Witchcraft as Involuntary Harm-Doing

The appropriateness of the terms "witchcraft" and "sorcery" deserves some comment. Evans-Pritchard's classic distinction (1976 [1937]) between sorcery and witchcraft is now well known to be inappropriate for some societies (see Marwick 1965; Macfarlane 1970; Thomas 1971), including, some would argue, the Azande. Even where the partition between the two forms of malevolence is an emic one, there remains ambiguity and uncertainty in specific cases of perceived harm-doing. Among the Lese, the elders clearly distinguish between witchcraft and sorcery, as I have described these two concepts; younger people often refer to all malevolence as witchcraft. The latter usage of the term "witchcraft" may be due to a general belief that one who has power in one domain, say sorcery, will also have power in other domains and will be able to use that power in any way he or she wishes.

For example, when someone dies, the cause of death is almost always attributed to witchcraft, but when someone becomes ill the cause is less easily defined. Some people will say that witches are "at work," but by this they simply mean that very powerful forces are at work, and they may even include sorcerers in the category "witches." When witchcraft and sorcery are spoken of in the abstract there is far more uniformity than when they are appropriated to refer to actual ongoing instances of misfortune. One has to be careful about using these terms as if they were unambiguous or understood clearly and in the same way by all people.

My purpose from here on is to explore in more detail the opposition between witchcraft and sorcery in general and between involuntary and voluntary malevolence in particular. I believe that the distinction between witchcraft and sorcery can be useful for analytic purposes. I also believe that the distinction holds quite unambiguously with regard to the Lese definition of witchcraft and sorcery as mechanisms of harm-doing. Although people may not reach a consensus about the cause of an illness, they will not dispute the fact that witches harm only within the village, whereas sorcerers harm within or without—usually without. I begin with a general outline of witchcraft as involuntary malevolence and then go on to compare it with the Lese model of sorcery. The data on which this outline is based were gathered largely from older Lese men and women.

According to Evans-Pritchard (1976 [1937]), the Azande hold that witchcraft is a biological and hereditary phenomenon. It is biological in the sense that witchcraft is contained within the human body and can be discovered through postmortem examination of internal organs. Azande witchcraft is hereditary in that children inherit witchcraft substance from their same-sex relatives. The Lese, who live in the same region as the Azande, do not believe that witchcraft is inherited; rather, malevolent witches transmit their powers by forcing or tricking children into consuming a witchcraft substance called kunda . Only if a child eats kunda will he or she become a witch. A witch may either spit the substance into a child's mouth, or surreptitiously place it in a child's food. The child will then unknowingly consume the kunda, which will grow larger as the child grows. The larger the substance, the more powerful the witchcraft will be. My informants told me that this is the reason why witches are, as children, only disobedient and mischievous, whereas old witches are dangerous murderers (cf. Evans-Pritchard

1976:7–8).^[2] Although elder widows are thought to be especially dangerous as witches, I found little indication that one sex is in general more feared for witchcraft than the other.

Witches are always witches, and they act malevolently because they are witches. Although they may commit specific murders because they are jealous of the wealth or good fortune of certain members of their village, they will murder members of their own village regardless of whether or not they are provoked by intravillage inequalities. In this sense, witchcraft is an involuntary practice. Some witches kill more than others, however, and though witches cannot help being witches, they are believed to be able to limit the number of people they must kill in order to satisfy their appetite for human flesh. Sorcerers, however, can act at will. They are people who decide to act malevolently and use bad medicines. Referring largely to Evans-Pritchard's data on Azande witchcraft, Keith Thomas describes the distinction concisely:

Witchcraft is an innate quality, an involuntary personal trait, deriving from a physiological peculiarity which can be discovered by autopsy. The witch exercises his malevolent power by occult means, and needs no words, rite, spell, or potion. His is a purely psychic act. Sorcery, on the other hand, is the deliberate employment of maleficent magic; it involves the use of a spell or technical aid and it can be performed by anyone who knows the correct formula. (1971:463)

A Lese informant stated the distinction:

Not all people have kunda.^[3] If it is inside of you, you will know it, and you will eat people because this is what witches do. . . . You can be a sorcerer (hai-aru ) if you want to be. You must find the people with bad medicines, and tell them what you want to do. You will hurt women who refused you their vaginas, maybe you will hurt the husbands of those women, or maybe you will give your brother a disease. A woman wants to hurt her co-wife with bad medicine.

[2] Witch doctors (noko todu ) are an exception. They are witches who have in the past been given witchcraft substance by other witch doctors but have harnessed their powers to help victims of witchcraft. I point out here that the witch doctors act on their own behalf; their "good witchcraft" is considered to bear no relation to the other members of the witch doctor's clan. Although the clans of these doctors are said to be free of witches, they and their fellow clan members are susceptible to harm if witchcraft is introduced into the village by a new resident.

[3] The word kunda is used in a variety of ways. It is frequently used to mean witchcraft, or witch substance, and sometimes to mean witch or witches. Someone is said to be kunda-ani , to be with witches. Hai-kunda is a more common term used to mean "possessor of witches."

The important aspect about harm-doing revealed in this explanation is that while witchcraft activities are not necessarily motivated by conflict or malevolent intention, sorcery is always employed for specific purposes between people in conflict. Sorcerers are necessarily selective.