Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual

by Victor Turner

Drawing on two and a half years of field work, Victor Turner offers two thorough ethnographic studies of Ndembu revelatory ritual and divinatory techniques, with running commentaries on symbolism by a variety of Ndembu informants. Although previously published, these essays have not been readily available since their appearance more than a dozen years ago. Striking a personal note in a new introductory chapter, Professor Turner acknowledges his indebtedness to Ndembu ritualists for alerting him to the theoretical relevance of symbolic action in understanding human societies. He believes that ritual symbols, like botanists' stains, enable us to detect and trace the movement of social processes and relationships that often lie below the level of direct observation.

Genres: Anthropology, Africa, Religion

354 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1975

About the author

Victor Witter Turner was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals, and rites of passage. His work, along with that of Clifford Geertz and others, is often referred to as symbolic and interpretive anthropology.

Reviews

[Meghan Fidler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Victor Turner is one of the great ethnographers. In this text, Turner examines the structure and properties of symbolic objects used in Ndembu divination (The Ndembu are a group of people who live in Zambia, in Southern Africa). By explaining the meaning behind material form of objects and the organization which surrounds their deployment, Turner demonstrates a solid and rational epistemology. Residing within systems of social organization regarded as 'backward' or 'archaic' by the gun-swinging economic-restructuring Westerner are worlds forgotten (like many things) in the post-modern era, lessons for us to relearn.
“The more esoteric a man’s knowledge, the more he will tend to regard that item as a sign, and the more readily will he be able to allocate meanings to it.”

"Since death, disease and misfortune are usually ascribed to tensions in the local kin group, expressed as personal grudges charged wit the mystical power of sorcerer/witchcraft, or as beliefs in the punitive action of ancestors spirits which intervene in the lives of their surviving kin, diviners try to elicit form their clients responses which give them clues to the pattern of current tensions in their groups of origin. Divination therefore becomes a form of social analysis, in the course of which hidden conflicts between persons and factions are brought to light, so that they may be dealt with by traditional and institutionalized procedures.”