On the nature of the demonic: African zaitch,ery
ON THE NATURE OF THE DEMONIC:
AtrRICAN WITCHERY
BY
E,VAN M. ZUESSE
Meadville, Pennsylvania
I. INTRODUCTION
The problem of witchcraft has been generally treated as peripheral
to the phenomenological study of religion. Indeed, it has often been
explicitly excluded from serious consideration as mere "magic" without
genuine "expressive" content. It is one aim of this essay to demonstrate the "expressiveness" of witchcraft practices, and to show that
they not only are directly related to the essential realities of the religious
life, but that they disclose new meanings and aspects in those realities.
At the same time, I think, one cannot help but misunderstand witchcraft if one applies to it traditional phenomenological methods and
categories. It is not merely a matter of the inanity of the intellectualistic
term "magic", which so effectively separates knowing from doing. It
is a part of phenomenological method itself to locate the unitary
"essence" behind all historical appearances of a phenomenon. This in
itself is valuable, and this es'saywiil attempt much the same thing, but
it has no been sufficiently understood how easily this approach tempts
the researcher to ignore actual cognitive contexts, and to separate
insight from action, "religion" from life. The result has been that the
researcher is quick to disregard the unique contexts shaping and determining such a phenomenon as witchcraft in order to assimilate it to
some other more "spiritual" or congenial "essence" as its perversion,
degeneration, or meaningless "application". The whole problem of
"survivals" has not yet been adequately dealt with in the research into
the history of religions, due to this manner of understanding essence.
The same basic structures can express many "essential meanings":
this does not mean that only one of them is "the true one" and the
others are "degenerations"; each must be understood on its own terms
from within the particular structure or patterned meaning it creates or
sustains. Witchcraft can be shown, for example, to possess structures
2TI
relating closely to the most archaic hunting-and-gathering religions
known to us, and again to such explicitly religious phenomena as divination or ancestorreverence.Yet these essentialcontributory structures do
not "degenerate" into witchery or lose meaning, but take on quite different and profound meanings in their new context. The conterf determines meaning, and it may be the context is so meaningful, so well
understood,it needsno consciouslyphilosophic or "spiritual', indigenous
interpretations. This is the case with witchcraft, which integrates such
intimately experienced realities as sexuality and ingestion, bodily
exuviae and human social existence, into a meditation on ultimate
matters concerning Self and Other, freedom and evil, and the limits
of the human condition.
A11 this is likewise so basic to us that we, too, ignore it while
reactualizing it constantly. witchcraft ideologies have deeply affected
the West. It has been estimated that over one million "witches,', most
of thern women, were killed between r5oo and r1oo, the vast majority
in Germanic lands, using methods quite simiiar to those adopted by
the Third Reich against the Jews and Gypsies.1) Country and mountain folk in the U.S. and Europe still cling to witchery practices, and
various youth cults in America center on a Romanticized .,witchcraft" . But the most penetrating studies of witchery hat e been done
in Africa, to which this studv turns.
II. AFRICAN
WITCHERY
A. Fwnctionali,sticI nterpretations
There are many African societiesin which witchcraft, or zuitchery,
a word I use to include both sorcery and witchcraft, z) is practically
non-existant or quite unimportant. There are many others where such
ideas have profound consequences.
Most of those who have studied witchery in Africa are British
t) Cf. Adolph Leschnitzer, The Magic Background, of Anti-Semitisz, (N. y.:
lnternational Universities Press, 1956).
z) The distinction between sorcery and witchcraft first made by E. E. EvansPritchard merely for the Azande inhis witchcraft, oracles and Magic among the
Azand,e (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), was extended into a dogma by later
social anthropologists, but is now admitted to be inapplicable in many .ur".. s..,
for example, victor Turner, Tke Forest, of Symbols: Aspects of Niemhu Ritual
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 19167),
pp. rr8-24.
2r2
Evon M. Zuesse
social anthropologists, and their interpretations have tended to explain
such differences between various cultures through'sociological factors.
A by now traditional axiom of this school is that if a given trait exists
in a society, it must serve a useful purpose, even if not evident to
those who assign "manifest" meanings to it within the culture. The
social function of a cultural trait is even its real "latent" meaning.
Foilowing this line of reasoning, many anthropologists have devoted
considerable ingenuity to proving the social excellence of witchcraft
and sorcery beliefs, where they appear.As the American anthropologist,
Anthony tr. C. Wallace has stressed in his recent work, Religi'on:
An Anthropological Vi,ew (N.Y .: Knopf, t966): ". . . the practise of
witchcraft, and the fear of it, tend to curb precisely those trespasses
which the social structure fails to prevent." 3) Working with such
theories, these researchers har.e agreed that witchcraft accusations
reflect social tensions and probably increasewith progressive acculturation (this link has not been irrefutably demonstrated), and that they
arc basicaily positive attempts to deal with such tensions when no
other approved methods are available.+) This last assertion is, however, problematic and paradoxical, if not self-contradictory. If one
thing is certain about witchcraft beliefs, it is that it encourageshatreds,
i Op. cit., pp. r96f. This view coincidesremarkably with Wallace's view of
religion in general, as a method of overcoming gaps in the social structure, or
tying up the loose ends of logic and behavior left dangling by the social process
From this viewpoint there is little to choosebetween worship and witchery. Warlace's view is clearly inadequately elucidated, though we too shall argue for a
similarity and even identity between witchery beliefs and religious ones.
+) For an extensive bibliography (which if presented here would too greatll'
expand these footnotes), cf. ibid,.,pp. 196ff. and the referencesthere; also see a
similar discussionwith references and bibliography in the excellent "Introduction"
by John Middleton and E. H. Winter to the important volume edited by thern,
Witchcraft and, Sorcery in East Afri,ca (N.Y. and London: Oxford University
Press for the International African Institute, 1963), pp. 'r-26 (hereinafter this
work will be referred to as Witchcraft and Sorcery); the thorough discussionof
the literature by M. G. Marwick in his article, "The Social Context of Cewa
Witch Beliefs," Africa, XXII (1952), esp. pp. rzo3o, and.the annotated bibliography at the back of his Sorcery in lts Social Setting (Manchestet: Manchester
University Press, 1965), pp. 3o5-2o. For a statistical "scientific" approach to the
subject, see also Guy E. Swanson, The Birth of the God,s: The Origins of
Primitive Beliefs (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 196o), pp. 137-52,
a work not mentioned in the above discussions. See also the critical review of
the material on witchcraft and the theories by Edward Norbeck, Religion in
Prirnitizte Society (New York and Evanston: Free Press, 196r), pp. r88-ztz and
elsewhere.Also seeLucy Mair, Witchcroft (N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Book Co., rq6q).
On the natu,reof the d,emonic:African zaitchery
2r3
spreads suspicions and divisiveness, often culminates in murder of
suspectedwitches and even of widespread purges, frequently brings
social process to a total halt, a paralysis of fear and terror, and often
results in the splitting off of large groups in an atmosphere of
enmity. 5) We may wonder whether or not, in fact, the functionistic
method in general is no subjected to a red,wcti'oad, abswrdwm here, a
product of a fanatical insistence that whatever occurs in society, and
thus is a social fact, is by that same facticity at base merely social,
and so necessarily positively functional. Therefore we find the assertion that sorcery suspicions in some societies "help break up" family
groups or villages or cians becausethese groups had become "dysfunctional": they must have been too dense, too competitive, or what not'
But this can win our assent only if we refuse to beg the ob'vious
question: "Why dysfunctional?: is density as such, or co'mpetition,
always to be found as a social wil, or is not in fact the lack of functionality merely presumed by the presenceof divisive witchcraft ?" ldor
is it proven by the functionalists that witchcraft is really the only or
the necessarymethod for expressing and resolving social strains, that
other lessterrifying methodswere not availableto the co lective imagination of the culture if it had looked for them. There is something of
Dr. Pangloss' "Whatever is, is right" in such assertions' The root of
rvitchcraft beliefs canniotbe merely social, nor merely for the benefit
of society, but lie at a deeper, spiritual level.
5) Accounts of periodic witch-purges which grip entire cultures and bring all
rvork to a halt have been recorded from all parts of Africa, and such movements,
l,hich often revealed in the colonial period definite anti-Western elements, have
received the general name of "witch-finding movements"; for some representative articles specifically on such crtlts, see Aubrey I. Richards, "A Modern Movement of Witch-Finders," Afri,ca, VIII (1935), 4+B-6t:.M. G. Marwick, "Another
Anti-Witchcraft Movement in East Central Africa," Afrtca, XX (tqSo), '7(x:-12i
P. Morton-Williams, "The Atinga Cult among the South-Westeln Yoruba: A
Sociological Analysis of a Witch-Finding Movement," Inst. I;ranEais Afri. Noire,
Bull., SeriesB (rqS6), 315-34;Barbara E. Ward, "Some Observationson Religious
Cults in Ashanti," Africa, XXVI (rgS6), 47-fu; Paul Bohannon, "Extra-Proces
sual Events in Tiv Potitical Institutions," in Cultures and, Societies i'n Africa,
ed. Simon and Phoebe Ottenberg (N.Y.: Random }fouse, t$o),328-4r; and the
stimulating cultic approach of Mary Douglas, showing that witch-finding movements had a periodicity and a cultic importance going back to pre-colonial times
that proves them to be traditional, in her essay, "Techniques of Sorcery Controi
in Central Africa," 1n L4/itchcraft and' Sorcery, op. cit., pp. r23-r4r, and her
analysis, "Witch Beliefs in Central Africa," Africa, XXXVII# t (Jan''t967),
7z-8o.
Eztan M. Zuesse
On the nature of the demonic: African zaitchery
One thing, for example, that is notable about witchery beliefs is
that they often represent severe but submerged, and even if one likes
subconsciously projected, criticisms of the society in which they appear.
The anthropological studies themselves often dernonstrate this. For
example, Monica Wilson has shown that amongst the Pondo of" Zambia,
where family groups cluster in exclusive territories and so make the
incest taboo and the exogamous norm strongly conscious inhibitions,
witches are conceived of especially as persons indulging in incestuous
relations, often with their animal familiars who are their alter egos
of the opposite sex: this classifies their incest as synonymous with
sexual'bestiality. On the other hand, Wils'on shows that among the not
far distant Nyakyusa of Malawi, where exogamy is not such a heavy
burden since village life is highly heterogenous, and rich and poor
clans live in close proximity, witches tend rather to be conceived of in
terms of miserliness: they are individuals so greedy for their own
produce, milk and meat (especially human meat or flesh), that their
lust for flesh drives them to feast cannibalistically on relatives and
neighbors. Despite wealth differentiation, it is a Nyakyusa norm to
invite neighbors to feasts. Yet neighbors are not kinsmen, and often
are excluded from each other's meals. This social irresponsibility and
the very fact of mysterious differences in wealth are rationalized in
witch ideology. 0) In other words, the pan-African conception of
witches as incestuousand cannibalisticbeings receivesvarying emphases
in particular societiesin accordancewith the strains within each.
The sex image of witches may be similarly understood, according
to another British social anthropologist, S. F. Nadel. In an essay
entitled "Witchcraft in Four African Societies: An Essay in Comparison," z; Nadel followed up Wilson's article by demonstrating that
the sex most commonly associated with witches in the societies he
studied reflected sexual tensions felt by them: among the Gwari,
where marriages were harmonious, witches could be of either sex, but
among the Nupe, a Nigerian people otherwise culturally similar, women
were independent of the men, and male resentment and helplessness
expressed itself in emphasis on female witches. Useful and interesting
as such conclusions may be, however, the very sociological emphasis
given these constructs limits their insightfulness, as I shall attempt
to show later in dealing with the ,sexual image of witches. One is
always left, after reading such studies, with the nagging question of
what has been left out. 8)
2r 4
6) "Witch Beliefs and Social Structute,"Ameri,canJournal of Sociology,LYI
(rgs,r),3o7-r:.
in Africa, op. cit., pp.4o7-n.
7) In Culturesand Soci,eties
2 t5
But it cannot be denied that witchery beliefs do in some manner
become involved with conflicts implicit in given social systems, if
only because 'such conflict-oriented belief s involving real people
necessarily have social consequences. But witchery, too, involves the
divine order which is the pattern of life, the web of norms and actions
that go together to constitute the way of iife handed down from the
Creation. o) Approaching witchery frorn the perspective of the divine
order, as a religiows not magical apprehension of man's position in the
cosmos, discloses an internal logic to witchcraft and sorcery beliefs
not accessibleto a functionalistic analysis.
8) For example, Nadel relates the economically independent and dominating
position of Nupe women in the market-place directly to their being charged often
with witch activities. But it is possibleto assert that it is not the power of the women
vi,s-d,-visthe men which is at issue here, but the symbolically ambivalent significarrceof tradi,ng and market-places in West Africa and beyond. The market-place
is cosmologically a dangerous point where incompletely controlled alien forces
penetrate our society, our divine order: it is a center for transactions par ercel'
lence, but where we may well be victimized by aliens and our very substance
cheated from us. We may be hypnotized by a smiling stranger into utter failure.
Witches and demonic beings are often believed in West Africa to haunt marketplaces, or to have compact with the strangers who come there (cf. Geoffrey Parrinder's remarks concerning the lbadan, Nigeria market plaza in Witchcraft:
European and African (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 163), p. r95). This attitude
throws a revealing light on the slaughters of the Ibo tradesmen throughout
Nigeria but especially in the Hausa north in ry67, and which helped drive the
Ibos into proclaiming themselvesindependent; the ferocity of the war with Biafra
can only be understood in such a light. But such conceptions should least of all
surprise Westerners : the medieval stereotype of Jews as usurers, the witches of
the market-place, was fed by the fact that in economically backward Europe, the
Jews were the most prominent and even the only traders in many places. Such
suspicions1ed to all too recurrent bloody massacres,and, to judge from Nazi
stereotypesof 'wealthy Jewish Iinanciers,' profoundly influenced modern history.
The slaughter of the Chinese in Indonesia had similar roots, for there the Chinese
were not only the main tradesmen in the area, but were hated for it by many.
9) I am indebted to Hans Schlrer's penetrating applications of the concept of
the "Divine Order" in Ngal'u Religion: The Conception of God among a South
Borneo People (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), for much of my own
understanding of the concept, though rnodified and deepenedthrough contact with
the thought of Mircea Eliade.
21 6
Eaan M. Zuesse
B. Reli,gi,ousH omologies: Shatnani"stn
There are a number of important similarities between the fundarnental structufes of witchery symbolisms and clearly religious structures and rituals among hunting-and-gathering cultures, for example'
The symbolisms of shamanic flight, to give one instance, are constantly
predicated of witches: they can leave their hut or house at night and
fly through the sky magically, or even transform themselves into owls
or other carrion birds and sail through the night swiftly, silently and
with evil intent to their assemblies far out in the dark bush, on sorne
secluded mountain top, or in a deserted grave-yard. Such symbolisms,
so familiar to us, are widespread in Africa, too; they are indeed
world-wide, indicating a pervasive necessity for such structures. Everywhere we find witches linked with the wild and the dark "outside"
world, though resident amongst us in the human form, outwardly a
member of human society. Witches, with their animal familiars (likewise practically a pan-Af rican conception), have peculiar links with
the animal realm. The Temne o{ Sierra Leone link together the witch's
familiarity with the forest realm and with animals, the witch's ability
to assume rnany shapes (just as shamans are often reputed to do),
and the demonic character of witchery: they say bush demons coopelate
with witches in their mutual hatred of and hunt for human beings, and
that at the moment of bewitching the witches' faces turn into those of
animals. 10) Like shamans, the witch everywhere can wield the power
of invisibility, and only the special eyesight of the "witch-doctor" can
see such a witch, or detect a witch-person in the day-time in a crowd.
The witch is often believed to be specially immune to heat, indeed the
witch's element is fire, and he can often be seen at night in the bush
as a ball of fire floating through the air. Contrast all this with the
typical attributes of shamans: according to Eliade,
Becauseof his ability to leavehis body with impunity,the shamancan,if he
so wishes,act in the mannerof a spirit; e.g.,he flies through the air, he
becomes invisible, he perceives things at great distances, he mounts to }leaven
11)
or descends to Hell, sees souls and can capture them, and is incombustible'
ro) James Littlej'ohn, "The Temne House," ln Myth and Cosntos: Readings
in Mythology and, Syrnbolisrn, ed. John Middleton (Garden Citv, N.Y.: The
Natural History Press, 1967, p. 338.
rr) Rites and Symbols of Ini,tiation: Birth and Rebi'rth (N.Y. : Harper and Ro'n',
1958), p. 95.
On the nature of the demonic: African witchery
2r 7
The shaman is distinguished by his closenessand familiarity with the
animals (he knows their languages and can talk with them, etc.; can
assume their shape and generally has animal familiars or alter egos);
from this cornes his control over hunting. The shaman too is "hot"
and can even handle burning coals. His initiation takes place often in
the bush, far removed from human society, where he attains unity
with the non-human sources of reality. He thus becomes a mernber
of a larger shamanic society which sometimes mysteriously convenes
far away; the gathering of shamans in a village is an aweso'me a"nd
frightening thing for those who live there. The initiation of a shaman
may involve his being torn apart or eaten ali.zteby divine beings, or
by ancestral shaman spirits, and thus assimilated to the divine and to
the shamanic circle. rz) In witches' circles, we may see the memory
of this, and its inversion, through the dismemberment or slow devouring
of the zi.cti,tn'sbody by the witches; a novice witch must often provide
the victim for this initiation from among his olvn kinsmen, his own
"flesh". Through this feast he joins the witch society.
That there is a strange similarity between witches as commonly
imaged and sharnans, may be accepted, but what is the meaning of this ?
In the passagecited just above, Eliade goes on to isolate the essential
motivation of the shaman, which determines all his modalities and
symbolic powers:
They all expressa breakwith the universeof daily life. The twofold purpose
and the freedom that are
of this break is obvious: it is the transcendence
obtained,for example,through ascent,flight, invisibility, incombustibilityof
the body.. . . The desire for absolutefreedom-that is, the desire to break
the bondsthat keep him tied to earth, and to free himself from his limita'
tions-is oneof man'sessentialnostalgias.And the break from planeto plane
effected by flight or ascent similarly signifies an act of transcendence; flight
proves that one has transcended the human condition, has risen above it,
by transmuting it through an excess of spirituality. ls)
We may anticipate ourselves by saying that it is the d,enoonicand
negatiae ospect of this nostaigia for absolute freedom that witchery
is the meditation on. The fu1l significance of this will be suggested
later, in our concluding remarks. But it is already clear that witchery
symbolism embracesa deep-rooted desire to achieve the status of the
rz) See the full discussionby Eliade inhis Shamani'sm: Archaic Techniques of
Ecstasy (Bollingen Series LXXVI; N.Y. Pantheon Books, I9r54).
ri Op. cit., p. ror.
218
Exan M. Zuesse
Other which confines man, limits him and masters him. The witch
is one with that threatening Other, in the popular conception' If the
shaman represents the Otherness which infiltrates humanity in its
benevolent aspect, the witch represents Otherness in its resolutely antihuman mode, despite its penetrati,on of the human cosmos. The problem
of freedom involves a dialectic between the personal will and the
cosmic order which, in witchery, realizes mankind's worst nightmares.
C. Rel,i.gi,ousH om,alogies: Divination
That witchery belongs to that same Other that presents shamanism
as a possibility is proven by the genetic similarity of their symbolic
structures. The same can be shown for the relationship between divination and witchery. There is relatively little shamanism in Africa in the
classic forms defined by Siberian, Amerind and Australian religions.
This is doubtless at least partly due to the prevalence of agricultural
religions and cultures all over the African continent; the shamanic
structure which achieves its full form only in hunting cultures is
refracted into various priestly and mediumistic specialties in agricultural religions; witchery, which is relatively little developed as a specific
form in the most archaic hunting-and-gathering societies but which is
often pronounced among agricultural peoples, is no doubt one of these
refractions, as we have seen. Divination is another, and is widely
spread in Africa and is even brought to extremely philosophical heights
in many societies.Like witchery, divination involves a dialectic between
personal will and the cosmic order. In a brief formulation, divination
resolves a crisis in the divine order by submitting the personal will
to the cosmic ordained pattern, i.e., by discovering Destiny. This
discovery of Destiny is not a merely passive process, but a creative
one, in which one actively changes one's lot in life by conforruing it)
to the divine order: divination allows one to experience anew one's
inciusion in a larger process which sustains the whole of the universe.
Events which before seemed disintegrative, meaningless and random
are now disclosed as meaningful, the result of a hidden and now
revealed Demand being made on one, and so even part of a healing
process when the remedies of divination are applied. Witchery, on
the other hand, is a response to crisis which retreats from any Demand
hidden in the divine order, into personal desires, and which refuses
to rejoin the flux and reciprocity controlling the cosmos.Divination is
On th,e nature of the demonic:
Af rican zaitchery
219
practically universally brought to a close with a sacrifice from the client,
in which he reestablishes harmonious contact with the powers which
are now known to govern his life or this moment in it. 1a) Witchery,
however, centers on a sacrifice in which the client (that is, the witch,
who like the divinatory client is seeking redress for "bad fate")
immolates, so to speak, his enemy, while giving up nothing of himself.
Witchery pulls away from the ongoing change and mutuality of things,
and insists on the necessity of personal will and passion. Only on its
own terms will it relate to the divine order.
Yet one of the striking things about divination is the frequency with
which it is connected with witchery in many cultures. Both procedures
involve the same dialectic; divination gone wrong can easily become
witchcraft. Often the diviner is suspected of being a witch by his
clients, and this is even one of the reasons that they come to him:
if he knows how to curse powerfully, he must also know how to lift the
curse of others; he who can harm can also heal. The same powers are
involved in both the diviner's and the witch's art. One sees this often
in African cultures. The Mbugwe of Tanzania, lor example, have over
each of theilsub-tribes a rain-chief, who is both political leader and
spiritual intermediary and diviner for his people. By the power innate
in him, as well as by learned skills, he causes the rain to fall on the
fields of his people, but by the same token deprives rival groups of the
heaven-sent waters. The rain-chiefs compete each year for the rains.
By his own group the rain-chief is regarded as a beneficent and
powerful diviner and "witch-doctor"; by other groups he is thought
to be a sorcerer, or witch. rs) Similarly, as Robert LeVine remnrks,
for the Gusii of southern-western Kenya
The diviner groups seems to be a socially accepted version of the witch
group, or, conversely stated, the conspiratorial witch group may represent
a deviant dangerous and perhaps fantastic version of the actually functioning
group of diviners. 16)
r4) So intimately linked is divination with the act of sacrifice that often sacrifice
is the whole of the divinatory session: from the entrails of the victim, the cracks
in its heated bones, or even the manner of its staggering and fall, the verdict of
Destiny and the Divine is "read".
r5) Robert F. Gray, "Some Structural Aspects of Mbugwe Witchcraft," in
lt[/itchcraft and Sorcery, op. cit., pp. r43 1., t46, t541., r7o.
16) "Witchcraft and Sorcery in a Gusii Community," in ibid., pp. 4z t.
Etan
M. Zuesse
On the nature of the demoni,c: African zaitch,ery
Among the Gusii, however, diviners were not themselves considered
witches. A closer and even more striking rapproachment is evident
among the Azande, where occasionally one finds diviners (or "witchdoctors") who are commonly regarded as witches, and thus credited
with even more power to effect cures; Azande whisper that certain
diviners may act in collusion with witcheslT). There are many reasons
the Azande might have such suspicions. It is known by them, for examp1e, that witches have within them mangw, witchcraft substance, which
they inherit but increase in power through their cannibalistic initiation
and regular diet of human flesh. Part of the initiation of the ztti,tchdoctor, however (and a climax to it), is the physical transfer of the
master's tnangu to the initiate his novice, through the process of coughing up lhe m.angw like phlegm, and forcing the novice to eat it. 18)
Afterwards the new witch-doctor must continue to feed his mangw
with strong medicines, for it is very much due to his internal power
of nrangw that he ef fects cures, and not merely by external manipulation
of charms. Periodically the witch-doctors gather in a private place to
celebrate the feeding of their tno,ngui like the Zande witches who
reputedly convene in sinister covens out in the bush or near graves
to eat human flesh which they boil in cauldrons with curses and spells,
the witch-doctors too cooperate in stirring the cauldron of their "hot"
medicines, uttering charms and spells which direct the medicines to
intensi{y their powers. In these spells the doctors name as kinsmen
only animals, very much as the witches have animal familiars; but
Evans-Pritchard explains that these medicines are so powerful that
they demand the life of the kinsmen of the cooks: thus the doctors
name animals. But at such moments they may also name rivals or personal enemies, who will surely be afflicted in consequence."I dance,
a man dies," goes their traditional initiation song, recaliing to us the
obscene dance Zande witches are said to make in the dark of night
in the compounds of their victims before blighting them and their
household with death and disease.1e)
r7) Evans-Pritchard, [,Vitchcraft, Oracles
op. cit., pp, rg2fl., zz5.
t8) Ibid., pp. 221-9.
ry) Ibid., pp. 2o7 and zz8.
and
Magic
among
the
Azande,
227
D. Religi,owsHomologies: Nemesi,sand, the Ancestors
Analysis of the sources of the Zande witch-power indeed leads to
the sources of the witch-docto,r's power; both have the s.ame root
in the High God, Mbori. The medicines which both use are said to
grow under the special care of the Supreme Being, for example, and
the diviners are able to use these herbs with Mbori's mandate to
counter the excessesof the witches. 20) The Mandari, a tribe to the
north of the Azande, in the Sudan, say likewise of witches that:
'They are God's creatures,like lions and other preying animalswhich harm
people,and their natureis to spendtheir time harming'.Although said to be
'God's servants in bringing death', they are also said to be hated by God.
'Because they harm good people, their end is planned, and after a time thel'
o1e.'-)
The implication is that they should only harm bad people. The destructiveness given witches, though it is random in its maliciousness,
is not entirely arbitrary, for many peoples believe that witches serve
the larger purposes of Deity in singling out as victims those who genuinely erred, who through excessivepride or selfishness have elevated
themselves over their fellows, for example, or who have otherwise
violated divine norms. Widespread through West Africa is the belief
that there are certain of the most powerful witch-medicines that refuse
to harm an innocent person; if a witch attempts to misuse in this way
such a medicine, its malificent powers will recoil in full strength upon
the sender. In a recent study of the Cewa of Zambia, we read:
As to victims of sorcery,two-tiirds of the rr8 casesinvolving beliefs in
those of vengeance on sorcerers-\\'ere
sorcerl'-including
orle in which
anti-social or socially inadequate behaviour was attributed either: to the victim
or to someone closely associated with him. . . (that were) . . . violations of
widely accepted Cewa norms, including those violated by the sorcerers in the
sampl e.22)
Among the Nyakyusa of Malawi one of the most powerful sanctions
for moraiity and harmonious participation in the social order is the
widespread fear of "the breath of men", i.e., witchcraft.23) Witches
m) Ibid., 36, zr5-r7, 3go, 44r f.
zt) Jean Buxton, "Mandari Witchcraft," ia Wi,tchcraft and, Sorcery, op. ck,
p. Io2.
zz) Marwick, Sorcery in its Social Setting, op. cit., pp. 245f.
z3) Monica Wilson, Good Corupany: A Study of Nyakyusa Age-Villages
(Boston: BeaconPress, rg5r), pp. gi-r2o.
Evan M. Zuesse
pick out those who offend them personally, of course, but such offenders have very likely harmed many before occasion brought them into
contact with a witch; the very randomness of the resentment of witches
insures the "objectivity" of their hatreds: considerations of friendliness, personal favor, or even family blood, will not stand in the way
of a witch's ferocious and spontaneous (even quite involuntary) vengeance.Among the Shilluk of the southern Sudan, the witch is often
known as such from birth, and is avoided by others throughout his life,
but the power that is innately his is thought to come from Jwok, rGod,
and thus to have a certain justice in its application; these black magicians
are said to make the following tormented prayer at night before commencing their spells:
You who are God (Jwok) give me this personto kill.
Why was I createdthus if it was not that I was to kill?24)
In this way the witch plays a role amongst many African peoples that
in Greeceis representedby the power of nemesis,whose agents were the
dread hags, the Eri,nyes. For the Nuer, neighbors of the Shilluk, to
break a taboo is to act to destroy the divine order i'n which Kwoth,
God, directly participates. The result is nueer'. God blasts the one who
causesthe knot in the flow of Divinity through the cosmos.Lightning
doesnoi strike randomiy, according to the Nuer and many other African
peoples, but selectsparticularly the houses of the prosperous who are
fu11of wealth, who have refused to share their bounty with others and
haye otherwise violated the basic divine norms. zs) In the same way
the sometimesquite invo untary power of witches and of the evil eye can
fall upon those who refuse in general to share things with others,
especially with the witches or hexers themselves (but since these are
often unknown before the event, one ought to share with all).
In such matters the witches seemsto perform for the gen.eralsociety,
between neighbor and neighbor, what the ancestors do for the family
group, between kinsman and kinsman. There are further similarities
between the ancestors and witches. The ancestors of a kinship group
generally intervene actively in the human order only when one of their
z4) Rev. D. S. Oyler, "The Shilluk's Belief in the Evil Eye-The Evil Medicine Man," Sudan Notes and,Records, IIffz Apri| rgrq), r3r.
z5) E. E. Evans-Pritchard,, Nuer Religi,on (London: Oxford University Press,
1956),pp. r8z-95.
On th,enoture of the demonic: African witchery
223
descendentshas transgressed a norm of family life, threatening the
collapse of its structure. Then, using spiritual powers received from
their participation in the divine order, they can cause the illness or even
death of the victim, or those close to him, unless restitutio,n is made
to the ancestors and through them to the divine order, just as one
can release oneself fro'm witchcraft by obtaining from the witch his
forgiveness and establishing a mutuality and reciprocity with him
(signalled by the witch blowing water on a fowl's wing, from the victim's
domestic fowl, or having him share a feast with one, or otherwise).
Joining in a communal meal with the witch is especially similar to the
communal sacrifice with the ancestors. Ancestors and witches are both
"Other" to the day-time world of mankind: they inhabit the night,
and may embody themselves in animals, often of the same species:
lions, leopards, snakes. Evil ghosts, that is, rejected'ancestral shades,
may go further and feast on corpses, cast spells on night travellors,
and haunt secret places in the bush, all just like witches.
F,. Witchery as Negati.veOtherness
But while it is important to stress parallelism between witches and
the more benevolent religious levels of Otherness in the cosmos,
in order to demonstrate the fact that we must understand witchery in
terms of a spiritual logic, and not merely as sociological nor as mereiy
magical "degenerations", it would be a clear travesty of the facts to
leave the matter there. For witches, for example, are quite evil and
repulsive, while the ancestors are benevolent; witches attempt finally to
destroy the divine order, and if their activities occasionally work for
its support it is, so to speak, in spite of the witches themselves.The
witches belong to a separaterealm of the cosmic order apart from the
ancestors,or perhaps we can say that the witches belong finally quite
outside the cosmic order. The honored dead, for example, who will
becomeancestor,sand assure for their descendentsthe fertility of family
fields and of the women of the clan, who will constantly work for
harmony and peace in the family, are buried in a consecratedplace;
the witches are thrown into the bush, or buried with'out rites far off
in the wilderness, near or under a stream perhaps that shall eternally
wash their polluted bodies and souls far away, "cooling" the land. Nor
do the witches work even when alive for anyone's fertility; rather do
they continually cause universal sterility and barrenness. While the
On the nature of the demonic: African witchery
Etan X[. Zu,esse
oc
225
^
ancestofs are so closely and intimately linked with the cultivated,
,,purified" land that Earth and ancestors often seem rnodalities of
it is
each other in many African cultures (in Bantu Africa especially
and
spirits
often impossible to make a valid dichotomy between nature
ancestor spiril, zo) the witches are the enemies of the cultivated Earth,
a
and many witch-ordeals (tests to single out the gui{ty witch from
repEarth
with
the
suspects
group of suspects) involve confronting
resentatives. Widespread in West Africa, for example, is the use
of iron-smiths as witch-finders, for iron is iinked with the Earth, and
the Smith has the secret of transforming the alien natural substance
into a humanized one, and getting it to work for man' Witches and
iron therefore are antipathetic; the witch will not touch iron, or inrn
will burn the witch, etc. The Smith is in actuality an Earth-priest, and
of
often leads the ordeals. Many societies shared with the LoDagaa
Ghana, to mention but one specific rite, the traditional practice of
forcing a suspected witch to drink a mixture of soil and water at the
Earth-shrine; a true witch's body would so rebel against the mixture
his beily would immediately begin to swell up, finally causing death,
while the innocent suffered no harm. 27) The witches do not love the
cultivated Earth, but the wild and chaotic Bush, the non-human side
of Earth. Their sphere is the forest or jung'le, darkness, all that is
anti-human and threatening within the general category of the Other;
they isolate in themselvesthis horrible aspect of the non-human otherness, and represent it among men. They form the inversion of the
divine order, and thus their mirroring of the ancestors,of the diviners,
and even more archaically, of the shamans, is by way of reversed
image and antithesis. The very similarity of the structures we have
outlined, however, points to a further important conclusion.T'he witches
too obtain their powers from the same sources as the benevolent
forms of the divine order do, but they turn those powers backwards
upon that order. Witches are conceived of as parasitic, gaining their
power from the very divine flow they block and reverse' One of the
most striking images of this symbolic status of witches can be found
in medieval Europe: the central rite of the witch-covens, held on distant
4) Cf. olaf Pettersson, "The Spirits of the wood," in supernotttral Owners
of' Natwre, ed. Ake Hultkrantz (Stockholm, Uppsala: 196r)'
z) Iack Goody, Death, Property and' the Ancestors (Stanford and London:
Stanford University Prcss, tSz), p. 64.
mountain tops in the darkest hour of the night, was the recital of the
Latin Mass-backwards. witches relate to the inversion of holiness.
In a certain sense wilches mwst be more pious than we are' for it is
the token of their satanic holiness that it is so intense it becomeseven
unholy and anti-human, removing witches from the ranks of true (and
mere) humanity. Witches are so given over to their own reality, in
the popular conception, that they are "obsessed" with evil, they are
"compelled" to do evil, it is even "involuntary" with them: it is this very
pi,ety which so de-humanizes them that they loose contact with mankind
and so can no longer be argued with, but must simpily be either avoided
or killed.
The pattern of inversion and of assimilation to a structure of "negative Otherness" mirroring in reverse image "positive Otherness" can
be shown to hold throughout African religions, and to explain many
puzzhng features of witches in Africa. For example, witches belong
to the "Outside": they are marginal, come from an alien background,
or live far off. It is as an alien that they penetrate the divine order
of good humanity. As John Middleton first systematicallydemonstrated
for the Lugbara of Uganda-Congo, the divine order of humanity is
establishedin the center of a field of social structure and traditional
patterns, beyond whose horizon all relationships and powers become
inverted:
In the centre of the field, relations and persons involved in them are 'good';
the further from the centre the more 'evil' and inverted they become. In
other words, orderly relations of authority, unchanging from the time they
and the founding ancestors, are 'good'; relations
were created by Divinity
pureh of force are 'evil'.28)
But witches are not merely the inversion of the divine order through
their use of force; their inversion is systematic and thorough-going.
Normal people are active in the day but sleep 'the sleep of the just' at
night. Witches are active at night, quiescent by day' Normal peoplq,
good, people, marry exogamously, eat foods other than human flesh, kill
the enemies of their village in warfare, work to increase the crops or
improve hunting, wear clothes, walk on their two feet, and so on and
on. Witches, however, commit incest, eat human flesh, kill their own
z8) John Middleton, "Witchcraft and Sorcery in Lugbara," in l4/itchcraft and
Sorcery, op. cit., p. z7z; also seeidem, "some Social Aspects of Lugbara Myth,"
Africa, XXIV (r95a).
Nuuar XVIII
r5
226
Evan M. Zwesse
kin and their own neighbors (and may band together in a 'conspiracy'
with enemy viilages' witches to feed on their own kith and kin); they
blight the crops and ruin hunting, go about at night quite naked, stand
on their heads and even walk upside down on their way to bewitch
victims, rest dangling like bats from trees, eat salt when thirsty, transform themselves into animals in order to devour their victim or to
sneak into his compound, cause nightmares, disease and death. 2e)
Ordinary people walk to their destination, but witches have everywhere the power to overcome space and fly, either in the form of a
carrion bird or on an animal familiar like the proverbial "nightnare" , or on some object like a filth-collecting broom (another memory
and parody of the shaman's drum or aris rnwnd,i,tent-post 'on which
he makes his ecstatic ascent, perhaps). Witches therefore construct an
antithetical order. We might again think of the frequent African motif
(found widely elsewhereamong highly localized peoplesso) of the land
of the dead being patterned precisely the reverse of life here below,
but the difference is that the latent ambiquity in this reversal is in the
case of the witches made explicit: the witches are pure evil.
tr. I'l/rtchery as Isolati^on
This reversal of the divine depends above all on one thing: the breakdown in the divine flow through the cosmos. The fertile women must
be made barren, the fecund land blighted and the crops "magically"
stolen. At points of transformation in the divine order the witches cluster
and focus their withering hate. Initiates, while in the delicate liminal
stage of their training, are especially vulnerable to witches, who will
seek to bewitch and damn up the budding sexual generativity of the
initiate. Newly-weds are similariy especially vulnerable, and like pregnant women are especially surrounded by restrictions and safe-guards
to protect them from the envious witch's curse or evil eye' The favorite
prey of the witches are a hated person's infant children and fertile
z9) See above note; also E. H. Winter, "The Enemy Within : Amba Witchcraft," in Witchcraft and,Sorcery, op. cit., p.42, and other essaysin this volume.
:o) The term "'highly localized peoples" replaces here the prejudicial use of
"primitive peoples", "natives", or worst, "savages", still commonly found. "Nonor illiterate cultures" is unsatisfactory since in point of fact certain cultures of
Aftica and elsewhere have scripts or the equivalent of hieroglyphs, generally
reserved for religious and divinatory purposes just as in early Sumer, Egypt,
ancl China.
On the naturc o7 tl te dentoni c : A l ri c an
i J tc her]'
221
wives, the open cultivated fields and the herds, for in these the victim
has continued creativity and strength, in these the hated person shares
himself with the cosmos.This sharing must be broken or twisted.
At the root of the symbolism of witcherl, one can even 'say, is a
meditation on the significance of shari.ng.A very basic concept found
amongst highly localized peoples all over the world is that the universe
is built up through sharing: that through the intenningling of divine
forces, through economic exchange, through wife-giving and marriage,
through ritual sacrifice and the very act of eating, through the initiatic
transformation of a family's child into an adult whose work and creativity will be shared with the whole society, the entire cosmos is continually being regenerated anew. And corresponding y, almost all the
casesof witchcraft in the literature, not only in Africa but also elsewhere, can be understood as centering on a break-down in the flow of
reciprocity; the actions and prediiections of witches can be understood
also as an extension of this symbolism of aborted reciprocities. It is
jealousy that drives a man to witchcraft, the Lugbara say, and it springs
from the refusal of neighbors to share their feasts with one, or from
envy when another more seductive man draws all the eligible girls to
him, leaving one alone, or when another is prosperous and one has
nothing. 31) It is the person who keeps to himself, withdrawing from
the social round and refusing to "share himself with others", who is
everywhere suspectedof hidden resentmentsand dark tendencies.Very
many sorcery accusations spring up within the family circle when it
appears that the inheritance and power will not be equitably shared.
The barren co-wife, who willfu'lly withholds herself frorn sharing her
fecundity with the household,who at the same time resents the fertility
of others, is a prime suspect as a witch. All these figures recur again
and again in the witchery symbolisms of African cultures. It is the
co-wife's "evil eye" that kills the other women's children, and the
youngest son's sorcery that causesthe eldest son's inheritance to come
to ruin.32) The witch is one who has been isolated and pained, but
who takes malicious umbrage at this isolation. and attempts to make
3r) Middleton, "Witchcraft and Sorcery in Lugbara,', op. cit., pp. z6zff.
3z) It is not hard to see in such ideas the symbolization of guilt feelings felt
by the fertile co-wives, or the eldest son, who contrast their own successwith
their {ellow's misfortune uneasily, and who with the coming of bad fortune to
themselvesaccusethe fellow as almost a self-exonerationand iustification,
i'228
On the natu,reof the d,etnonic:African witchery
Eaan LI. Zuesse
that
one share that painful excommunication from the divine order
a
be
can
the witch has felt. Or, as we have already seen, the witch
his
powerful medicine-man, a rainmaker or a chief, who does not share
power equitably with those who are dependent on him'
G. Bodity Il[etaPhors of WitcherY
this
In the same way the actions and rituals of the witch repeat
ways
symbolism of aborted transformations. The two most intimate
the
and
eating
is
by
themselves
beyond
people relate to the world
witch
fui{
the
of
signs
characteristic
.e*,r"l act. But perhaps the most
The
symbolism are the persistent canni.balisti,cand incestwot'tsmotifs.
meat'
witch does not assume full humanity through eating non-human
refuses
rather he turns on his own kind, and der,nourshuman flesh. He
He
incest.
his
of
is
true
same
The
other.
true
the encounter with the
wichery
of
transmission
the
of
reads
mates with himself. One often
power through an incestuousact, The Nso of the west cameroons are
and
trrr,rruul im that they clearly distinguish between witches of incest
wirches of cannibalism. The first are called'witches of the sun or day',
and are innocuous enough; only the kin suffer. Any incest warrants
the appelationwitchcraft. But 'witchcraft of the night" ztirinove vitsa'4,
will
is the completely malicious type, whose cannibalistic practioners
witch
African
stop at nothing in their lust for human flesh.33) The
however, is above all a spiritual cannibal' Among very many peoples
his cannibalism is not understood to be physical as such; the witch
devours the ,sotil bit by bit, and as the meal proceeds through the days
is no
and weeks, the victim visibly weakens and sickens, until there
sa)
vampire
the
The image of
more life left in him and he utterly dies.
is
the same lust that drives
It
tales.
horror
to
European
limited
is not
feast, too, is however
ghoulish
this
corpses;
the witch to exhuming
undisturbed by
entirely
appear
may
grave
often a spiritual one, and the
e3lpfrvffi.M.Kaberry,"WitchcraftoftheSun,"inManinAfri'ca'ed'Kaberrv
1969),pp' r75-q5;the
Douglas(Lonion, N.Y.: TavistockPublications,
^rrl"it"ty
J"rrg", to the liinspeoplefrom the incestof a pair is very real to the Nso: "It is
it i,sas thoughthe culprits uere eating one
like ,witchcraft of the night' because
go mad but in
another and they would, unless action were taken, not only die or
compound inthe
of
members
other
and
children
their
to
death
bring
cases
some
revolting or
as
.
but
.
dreadful.
.
or
bad..
,
as
volved. It is describednot merely
disgusting (ko,oi, a term also applied to a cofpse found in decayed state, to excrement,suicide,and leprosy." Ibid'.,p. r79 (italics mine)'
cit', pp' 47ft'
3D it. Parrinder, Witchuaft: EwroPeanand'African, op'
229
the light of day. Often only the medicine-man can "see" the macabre
activities of the witches.
The preference of the witch for animal bestiality and other forms
of sexual perversity is also proverbial through Africa. For the witch
belongsin essenceto the animal world; such acts are like incest for him.
Even in his eating habits is the witch animalistic or bestial, for he sides
with the animals in making man his prey. Thus in the most bodily
kinds of metaphors the witch announceshis rejection and hatred of the
human pattern of social interchange and sharing. The same kind of
symbolism informs witchery spells and ritual.
Witches fasten their attention on other people's eating and sexual
relations, and, gaining access to their victim's inner spirit during
precisely these vulnerable moments of interchange and transformation,
seize the "life" of the person or blight it. One of the most reliable
symptoms of a society deeply concernedwith witchcraft anxieties is a
multiplication of taboos around the act of eating; among the Mbugwe,
for example,
It is thought that 'r'\'itches
cast the evil eye on a victim's food just as it is
about to enter his mouth.. . The only reliable precautionagainst the evil eye
is to eat privately or only in the presence of absolutely trustworthy people'
The Wambugwe actually try to safeguard themselves in this manner, by
maintaining meticulous privacy in eating. Meals are always taken inside the
house, even in the hottest weather. Chrildren commonly eat first while a
parent stays outside to watch for intruders; then the parents eat while the
children stand guard. 35)
Moreover,
vomit,
hair,
the great importance
toe-nail
permeated with
parings,
the victim's
of
exuviae
excrement,
(blood,
menstrual
sweat, urine,
blood,
sweat, etc.) in the making
clothing
of charms,
ef figies, or potions to be used against the victim, can also be understood
in terms of such symbolism. Exuviae provide the most potent medicines
of the witch. They are the symbols and the very evidence of man's
mortality and submission to change, his constant entry into the ongoing
transformation
of things. These are the very signal of man's involve-
ment in time. The witch uses these same elements of transformation
against the victim, forcing them back on him and stopping up, so to
speak, the channels of ebb and flow that permit man to live in the
the witch places the victim's exuviae back in his food,
world. Often
35) Robert F. Gray, oP. cit., p. ,1$3.
230
Etan XI. Zu,esse
or buries it under his threshold or in the thatch of his compound. The
the victim entirely from this world.
exuviae wo'rks then to d,i.ssoci'ate
The witch, it is often said in Africa, comesin the dark of night to one's
hut area, and there he or she dances naked a wild obscene dance until
blood comes out of the anus, or vomit appearc. This blood'or vomit
is the medicine; many witches defecateat the door-way of their enemies,
or in their compounds - even if they bury the exuviae to hide it, the
power in it works to kill the victim.36)
In the same way, exuviae are generally the absolutely necessaryprerequisites to the shaping of an effigy, 'sincethey most securely anchor
the ef figy to the victim's soul. Spells and chants may dupiicate or replace
this use of "contagious magic", but the underlying intention is the
same. The victim is through the use of such techniques torn from his
inclusio,n in the divine order and isolated under the power of the witchsorcerer. Such concepts are dramatically embodied in the belief in the
"zombie" or soul-slave,who is subdued to the will of the hexer through
the use of an effigy in most instances.For example, the Gi of Ghana
declare that the sorcerer does much the same thing in each of the
following three methods: he can call up through spells the victim's
swurnct (soul), making it appear in a bowl of water, and there he
impales it, causing pain or death to the victim; or the sorcerer can
tie the victim's A/o (1ife-essence)with string, thus withdrawing the
victim from the cosmic order and causing the victim's withering
away; or the sorcerer can draw the hla, into a miniature of the victim
lying on a tiny sleeping mat through concentration, then "nurse" the
figure through its "illness", enacting an unsuccessful cure, finally
36) For a convenient series of references demonstrating the pan-African belief
in the above tcchniques,see,for East and Central Africa, Witchcraft and,Sorcery,
op. cit., pp. 66, roof., 165, rg7, 2271., and' 44 etc.; for South Africa, see the
survey, by A. Winifred Hoernl6, "Magic and Medicine," in The Bantu-Speaking
Tribes of South Africa, ed. Isaac Schapera (London: George Routledge & Sons,
rg3D, pp.z4tfl.; no single adequatesurvey of West African usagesis available,
but for the purposesof this brief note it is sufficient to refer to Geoffrey Parinder, West African Religion (znd. ed.; London: Epworth Press, 196r), pp. 163f.
For the importance of exuviae for the Ge of Ghana, whose use of effigy sorcery
is discussedin the next paragraph of our tex! seethe vivid description in Margaret
J. Field, Religion and. Medicine of the Ga People (London: Oxford University
Press, rg37), p. r28i this work is, together with the same author's Search for
Securit5t (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 196o),our best West Africancentered ethnological rescription of witchery. Also see H. Debrunner, Witchcraft
in Ghana(Kumasi: 1959).
On the nature of the demonic: African zuitchery
23r
burying it-and as this ritual is dragged out, the victim simultaneously sickens, worsens, and dies.3?) A very similar ritual to this
latter one is enacted amongst the Central African Rotse peoples o1f
Zambia. Witches there are believed to seek always to increase the
number of "familiars" they have working for them. One common way
of getting such servant souls is to steal the soul and body of a villager,
making him into a true zornbie, while replacing the absent villager
with a charm that seems to all his neighbor,sto be the person. This
"person" sickens and dies, is buried, and finally the charm is dug
up by the sorcerer; meanwhile, the real victim is forced into utter
spiritual slavery.38) In such rituals, the effigy and the victim are
interchangeable. The entire significance of such practices is to isolate
the victim from his normal participation in the cosmos, and so to
reduce and master him.
H. Witchery and Hunting Symbolisrus
We might ask, where did such practices come f rom ? We must not
be surprised that the answer is, from the same hunting-and-gathering
milieu that we know shamanism's home to be in. It has been well
established that at least a certain percentage of Paleolithic ,cave paintings were the product of a kind of belief in effigy sorcery: by depicting the game, and perhaps going so far as to ritually spear it after
it had been drawn (numerous such pitted figures remain to us), the
ancient hunters achieved power over their prey.3e) The parallels
with modern hunting-and-gathering peoples are too numerous for us
to mention more than a few raadom examples. In Siberia, for example,
we find that the Tungus carved figures of the game they sought and
take these with them on hunting trips; like the Ostyaks, Voguls and
many other Siberian tribes, they believe the effigy to carry the soul
37) Field, Religion and Med,icine of the Ga People, loc. cit.
38) C{. Barrie Reynolds, Magic, Diaination and l,l/itchcraft alnong the Barotse
of Northern Rhod,esia(Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press,
rS6:), pp.33-4; also see the more detailed accounts in Frank H. Melland, 1z
Witch-Bound, Africa (London: Seeley, Service & Co., tg4), pp. 2t4-r7.
39) See the extensive recent discussionby J. Maringer, The God,sof Prehistoric
Man (N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 196o), pp. rro-52; a critical review of modern
evaluations of such cave art is given in Peter J. Ucko and Andrde Rosenfeld,
Paleolithic Cazte Art (World University Library; N.Y.: McGraw-Hill, t6il,
pp. 123-37,et passim. Also see K. J. Narr, "Interpretation altsteinzeitlicher Kunstwerke durch vd,lkerkundliche Parallelen," Anthropos, L (1955), 513-45.
232
Eaan M. Zttesse
of the quarry and place it under the hunter's power. Rituals involving the ef figy are not uncommon. +o) Rock paintings remarkably
similar to Paleolithic art and perhaps genetically related to such
southern European art has been found in a wide arc through Africa
from the once-greenSahara down along East Africa to the desert hi1lsof
the Kalahari, where ritual painting was still practiced by the Bushmen
within living memory.41) Clear-cut effigy hunting ritual has been
reported of the Pygmies of the Congo, and indeed practices that in
other cultures are clearly "witchery" are again and again repeated in
a fully religious context by the Congo Mbuti, often as part of rituals
linking mankind and the Suprem'e Being n:Jing the forest and all the
gam e .4 2 )
L Wi,tchery atcd the Female Im'age
It is important to stress again the religious structure that we find
at the roots of witchery beliefs. The forms that we find in outright
witchcraft symbolism are still, therefore, a meditation on fundamental
questions of human existence, even if here as in other ways an
inversion of the normal. It is well to remember this also in connection
with the persistent linkage of witchery to women. Again, we can do little
more here than throw an undoubtedly too rapid light over a vast field
of evidence. It has long been noted as a curiosity that among hunting4o) Ivar Lissner, Man, God and Magic (N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, r96t), p.
245; also see detailed accounts in Eveline Lot-Falck, Les Rites de Chasse chez les
peuplesSibdriens (Paris: Gallimard, t953).
4r) The subject has been well-documented.See Sonia Cole, The Prehistory
of East Africa (N.\.: New American Library, 1963), pp. zzn-44and' the bibliography; for a recent discussion,see J. Desmond Clark, The Prehistory of Africa
(N.Y.: Praeger, tgTo), pp. r8z-84. The remarks of H. Baumann are perhaps
historically too su'eeping a unification of the Bushmen with the European Paleolithic, but much is still obscure: see Baumann, Les Peuples et les Ciailisations de
tAfrique (Paris: Payot, tgTo), p. to4.
4z) Leo Frobenius' report of elaborate ef{igy hunting ritual is, however, still
unique: Das (JnbehannteAfrika (Munich: Oskar Beck, r9z3), pp. 34-5. But
obviously similar, and here emphatically religious, practices are related by Colin
Turnbull, Wayward, Serztants (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1965),
pp. r3o f., r55; also see Paul Schebesta,Die Bambuti-Pygmiienvom ltttri (Mem.
Inst. Roy. Col. Belge, Sect. Sci. Mor. et Pol., Co1l.-in-4'; Bruxelles: Georgesvan
Campenhout,rg+r &'rg5o), t. II, fasc. r, p. rr3, and t. II, fasc. 3, pp. rro-r. These
discussionsmust be viewed together with such rituals of the chief game animal,
the elephant, as are related by No€l Ballif , Tke Dancers of God (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1955),p. 166.
On the nature of the d,emonic: African uitch,ery
"JJ
and-gathering peoples,and indeed, among very many agricultural peoples too, hunting taboos often weigh more heavily upon the wife of
a hunter than upon the hunter himself. In the u,sual collections of
taboos made by ethnographers, long lists of such taboos are often
given, from widely dispersed societies from the far north to the
densest tropical jungles, always torn out of context and advanced as
evidenceof "magical" thought and "savage" non-rationality. Sir James
Frazer, for example, in his always useful compilation The Golden
Bowgh, notes that
In Laos when an elephanthunter is starting for the chase,he warns his
wife not to cut her hair or oil her body in his absence;for if she cut her
hair the elephantwould burst the toils, if she oiled herself it would slip
throughthem....
Elephant-hunters
in East-Africa believethat, if their wives prove unfaithful in their absence,this gives the elephantpower over his pursuer,who
will accordinglybe killed or severelywounded.. . . An Aleutian hunter of
sea-ottersthinks that he cannotkill a single animal if during his absence
from home his wife shouldbe unfaithful or his sister unchaste.
Many of the indigenoustribes of Sarawakare firmly persuadedthat were
the wives to commitadulterywhile their husbandsare searchingfor camphor
as)
in the jungle, the camphorobtainedby the men would evaporate.
What is striking in these examples is the clear symbolic equation made
between women and the natural realm of forest and game; what
one does effects a change in the other. This is apparently especially
true in regard to women's sexuality and fecundity: the unfaithfulness
of the wife is immediately expressed in a simi{ar "unfaithfulness" of
the animals who are truly engaged with the hunter in a li.ebestod.That
this equation goes deeper than a "mere" homology of woman and
game animals is seen in the last instance given involvtng cam'phor:
somehow women and the enti,re realm of the natural divine order
equally confront man as Other; both women and the forest are metaphors for each other. Both are a spiritual reality above all, with which
man must necessarilybe joined in a dialectic which involves life out of
death, food out of a "penetration". That women and forest however
ate noit the satme symbolic reality is shown in the clearest possible
manner by the insistence amongst such hunters of a preparatory
chastity between husband and wife before the hunt commences: such
a prohibition affirms that the relation of hunter to wife is similar to,
4) The Gold'enBough, Abridged Ed., r vol. (N.Y.: Macmillan, 196o),pp. 26-27
llf
'J'i
EYan M. Zuesse
On the nature of the demonic: African
uitcltery
235
and therefore must not interfere with, the relation of hunter to prey.
The separation of women from animals is, after all, the guarantee
of human culture. We have not here a "pre-logical" identification of
women with the game, but, precisely by the taboos, a recognition of
the distinctions between nature and culture which establish the human
condition. Taboos deal not with a literalism but with ,symbolism.
At the same time, it is very significant that it is precisely the witch
who is thought to confound the symbolic and physical through her
bestiality: for the witch the animals are mates and true society, while
mankind is the prey. The witch is given over entirely to the Otherness of
life; she belongs to the wild and hates society. It is also no doubt for
this reason at least partly that witches are so often conceptualizedas
female. We have seen that the forest and the feminine are closely
associated in the thought of the hunting peoples who first develop
the structures later cultures relate to witchery. But just as, for so
many agricultural peoples, the forest and the wild beyond the cultivated
fields are revalorized as demonic and populated with dark, evil beings,
from which not food but only death comes,44) so too the link between
women and the wild is in the witch figure wholly dark and negativelv
complementsthe positive meaning of the feminity of the food-producing
cultivated Earth. Hunting-and-gathering peoples seldom develop the
witchery conceptsthat so often pervade agricultural societies,it would
seem; the splitting of the religious Other into a clearly demonic and
clearly benevolent realm is perhaps part of a general increased complexity of cultural forms amongst farming peoples.4s) Women possess
a natural creative power denied to men, a power of fecundity absolutely
necessary for the continuance of the culture; their lifegiving powers
are also clear in their close associationwith the domestic fire and the
cooking of food. But this natural generative power so essential for
sustaining the divine order is in some ways uncontrollable, despite
the masculine attempt to guide it ritualily, and so it may break out of
cultural boundaries and even act to destroy the divine order. As L6viStrauss has ,shown, culture has built itself up out of a complex fabric
of wife-exchange. But if the inexplicably creative and divine power
within women refuses to cooperate,the entire pattern of sharing and
social transformations is destroyed at the root. (Nor has this anything
to do with merely patrilineal'ly-caused fears of the stranger women
who marry into the clan from "outside": some of our most striking
descriptions of female witches come from matrilineal societies.a6)
44) The difference in cultural valuations of the forest comes out strikingly in
Turnbull's description of the views of the village patrons of the Mbuti Pygmies,
and those of the Mbuti themselves: see, for example, Turnbull, "The Mbuti Pygmies of the Congo," in Peoples of Africa, edited by James L. Gibbs, Jr. (N.Y.:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961;),pp. 288 f.
4.5) Turnbull stresses that the Mbuti do not practice outright sorcery or
witchcraft themselves; cf..ibid'., p. 3o4, or id'em, Wayward' Seruants, p.zg7; H.
Trilles, L'Ame du Pygmie d'Afrique (Paris: rg45), writes: "I1 importe de noter
clue les Pygm6es de race pure ne connaissent pas les sorciers" (p. rz8). Yet the
data amassedby Paul Schebesta(see specific references in the earlier citation from
Schebesta)show at least some such practices among the Mbuti, which are according
to Turnbull village Bantu influences. Lorna Marshall, the major authority on the
lKung Bushmen, writes that their medicine men are not sorcerers nor witches,
but solely devote themselves to curing and work together without rivalry: "The
lKung are not a witch-ridden people": "The lKung Bushmen of the Kalahari
Desert," in Peoplesof Africa, op cit., p. 27r.yet H. Baumanninsists in his earlier
cited work that both the Pygmies and the Bushmen practise sorcery to some
degree, and it is remarkable that the use of "projectile" sorcery, u.idespread
throughout Central and South Afric4 has been traced to Bushmen hunting usages;
"magic" borvs and arrows are used by the Bushmen both for love charms and
against rivals: the sl"rnbolic homologies between sexual polarities, man-animals,
and man-inimical Other, are striking. See Reynolds, op. cit., pp. 39-4r, 59, 79-U,
etc., and Isaac Schapera, The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa (London: Geo.
Routledge & Sons, rg3o), pp. rgs-ur:r. The archaic homology between women and
the natural animal realm for hunting peoples is brilliantly demonstrated by A.
Leroi-Gourham, Les Reli.gi,onsde la Prdhistoire (Pal6olithiqtr,e) (Paris:- 1qf,4), and
id'em, Treasures of Prehistori,c Art (N.Y.: Abrams, n.d,. ltqf7l).
46) See, for example, B. Malinowski's remarks concerning the matrilineal
Trobriand Islanders' "flying witches", in Argonauts of the Western Pacific (N.Y. :
E. P. Dutton, 196r), pp. 461f.; also see the discussionof the matrilineal Navaho
views, in tlre classic by Clyde Kluckhohn, Naztaho Witchcraf t (Boston: Beacon
Press, rg44, 1967).
The women, apparently passive and dominated (in most matrilineal
societies,too), are felt to be for that very reason dangerous, for it is
their formidable and largely involuntary powers which culture harnesses for its own perpetuation, which can so easily turn against all
culture and humanity. Added to that is the weaker position of women,
for that in itself draws in its train condemnationsof witchery. Again
and again in human culture we note that the weaker are suspected of
hidden powers of resentment and hatred. The very passivity of nature
itself before man, a passivity which seem'sto increase with improving
technology and the development of agriculture, makes it a demonic and
46
On the nature of the demonic: African witch'ery
Evan M. Zuesse
untrustworthy realm: in the bush foam foul demons and ghosts always
ready to leap upon or seize travellors or wanderers in the night'
But, in any case, it is now clear how identical are the accusation's
everywhere leveled against witches that they commit incest (or sexual
bestiality) and cannibalism. Sexual and hunting perversions are modes
of each other. Both practices abort proper life-giving and -sustaining
transformations. In incest as in cannibalism, and in the sheer malice
witches are supposedto have, man turns away from the proper reciprocity with the Other which sustains the cosmic order. The relations of
man and animal, culture and nature, village and forest, day and night,
and man and woman, are broken and turned back on themselves,
creating the various forms of witchery symboli,sm.Instead of marrying
the truly other, the witch commits incest or has relations with animal
familiars. Instead of eating the not-Self, the witch has a lust for
human flesh.
III. CONCLUSION:
THE
NATURE
OF THE
DEMONIC
It is for this reason that witchery is the expression of the demonic,
not simply becauseof the anti-social tendency of the symbolism' The
clemonicis the attempt to define man only by himself, an incestuous,
cannibalistic urge. In breaking the fundamental taboos of culture, the
rvitch exults in the isolation, freedom and power that this reversal of
clivine norms gives him. The witch is thought to accept and desire this
inhumanity, and so is not destroyed by it; but his victims are. In this
way we can explain the efficacy of many witchery practices' As we
have seen,one common way of bewitching a victim is to siip some human
flesh or bodily exuviae into his foocl, or even into the area of his hut
compound.Flesh or exuviae are forced back on the victim, "stopping up"
his life, so to speak.aea)Thus the sameway that constitutesthe delight of
the witch destroys the ordinary human being whose life is woven into
symboltsms,
+6a) So powerful and deep-rooted are these and other witchcraft
that moclern languages still vividly retain them in "obscenities". We know without
needing or wanting it to be fully conscious that in them we are in effect uttering
\,vitche;y accusations or curses; such expressions as "Eat shit," or "Fuck yourself,"
have the same rudimentary pow-er and symbolism. "Up your ass" condemns the
victim to an utterly severed and inhuman life to the same degree as "Motherfucker;,' since in the first curse all defecation is prevented or is associated with
perverted sexuality, while in the second the victim-witch is cursed with incestuous
isolation from humanity.
237
mutuality. Breaking the taboosreleasesa terrific force which can destroy
the ordinary person. But for him who can absorb this power, the result
is an intensification of life. Thus the divine king also inaugurated his
reign almost everywhere in Africa (and often elsewhere), with a ritual
marfiage with his sister. This ritual incest immediately raised him above
the common lot of humanity, bestowing upon him a terrific blighting
power which he could also turn to good; but this power affected his
essencehenceforth, and isolated him frorn the common run of mankind. a7)
It is a consequencefrom all the above that the same order of divine
power which sustains and shapes human society is also the order that
bestowspower on the witches and sorcerers.Witches feed o'n the normal
by turning it back on itself, inverting it, and refusing to permit the
interflow of the divine order to continue. Above all the witch refuses
to allow his personal inclusion in the reciprocities of the divine order.
The Wholly Other is rejected, and the confrontation with that Otherness
is avoided by the witch's own obsessivedrive to reduce all beings to
his own finite and isolated position. To succeed in his own self definition, the witch must reduce especialiythose who in their successful
integration into the cosmic flow have obtained wea'lth, fecundity, and
prestige, and also those who are in the midst of a liminal transition to
a heightened, more divine stage of the cosmic order, such as initiates,
pregnant women, newly-weds, and so on. A11these threaten the witch's
own freedom and self-determination by their integration into an order
47) Cf. the penetrating comments by Jan Vansina, Le Royaume Kuba (Annales,
Mus. Roy. de L'Afr. Cent., S. in-8', Sci. Hum., f 49; Tervuren: 196-1),p. rrr.
For a review of these and other forms of African divine kingship, with bibliographic
references,see V. van Bulck, "La place du Roi Divin dans les circles culturels
d'Afrique Noire," in The Sacral Kingship (Studies in the History of Religions,
Num.en Spl. IV; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1959),pp.98-134. The following passageis
interesting from this perspective: (concerning the Cewa ol Zambia) "Some informants assert that a sorcerer does not achieve any power until he had sexual
intercourse with his sister. . . . In preparing his 'medicines', the maize-sorcerer is
said to make use of activating agents ... such as the caul from his sister's child or
his mother-in-law's loin cloth .. . Similarly, some owners of muzzle-loaders are
believed to increase the accuracy of their shooting by persuading their sisters
to sleep with their bullets in contact with their private parts. These practices are
referred to as ufi.ti, (sorcery)." Marwick, Sorcery in lts Social Setting, op. cit.,
D. 8o. The bullet gains in its ferocity of penetrative power, its phallic power, by
its participation in its owner's symbolic incest with his sister who links him with
the wild.
48
Etan il[. Zu'esse
larger than and independant of the witch. They must be brought low.
One recalls the figure of the lawyer-Satan in Camus' La Chwte'
The witch exults in a perverse but totatr freedom to break all
boundaries, to permit any impulse no matter how chaotic. But this
very need to break boundaries destroys the witch's freedorn, for he
is always dependent on those noffns he violates to define his isolation
anew. He is reduced, that is to say, to an obsessive perversion of
norms, a frozen refusal to enter into the mutual interaction with the
Otherness of life which the norms modulate and the divine order
fepfesents. Those impulses in the witch that lead to fruitful relationships with the Other of life, with marriageablewomen, with non-human
foocl, etc., the witch must refuse, for these impulses make him conditioned by that Otherness, and ultimately liable to failure and death.
Again and again we afe told that witches must offer up their own kin,
even their own children, in their initiations and subsequent feasts in
their covens.Witchery is a willed and desperatefinitude which does not
stop at assaulting all moments in the universa{ transformation of
things in order to preserve itself and its intentions eternally invio ate.
This finitude is achieved through the construction of an antithetical
orcler and the inversion of the normal, in order to sustain the abnormality of it,.e1f.There can be permitted no true Other in such a system.
To give the matter a paradoxical twist, the witch is demonic precisely
becausehe is so resolutely fincte, banal, self-determined, and even, as
\ve have seen, free. His freedom is the freedom of obsessionand deniai,
based on a continual hatred of the beyond'quality of existence.
It is an old paradox that true freedom and spontaneity can be won
only by the submission to the commandmentsof the divine order which
spring out of and express the Otherness of life. Otherwise man remains
self-defined and self-determined, locked into personal and ultimately
destructively obsessivefinite systems.It is that very refusal to recognize
the controlling power of Otherness which is at one and the same time
the extreme of banality and the extreme of demonic evil.
The striking thing about the symbolism of witchery that we have
just finished reviewing, is that these structures have without question
not sprung from any organized religious movement, and so have not
their source in any kind of preliminary historical facts: this complicated
and profound structure has evolved spontaneously out of the very
structures of consciousnessitself, as a kind of fantasy and meditation
On the nature of the demonic: African
witclt,ery
239
on the limits of finitude and on the nature of the relationship between
self and Other. This "fantasy on evil" is deeply ingrained into the
human awareness as is shown not only by its structural indebtedness
to the earliest forms of hunting religion and symbo ism, not only bv
its appeal to rudimentary libidinal experiences, but also by the amazing
similarities in witchery symbolism in all stages of later history and
in the most varied cultures. The evidencewe have concerning confessed
witches (that is, accused witches who are brought to "confess" their
crimes, often sincerely 48)), is that far from being convinced adherents
of any cult, whether in medieval Europe or elsewhere,these unfortunates are as much victims of a universal psychosis as are their accusers
who project their own spiritual rejection of the human condition onto
them. The witches are scapegoats for our universal gui'lt.
48) For some remarkable confessions along this line, see the works cited in an
earlier note by Margaret J. Fields. A study of medieval witch trials will also disclose a number of such documents, many extracted under extreme torture. Yet as
Fields' work shows, some accusedwitches could genuinely come to believe in their
own guilt. My remarks above also indicate my rejection of the thesis of Margaret
Murray, The Witch Cuh in V[/estern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, rgzr),
and other works by the same author, that European witch-cults actually existed
continuing genuinely positive pre-Christian pagan cults in a Christian environment.
Those pre-Christian pagans also believed in witches who did much the same negative things as medieval witches. It is there that the continuity must be sought, if
anywhere. See Parrinder's comments, [.1/itchcraft, op. cit., passim,.