"This volume of finely crafted case studies is also the vehicle for an important general theory of divination.... this is a book overflowing with ideas that will powerfully stimulate further research." -- Journal of Ritual Studies"The essays in this collection provide a very useful overview of both the diversity of African divination systems and of recent approaches to their study." -- ChoiceThis unique collection of essays by an exceptional international group of Africanists demonstrates the central role that divination continues to play throughout Africa in maintaining cultural systems and in guiding human action. African Divination Systems offers insights for current discussions in comparative epistemology, cross-cultural psychology, cognition studies, semiotics, ethnoscience, religious studies, and anthropology.
Author(s): Philip M. Peek
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Year: 1991
Language: English
Pages: 271
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
The Study of Divination, Present and Past
Philip M. Peek 1
Part One. Becoming a Diviner 23
The Initiation of a Zulu Diviner
Henry Callaway 27
Part Two. The Search for Knowledge 37
Nilotic Cosmology and the Divination of Atuot Philosophy
John W. Burton 41
Divination in Madagascar: The Antemoro Case and the Diffusion of
Divination
Pierre Vérin and Narivelo Rajaonarimanana 53
Part Three. Cultural Systems within Divination Systems 69
Diviners as Alienists and Annunciators among the Batammaliba of
Togo
Rudolph Blier 73
Divination among the Lobi of Burkina Faso
Piet Meyer 91
Divination and the Hunt in Pagibeti Ideology
Alden Almquist 101
Mediumistic Divination among the Northern Yaka of Zaire:
Etiology and Ways of Knowing
René Devisch 112
Part Four. Divination, Epistemology, and Truth 133
Splitting Truths from Darkness: Epistemological Aspects of
Temne Divination
Rosalind Shaw 137
Knowledge and Power in Nyole Divination
Susan Reynolds Whyte 153
Simultaneity and Sequencing in the Oracular Speech of Kenyan
Diviners
David Parkin 173
Part Five. Toward a New Approach to Divination 191
African Divination Systems: Non-Normal Modes of Cognition
Philip M. Peek 193
Afterword
James W. Fernandez 213
Contributors 223
Index 225
