African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing African Systems of Thought

Description

"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. 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