cult (though the father’s ghost is regarded as especially important); few commoners can remember the names of their forebears for more than two or three generations back. Ghostly activity is generally diagnosed on the basis of known or presumed social relationship, and if a person dies with a grudge against someone whom he believes to have wronged or neglected him, a percipient diviner may well attribute any misfortune which subsequently befalls the latter to the offended ghost.

It is natural that in most cases where ghostly activity is diagnosed the ghost should be a dead kinsman, or less often an affine, of the victim, for kinship obligations are onerous and highly regarded – though decreasingly honoured in recent times – and few people can be sure that they have not at some time or other neglected or offended a deceased kinsman. But the ghosts of Outsiders’ are also much feared. Thus it is said that a sister’s son’s ghost can ‘finish off a whole household’ – in Bunyoro ‘sisters’ sons’ ( baihwa) are regarded as both ‘outsiders’ and kin (Beattie, 1958). In traditional times, also, the ghosts of household slaves, who were usually war captives, were regarded as especially dangerous. Here as in other contexts Nyoro culture seems to invest with ritual power categories of people who in everyday affairs occupy inferior and subordinate social status.

As in the case of the mbandwa spirits, the relationship between ghosts and people is thought to be a reciprocating one. Ghosts are dependent on humans for the services they need, just as humans’ well-being is dependent on the ghosts’ goodwill, or at least upon the withholding of their ill-will. Thus a ghost, like an mbandwa spirit, is said periodically to be ‘hungry’, and ‘to want meat’, in which case the blood sacrifice of a ghost or chicken may have to be made to it. Or it may require one of the household goats (it must be a black one) to be dedicated to it. It will almost certainly require the building of a small spirit hut. And without a medium as its vehicle it cannot speak with the living and convey its needs to them. But unlike the traditional mbandwa spirits some (though not all) kinds of ghosts can be destroyed by men: I describe below how this can be done.

There are other kinds of spirits which can ‘possess’ people and communicate through mediums. Thus the ghosts of certain animals slain by hunters, such as hippos, may sometimes possess their killers (Beattie 1963b), and it is said that certain powerful medicines used in sorcery and associated with animal horns ( mahembe) can assume a kind of personality and afflict their victims by entering into them. But by far the most important kinds of possessing spirits are the various types of mbandwa and the ghosts of the dead, and in what follows I deal only with them. What they all have in common is that they are thought of as powerful, extra-human agencies, representing potentially dangerous forces which men have no ordinary, empirical, means of controlling. By spiritualizing and so in some degree ‘personalizing’ these forces men may hope to come to terms with them, sometimes even to control them.

As already noted, spirits, whether mbandwa or mizimu, usually manifest themselves in situations of misfortune. A man becomes ill, his children sicken and die, his crops fail, he loses his money or his job; a woman has repeated miscarriages or loses her babies in infancy (both all too frequent, alas, in Bunyoro): all these misfortunes and many more still bring Nyoro peasants to the diviners to find out what malevolent agency is responsible. Divining in Bunyoro is a part-time occupation (for a fuller account of it see Beattie, 1964a); most diviners are also small-scale peasant cultivators like their neighbours, and although they vary greatly in skill and prestige there are several in every Nyoro community. Most are also initiated members of the spirit cult, being mediums of one or more of the traditional Cwezi mbandwa (whose activities are not restricted to the clans with which they are particularly associated), and usually of a number of the newer ‘black’ mbandwa spirits as well. There are many different techniques of divination, but the most popular is by throwing nine cowry shells on a goatskin mat and interpreting the ensuing pattern. Also popular, but more expensive, is divination through spirit mediumship itself; some spirits (though not the traditional ‘white’ Cwezi ones) can divine for clients when ‘on the head’ of their mediums.

Whatever the mode of divination, the diviner is likely to attribute his client’s troubles to one of three broad types of agencies; sorcery, some kind of mbandwa spirit, or a ghost. If sorcery is diagnosed, as nowadays is very likely, the question of spirit mediumship does not arise; sorcerers are people as their victims are, and they can be dealt with as such (for a brief account of sorcery in Bunyoro see Beattie, 1963a). But if the activity of either a mbandwa spirit or a ghost is diagnosed, it can only be dealt with through the possession cult. The sufferer, or sometimes, as when the patient is a small child, his mother or other appropriate representative, must be, or appear to be, possessed by the offending spirit, and must generally, also, act as the spirit’s medium and mouthpiece. Only when the spirit has been persuaded or otherwise induced to manifest itself through possession can it be properly dealt with, and its harmful effects on its victim ended.

This ‘cure’ can be achieved in either of two ways. Either the attacking spirit can be induced to leave its victim’s head and then be destroyed, or it can be persuaded to say what it wants through its medium, who thereby enters into a more or less permanent relationship with it. Only a few kinds of lesser spirits and ghosts can be destroyed, and even then the operation is said to be a highly dangerous one. The powerful Cwezi mbandwa are, of course, immortal, and the other major mbandwa spirits, including most modern ones, are similarly indestructible; the only course open to their victims is to enter into an enduring relationship with them as their mediums. Of ghosts, only those of persons unrelated or only very distantly related to their victims, strangers, household slaves ( bairu rubale), blood partners ( banywani), and some affines, can be ‘captured’ and destroyed. Like the major mbandwa, the ghosts of close relatives or spouses can only be dealt with by entering into a lasting mediumistic relationship with them.

Doctor-diviners ( abafumu, sing, mufumu) practise various techniques to induce a ‘destructible’ ghost to leave its victim, which it often does under considerable protest, uttered, through its victim as medium, in a falsetto voice and in a special ‘ghost’ vocabulary. Once extracted, it may be deftly imprisoned in a pot or other receptacle, and buried, left far away in the bush, or burned. If the last course is chosen the fire must be a strong one, for if it is not the ghost may escape as the ropes which bind the pot are burnt, and if it does so it may avenge itself terribly on its would-be destroyers (for detailed accounts of such ghost-disposal activities see Beattie, 1964b).

But generally the patient or his representative must enter into an enduring mediumistic relationship with the spirit concerned. This usually involves a lengthy and expensive course of initiation, in which several established mediums participate, and which culminates in manifestations of possession and mediumship by the novice. After this, he is himself an accredited medium, and he may if he wishes participate profitably in the initiation of others, and (if he has been initiated into the cult of a ‘divining’ mbandwd) he may even set up as a part-time diviner himself. It seems that in pre-European times initiated mediums formed what were virtually corporate groups or guilds, stressing their difference from ordinary people, and conscious of strong mutual loyalties. But nowadays mediumship is a much more individualistic and clandestine affair, partly owing, no doubt, to half a century’s rigorous repression by both Government and missions. Nevertheless its group aspects are still strongly stressed in initiation ritual.

This ritual (there is a fuller account of it in Beattie, 1957) may continue for several days, and it expresses a number of themes, of which the following seem to be the most important. First, there is the rite de passage aspect; the initiate’s acquisition of a new status is marked by the dramatic enactment of death and rebirth, by his being given a new name, and by his being presented with a special headdress and other cult objects. Secondly, and associated with the foregoing, the ritual has a didactic or learning’ aspect. The initiated has to acquire an unfamiliar vocabulary, different from ordinary Runyoro, which is said to be used by ghosts and mbandwa spirits. Also, and most important, he receives detailed instructions on how to simulate possession by the spirit or spirits whose medium he is to be. Third, complete secrecy is strongly stressed, and its importance is impressed on initiates by a severe formal cursing and ‘uncursing’. Fourth, as already mentioned, the initiate’s obligations to and fellowship with his co-mediums are strongly emphasized. And finally there are rituals designed to relieve the initiate from the dangerous ritual condition in which initiation (some of the procedures in which are abnormal and shameful by ordinary Nyoro standards) is believed to have placed him.

Once the novice has been properly initiated, and has undergone a mediumistic possession in the approved form, he (or more likely she) has achieved full status as a mubandwa or spirit medium. If she is a medium in the traditional Cwezi cult she would, traditionally, have been required to undergo further possessions periodically, involving mediumship, invocation, sacrifice and feasting, for the benefit of the local domestic group whose medium she is. If she is a medium for another mbandwa, or for several, she will likewise be required to undergo possession ritual from time to time, though for he...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Plates
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• West Africa
• Central and South Africa
• East Africa
• Index