15 - Useful Magic

Summary

THESE IDEOLOGIES MAY REASONABLY BE CALLED OPTIMISTIC, FOR generally they taught the supremacy of man in controlling or influencing his own present and future. Far from imposing a grim subjection to the ‘blind forces’ of nature, they held to a shrewd realism. Onipa ne ascm, say the Akan: it is mankind that matters—meaning, in this context, that any man can always be responsible for himself.

Within the God-given community of the dead, the living and the yet unborn, it is the living who face the actual problems of life, and who therefore have priority. On their side the ancestors have promised that the living can solve these problems if they obey the rules. By the same token, however, the ancestors must also obey the rules. From this standpoint, the spirits become the servants of living men.

Proper manipulation of the spirits has consequently been a chief preoccupation of these societies. It has occurred in two chief dimensions of therapy. The first may be called the social dimension, while the second is that of the intimately personal. A few more examples of the first may be useful before going on to the second.

Popular wisdom has had a lot to say on the subject of manipulation or control. Thus the Kalahari of the Niger delta undoubtedly respect their ancestral spirits, but only so long as these behave according to the rules. They say, for instance, Tomi oru beremere, It is people who make the oru (the carved shrine object which a given spirit will inhabit while speaking to men); and Tomi, ani oru ma, People, they are the oru; or, along the same line of thought, Agu nsi om baku fewma, en duko i'o pre ba, If a spirit becomes too violent [in its demands], they will tell him the wood he is carved from. In other words, the spirits cannot be expected to do what they are told; but they can be and are expected to behave according to reliable prediction. Otherwise they will only make themselves ridiculous.

We have looked at several cases of social therapy at the community level. Anthropologists have come across many others. The Mbugwe are a small farming people of northern Tanzania among whom there is a great deal of ‘sorcery between chiefs’.