Tolai Sorcery and Change

Abstract

Despite the considerable literature on the Tolai that has been produced by modern anthropologists as well as earlier ethnographers, we still lack a contemporary account of their notions of sorcery and its practice. This article is an attempt to plug this gap. Of all the ethnic groups in Papua New Guinea, the Tolai have had the longest and closest experience of the wider society that came into being with the onset of colonial rule. Over the past hundred years and more, the Tolai have seen momentous changes that have touched almost every aspect of their society and culture. Since, as with so many other tribal societies, magic was such a central feature of their world-view, the question arises of how the traditional belief in and practice of sorcery have been affected by their changed circumstances. This is the question that the article seeks to address. (Witchcraft, sorcery, social change, Tolai) In a valuable paper in which he explores the nature of Tolai sorcery as it had been examined by Josef Meier and Carl Laufer, two early Catholic missionaries, Peter Sack (1974), a jurist, finds that the gap between the relevant facts remains too wide to allow for more than speculation, and he concludes his essay with the observation that even the best thesis is of limited use if it is not backed up by specific evidence which allows the reader to satisfy himself of its validity. Accepting this view, it has seemed best to build my own analysis around instances involving the attribution of sorcery that I encountered in the course of fieldwork on the island of Matupit.(1) But before turning to this task, I first set out the forms of sorcery recognized by the Tolai. FORMS OF SORCERY In his paper on Tolai sorcery Meier (1913) concentrates on what he calls e magit. E magit, he explains, is understood by the natives of my district as an evil principle of the worst kind.... This evil principle is none else but the dark soul of a sorcerer contriving injury, discord, misfortune and death.... The soul with all its powers leaves its original body to take possession of an animal's body or to take the shape of a new independent human being. (Cited in Sack 1974:402) Elsewhere, Meier (1913:287 ff.) speaks of e magit as no longer having one's own, original shape or appearance, but to have a new shape. It seems clear from this account that the form of sorcery that Meier is talking about is more commonly referred to as iniet. Missionaries and other Europeans with some familiarity with Tolai ways usually refer to iniet as a society of sorcerers although, as far as I am aware, this carries no suggestion that it was a solidary group covering the whole of Tolai society. Meier cites the chant or incantation of an initiated member or a tena iniet, which again I take from Sack's article (1974:403): Invisible I will assail my many victims. Numberless corpses shall lie about and their cadaverous smell shall poison the air.... Quickly I shall murder them so that on the death of the second the first's grave will have not yet been closed. Corpses and graves will tumble in a landslide down the hill. They shall fornicate with the devil himself, fornicate with the most horrible and repulsive spirits, even fornicate with devils who step up to them, painted black like widows mourning for their husbands, so that I can seize them and maim them and push them into deepest misery. Like a sharp-beaked parrot I will hack their genitals, like a greedy ravenous fish I will mangle their genitals and destroy them completely. (Meier 1913:292). The passage just quoted surely presents a vision of evil incarnate(2) that is fully in line with Laufer's (1951) denunciation of the iniet as sheer primitive destructiveness. As in others of his articles, Meier's data consists of written texts prepared by Tolai informants, in this instance former iniet members who had become Catholics, and he offers little empirical data from which the reader can draw his own inferences about the nature of the phenomenon. …