Abstract
The peripheral role of divination in religious studies reflects centuries of misrepresentation and depreciation in the textual record. This long history dates back to the travel literature of early modern times, particularly in West Africa, where two stereotypical themes took form: divination as mumbo jumbo, and the diviners as charlatans who shamelessly deceive their credulous clients. These two stereotypical themes persisted through the anthropological discourse about African divination until the 1970s. To undo this long history of misrepresentation and depreciation, a change of analytical focus from reified differences to similar engagement with broad ideas and big questions is in order. By considering a particular case study—basket divination in northwest Zambia—through the theoretical lens of worldviews and ways of life, it becomes possible to take divination seriously and grant it a more central place in religious studies. Four broad, inclusive ideas or big questions emerge from the ethnography of basket divination in northwest Zambia: ontology, epistemology, praxeology, and the place of suffering in human existence.
Highlights
The Time of GuineaDivination, like magic, has been frowned upon for the longest time. In the Book of Deuteronomy
The peripheral role of divination in religious studies reflects centuries of misrepresentation and depreciation in the textual record
I would not restrict ways of life to the embodiment of worldviews, I appreciate the idea of “big questions” and the close attention given to particular cases where individuals and groups engage with those questions
Summary
Divination, like magic, has been frowned upon for the longest time. In the Book of Deuteronomy. While the arts of divination continued to be refuted by Christian doctrine, they came to be seen as a sign of ignorance and inferiority by those who upheld the new idea of scientific progress From this time period came the earliest derisive descriptions of divination as “mumbo jumbo”, and of the diviners as charlatans who shamelessly deceive their credulous clients. The travel writers who paid lip service to these stereotypes are too many to list In his widely read bestseller, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, first published in 1705, Willem Bosman, a Dutch tradesman, had the following to say about the “priests” of the Gold Coast, Ghana, which he often called “feticheers”: “The priests, who are generally sly and crafty, encouraged by the stupid. In the late nineteenth century, the eminent scholar of comparative religion Edward Tylor, who had little to say on the topic of divination otherwise, returned to the theme of randomness in divination, stating: “To a modern educated man, drawing lots or tossing up a coin is an appeal to chance, that is, to ignorance; it is committing the decision of a question to a mechanical process” (Tylor 1920, p. 78)
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