The work on Ndembu rituals is a contribution to the understanding of the meaning of ritual performances. The meaning of the act is combined in the rituals. Earlier, the focus of the religious and ritualistic studies was on the functions they perform. With Turner, the focus shifted to the symbolic aspects, to finding out the meaning of the rituals.
Turner book The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual is a collection of essays already published in various journals and
anthologies, and these essays are arranged in two sections: (1) mainly theoretical treatments of symbolism and witchcraft; and (2) descriptive accounts of aspects of some rituals. At the time of investigation (1950s), there were about 18,000 Ndembu in Winilunga district, dispersed in scattered villages of about a dozen huts over 7,000 square miles of deciduous woodland in Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) and Zaire (formerly Belgian Congo) in Africa. They are matrilineal and practice virilocal residence, and the oldest male matrikin of the senior genealogical generation is usually head of the village. The majority of local groups in Ndembu society are relatively mobile, transient and unstable.
Men, of their own choice, and women through marriage, divorce, widowhood and remarriage, constantly move from village to village and change in domicile. Men go where they have kin who are widespread over the region. Villages may break up and divide or disperse, members disperse and come together at another point of time, but the structural principle remains the same. The residential pattern
is influenced by matrilineal descent and virilocal marriage. Matriliny governs prior rights to residence, succession of office, and inheritance of property. Aman has right to reside with his matrilineal kin, primary or classificatory. He may live in his father’s village if mother lives with him there or if she does not, as a privilege granted to him by his father who has a right in his village matrilineage. This kind of residential pattern has implication that at a given time the village structure is made up of not only relationships between male matrilineal kin, but
also between these men and a variable number of matrilineal kinswomen who have returned to them after divorce or widowhood, bringing their children. There are two kinds of solidarity among the male kin: between fathers and sons and between brothers. These receive recognition in rituals.
Symbols:
Turner writes about ritual and symbol, “By “ritual” I mean prescribed formal behaviour for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in mystical beings or powers. The symbol is the smallest unit of ritual which still retains the specific properties of ritual behaviour; it is the ultimate unit of specific structure in a ritual context.” (1967:19). The symbols are objects, activities, relationships, events, gestures and spatial units in a ritual situation. The structure and properties or meanings of these ritual symbols may be inferred from (1) external form and observable characteristics; (2) interpretations offered by specialists and by laymen; (3) significant contexts largely worked by the anthropologist. The ritual symbols are stimuli of emotion, and they are at one and the same time referential and condensation symbols, each symbol is multireferential rather than unireferential. Ndembu regard some symbols dominant, and such of them are mainly two classes: first tree or plant in a series of plants, shrines in curative rituals. Both the classes of dominant symbols are
closely associated with non-empirical beings. Symbols instigate social action and even act as “force” and they have to be examined within the context of the specific ritual. The vernacular term for symbol, chinijikijilu, “to blaze a trail” by cutting marks on a tree with one’s axe or by breaking and bending branches to serve as guides back from the unknown bush to known bush to known path.
Turner writes, “A symbol, then, is a blaze or landmark, something that connects the unknown with the known” (48). About meaning of a symbol, he states, three levels must be distinguished: (1) the level of indigenous interpretations (or, briefly, the exegetical meaning); (2) the operational meaning and (3) the positional meaning. The first one is obtained by questioning the indigenous informants about the observed ritual behaviour, the second one is what the Ndembu do with the symbol, and not only what they say about it, and the third one is about what is derived from its relationship to other symbols in a totality whose elements acquire their significance from the system as a whole. The exegetical meaning of dominant symbol may be conceptualised in polar terms. One cluster can have a set of referents of gross physiological characters and on the other end these are referents to moral and social structure. For instance, milk tree stands at one end
for physiological aspects of breast feeding with affectual patterns and at another end matriliny.
In the paper on “colour classification in Ndembu ritual,” Turner deals with the problem in primitive classification. Against the earlier opinion of dualistic classification, like left and right, consanguineal and affinal, he argues that in African and other contexts also there are lateral symbolisms of other forms of dual classification. Among the Ndembu there is tripartite classification relating to white, red, and black colours. Like any form of dualism which contains a wider tripartite mode of classification, he finds white and red in close association
against the black. In Ndembu life-crisis rituals, there is mystery surrounding three rivers: the rivers of whiteness, redness and blackness. The white relates to or refers to mother, milk, semen, power and so on, and the redness relates to blood of women, animals and so on, whereas blackness is related to death. There are several other referents for these colours. However, the people clearly contrast white and black in antithetical way as goodness/badness; purity/lacking purity; lacking bad luck/lacking luck; life/death; health/disease and so forth. But white
and red form as a binary system and remain complementary to each rather than as antithetical pair. Such a kind of association is found in several societies, and examining some of them, Turner finds some interesting facts about the three colours. These colours represent products of human body emissions, heightened bodily experiences; heightened physical experience transcending the experiencer’s
normal conditions, experiences of social relationships. Black is particularly related to catabolism, decay, sleep or darkness. Finally Turner makes a strong case stating that these three colour stand for basic human experiences of the body associated with the gratification of libido, hunger, aggressive and excretory drives and with fear, anxiety, and submissiveness, they also provide a kind of primordial
classification of reality. This view contrasts Durkheim’s notion of social relations in relation with things.
In ‘betwixt and between: the luminal period in rites de passage’Turner considers the liminality – the transition from one position to the other – as an interstructural situation in the rites of passage. Though rites of passage are found in societies, they reach maximum expression in small scale societies. Structure he means the ‘structure of positions’ which is a relatively stable condition or state. In this state individuals or group or society are no longer classified and not yet classified.
Symbols represent this situation in many societies drawn from the biology of death, decomposition, catabolism and other physical processes that have negative tinge. In circumcision and puberty rituals the neophytes are structurally “dead” among the Ndembu. In some cases the transitional beings are particularly polluting since they are neither one thing nor another. In some other the neophytes find
connection of deities with superhuman powers. The neophytes are structurally invisible. The liminal processes are regarded as analogous to those of gestation, parturition and suckling. Sometimes incumbents experience many kinds of subordination or superordination. In many societies, the neophytes acquire special spiritual knowledge through sacra which is classified as: (1) exhibition, “what is shown”, (2) actions, “what is done”, and (3) instructions, “what is said”. Turner considers the liminality of rites of passage as the building block of culture as
individuals pass out of and re-enter the structural realm.
In ‘witchcraft and sorcery: taxonomy versus dynamics’, while critically reviewing the book Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa (Middleton and Winter, 1963) Turner finds that anthropologists are concerned with exhibition of “structures” of social relations, ideas, and values and cultural analysis. He suggests they move forward employing process theory employing a construct “action-field” reproducing the structure or “web of relations” identifying goals, motivations, rationality, meaning and so on. There should be consensus on the definition of
witchcraft and sorcery, now anthropologists have used these concepts interchangeably. He urges them to engage in unraveling structure of the social system in its dynamic process while analysing the components at cultural level.
Rites:
In ‘Muchona the hornet, Interpreter of religion’ Turner shows the ritual specialist’s knowledge about plants and animals in the area, their medicinal properties, symbolic value, their meanings and interpretations. Such persons are great resource for getting insights into the peoples’ interpretation of their world. In the chapter ‘Mukanda: the rite of circumcision’ he provides detailed account of the process and analysis of the Ndembu’s circumcision ritual which is quite complex, employing field theory. Before describing the ritual organisation, he
gives a detailed account of the social field and its properties. These include the differences in the size, origins, and extant interests of villages, their internal segmentation, marital interconnections of the residents, sociospatial distances between them, and other aspects of their interdependence with and independence from one another. Further, customary relationships between categories of people
and psychological differences among the individuals and so on in the field are also indicated. These properties are significant in terms of sponsoring role of a village, identification of Establisher, and Senior Circumciser and their assistants.
The selection of these persons involves conflicts, association of groups, and change of alignments, differences and resolution of the disagreements. The rite of Mukunda has three main phases: kwing’ija – causing to enter, kung’ula – seclusion and kwidisha – the rites of return. The sequence of the episodes is as follows. After the formal invitation to Senior Circumciser the activities of the ritual begin under kwig’ija, the assembling of food and beer at the sponsoring village and clearing of a site for the camp of the novices’ parents and kin; these
are preliminary. The activities that takes place on the day before circumcision are: the collection of ku-kolisha strengthening medicine, the sacralisation of the camp and sponsoring village, prayer to the ancestors of the sponsoring village, sacralisation of the ijiku Makukanda fire by the Establisher, the setting up of a chishing’a pole, sacralisation of the circumciser’s fire, and the night dance in which novices’ parents take a leading role. On the day of circumcision, there are ritual washing, preparing novices’ food, procession to the circumcision site, the
beating of drums by guardian, the erection of mukoleku gate, preparation of the circumcision site, the hyena, the circumcision, ritual washing and feeding of novices. The kung’ula, the next phase, includes the building of the lodge where the boys are secluded till they are healed which takes around two to four weeks.
During this time, there is appearance of makishi masked dancers, training and esoteric teaching of the novices. In the final phase, kwidisha – the rites of return, on the first day, the activities include assembly at katewu kanyanya, the small shaving place where medicine is applied, nayakayowa, man dresses as a woman and miming of copulation, the first entry of the novices in which mothers witness their sons, the ifwotu, site for the stay of boy, the second entry of the novices and the night dance. On the second day, there is burning of the lodge, the final purification, katewu keneni, the great shaving place – shaving around hairline, the making of nfunda – the medicine, the lodge instructor’s final harangue, the third entry, the ku-tomboka war dance, and finally the payment. In this rite mudyi and chikoli trees, the nfunda – medicine made of various barks and scrapings of trees, and death of novices are the significant symbols besides various other
symbolic acts.
In ‘themes in the symbolism of Ndembu hunting ritual’Turner aims at providing the meanings of various symbols that appear in rites related to hunting cults – wumbinda and wuyang’a. These meanings can be noted at different levels – exegetical, operational and positional. For the Ndembu, the hunting is more than a food quest, it is a religious activity. It is preceded and followed by the
performance of rites. The wumbinda and wuyang’a are assemblage of various rites, the former is concerned with worship of a hunter ancestor and propitiatory rites whereas the latter is for attainment of a certain degree both of proficiency in killing of animals and of esoteric knowledge of the cult mysteries. The dominant symbol in these rites is chishing’a, a branch forked in one or more places, stripped
of all its leaves and bark. It is termite resistant and strong wood representing the strength of huntmanship.
In ‘Lunda medicine and the treatment of disease’ Turner aims at not simple enumeration of afflictions and healing procedures but revealing ideas implicit in the Ndembu treatment of diseases. He shows that these ideas pervade wider realm of belief and action. Besides the presence of colour, trees and other symbolism, he notes ultimate and axiomatic values of Ndembu religion and ethics entered into such an everyday matter as curing a headache. Finally, in ‘ANdembu doctor in practice’ he is concerned with the healing processes of illnesses. The
Ndembu healers use herbal medicines as well as therapeutic magico-religious rites following divination. All deaths are attributed to sorcery or witchcraft, but only those of structurally important individuals are singled out for special ritual attention. Chimbuki whom Turner calls “doctor” is a “ritual specialist” who performs the rites through cult association devoted to manifestation of the ancestral shades that afflict its living kinswomen or kinswomen with various illnesses. With the help of an extended case study Turner analyses the ihamba cult therapeutic practice, which is very significant in the curative processes. This is different in the way that the “doctor’s” task is less curing an individual patient than as remedying the ills of a corporate group. The disease has social dimension, breaches of social relationships due to conflicts and factional rivalry which need sealing up through confessions of grudges and ill-feelings. Ndembu social norms and values, expressed in symbolic objects and actions are saturated with generalised emotions.
Conclusion
The book provides a detailed understanding of the cosmology of the Ndembu. The practices of these people lead on to their thought patterns. Making use of the extended case study method, Turner shows the channelisation of emotions through these rituals
This work is a contribution to the symbolic understanding of rituals. It is one of the crucial texts for following the interpretive approach. Besides understanding the meaning of rituals among the Ndembu, the book lays the foundation of the approach, which can be used in other studies