The young king Kwet aPe of the Kuba, seen here with ANTI-GOD CHARMS fashioned for him by a travelling Nsappa Sap (Songye) sorcerer to break the GOD DOOM CURSE on his dynasty.
From Vansina's Being Colonized: The Kuba Experience in the Rural Congo, 1880-1960
Interested parties (my brother and my roommate) have informed me that the passing reference to Africanist philosopher Thaddeus Metz in the previous part of this readalong was "out of place" and delivered with "a shockingly pretentious off-handedness." This was fantastic news for my future as a loser with an rpg blog, so I've decided to follow up the win by employing the most annoying method possible to explain what I meant by relational personhood and the Basongye - an extended book excerpt: "There are two ways to be part of or party to a communal relationship, either as a subject or an object. Being a subject involves identifying with others and exhibiting solidarity with them oneself. A being can be a subject of communal relationship insofar as it can think of itself as a ‘we’, cooperate with others, help others, and act for their sake out of sympathy. In contrast, a being can be an object of such a relationship insofar as characteristic human beings could think of it as part of a ‘we’, advance its goals, benefit it, and act for its sake out of sympathy. Note that having the capacity to be an object of such a relationship does not imply that a being would (or even could) respond to any friendly engagement by another, at least not in any way as a subject...Having spelled out what a communal, harmonious, or friendly relationship is, and indicated what is involved in having the capacity to be part of one, it is now time to present my favoured principle of right action. I do so in part by contrasting it with other prominent Afro-relational principles considered above (6.3). First, instead of focusing on an actual relationship as the highest or greatest good that is foundational to morality, I deem the capacity for it to be what is superlatively good for its own sake and bestows a moral status. It is not a communal relationship itself towards which we fundamentally have duties; instead, we have them towards individuals capable of it. Furthermore, individuals have a full moral status or a dignity, not because they are in fact members of a communal relationship—say, are part of a family; instead, they have it because they by their nature are able to be subjects and objects of such a relationship. By my account, individual entities are what are ultimately owed moral treatment for their own sake, but they are so in virtue of a modal-relational property, their ability to commune with others, which contrasts with intrinsic properties such as the capacity to feel pleasure or act autonomously (cf. 8.4)."
The above is from Metz's book-length attempt to answer V. Y. Mudibe's call for a reimagining of ideas from Bantu Philosophy by Tempels - A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics in and beyond the Continent - and I think it actually succeeds in providing an account of personhood and moral agency that would be familiar to most folks from the precolonial miombo-belt and the Great Lakes both. I don't think that the concept of the bandoshi ("witches") really tracks internally outside of this framework, so it's good to be aware of moving forward.
Class II - Bwanga
Pastoral Magics (Lukando)
Lukando (pl. nkando) might be called "economic” magic - it's concerned with farming; at least three varieties are known in connection with protection of crops in the field:
- The first makes impossible for a potential thief to move after he has touched produce which he intends to steal; he is thus trapped until the owner arrives.
- The second makes it possible for the owner to exist simultaneously in the village as himself and in his field as a snake. When a potential thief arrives in the field, the owner-snake appears and is impossible to kill; the thief thus knows he is opposed by magic and flees. Bilocation and an invincible snake form appear in farming magic - reminder of the differences in categorization methods. This also interacts in a cool way with the Songye belief that a person fearing the theft of a soul can place one or more of them into a fingernail or similarly removable part of the body to "store" it while going about their business, mentioned in passing previously.
- The result of the third type is that when the potential thief touches something he is attempting to steal, he is attacked by invisible insects which torment him until he confesses - the sorcerer uses leaves of the kampesese tree, leaves of the mpesha vine, and a piece of the tatwe fish, placing the mixture in a fish trap stored in the home. This form also guards against crop-destroying anti-social magics.
Other ones are general crop improvement magics, including the "sharing magic" of the firstfruits collective feast and the Stranger's Bowl ritual - which included a prominent position for the kitesha - a group of gender non-conforming people that would probably be called MtF trans folks today (though that misses nuances in the way the kitesha of Lupupa Ngye discussed their own gender.)
Rainshaping (Kulala kwa mpeshi)
Kulala kwa mpeshi ("to sleep" "of the" "rain") is a means of controlling rain - not specifically protection-oriented but is generally of a kindly, pro-social intent. The specialist takes four leaves of the mulolo weed and places them on top of each other with two tips one way and two tips the other. She then rolls them into a bundle lengthwise. and spits on them. If she wishes to prevent the rain, she waves the leaves in his left hand; if she wishes to make the rain fall immediately, she puts the leaves in water; if she wishes to make the rain fall after a short wait, she holds the leaves a while and then throws them away. An interesting bit - ancestor spirits will not allow this magic to be used to create floods or rot crops with overwatering.
The Lightning Shield (Bwanga bwa mpeshi )
Bwanga bwa mpeshi (s. manga lwa mpeshi) has two major and, according to a very few, one minor, functions. Most importantly, it protects a house and the family members against the malevolent use of lightning. It also protects against accidental lightning strikes (one of the few instances in which the concept of lightning-as-accident is used), and some say that it protects against witches, though this last interpretation is rare. The magic apparatus is constructed by a sorcerer who digs a hole in the ground, places a magic potion in it, and covers it with an overturned clay pot of local manufacture or a dome of clay shaped like an overturned pot. No one in Lupupa Ngye was able to make this magic when Merriam visited and thus the material placed in the hole is unknown - a specialist from the villages of Mona, Basanga, or Sankia had to be engaged and paid a chicken for his services. You do get a chicken back if the magic doesn't work, btw.
When lightning begins striking close, the owner must tip up the pot and pour cold water into the hole and onto the magic mixture; this will calm the storm and prevent lightning from striking his house. The equation of "cool" and "calming" is a frequent one in the minds of the Lupupans and is powerful across the miombo-belt. Sin in terms we are likely to be familiar with is a nonsense concept in the worldviews concerned and should typically be replaced with questions of spiritual heat and coolness.
Harmstifling (Kumbakabamba)
Kumbakabamba is a frequently used magic which protects you from being wounded. The actual mechanism in this widely known, though the exact form depends on the protection being granted. In one, intended for wartime, the practitioner heats a piece of rubber with a piece of iron, and then eats the rubber - this protects against being wounded with a knife, lance, or bullet. Metal in general, possibly. Another sort helps keep folks working up in trees from falling damage. The general rule appears to be that the variant requires the use of a symbolic representation of the harm-causing agent to be destroyed or consumed in some fashion. It's related to, but distinct from, more general healing magics.
Wholeness-Work (Bukishi)
Bukishi is carried out by a sorcerer in the public presence and for the public good. A hole is dug in the center of the village and unknown ingredients are placed in it. Individuals can then make requests at the site, but these must be of a general nature and for the good of the village as a whole - for example, protection against malefactors or against illness in the village or the fostering of harmony between community members. This is a good Congolese example of the kinds of public healing for collective problems (ebizibu ebwawamu) such as famine, epidemics and warfare that formed the base of group organization around the Great Lakes. In the Ganda case, much like here, these conditions required that community members collaborate in a concerted effort to ensure their collective well-being. They pursued this objective by engaging the area’s dominant spiritual entities, which maintained a connection to founding ancestors whose graves were located at the nearby burial grounds (kijja). These two features – a sacred site and a burial ground – together constituted a Ganda clan’s primary estate/butaka, which "belonged to the whole clan" and served as a meeting point for "those who believed in their totems" to "beat the drums and call the spirits which protected the lives of all descendants". The activities undertaken at these gatherings, which included large-scale practices of spirit possession, drew upon the idea that the public recognition of common spiritual entities generated the conditions for collective prosperity. This concept of public healing is really well-explored in Neil Kodesh's fantastic book Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda on reinterpreting lineage models of clanship and I think drawing on those examples to contextualize these Songyeland ones can be helpful.
Unclear Woven Magic?? (Emanya)
The use and composition of emanya (s. & pl.) remain in doubt, since no one in Lupupa Ngye knew how to make it (the consequences of Belgian rule) and informants differed as to its use. Some say that its form is a woven ball into which a magic mixture is placed for success in war; others indicate that the form is that of a small basket about the size of the palm of the hand, into which a magic mixture is placed and then eaten to prevent the individual's being poisoned. In the first case, the magic would be regarded as a general good, in the second a protective.
Contracting a Wizard Killer (Ngo)
Another one where just posting the section might be the best thing:
It does speak for itself, but I'll just add that a good deal of regional "punishment" works on a scheme like this. People are rarely considered fully accountable for their actions, thanks to the vast number of influences seen and unseen working on them - ancestors and family and gods of the wood and kings. Free will is kind of a moot question, our choices reflect more than our will. In light of that position, much of the moral justification for punishment takes the form of a sort of harm reduction argument rather than a truly retributive one. There are some exceptions, like in the case of the highly bureaucratized Kuba Kingdom, but even then there was a distinct split between the chiefly courts and the more common moots of law. Interestingly, a closely related position has recently been presented in a new book by ethicist/philosopher Gregg Caruso (maybe most famous for debating fellow philosopher Daniel Dennet on questions of free will in what eventually became the full-length book Just Deserts) titled Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice. Might be worth exploring in a future post, though it will mostly be pointing at the book and hollering when I recognize a thing related to precolonial Africa in it.
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