Radio Free Beszel

Witchcraft's Reason

Alphonse Season 1 Episode 18

We need someone to blame. When something bad happens, we don't want to hear that it's because of chance or nature, because then it's meaningless. We want a social explanation. That's what witchcraft delivered for the Azande people, studied by Edward Evans-Pritchard,

For the Azande, everyday misfortunes are caused by witchcraft. If you get sick, and the illness gets progressively worse, that's because of witchcraft. There are witches all around. Their envies and jealousies lead witches to bewitch friends, neighbours, even family members.

To us, this belief seems irrational. But it is no more so than our confidence in science or technology. We don't understand most technology, but we have experts who do, and we take their word for it. The Azande have experts too, and ways to identify witches. Suspected witches even effectively confess to the deed. And their experts can even conduct an autopsy to discover whether someone was a witch.

The only thing missing is a mechanism - the actual method that a witch uses to arrange it so that your hurt yourself on a stump, for instance. That's the one thing that science offers that witchcraft does not. But do you know how your phone works? All the mechanisms involved, from electromagnetism to just-in-time software compilers? Of course not. So it is with the Azande. It is easy to pretend superior knowledge, but we are not so different.

Witchcraft among the Azande is real. Even if no one is truly bewitched, from oracles to autopsies to the rituals of an accused witch promising to desist, witchcraft is a real social institution. As an example from a foreign culture, it provides us with an illustration of how social constructions work. In the next episode, I will bring that home, to a more familiar construction: race.

See E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande.

0:01
Good evening. This is Radio
Free Beszel. I am

0:04
Alphonse. Tonight: the
meaning of witchcraft.

0:09
Edward Evans-Pritchard was
a British anthropologist

0:12
who in the late 1920s and
early 1930s went to

0:15
South Sudan and lived among
the Azande people.

0:19
And his work on their
ideas of witchcraft

0:22
has been extraordinarily
influential.

0:25
What the Azande believed
was that witchcraft

0:28
was all around. When they
experienced everyday

0:31
misfortunes, they blamed
witchcraft.

0:34
Evans-Pritchard gives
an example of a boy

0:37
who goes for a walk in the
woods. Now he knows he

0:40
has to be careful not to
hurt his foot on stumps,

0:43
but on this particular day
he makes a mistake.

0:46
He hits his foot on a stump
and it gashes him,

0:49
and within a couple of days
it becomes infected.

0:52
And that's when he and everybody
else knows that

0:56
he must have been bewitched.
To hurt one's foot

0:59
on a stump as normal, but
for it to be infected

1:02
is bad luck. And that kind
of bad luck can only be

1:06
caused by witches. Another
example that he gives

1:10
is about a grain storehouse.
Now this grain

1:13
storehouse is raised up on
the ground on stilts,

1:15
and those stilts can be
eaten over time by

1:18
termites. It's an ordinary
occurrence eventually

1:21
for grain store houses
to collapse if

1:23
the legs have been
eaten by termites.

1:26
It's also normal for men
in the heat of the

1:28
day to sit under the storehouse
for shade.

1:31
But on this particular occasion
when the storehouse collapses

1:35
killing some of the
people underneath,

1:37
that's an extraordinary
coincidence.

1:40
It must be a result of
witchcraft. Everybody

1:43
knows it. That's how
the azande thought.

1:47
But they didn't respond
the way Christians,

1:50
Europeans, Puritan New
Englanders did by trying

1:53
to find witches and burn
them or kill them.

1:56
They didn't see witches
as spawn of Satan.

1:58
They actually saw witchcraft
as something that was

2:02
inherited. Boys inherited
it from their fathers;

2:05
girls inherited it from
their mothers. And it

2:08
could actually be detected
physically after death.

2:12
If someone was suspected
of being a witch an

2:15
autopsy by an expert could
determine the truth

2:18
by examining the intestines
and looking

2:20
for specific kinds
of black marks.

2:22
They could confirm whether
someone was

2:24
a witch, or confirm
that they weren't.

2:27
So of course virtually
anybody could be a

2:30
witch. Communities were
full of witches.

2:32
Anybody living among the
Azande knew that some

2:34
of their friends or neighbors
or even people

2:36
in their family might be
witches. So if your

2:40
community is partly witches
you can't afford

2:43
to just eliminate them. You
can't afford to go to

2:46
war against them. You have
to find a way to get

2:48
along. And that's what the
Azande would do. They

2:51
didn't go hunting for witches
for no reason - no

2:55
they only went trying to
find if they were being

2:57
bewitched, if they had a
particular problem, if

3:00
it was clear that they were
the victim of a witch.

3:03
Then they would go, usually
to the poison oracle.

3:07
The poison oracle would
entail getting

3:09
a chicken and then naming
suspects. And

3:12
the suspects would be
friends, neighbours,

3:13
maybe sister wives -
people who might be

3:15
jealous or envious or
have some kind of

3:18
dislike for the person
who is the victim.

3:21
And then the chicken would
be given poison,

3:23
and depending on whether
the chicken died

3:26
you would know whether that
person was actually a witch.

3:30
Now the next step was
not for the victim

3:32
to go and confront the
witch face to face

3:34
that was too risky the
witch might actually

3:37
use his power to do something
bad to the victim

3:40
and the community
couldn't afford

3:41
that kind of confrontation.
confrontation.

3:43
So instead an intermediary
was sent. The

3:46
intermediary would take
a wing from the

3:48
chicken and he'd place it
in front of the door

3:51
of the accused witch. And
then he would call out

3:53
the witch and tell him
that the poison oracle

3:55
had identified him as bewitching
the victim,

3:58
and he would ask him to stop.
Imagine if you're in

4:02
that situation. You believe
in witchcraft. There's

4:06
evidence of it - after all
when people die, we

4:08
can find out physically whether
they were witches.

4:11
And other witches have been
found before. People

4:14
are bewitched all the time.
It's an ordinary

4:17
part of life. Mut when you
are accused, you're

4:19
shocked. You never thought
you were a witch.

4:23
But maybe you are. Maybe
you inherited that

4:26
witchcraft capability,
and although you don't

4:29
know about it, although
you don't get together

4:31
with the other witches
in the dark of night

4:33
in order to bewitch people,
maybe you actually

4:36
thought bad thoughts about
the victim. And your

4:39
capacity for witchcraft meant
that the person was

4:43
actually hurt. That could
be it. And if you say

4:46
I'm not a witch, you know
nobody will believe

4:48
you, because the poison
oracle never lies.

4:52
So instead what you
say is, I didn't

4:54
intend to do anything
bad to the victim,

4:57
and I'm certainly not going
to think anything bad

5:00
about them now. And then
there's a ritual that

5:02
you would do to indicate
that as a witch you're

5:05
going to stop. You would
take water into your

5:07
mouth and you'd blow it over
the chicken wing. And

5:11
then the issue was resolved.
Everybody's happy.

5:14
The victim has an explanation
for what happened

5:17
to him. He knows why he
got hurt. And the witch

5:21
has discharged his part
of the problem as well.

5:23
The case is closed the community
continues on.

5:28
Witchcraft here is performing
a very important

5:31
function. It's providing
a social explanation

5:34
when things go wrong. When
something bad happens

5:37
to you, when bad things
happen to good people,

5:40
it's not very satisfying to
say it's just bad luck

5:44
and there's no reason. Human
beings want a reason.

5:47
We feel cut adrift if
there's no reason. In

5:50
fact, the idea of there
being no reason is the

5:53
foundation of H. P. Lovecraft's
horror fiction.

5:56
The idea of cosmic horror
is that there are no

5:59
gods. The universe simply
does not care about

6:02
humanity. And Lovecraft
and many of his readers

6:05
found that terrifying. Well,
the Azande have a

6:08
solution. There are witches.
They live among us.

6:13
They cause our misfortunes.
And we have a remedy.

6:16
We have a way for dealing
with that problem that

6:19
does not disrupt the community.
Evans-Pritchard

6:22
said that in his time
among the Azande,

6:25
living as much as he could
like them, he found

6:27
that the material everyday
evidence of witchcraft

6:30
was so overwhelming that
he started to believe

6:33
it himself. He had difficulty
reminding himself

6:37
that in fact there
are no witches,

6:39
that witchcraft
is not real.

6:42
Now i know a lot of modern
people would say, oh

6:45
no, that's just myth and
superstition. But I want

6:47
to just give one other little
piece of evidence

6:50
that the Azande were not
irrational at all.

6:53
For when they wanted to be
absolutely sure about

6:55
what the poison oracle
was saying they would

6:58
do it twice. But the key
is, they expected the

7:01
result with the second chicken
to be the opposite

7:05
of the first. That's a very
clever way of double

7:08
checking to make sure that
the mechanism really is

7:11
working as an oracle and
it's not simply that the

7:14
poison is too powerful and
would kill any chicken,

7:17
for example. These people
were thoughtful, they

7:20
were intelligent, they had
evidence around them

7:22
all the time that witchcraft
happened. And it

7:26
solved a social and
psychological problem. How

7:30
are we so different? Rene
Girard in fact, in

7:33
his work on the scapegoat,
is partly inspired

7:36
by Evans-Pritchard's work
on the Azande. Girard

7:39
describes how the scapegoat
ritual addresses

7:42
a similar problem. The
scapegoat provides a

7:45
social explanation for
why bad things happen,

7:48
and it provides a ritual
for solving it. Although

7:51
obviously it's a much more
violent and destructive

7:54
ritual than the Azande
tradition of killing

7:56
a chicken and then asking
somebody to stop.

8:01
Given all of this, should
we think that we are

8:04
immune? After all, we have
the same need for

8:06
closure when something
really bad happens.

8:09
Not to say simply that
it's just random,

8:12
but to have a rational
social explanation.

8:15
When we talk about conspiracy
theories that's

8:18
what we're talking about.
But who's to say that

8:21
our society in general
does not accept things

8:23
similar to conspiracy theories
in order to give

8:26
social explanations for
bad things happening?

8:30
This episode actually leads
into a discussion of

8:33
that in the next episode.
In effect, this is the

8:36
third in a series of four
episodes talking about

8:40
race and racism in America.
The first episode

8:44
talked about the invention
of white privilege.

8:47
The second gave a critique
of the sociological

8:50
idea of social construction
to try to show how

8:54
social constructions are
actually anchored in

8:57
real practices and interactions
and relationships

9:00
- and witchcraft among the
Azande is exactly that.

9:05
Witchcraft isn't real in
the sense that human

9:08
beings can bewitch other
people, but it is real

9:11
in the sense that it's actually
a phenomenon in

9:14
a society that changes the
relationships among

9:17
people, that dictates that
one participate in

9:20
certain rituals, that solves
certain problems for

9:23
the society, for individuals,
for the community.

9:27
In that sense witchcraft
actually is real.

9:30
It really is socially
constructed in the

9:33
way I talked about in
the previous episode.

9:36
And next episode I'm going
to take that and talk

9:40
specifically about race.
This isn't my idea:

9:43
this connection was drawn
by a couple of

9:46
Afro-American scholars, Barbara
and Karen fields,

9:49
sisters, who wrote a book
called Racecraft

9:52
and that's going to be
my topic next time.

9:56
This is Alphonse for Radio
Free Beszel. www.beszel.ca.

10:03
Good night.