Divination is an attempt to form, and possess, an understanding of reality in the present and additionally, to predict events and reality of a future time. Divination has been practiced in African societies for millennia. Divination might be thought of as a social phenomenon, and is central to the lives of many in Africa.Issue 46 of Semeia studies
Central Africa
Angola Amongst the Ambundu people, a diviner is known as a kimbanda, while they are known as an nganga amongst the Kongo people. In northeast Angola and neighboring regions of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, some diviners practice basket divination.
Burundi A number of individuals who are divinators within Burundi, use a lance which is composed of copper, to divine.
Cameroon The Kapsiki and Higi people of Cameroon use crabs for divination.Volume 50 of African Studies The Mambila use both crabs and spiders (see Mambila spider divination and Zeitlyn 2020Mambila Divination: Framing Questions, Constructing Answers (Routledge Studies in Anthropology) 2020. London: Routledge. ), and in the forest zone spiders are widely used in the form called nggam.
Central African Republic One method utilised by the Zandé people, is the poison-chicken method, in this, a chicken is administered poison, and the effects with regards to consequent mortality or survival of the creature determines the divination. This method is named Benge.
When a divinater has a sickened person to treat, the tribal group Nzakara makes a divination from asking question, which have either an affirmation or negation (i.e. either a yes or no answer), as a response (R. Devisch citing Retel-Laurentin;1974).
The Democratic Republic of Congo
The diviners of the Pende use instruments for divination.
The Yaka people contain individuals who divine.Volume 50 of African Studies Yaka divination, which is mediumistic, originated in the ngoombu cult.
A. Almquist studied the Pagibeti, R. Devisch studied the Yaka, while the country was known as Zaire (pre-August 1992).
East Africa
Djibouti Afar Divination plays a part in the lives of the nomadic Afar people, who range over Ethiopia, and Eritrea, but whose members are greatest within Djibouti (c. 2013).
Eritrea Eritrean witch-doctors also participate in divination....Eritrean witch doctors to drive evil spirits away from individuals suffering from mental health problems. Witch doctors involved in the act of divination .... (open link shows multiple sources)
Ethiopia Among the Bertha, divination practices including the throwing of bones of wild animals (osteomancy) and also consultation of special books.Boki Tolasa, and Missaye Mulatie Mengstie. Perceived causes, diagnosis methods and treatment practices of mental illness among traditional healers of the Berta community in Assosa, Ethiopia. International Journal of Social Psychiatry. 2023;69(3):639-645. doi:10.1177/00207640221128163 Among the Hamar, a diviner throws a pair of sandals and predicts the future based on how they fall.Strecker, Ivo. "Political discourse in an egalitarian society: the Hamar of Ethiopia." African Yearbook of Rhetoric 10, no. 1 (2020): 57-64. Among the Me'en, there are specialists who read the entrails of a slaughtered animal, haruspication.Abbink, Jon. "Reading the entrails: analysis of an African divination discourse." Man (1993): 705-726.
Amhara society holds a strong history of divination. Within the tribe, there are 4 main belief systems. The first system is primarily focused on the tenets of Christianity and all of its entities. The second system is composed of a belief of possessive spirits known as "zar". The third system centers around a special, cursed group of people known as the budu, who divine through use of their eyes and facial expressions. Lastly, the fourth system focuses on the belief of malicious spirits known as "satan" or "ciraq" that are unavoidable and enjoy wreaking havoc on innocents.
An Ethiopian ethnic group associated with the Amhara known as buda are thought to possess the "evil eye": a divination symbol capable of casting spells and misfortune with just a glance or facial expression. "Evil eye spells" are believed to be the cause of multiple maladies such as "wasting sickness, domestic accidents, infertility, plain bad luck, sick livestock, and blighted crops." The use of the evil eye is widely believed to be witchcraft steeped in envy or covetousness of another's possessions, status, or gain. As a result, those believed to be "cursed" with the evil eye are cast down to the lowest social level within Ethiopian community settings.
Spirit possession is another strong tenet of Amharan divination techniques. Special spirits known as zar are called by Amharan shamans in an effort to "heal" effected tribe members from a number of afflictions. The most common patients of zar healing are said to be "women who feel neglected in a man's world in which they serve as hewers of wood and haulers of water..." It is a form of spiritism known and practiced in Nubia, Egypt, Sudan, between Jewish Ethiopians, ancient Persia and Iran. The use of Persian Zara to import African slaves spread this cult in Muscat, in the Ottoman Empire and Arab countries facing the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf (including Baghdad, Mecca, Medina and Karbala). Cults whose names are etymologically linked to shatana (the Devil) were also discovered in Chad, among the Digo in South Kenya, the Tonga and Ndembu in Zambia, the bori in Nigeria and North Africa, as well as the Iamadsha in Morocco. The bodiless and invisible spirits are used to be involved when believers "face difficult circumstances such as marital conflicts, gender and social inequalities or in response to social and cultural changes."
Amharan diviners also utilize a method which is known as awdunigist as a means of "astrological numerology". Divination is made by counting stars in the night-sky. (R. Devisch citing Young; 1977).
Kenya
Divination specialism exists in Kenya.
The Nandi diviners, known as "Chepsageinik" or "Kibarbarinik" or "Keeriik". Those who can see beyond - they are both diviners and locators. They can locate where the lost items, money or animals are. They use some small pieces of round stones called Barbarek which they put in a certain calabash, shake them and throw them out. After which they study them as per the direction each one took and give the answers either to the cause of illness or where about of the animals. Some may use the animals intestines to predict epidemic in the society or the blessings coming to the community. Mbiti states that 'when things go wrong people try to find the causes, and after these causes are believed to be human agents using magic, sorcery or witchcraft' (2010), p. 170. They always do not stop at only what or who caused things to go wrong. They engage to put it right what has gone wrong the soonest possible. When they want to use an animal, they do not kill by cutting the neck but by suffocating the animal. Then the specialists took to their business of skinning the animal with a lot of care to avoid the shedding of blood. Diviners remove the intestines and study them carefully the pattern of the clotted blood and give their results. Divination is an incredibly rich area for anthropological research—in fact, I would argue that there is no richer ethnography of a culture than the study of its divination system. In a very real sense, as the Yoruba of Nigeria explicitly state about their system of Ifa, a divination system constitutes a people's "book of knowledge" wherein their history and cultural guidelines are maintained.Philip M. Peek 2013, The Silent Voices of African Divination, Indiana University Press, 2011, p. 1.
The Giriama and Swahili of Kenya contain individuals who practice divination (D. Parkin 1991). Swahili use the mostly astrological and numerological text, Falak, to divinate, based on an earlier text 'ilm al-Falak, which was used by Arabic and Omani to teach Africans astronomy and astrology. Giriama society is split into three main divination categories. First is the kaya, the elders of the society, in which many ritualistic and cultural traditions are held. Secondly, "ritual practitioners", or shaman, who provide spiritual support to Giriama entrepreneurs. Lastly, there are the high social class diviners who combine their skilled use of divination with politics to achieve high political capital and influence. Many Giriama report being afflicted by "spirit possession" of Islamic ghosts who aim to convert Giriama to Islam. Such accounts report "symptoms of possession involv[ing] somatic reactions that force Giriama into Muslim food avoidance patterns".
In Malindi, spirit-medium diviners are known as aganga a mburuga. Aganga a kuvoyera are both diviners and healers, who are additionally experts in locating witchcraft. This last capacity is thought important because of business situations giving rise to accusations of witchcraft.
The diviner (c.1904–1986) in the Luo is known as ajuoga.M.A. Nyagolo - file:///C:/Users/GGA/Downloads/Nyagode_The%20function%20of%20divination%20and%20the%20roles%20of%20Ajuoga.pdf The function of Divination and the roles of Ajuoga (Diviner-Doctor) in the changing society of the Luo of Western Africa 1904–1986 Nairobi University, December 1987. Retrieved December 22, 2016.Joshua Hammer - A Journey to Obama's Kenya Smithsonian magazine May 2012. Retrieved December 22, 2016 (Barack Obama). Ajuoga has the meaning, juok only or just juok (J. Harries 2012).(cf. University of Birmingham & https://www.vulnerablemission.org/) The ajuoga are also known as night-runners.TUKO.co.ke kenyan-naked-night-runners-plead-government-support TUKO.co.ke access-date: December 23, 2016M. Kaluoch - Homa-Bay-night-runners-in-trouble nation.co.ke June 11, 2015 access-date: December 23, 2016official website of the County Government of Homa Bay access-date: December 23, 2016
One investigation found within the Kaya area (of the Mijikenda peoples) most diviners were male, while within the Magarini area they were female. In Malindi circa 2009, most diviners were female.
Nilotic people of the Sudan
In cases and situations where ill and hurt or harm has been done by a sorcerer or suspected sorcerer, divination is used to both confirm or deny the presence of sorcery and if a sorcerer is found to be responsible, to then identify the sorcerer.
Protection from sorcery is afforded by a diviner by recourse to amulets, for which the diviner might take payment for, or alternatively, the diviner might assist with the direct punishment of a sorcerer by occult means, for the explicit reason of effecting a cure for the affliction.
J.W. Burton made a study of the practice of divination of these peoples, particularly the Atuot.
A belief held by the Atuot is of behaviour that is deemed improper causing disharmony in a world that is harmonious, and the punishment of sickness, ignorance and death is made by God, which is only alleviated by divination.
The faqih of Muslim societies, who is the theologian and jurist thought the most learned,O. Roy, A. Sfeir (2007) – The Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism, pp. 396-, Columbia University Press, . Retrieved December 29, 2015. also fulfills a role as a diviner.
Uganda