Divination and Healing: Potent Vision edited by Michael Winkelman & Philip M. Peek. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2004. Append.; biblio.; index; notes; 295 pp.; $50.00 (cloth).
Reviewed by Christian Dombrowe, Ph.D. Reprinted from Shaman's Drum, Number 70.
Traditional cultures throughout the world long have relied on divination for diagnosing illnesses and for problem solving. Divination can be viewed as a way to access information that is normally beyond the reach and control of the rational mind. Almost by definition, diviners base their knowledge claims on communication with spiritual forces, such as ancestors, spirit guides, and deities. The mechanisms by which diviners arrive at such information can include possession states (as in spirit mediumship), the interpretation of cast objects (as in cowry oracles), and the analysis of esoteric texts (as in the I Ching).
In Divination and Healing, the book’s editors—American anthropologists Michael Winkelman and Philip M. Peek—present an informative series of field studies that explore divination practices, as well as the cultural epistemologies that inform those practices. According to the editors, there has been only limited scholarship in the field of divination, and most existing studies “fail to take seriously the emic perspective.” So the editors define their task as “to more completely understand divination’s role in treating illness,” and to “provide expanded views of the efficacy of divination.” Each of the contributors to Divination and Healing was invited to explore the divinatory experience, its therapeutic potential, and the social processes involved in divination. However, the editors and some contributors seem to view the therapeutic function of divination primarily in psychological terms. For example, the editors suggest that divination reassures clients by contextualizing their suffering and helps overcome indecision and doubts by alleviating anxieties.
In one essay, social and cultural anthropologist Koen Stroeken introduces the reader to Sukuma divination practices in Tanzania. He points out that the Sukuma word ndagu simultaneously signifies “oracle, fortune or spell, and ancestor,” and he refers to Sukuma divination as “an event in which the ancestor or real speaks for itself.” Stroeken goes into elaborate details of the Sukuma chicken oracle divination. He also describes local beliefs about witchcraft and sorcery that form the cultural backdrop of Sukuma divination practices, and he argues that “divination helps those affected by crisis to feel at ease again in the sociocosmic world.” In the process, he convincingly demonstrates the healing impact of Sukuma- divination.
Anthropologist Edith L. B. Turner recalls her participatory research among the Ndembu people in northwestern Zambia. Her essay is a vivid experiential report that draws the reader into the events of a Ndembu spirit extraction ceremony. Turner explains how the ritual serves to mend tears in the communal fabric by drawing out the bad words—the resentments among the members of the community. She describes how, at the climax of the ritual, the healers extract a malevolent spirit that becomes visible (even to her skeptical Western eyes). Turner’s work is a beautiful example of participatory anthropological research conducted with respect, sensitivity, and a willingness to suspend the researcher’s own cultural preconceptions.
Social ethnographer Benjamin N. Colby explains calendrical divination among the Ixil Maya of Guatemala. Calendrical divination has evolved in Mesoamerica over more than a thousand years and, among the Ixil Maya, it is used to determine the causes of sickness or misfortune, or the client’s destiny. According to Colby, divination serves three functions: “(1) the providing of a sense of cultural coherence, (2) the instruction of the members of a society in important religious beliefs, and (3) the opportunity to give expression to the sense of disequilibria and stress that may have brought the individual to the diviner.”
Religious historian Jacob K. Olupona describes Ifa divination in southwestern Nigeria and introduces the reader to Yoruba cosmology and moral beliefs. As he points out, Ifa divination is used mainly for the diagnosis of client problems and ailments. Yoruba diviners mediate between humans, ancestors, and the orisa (the gods of the Yoruba universe). Olupona explains, “The Yoruba seek diagnosis, explanation, meaning, and treatment of disease through the lens of divination practices.” Based on the diagnosis, the diviner prescribes sacrificial rituals to appease malevolent spirits and/or herbal medicines, which are prepared using empowering incantations. Thus, according to Olupona, “Healing takes place when the diviner successfully diagnoses the source of a client’s illness and presents and carries out the necessary sacrifice.”
Anthropologist William S. Lyon, a scholar on American Indian religions, gives a general overview of North American Indian divination. He focuses specifically on the relationship between divination and shamanic healing, which in many Native American cultures were carried out by different specialists. According to Lyon, spirit communication is of central importance in Native American divination, and it is used to obtain information about diagnosis and treatment. Lyon also points out that dreams and altered states of consciousness play an important role in North American Indian divination. He concludes with the insightful comment that human consciousness is of central importance in divination and healing and that future research in the area will need to rely on recent advances in our scientific worldview, especially in regards to the observer effect, “whereby human consciousness plays a significant role in what comes manifesting into reality.”
Psychotherapist and anthropologist Eva Jane Neumann Fridman describes shamanistic healing practices in the republics of Tuva and Buryatia in post-Soviet Russia, and touches on the cosmology and history of shamanism in this part of the world. She introduces six shamans from these areas and describes how they use divination mostly as a diagnostic technique. Neumann Fridman also provides readers with some fascinating background information on the current status of shamanic healing in Russia. For example, in 1993, the Tuvan government officially recognized shamanism as a legitimate health system and even established old-age pensions for shamans. It is equally inspiring to learn that, in the Lake Baikal area, shamans are actively cooperating with ecologists on preservation and restoration projects.
Anthropologist Ruth-Inge Heinze, an expert on Asian studies, gives an overview of Thai divinatory practices, which include mediumship, astrology, numerology, and palmistry. She describes the worldviews and belief systems common among Thai peoples. According to Heinze, the Thai consult various divination experts, including astrologers, brahmins, and Buddhist monks, as well as shamans and other folk practitioners.
Medical anthropologist Krishnakali Majumdar examines divination practices among the Jaunsari Paharis in the area of Uttar Pradesh in North India from a critical phenomenological perspective. She presents four case studies of Jaunsari women who experienced spirit possession and who transformed their suffering with the help of diviner-healers. Majumdar concludes that “within the space provided by spirit possession, men and women discuss, articulate, and make sense of crises and the unattainable objectives of life, and, invariably, they tell us something about gender relations, household dynamics, and their existential dilemmas.”
Ecologist and anthropologist Elliot Fratkin introduces the reader to divination practices among the Samburu in Kenya. As with their neighbors, the Maasai, the Samburu rely on their laibons—male diviner-healer prophets. According to Fratkin, the laibons fulfill two main functions: on the individual level, they help to gain control over otherwise uncontrollable events and, on the social level, they serve therapeutic functions by reducing anxiety and stress through reestablishing the social order. By validating the internal conflicts of the clients and placing them in the context of the larger community, the laibon “reduces the feelings of helplessness, alienation, and powerlessness that may be the cause of the health problem.”
Medical anthropologist Keith Bletzer describes an intrafamilial healing ritual among the Ngawbe in western Panama. This ritual is a home-based vigil prescribed by a diviner, who encourages the family to do its own healing. The ritual is carried out by the family members themselves without the diviner’s presence. Bletzer points out that one of the vigil’s functions is to remind family members of their obligations to the nuclear and the extended family by clarifying and redefining boundaries within the family. Bletzer argues that this “indigenous form of family therapy” represents an important contribution to the survival of the Ngawbe as a people, since they rely heavily on the autonomy and strength of the household, which is the main unit of subsistence production.
Belgian anthropologist René Devisch focuses on divination practices among the Yaka in southwestern Congo. The Yaka diviners use a drumbeat to enter into altered states in order to receive clairvoyant information. Devisch describes in detail the initiatory crisis and the training of diviners-to-be. According to Devisch, Yaka divination is based on the assumption that the cause of suffering is often found in human relations. Incidentally, I must say that—in a volume that sets out to honor the emic perspective—Devisch’s psychoanalytically colored speculations about the oracle and its ritual paraphernalia being symbolic expressions of the “yearning to return to the uterus” seem out of place.
Since communication with spirits plays a central role in most divination practices cross-culturally, it seems appropriate to reflect on this topic in a little more depth. Since editors Winkelman and Peek extol the need to explore divination practices “with full respect for, if not belief in, other cultural systems,” I was perplexed to read Winkelman’s proposal “that spirits be understood as fundamental operations of the brain and mind and as manifestations of an ‘indigenous psychology’ reflecting internalized psychosocial and cognitive structures.” In fact, his psychological interpretations left me questioning his self-proclaimed respect for and belief in other cultural systems. According to Winkelman, “The perception of the world as having spirits results from the inevitable consequence of the human tendency to perceive the unknown ‘other’ as having qualities like our own self … we perceive the world as being like ourself, animating the world with human qualities. These human qualities of identity and intentionality—disembodied from our physical self—produce animism, the primordial human perception of a spirit world.” To me, Winkelman’s comments appear to be just another example of the hegemonic approach commonly used by Western anthropologists to explain away the ontological status of spirits.
Why do some Western academics seem so recalcitrant when it comes to accepting the existence of spirits? Why—if they claim to treat other cultures respectfully—can’t they accept the validity of those culture’s central beliefs? Could it be that taking seriously those beliefs would threaten the comfort they find in their own cultural belief system—that of scientific materialism? As Eduardo Duran has so perceptively remarked: “The study of colonized peoples [or other traditional tribal peoples] must take on a ‘lactification’ or whitening in order for the produced knowledge to be palatable to the academy.… When Western subjectivity is imposed … not only will the phenomenon under scrutiny evade the lens of positivism, but further hegemony will be imposed on the community in question.… A postcolonial paradigm would accept knowledge from differing cosmologies as valid in their own right, without their having to adhere to a separate cultural body for legitimacy” (Duran and Duran, 1995, pp. 4-7).
To trivialize another culture’s belief in the existence of spirits as “externalization of unconscious cognitive processes” exemplifies what Duran speaks of: the attempt to validate the knowledge claims of cultural traditions in terms of a different cultural paradigm—in this case, Western psychology. Treating indigenous peoples’ beliefs in this condescending manner while assuming that their worldviews can be exhaustively explained in the terms of our Western scientific worldview conveniently relieves us from the burden of having to question our own cultural assumptions. It also prevents us from seriously considering the possibility that we might have something valuable to learn from the practices and beliefs of indigenous traditions around the world.
Despite the fact that the book’s editors sometimes fall short of their goals to honor emic perspectives and to respect other culture’s epistemologies, many students and professionals in the field of anthropology may find Divination and Healing to be of value, insofar as it provides new and insightful material that should contribute to a better understanding of divination practices and, especially, their role in treating illnesses. It should be mentioned that the editors’ selection of essays is tilted in favor of African divinatory systems—five of the eleven studies in this collection focus on African divinatory practices. Nonetheless, given the prevailing shortage of ethnographic research on divination systems, this scholarly collection of essays certainly should advance our knowledge of this neglected field.
Reference: Duran, Eduardo, and Bonnie Duran. 1995. Native American Postcolonial Psychology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Christian Dombrowe, Ph.D., is a research scholar focusing on the cross-cultural psychology of religious and shamanic healing practices.
Reviewed by Christian Dombrowe, Ph.D. Reprinted from Shaman's Drum, Number 70.
Traditional cultures throughout the world long have relied on divination for diagnosing illnesses and for problem solving. Divination can be viewed as a way to access information that is normally beyond the reach and control of the rational mind. Almost by definition, diviners base their knowledge claims on communication with spiritual forces, such as ancestors, spirit guides, and deities. The mechanisms by which diviners arrive at such information can include possession states (as in spirit mediumship), the interpretation of cast objects (as in cowry oracles), and the analysis of esoteric texts (as in the I Ching).
In Divination and Healing, the book’s editors—American anthropologists Michael Winkelman and Philip M. Peek—present an informative series of field studies that explore divination practices, as well as the cultural epistemologies that inform those practices. According to the editors, there has been only limited scholarship in the field of divination, and most existing studies “fail to take seriously the emic perspective.” So the editors define their task as “to more completely understand divination’s role in treating illness,” and to “provide expanded views of the efficacy of divination.” Each of the contributors to Divination and Healing was invited to explore the divinatory experience, its therapeutic potential, and the social processes involved in divination. However, the editors and some contributors seem to view the therapeutic function of divination primarily in psychological terms. For example, the editors suggest that divination reassures clients by contextualizing their suffering and helps overcome indecision and doubts by alleviating anxieties.
In one essay, social and cultural anthropologist Koen Stroeken introduces the reader to Sukuma divination practices in Tanzania. He points out that the Sukuma word ndagu simultaneously signifies “oracle, fortune or spell, and ancestor,” and he refers to Sukuma divination as “an event in which the ancestor or real speaks for itself.” Stroeken goes into elaborate details of the Sukuma chicken oracle divination. He also describes local beliefs about witchcraft and sorcery that form the cultural backdrop of Sukuma divination practices, and he argues that “divination helps those affected by crisis to feel at ease again in the sociocosmic world.” In the process, he convincingly demonstrates the healing impact of Sukuma- divination.
Anthropologist Edith L. B. Turner recalls her participatory research among the Ndembu people in northwestern Zambia. Her essay is a vivid experiential report that draws the reader into the events of a Ndembu spirit extraction ceremony. Turner explains how the ritual serves to mend tears in the communal fabric by drawing out the bad words—the resentments among the members of the community. She describes how, at the climax of the ritual, the healers extract a malevolent spirit that becomes visible (even to her skeptical Western eyes). Turner’s work is a beautiful example of participatory anthropological research conducted with respect, sensitivity, and a willingness to suspend the researcher’s own cultural preconceptions.
Social ethnographer Benjamin N. Colby explains calendrical divination among the Ixil Maya of Guatemala. Calendrical divination has evolved in Mesoamerica over more than a thousand years and, among the Ixil Maya, it is used to determine the causes of sickness or misfortune, or the client’s destiny. According to Colby, divination serves three functions: “(1) the providing of a sense of cultural coherence, (2) the instruction of the members of a society in important religious beliefs, and (3) the opportunity to give expression to the sense of disequilibria and stress that may have brought the individual to the diviner.”
Religious historian Jacob K. Olupona describes Ifa divination in southwestern Nigeria and introduces the reader to Yoruba cosmology and moral beliefs. As he points out, Ifa divination is used mainly for the diagnosis of client problems and ailments. Yoruba diviners mediate between humans, ancestors, and the orisa (the gods of the Yoruba universe). Olupona explains, “The Yoruba seek diagnosis, explanation, meaning, and treatment of disease through the lens of divination practices.” Based on the diagnosis, the diviner prescribes sacrificial rituals to appease malevolent spirits and/or herbal medicines, which are prepared using empowering incantations. Thus, according to Olupona, “Healing takes place when the diviner successfully diagnoses the source of a client’s illness and presents and carries out the necessary sacrifice.”
Anthropologist William S. Lyon, a scholar on American Indian religions, gives a general overview of North American Indian divination. He focuses specifically on the relationship between divination and shamanic healing, which in many Native American cultures were carried out by different specialists. According to Lyon, spirit communication is of central importance in Native American divination, and it is used to obtain information about diagnosis and treatment. Lyon also points out that dreams and altered states of consciousness play an important role in North American Indian divination. He concludes with the insightful comment that human consciousness is of central importance in divination and healing and that future research in the area will need to rely on recent advances in our scientific worldview, especially in regards to the observer effect, “whereby human consciousness plays a significant role in what comes manifesting into reality.”
Psychotherapist and anthropologist Eva Jane Neumann Fridman describes shamanistic healing practices in the republics of Tuva and Buryatia in post-Soviet Russia, and touches on the cosmology and history of shamanism in this part of the world. She introduces six shamans from these areas and describes how they use divination mostly as a diagnostic technique. Neumann Fridman also provides readers with some fascinating background information on the current status of shamanic healing in Russia. For example, in 1993, the Tuvan government officially recognized shamanism as a legitimate health system and even established old-age pensions for shamans. It is equally inspiring to learn that, in the Lake Baikal area, shamans are actively cooperating with ecologists on preservation and restoration projects.
Anthropologist Ruth-Inge Heinze, an expert on Asian studies, gives an overview of Thai divinatory practices, which include mediumship, astrology, numerology, and palmistry. She describes the worldviews and belief systems common among Thai peoples. According to Heinze, the Thai consult various divination experts, including astrologers, brahmins, and Buddhist monks, as well as shamans and other folk practitioners.
Medical anthropologist Krishnakali Majumdar examines divination practices among the Jaunsari Paharis in the area of Uttar Pradesh in North India from a critical phenomenological perspective. She presents four case studies of Jaunsari women who experienced spirit possession and who transformed their suffering with the help of diviner-healers. Majumdar concludes that “within the space provided by spirit possession, men and women discuss, articulate, and make sense of crises and the unattainable objectives of life, and, invariably, they tell us something about gender relations, household dynamics, and their existential dilemmas.”
Ecologist and anthropologist Elliot Fratkin introduces the reader to divination practices among the Samburu in Kenya. As with their neighbors, the Maasai, the Samburu rely on their laibons—male diviner-healer prophets. According to Fratkin, the laibons fulfill two main functions: on the individual level, they help to gain control over otherwise uncontrollable events and, on the social level, they serve therapeutic functions by reducing anxiety and stress through reestablishing the social order. By validating the internal conflicts of the clients and placing them in the context of the larger community, the laibon “reduces the feelings of helplessness, alienation, and powerlessness that may be the cause of the health problem.”
Medical anthropologist Keith Bletzer describes an intrafamilial healing ritual among the Ngawbe in western Panama. This ritual is a home-based vigil prescribed by a diviner, who encourages the family to do its own healing. The ritual is carried out by the family members themselves without the diviner’s presence. Bletzer points out that one of the vigil’s functions is to remind family members of their obligations to the nuclear and the extended family by clarifying and redefining boundaries within the family. Bletzer argues that this “indigenous form of family therapy” represents an important contribution to the survival of the Ngawbe as a people, since they rely heavily on the autonomy and strength of the household, which is the main unit of subsistence production.
Belgian anthropologist René Devisch focuses on divination practices among the Yaka in southwestern Congo. The Yaka diviners use a drumbeat to enter into altered states in order to receive clairvoyant information. Devisch describes in detail the initiatory crisis and the training of diviners-to-be. According to Devisch, Yaka divination is based on the assumption that the cause of suffering is often found in human relations. Incidentally, I must say that—in a volume that sets out to honor the emic perspective—Devisch’s psychoanalytically colored speculations about the oracle and its ritual paraphernalia being symbolic expressions of the “yearning to return to the uterus” seem out of place.
Since communication with spirits plays a central role in most divination practices cross-culturally, it seems appropriate to reflect on this topic in a little more depth. Since editors Winkelman and Peek extol the need to explore divination practices “with full respect for, if not belief in, other cultural systems,” I was perplexed to read Winkelman’s proposal “that spirits be understood as fundamental operations of the brain and mind and as manifestations of an ‘indigenous psychology’ reflecting internalized psychosocial and cognitive structures.” In fact, his psychological interpretations left me questioning his self-proclaimed respect for and belief in other cultural systems. According to Winkelman, “The perception of the world as having spirits results from the inevitable consequence of the human tendency to perceive the unknown ‘other’ as having qualities like our own self … we perceive the world as being like ourself, animating the world with human qualities. These human qualities of identity and intentionality—disembodied from our physical self—produce animism, the primordial human perception of a spirit world.” To me, Winkelman’s comments appear to be just another example of the hegemonic approach commonly used by Western anthropologists to explain away the ontological status of spirits.
Why do some Western academics seem so recalcitrant when it comes to accepting the existence of spirits? Why—if they claim to treat other cultures respectfully—can’t they accept the validity of those culture’s central beliefs? Could it be that taking seriously those beliefs would threaten the comfort they find in their own cultural belief system—that of scientific materialism? As Eduardo Duran has so perceptively remarked: “The study of colonized peoples [or other traditional tribal peoples] must take on a ‘lactification’ or whitening in order for the produced knowledge to be palatable to the academy.… When Western subjectivity is imposed … not only will the phenomenon under scrutiny evade the lens of positivism, but further hegemony will be imposed on the community in question.… A postcolonial paradigm would accept knowledge from differing cosmologies as valid in their own right, without their having to adhere to a separate cultural body for legitimacy” (Duran and Duran, 1995, pp. 4-7).
To trivialize another culture’s belief in the existence of spirits as “externalization of unconscious cognitive processes” exemplifies what Duran speaks of: the attempt to validate the knowledge claims of cultural traditions in terms of a different cultural paradigm—in this case, Western psychology. Treating indigenous peoples’ beliefs in this condescending manner while assuming that their worldviews can be exhaustively explained in the terms of our Western scientific worldview conveniently relieves us from the burden of having to question our own cultural assumptions. It also prevents us from seriously considering the possibility that we might have something valuable to learn from the practices and beliefs of indigenous traditions around the world.
Despite the fact that the book’s editors sometimes fall short of their goals to honor emic perspectives and to respect other culture’s epistemologies, many students and professionals in the field of anthropology may find Divination and Healing to be of value, insofar as it provides new and insightful material that should contribute to a better understanding of divination practices and, especially, their role in treating illnesses. It should be mentioned that the editors’ selection of essays is tilted in favor of African divinatory systems—five of the eleven studies in this collection focus on African divinatory practices. Nonetheless, given the prevailing shortage of ethnographic research on divination systems, this scholarly collection of essays certainly should advance our knowledge of this neglected field.
Reference: Duran, Eduardo, and Bonnie Duran. 1995. Native American Postcolonial Psychology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Christian Dombrowe, Ph.D., is a research scholar focusing on the cross-cultural psychology of religious and shamanic healing practices.
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