And the
Bantu wishes they would not and is perpetually saying so in his
prayers, a large percentage whereof amounts to "Go away, we don't
want you." "Come not into this house, this village, or its
plantations." He knows from experience that the spirits pay little
heed to these objurgations, and as they are the people who must be
attended to, he develops a cult whereby they may be managed, used,
and understood. This cult is what we call witchcraft.
As I am not here writing a complete work on Fetish I will leave Nzam
on one side, and turn to the inferior spirits. These are almost all
malevolent; sometimes they can be coaxed into having creditable
feelings, like generosity and gratitude, but you can never trust
them. No, not even if you are yourself a well-established medicine
man. Indeed they are particularly dangerous to medicine men, just
as lions are to lion tamers, and many a professional gentleman in
the full bloom of his practice, gets eaten up by his own particular
familiar which he has to keep in his own inside whenever he has not
sent it off into other people's.
I am indebted to the Reverend Doctor Nassau for a great quantity of
valuable information regarding Bantu religious ideas - information
which no one is so competent to give as he, for no one else knows
the West Coast Bantu tribes with the same thoroughness and sympathy.
He has lived among them since 1851, and is perfectly conversant with
their languages and culture, and he brings to bear upon the study of
them a singularly clear, powerful, and highly-educated intelligence.
I shall therefore carefully ticket the information I have derived
from him, so that it may not be mixed with my own. I may be wrong
in my deductions, but Dr. Nassau's are above suspicion.
He says the origin of these spirits is vague - some of them come into
existence by the authority of Anzam (by which you will understand,
please, the same god I have quoted above as having many names),
others are self-existent - many are distinctly the souls of departed
human beings, "which in the future which is all around them" retain
their human wants and feelings, and the Doctor assures me he has
heard dying people with their last breath threatening to return as
spirits to revenge themselves upon their living enemies. He could
not tell me if there was any duration set upon the existence as
spirits of these human souls, but two Congo Francais natives, of
different tribes, Benga and Igalwa, told me that when a family had
quite died out, after a time its spirits died too. Some, but by no
means all, of these spirits of human origin, as is the case among
the Negro Effiks, undergo reincarnation. The Doctor told me he once
knew a man whose plantations were devastated by an elephant. He
advised that the beast should be shot, but the man said he dare not
because the spirit of his dead father had passed into the elephant.
Their number is infinite and their powers as varied as human
imagination can make them; classifying them is therefore a difficult
work, but Doctor Nassau thinks this may be done fairly completely
into: -
1. Human disembodied spirits - Manu.
2. Vague beings, well described by our word ghosts: Abambo.
3. Beings something like dryads, who resent intrusion into their
territory, on to their rock, past their promontory, or tree. When
passing the residence of one of these beings, the traveller must go
by silently, or with some cabalistic invocation, with bowed or bared
head, and deposit some symbol of an offering or tribute even if it
be only a pebble. You occasionally come across great trees that
have fallen across a path that have quite little heaps of pebbles,
small shells, etc., upon them deposited by previous passers-by.
This class is called Ombwiri.
4. Beings who are the agents in causing sickness, and either aid or
hinder human plans - Mionde.
5. There seems to be, the Doctor says, another class of spirits
somewhat akin to the ancient Lares and Penates, who especially
belong to the household, and descend by inheritance with the family.
In their honour are secretly kept a bundle of finger, or other
bones, nail-clippings, eyes, brains, skulls, particularly the lower
jaws, called in M'pongwe oginga, accumulated from deceased members
of successive generations.
Dr. Nassau says "secretly," and he refers to this custom being
existent in non-cannibal tribes. I saw bundles of this character
among the cannibal Fans, and among the non-cannibal Adooma, openly
hanging up in the thatch of the sleeping apartment.
6. He also says there may be a sixth class, which may, however only
be a function of any of the other classes - namely, those that enter
into any animal body, generally a leopard. Sometimes the spirits of
living human beings do this, and the animal is then guided by human
intelligence, and will exercise its strength for the purposes of its
temporary human possessor. In other cases it is a non-human soul
that enters into the animal, as in the case of Ukuku.
Spirits are not easily classified by their functions because those
of different class may be employed in identical undertakings. Thus
one witch doctor may have, I find, particular influence over one
class of spirit and another over another class; yet they will both
engage to do identical work. But in spite of this I do not see how
you can classify spirits otherwise than by their functions; you
cannot weigh and measure them, and it is only a few that show
themselves in corporeal form.
There are characteristics that all the authorities seem agreed on,
and one is that individual spirits in the same class vary in power:
some are strong of their sort, some weak.
