A Congolese Classification of Magic - I

I sometimes hang around worldbuilder spaces (I know, I know) focused specifically on magic and a thing that I've seen come up a fair amount is the question of classification. You're probably pretty familiar with the sort of topics discussed if you're looking at this, but an interesting variation that I stumbled across recently was a good-natured debate concerning the dominance of what we could annoyingly call something like ~neo-western paradigms~ when folks try to set up more structured magical systems. There's definitely merit to at least broadened forms of this point, so I thought that providing a guided tour through an ""out there"" example of a real-world system for classifying magical practice might make for some good clean edifying fun. I apologize in advance for the bad photos, I typically prefer to use PDF screenshots but this book hasn't been digitized yet and hunching over a desk with an old phone creates utilitarian results at best.  Behold! -

from Alan Merriam's An African World: The Basongye Village of Lupupa Ngye 

Merriam's research (though it really should be called the Merriams' research - Barbara Merriam was closely involved in collecting notes alongside her husband and did much of the excellent photography) was completed during the last year before independence, finishing up right around June 1960, but the finished book is definitely part of the terminal colonial/early post-independence golden age of revisionist ethnographic and historical research in much of the continent's interior. It was a brutally short renaissance, cut down well before its prime by intense squeezes on the fledgling university programs devoted to the craft and (often instigated, always contingent) instability in the many of the new countries concerned. Even this book was intended to be a relatively concise introduction to the thought-world of Lupupa Ngye's Basongye to prepare readers for a future two volumes on the music and art of the Songye along the silver tributary. Optimistic times. To this day, An African World remains the only major inquiry into Songye spirituality and a core source for reconstructive work on precolonial lifeways in the Southeastern Congo. 

It's worth questioning just how much of this was Merriam filtering the reports of his informants through a prism that forced the magical practice of the Lupupans into a more familiarly structured format, but tbh, I'm not overly worried here. Merriam dutifully reports his confusion at the placement of some elements and the vociferous responses of informants when asked if they meant to classify certain magics elsewhere, which to me implies that the whole of it isn't likely to have been cooked up by the man as an organizing tool. In any case, we don't have much else to work with, as mentioned above. Even Merriam couldn't get information on certain practices or formulas, since there were no fully-activated sorcerers (munganga) left in Lupupa Ngye by the time he visited.  

A Few General Notes

Merriam outlines three key distinctions that can be made between the first two classes, to which I have added a fourth and fifth at the top for overall clarity. 

• Data collected from Lupupa Ngye can't be generalized to all Basongye. Songye identity was a "dynamic, ephemeral phenomenon" in precolonial Kongolo, likely crystalized by the Luba Empire's attempts to set up new (more vertical) hierarchies upon arrival, and it's not even clear where to draw lines between fire king Bùki Kansimba's eastern Baluba conquerors and the Basongye they blended with.1
• The majority of Lupupan magic revolves around the first two classes: bakidyamuchi and bwanga. "Cultic operations" and the formal mask societies are relatively recent introductions into Songyeland from elsewhere in the Belgian Congo, largely arriving during the wave of healing movements that periodically swept the colony in response to immense societal pressures.2
• Bakidyamuchi is focused on actions that are initiated against something. Bwanga is typically reactive - whether countering action-oriented magic or providing some other protective service. 
• Bakidyamuchi always involves some sort of harmful intent, ranging from malicious mischief to killing, while bwanga counters this malignant intent and, where it is action-oriented itself, is a force for harmony.  
• Bakidyamuchi almost always involves individual action, that is, it is undertaken by an individual; bwanga is usually performed for the individual, sometimes communally, by a sorcerer/munganga. 

A friend who I discussed this with pointed out that "directed-offensive-malevolent-individually created vs counter-defensive-helpful-provided feels intuitive and familiar." Big agree, of course, even including the weird edge cases like lumoni magic here or others we'll see in Class II/bwanga. 

Class I - Bakidyamuchi

A thing to keep in mind as we go on here is that gaining the ability to utilize bakidyamuchi requires the murder of a family member, often several, with no exceptions. Anyone who can wield the powers below is invariably a kinslayer. That being said, instead of using terms like "black" or "evil" magic, bakidyamuchi is probably best labeled as an Antisocial Magic opposed to the Prosocial Magic of bwana. This is sort of an obvious point to Lupupans, who are fantastic examples of Metz's relational personhood and "rightness-through-friendliness," but it's a useful reminder for jabronis like us.

Witchery (Ndoshi) 

The first of the categories under bakidyamuchi are the fundamentals of the witch arts: the transformation process (kukyesa) that "carves out" a new witch and the unique powers that only witches can learn (mwanyi) like the hypnotic Witchlight or footless flight. Commanding the Tall Thin Ones (milungaeulu) isn't often described as a witch-specific power, but it can be. The nature of bandoshi and their skills is really a post on its own, but I'll try and cover it in an upcoming discussion of the types of magical technicians in this system. 

The Killing Crafts (Masende) 

These rituals are the cruel heart of bakidyamuchi, magic meant to slay other human beings. Masende is the sole province of full sorcerers, witches and Ones Against are not porous enough to use this category of practice. 

• Peshi rituals all center around killing people with lightning, a pretty common concern in occult traditions globally. Lightning is fucked. The oldest form is peshi a kantole and involves killing and burning a kantole (a forest robin/Stiphrornis - the greatest birdwatchers of all time, the Mbuti, have given these guys the delightful name tungulubei) alongside some other components. Gathering the ashes into a packet and speaking the name of the victim into it will call a small black cloud to you. Greet it politely and tell it who you want to die - the cloud will do its best. The other forms of peshi are variations on this basic formula. Peshi a kitufitufi adds a crushed kitufitufi beetle to the package - it's slower-acting than peshi a kantole but ensures a kill or torched dwelling if it acts. Peshi a lupete requires the ritual destruction of a special sort of knife, which is added to the usual ingredients. The resulting mixture is then spread on a different knife, allowing for finer control over the lightning strikes. 
• Needle To Murder Someone (Shingye ya Muninga) is a classic case of sympathetic magic. The sorcerer jabs a consecrated needle into a person's footprint to kill them, sometimes even immediately. Word to the wise, store your souls in a fingernail and avoid the embarrassment. 
• Ask of the Mulungu/Kilanda (Mushila wa Mulungu/Kilanda) involves going to a mulungu tree or kilanda tree to request that it imbue its bark with killing power, burning some, then using the ash as a magical trap. Spread the powder across their doorstep, and when they next walk across it, they instantly die or swell horrifically from the feet up before dying (respectively.) 
• I'm gonna let the book speak for this one:

The ambiguity is powerful.

• Lumoni is the strangest of the masende rituals - to gain this rare power, munganga must invert the vessel of power collection inside themselves, rendering them incapable of utilizing either masende or bwanga but granting the ability to sense if a masende ritual is in progress anywhere over a pretty large area. Wielders of lumoni were respected for their skill as arcane watchdogs but Merriam's informants pointed out that it was unlikely that a sorcerer would destroy their own ability to work magic. It was usually children of sorcerers, forced to awaken their skills early by the threat of attacks from rival munganga, who became lumoni users when the danger passed. While this seemed like a protective art to Merriam, the Lupupans placed it under this category since to gain it you must first have been initiated into a killing art, with the murder of family members that requires. A weird parallel to this can be found among Tamang ritual practitioners from Nepal, where prospective shamans who are rejected as students by the monkeylike mountain god(s) called ban jhakri gain a sort of clairvoyance in place of the powers they expected to recieve.3 Not much to add on that, just a cool similarity. 

The Heart Medicine (Buchi Bw'eshimba) 

There's another section I'd also like to present here as is, since I think it captures the vibe of bakidyamuchi as an Antisocial Magic very elegantly:

People who Are Against share a number of characteristics with witches, and this includes the transformation process (which will be discussed in connection with the witch process.) Suffice it to say at this point that in opting to be buchi, the individual must designate a member of his own family to be killed by the sorcerer - in fact, this person is changed into a new kind of being, an enslaved kiswikiswiki, which thereafter must do the bidding of its master (unless it BUSTS OUT!!! which it can do.) Kiswikiswiki are super interesting, but again, probably their own post alongside Tall Thin Ones. Buchi gives you one major power - transforming into animals - and a host of unclear minor ones. Buchi may be performed by a single person, like when an individual leaves a magic potion by someone's door causing him to become ill; or it may be carried out in groups, as when a number of buchi go to someone's field, turn themselves into animals, and destroy the crops. Individual buchi are fond of tampering with food by slipping potions into it, thus causing illness or bad luck. Witches and sorcerers can do anything buchi can and more, but it's easier to become One Against. 

Assorted Sorcerous Tricks

This entire section is a grab bag of stuff that the author's informants were not sure where to place, including reports of magic that causes hunting accidents and the like. The only part of this section that grabbed me was the fact that sorcerers are described as having a "poisoning" ability to cause rifts between people socially, splitting up friends and destroying marriages.  The strongest expressions of this poisoning cause whole villages to tear each other apart in a thousand petty vengances. This definitely leans into the particular type of fear that is attached to this class of magic for the Basongye. Antisociality! Cutting the bonds of community! Destroying the relational ability that defines humanity! It's a very effective sort of horror, imo.

Next time, we'll look at bwanga, the Prosocial Magic, and learn many esoteric football secrets. 

1 - Writing up real endnotes like Marcia does would detract from the laid-back air that I am neurotically attempting to cultivate, but there are some things worth listing for further reading, so I've settled for an informal (and comedically self-aware!!!!!) system of cites. Now that we're all together on this, Loffman's Church, State and Colonialism in Southeastern Congo, 1890–1962 contains a summary of current theories on Basongye ethnogenesis which factor in the effects of Luba conquest and colonial rule. 

2 - Discussed further in "A War Between Soldiers and Prophets": Embodied Resistance in the Colonial Belgian Congo, a really good read if you're interested in religious studies. 

3 - Yet another ethnography - Tibetan Shamanism: Ecstasy and Healing by Peters.