From: E.E. Evans-Pritchard Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande, 1937

The Notion of Witchcraft explains Unfortunate Events

W 1 TC HE s, as the Azande conceive them, clearly cannot exist. None the less, the concept of witchcraft provides them with a natural philosophy by which the relations between men and unfortunate events are explained and a ready and stereotyped means of reacting to ~uch events. Witchcraft beliefs also em­brace a system of values which regulate human condutt.

Witchcraft is ubiquitous. It plays its part in every activity ofZande life; in agricultural, fishing, and hunting pursuits; in domestic life of homesteads as well as in communal life of district and court; it is an important theme of mental life in which it forms the background of a vast panorama of oracles and magic; its influence is plainly stamped on law and morals, etiquette and religion; it is prominent in technology and language; there is no niche or corner of Zande culture into which it does not twist itself. If blight seizes the ground-nut crop it is witchcraft; if the bush is vainly scoured for game it is witchcraft; if women laboriously bale water out of a pool and are rewarded by but a few small fish it is witchcraft; if termites do not rise when their swarming is due and a cold useless night is spent in waiting for their flight it is witchcraft; if a wife is sulky and unresponsive to her husband it is witchcraft; if a prince is cold and distant with his subject it is witchcraft; if a magical rite fails to achieve its purpose it is witchcraft; if, in fact, any failure or misfortune falls upon anyone at any time and in relation to any of the manifold activities of his life it may be due to witchcraft. The Zande attributes all these misfortunes to witchcraft unless there is strong evidence, and subsequent oracular confirmation, that sorcery or some other evil agent has been at work, or unless they are clearly to be attributed to incompetence, breach of a taboo, or failure to observe a moral rule.

Witchcraft 19 To say that witchcraft has blighted the ground-nut crop, that

witchcraft has scared away game, and that witchcraft has made so-and-so ill is equivalent to saying in terms of our own culture that the ground-nut crop has failed owing to blight, that game is scarce this season, and that so-and-so has caught influenza. Witchcraft participates in all misfortunes and is the idiom in which Azande speak about them and in which they explain them. To us witchcraft is something which haunted and dis­gusted our credulous forefathers. But the Zande expects to come across witchcraft at any time of the day or night. He would be just as surprised if he were not brought into daily contact with it as we would be if confronted by its appearance. To him there is nothing miraculous about it. It is expected that a man's hunting will be injured by witches, and he has at his disposal means of dealing with them. When misfortunes occur he does not become awestruck at the play of supernatural forces. He is not terrified at the presence of an occult enemy. He is, on the other hand, extremely annoyed . Someone, out of spite, has ruined his ground-nuts or spoilt his hunting or given his wife a chill, and surely this is cause for anger! He has done no one harm, so what right has anyone to interfere in his affairs? It is an impertinence, an insult, a dirty , offensive trick! It is the aggressiveness and not the eerieness of these actions which Azande emphasize when speaking of thein, and it is anger and not awe which we observe in their response to them.

Witchcraft is not less anticipated than adultery. It is so inter­twined with everyday happenings that it is part of a Zande's ordinary world. There is nothing remarkable about a witch­you may be one yourself, and certainly many of your closest neighbours are witches. Nor is there anything awe-inspiring about witchcraft. We do not become psychologically trans­formed when we hear that someone is ill-we expect people to be ill-and it is the same with Zande. They expect people to be ill, i.e. to be bewitched, and it is not a matter for surprise or wonderment.

I found it strange at first to live among Azande and listen to na·ive explanations of misfortunes which, to our minds, have apparent causes, but after a while I learnt the idiom of their thought and applied notions of witchcraft as spontaneously as themselves in situations where the concept was relevant. A boy

C HAP T ER VI I I

The Poison Oracle in Daily Life

I I

Th.e method of reveal.ing what is hidden by administering poison to fowls has a wide extension in Africa; but just as the Aza~de are the most no~th-easterly people who have the notion of witchcraft as a material substance in the belly, so also is their culture the north-easterly limit of the distribution of this type oforacle. They are the only people in the Anglo-Egyptian Sud­dan who employ it.

The poison used is a red powder manufactured from a forest creeper and mixe.d with water to a paste. The liquid is squeezed out of the paste into the beaks of small domestic fowls which are compelled to swallow it. Generali y violent spasms follow. The doses sometimes prove fatal, but as often the fowls recover . Somet.imes they are even unaffected by the poison. From the behav1?ur of fowls under this ordeal1 especially by their death or survival, Azande receive answers to the questions they place before the oracle.

Azande observe the action of the poison oracle as we observe it, but their observations are always subordinated to their beliefs and are incorporated into their beliefs and made to explain them and justify them. Let the reader consider any argument that would utterly demolish all Zande claims for the power of the oracle. Ifit were translated into Zande modes of thought it would serve to support their entire structure of belief. For their mystical notions are eminently coherent, being inter­related by a network of logical ties, and are so ordered that they never too crudely contradict sensory experience but, in­stead, experience seems to j ustify them. The Zande is immersed in a sea of mystical notions, and if he speaks about his poison oracle he must speak in a mystical idiom.

If we cannot account for Zande faith in their poison oracle by assuming that they are aware that it is a poison and are wil­ling to abide by the chance of its action on different fowls we might s~k to comprehend it by supposing that they personify it. Given a mind , the Zande oracle is not much more difficult to understand than the Delphic Oracle. But they do not per­sonify it. For, though it would seem to us that they must regard the oracles as personal beings, since they address them directly; in fact the question appears absurd when framed in the Zande

1 tongue. A boro, a person, has two hands and two feet, a head, a belly, and so on, and the poison oracle has none of these things. It is not alive, it does not breathe or move about. It is a thing. Azande have no theory about it; they do not know why it works , but only that it does work. Oracles have always existed and have always worked as they work now because such is their nature.

If you press a Zan de to explain how the poison oracle can see far-off things he will say that its mbisimo, its soul, sees them. It might be urged that if the poison oracle has a soul it must be animate. Here we are up against the difficulty that always arises when a native word is translated by an English word. I have translated the Zande word mbisimo as 'soul' because the notion this word expresses in our own culture is nearer to the Zande notion ofmbisimo of persons than any other English word. The concepts are not identical , and when in each language-the word is used in a number of extended senses it is no longer poss­ible to use the original expressions in translation without risk of confusion and gross distortion . In saying that the poison oracle has a mbisimo Zande mean little more than 'it does some­thing' or, as we would say, 'it is dynamic'. You ask them how it works and they reply, 'It has a soul.' If you were to ask them how they know it has a 'soul', they would reply that they know because it works. They are explaining mystical action by nam­ing it. The word mbisimo describes and explains all action of a mystical order.