Ndembu ritual. Victor Turner; Symbols in Ndembu Ritual Flashcards 2022-10-08
Ndembu ritual Rating:
8,8/10
1513
reviews
The Ndembu people are an ethnic group living in the Northwestern Province of Zambia. Their culture is rich in tradition, including a variety of rituals that play a significant role in the community. One such ritual is the Ndembu initiation rite, which marks the transition from childhood to adulthood.
The Ndembu initiation rite is a complex process that takes place over a period of several months. It involves a series of ceremonies and rituals that are designed to teach young people the values, beliefs, and traditions of the Ndembu people.
The first stage of the initiation rite is the separation of the initiates from their families. This is symbolized by the cutting of their hair, which is a sign that they are no longer children. The initiates are then taken to a secluded location where they are taught the secrets of the Ndembu people by older members of the community.
The initiates are also expected to undergo physical challenges and tests of strength and endurance. These challenges may include long periods of fasting, physical labor, and the performance of various tasks and rituals.
The final stage of the initiation rite is the circumcision ceremony, which is considered a rite of passage into manhood. The circumcision ceremony is a highly ritualized and symbolic event, and it is accompanied by a series of prayers and sacrifices.
Once the initiation rite is complete, the initiates are considered to be full-fledged members of the Ndembu community. They are given new names and are expected to take on the responsibilities and duties of adulthood, including participating in the community's economic, social, and political life.
The Ndembu initiation rite is an important part of Ndembu culture, and it is a tradition that has been passed down through the generations. It serves as a way to transmit the values and traditions of the Ndembu people to the next generation, and to ensure that the community remains strong and unified.
Religion and expressive culture
Striking a personal note in a new introductory chapter, Professor Turner acknowledges his indebtedness to Ndembu ritualists for alerting him to the theoretical relevance of symbolic action in understanding human societies. In the Musolu 6 ritual, performed by a chief or senior headman to bring on the rains if they are unduly belated, the mucha tree plays a leading role. The latter may set some as yet undetermined limits on human capacities for thinking and doing, but the free variables available for communication and manipulation in symbolic action are so diverse and numerous, and the rules for their combination so simple yet fruitful for the production of messages including inspired and prophetic messages , that free will virtually reigns during important phases of the social process. Sakutoha took the bead hung arrow and put it to lean against principal patient Nyamukoila's hut. From 1964 to 1970, because of high copper prices, the The Ndembu tend to hold themselves politically apart from their neighbors. The male adepts, with branches in their hands, did not actually strike the women, but made as if they would do so. Forkedbranch shrines are common throughout Africa, and they are by no means always associated with hunting cults.
Victor Turner; Symbols in Ndembu Ritual Flashcards
I spoke to Muchona about the mutual joking wusensi at Chihamba. Together they make up a bundle, known as 'Chihamba. Witches are also the involuntary hosts of familiar spirits. But as the section on divination shows, there are many other kinds of diviners and modes of divination which relate more frequently to the complex of rituals of affliction and to the veneration of ancestors. Simply because each ritual symbol is so dense with significance, the task of presenting, classifying and analysing the referents of even a few interrelated symbols is necessarily a long one.
At Chihamba the mucheki tree itself was doomed, for the root taken was its taproot, source of its strength. Mpemba oyu, walwa nawa owu. Often their survival may depend upon the chance that another woman has recently lost a child, has milk available, and is willing to nurse one of the twins. These are not used interchangeably, but the kind of rite determines the kind of shrine-tree. Revelation and divination both unmask, but divination unmasks the culturally defined sins and vices of those who voluntarily separate themselves from the living flow of society, while revelation uncovers that flow itself. This again is a sign of strength. Patient, doctors, and spirit belonged to a single sacred community, which initiated the patient as a new member.
The forest of symbols : aspects of Ndembu ritual : Turner, Victor W. (Victor Witter), 1920
The prongs of the extremities of the branches are sharpened by the knives of hunter-adepts. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. White and Death and Afterlife. The words of one song included, "She has been caught by the Chokwe. It was agreed that a woman with the Cbihamba-name Katendi was allowed to approach closely the sacred site called isoli see pages 78-86 below , a sort of tabernacle, while a woman named Kalukeki had to remain at a little distance from it.
Book Excerptise: The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti
But once more a devotional movement was doomed to founder on the rock of doctrinal formulation. The patient is exposed to a hot fire so that fragments of leaves should adhere to her when the medicine has dried. The Ndembu language, which is part of the West Central Bantu Language Zone, is agglutinative with ten noun classes. The conversation turned to degrees of ritual status. Yes, sir, I am well. The people shout: Tunafwi yayo, wuyanga hohu.
In Ndembu thought religion is emphatically not what an individual does with his solitude. The moral order that decrees piety to the dead and compassionfor the living is felt to be higherthan both and in some obscure way to be connected with the High God Nzambi or Shakapang'a. In Chihamba special stress is laid on the candidates acquiring correct knowledge of the medi cines vested in the cult. Mungongu was made to sit third in order, behind the two women. Wubinda watwala dehi eyi. The patients entered first, guided by female adepts, followed by male adepts who entered the hut backward.
Unlike the respected ancestor spirits who are addressed by their names when alive, the ayikodjikodji arc regarded as a crowd "without names. The ordeals and humiliations, often of a grossly physiological character, to which neophytes are submitted represent partly a destruction of the previous status and partly a tempering of their essence in order to prepare them to cope with their new responsibilities and restrain them in advance from abusing their new privileges. I now see that I was looking to Ndembu culture for some evidence of ethnophilosophy or ethnotheology, or for some "metalanguage," which, because the Ndembu have no specialized class of professional theologians or philosophers, would probably be in the main a nonverbal language, a language of symbolic forms and actions, like the Zen master's thump on the head or the token decapitation of the Chihamba candidate. The Ndembu constitute the southern arm of the ancient empire of the Lunda in the Congo. The animal must first be given to him by the hunter-spirit, and this is already a sign of partial reconciliation, of the spirit's provisional approval of the hunter's worthy intention. It may be said that in general, forks in nature or in physical structures, like the forks of trees, the apices of round huts, and forks in paths are ritually regarded as sym bols of fertility, human or animal. Women cannot able to adopt the changes of this changing modern world.
Settlements Ndembu villages are changing from a pattern of discrete circles of houses inhabited by matrilineal kin to a conglomeration of groups of two or three mud-brick houses that face inward to a small courtyard. In a like manner, remorse and loss of confidence are factors that occur immediately while capacity in decision-making can potentially cause severe damage in the life of any…. Beginning of chasing ku tachika ku hanÄŸ'a b. Whether this revival is a belated response to developments in other disciplines psychology, ethology, philosophy, linguistics, to name only a few , or whether it reflects a return to a central concern after a period of neglect, is difficult to say, In recent field studies, anthropologists have been collecting myths and rituals in the context of social action, and improvements in anthropological field technique have produced data that are richer and more refined than heretofore; these new data have probably challenged theoreticians to provide more adequate explanatory frames. When invocations are made to ancestor spirits only beer with a white color, such as maize beer {walwa wakabaka or kaffir corn beer walwa wamasa , may be used. As I have men tioned, Chihamba is conspicuous for its many white symbols. The condition of the patient and her husband in Isoma had some of these attributes— passivity, humility, near-nakedness—in a symbolic milieu that represented both a grave and a womb.
