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Suriname folk-lore (1936)

Suriname folk-lore

(1936)–Melville J. Herskovits, Frances S. Herskovits–rechtenstatus Auteursrecht onbekend

Vorige Volgende

12. Magic, Good and Evil

a) obia - the tapu and the opo

Of the four phenomena which define the world of the supernatural for the Paramaribo Negroes, we have thus far described two, the manifestation and role of the akra, (the soul) and of the wɩnti (the gods). The third phenomenon concerns magic, good and evil. The generic term for good magic, as among the Saramacca Bush-Negroes, is obia,1 and for evil magic, wisi.2 But whereas the word wisi has general currency when reference is made to evil magic, the more usual name for good magic in Paramaribo is ‘luck’ rather than obia. That is, people are spoken of as ‘buying luck’ or ‘wearing luck’, and comments are heard about the importance of carrying one's ‘luck’ when walking alone at night, when going on a journey, when wooing a woman, or seeking work, or combating the effect of black magic.

More specifically, however, this ‘luck’ is divided into two distinct types, the tapu1 and the opo. It is when we consider these two designations, indeed, that we come to the twofold aspect of good magic. A tapu is good magic which acts as a defensive instrument against evil. Thus, there are tapu against Yɔrka (ghosts), against bakru, (sorcerers' emissaries), against poison, against slander, against sterility and impotence, and against illness of the soul. In fact, a tapu can be provided for any ill within the range of human experience. The opo, on the other hand, is called into play to procure for an individual certain definite ends. It is an aggressive force, and it is the offensive factor in the concept of good magic.

The opo, in its use as a supernatural instrument to procure positive ends for its owner, is often asked to accomplish such ends to the definite disadvantage of other people. From the point of view of the group, these disadvantages may assume, if not a criminal character, certainly one that is anti-social in nature. That this does not escape the attention of the people themselves is evidenced by the fact that they recognise the opo as a marginal instrument between good and evil magic. We heard this point raised several times, one view holding that since the opo requires a ghost to act as its agent, it is wisi, another maintaining that the opo serves to better oneself, and takes that for its primary function as against the function of wisi, whose essential purpose is to bring harm to another.

An opo, then, is conceived as a supernatural agent which works on the will of others to make that will favorable to the owner of the opo. Examples of such opo are those which use as a base a piece of paper on which appears the handwriting of a White man. This paper, when combined with other elements, forms a charm for working on the will of White persons, and such charms are called Bakra opo and form in themselves an entire category of magical devices. Since a charm possessing blanket power to achieve any end, in all situations, is not deemed to have much efficacy, a special opo must be procured for each occasion of sufficient importance to warrant the expenditure of the amount necessary to secure it. One of these Bakra opo might be bought to secure a desired job from a White man; another for a case that is pending in court before a White judge, to bring a judgment favorable to its possessor. A Bakra opo might also be acquired to conceal irregularities in keeping the larder, or the mercantile stock of a White employer.

There are other categories of opo. People buy love opo, that is, either umą (female), or mąn (male) opo, which make it impossible for the men or women held desirable by the owners of the opo to resist their attentions. There are hunting opo, opo for trade, opo to help a person win at cards when played for money, and opo

to make it impossible for a police officer to arrest its owner. ‘Te suma habi let-let' opo,’ in this instance it was an opo against the interruption of a wɩnti dance, - ‘na sxɔtu no mąŋ fɔm hɛm. A no mąŋ, srɛf-srɛfi. Na opo a no gi 'ɛm pasi. Mi si ɛm tu trɔ̨ kaba. Na sxɔtʾ srɛfi bɩgin dąnsi, a fergit' sąn a kɔm du. Na opo taki, “Pɛ̨ŋgere, pɛ̨ŋgere, no kɔm dia tide”... Pɛ̨ŋgere, dati na obia-taki fō sxotu nąŋga oru. - When a person has a true-true opo, the policeman cannot beat him. He cannot do it at all. The opo does not give him the right. I saw it twice already. The policeman himself began to dance, and he forgot what he came to do. The opo said, “Pɛ̨ŋgere, pɛ̨ŋgere, don't come here today”... “Pɛ̨ŋgere” is the obia-language for a policeman with his weapon.’ A very famous opo that has earned a great deal of money for its owners is called bambakula, and is said to have been brought from Africa.

An opo may be some medicine in a bottle which, as in the karta-opo, or in the mąn or umą opo, for example, the individual puts on his person, - on his hair or his hands or some other part of his body - before embarking on the adventure he wishes to engage in; or it may be a charm to be worn on the person, or carried in a pocket, or kept in the house, and used in conjunction with a medicine. Each tapu and each opo has its own trefu, and sometimes an opo or a tapu may have several of them, for it is these food taboos which individualise the opo or the tapu for each owner, and assure him that his charm will remain potent. Thus, if someone, suspecting that a tapu was impeding his black magic, were to seek to nullify its effectiveness, he would be unable to spoil it if he did not know the proper trefu. On the other hand, violation of a trefu spoils an opo, as is to be seen in story 146.1

We have seen how the sweri, - the compact - sealed between an individual and his wɩnti, resulted in the release of that individual's family from its obligation to serve the wɩnti. This concept of making a sweri with a supernatural force is operative in magic also. An opo which once freed a sentenced man from jail involved such a compact made between the prisoner and a bird. The opo was worked with the head of a cock, and was called kakaforu opo. The compact specified that at the next cock crow the man was to be set free, and it is told that this occurred. This opo could have been made with any bird instructed to enter the cell, and when the bird found its freedom, the man would also have found his freedom. Such power is given to a bird by the maker of the opo, and is based on a formula, such as the one which occurs in story 141,2 where the man makes seven cuts on a calabash, gives seven cuts to the man for whom the charm is being made, and says, ‘Well, you see, I did not cut you any more than I cut the man, so I throw you away under the water. Well, you see, the person who gets you under the water to do something to

you, that one can do something to the man, too.’ This same principle of sealing a compact applies both to the tapu as well as to the opo and is also operative in wisi. What special supernatural agencies stand behind this compact is not clear, but it is generally attributed to the power of the basi-wɩnti of the practitioner.1

Though we have spoken of the tapu as a passive agent, there are times when, in its defensive role, it issues positive warnings to its possessor. We have already spoken of the belief that if a drink which had black magic in it were taken up by a person who had a tapu against wisi, the glass would break. There are also tapu in the form of metal arm-bands, which contract when danger threatens, to warn the wearers. Variants of this general type are sɛgribui (silver link bracelets) which have been ceremonially cleansed in herbs, iron anklets or toe rings, and belts on which cauries or small white buttons are sewed. All of these, when felt to tighten, tell their owners that not only is black magic set against them, but that the wisi is actually entering into these tapu. Another form of tapu is that of ‘getting a kɔti’. This consists of several small incisions which are made anywhere on the body, and into which medicine is rubbed. An example of this was had in the story of the calabash and the man who was cut seven times. These kɔti are specialised in power. There are Yɔrka-kɔti which insure to the possessor of them the harmlessness of ghosts; there are Bakru-kɔti, which protect against these ‘little people’; cuts are also made against illnesses, and to prevent anyone from calling away a person's soul.2

A tapu of this type that has attracted the widest attention in the literature is the sneki-kɔti.3 Belief in this immunizing agent against snake bite, and in its curative powers if given after the serpent has struck (it may either be taken internally or in a cut), is not only held by the Negroes but by many of the Europeans resident in the colony. This remedy of the Bush-Negroes is said to be made out of the roasted powdered head of a venemous snake, and is sold to the people of the town. We have heard many persons testify to its efficacy, but whether their belief is validated in fact, or whether it is only of folkloristic value, is not our concern here. That this belief is firmly held is significant for our study, and we may quote an incident related to us illustrative of the manner in which faith in the remedy is kept alive. The person who recounted this anecdote was at one time a plantation-overseer whose station was

not far from Paramaribo. One day, during his absence in the city, a poisonous snake bit a Javanese woman who was working on the plantation. The natives who were present did everything possible for this woman, but her condition grew steadily worse, and, toward evening, it seemed certain that she would die. It was at this time that the plantation manager returned. Going to his medicine stores, he took out some of this kɔti, mixed it with liquor, and forced it down the unconscious woman's throat. She soon began to revive, and early the next morning was at work again. This kɔti, it must be noted, is believed to be a preventive in other than the prophylactic sense, for belief has it that if a person with sneki-kɔti encounters a poisonous snake, the snake, recoiling from the influence of the kɔti, glides out of his way.

There is yet another aspect of obia to which reference has been made in several connections, and this is its curative power. The internal and external application of various ingredients added to a base of herbs, white clay, washing-blue (for indigo), and other similar substances which have for their purpose curing disease, are all actuated by the principle of supernatural aid that is implicit in the belief in obia. We shall see, in the case of black magic, how the Paramaribo Negro does not differentiate between the chemical operation of an actual poison and the supernatural actuation of a charm that has as its end the bringing of evil to another. The same evaluation of cause and effect holds also in the case of obia, where the work of chemicals and formulae are for purposes of good magic, and not evil. No efficacy is thought inherent in any medicine except insofar as such medicine is actuated by the power of obia, and so strong is this belief that, while the natives of Paramaribo do avail themselves of the expert medical services which are at their disposal, they do not fail to complement the White man's cures with their own obia remedies. The view persists, however, that there are fevers that the White doctor can treat, and those that he is powerless to cure. For this last type of fevers, therefore, the lukumąn, the wɩntimąn, or the obiamąn must be called in, since these ailments are of supernatural origin, and it is only a supernatural remedy that can cure those who have succumbed to them.

b) Wisi and Bakru

If obia, then, is good magic, wisi is the magic that brings evil. ‘Wisi wroko nąŋga Yɔrka - Wisi works through ghosts,’ and in manifestations of black magic it is not so much the ingredients which go into the making of black magic as the deadly carrying agent which kills. The control of ghosts for these errands is obtained by wisi-men in the following manner. It is thought that the souls of men, like the wɩnti, may belong to the earth, to the water, to the air. In order to procure a carrier for black magic, a

wisimąn will call out the soul of a living person and shoot it; if it is a soul of the air, he will imprison it in a tree; if it is a soul belonging to the earth, he will bury it in the ground; or he may destroy it in the water, if it is a soul which in its wanderings would make for the water. A person whose soul had been so treated sickens and soon dies. It is then that the wisimąn claims this soul, making it his agent through which he accomplishes his ends. Other souls are obtained by digging up a recently buried body and taking from it some hair or a finger, and calling the ghost of the one who has died to enter into this. Some souls are brought under the control of a wisimąn by stealing some of the water in which a corpse had been washed and summoning the Yɔrka to enter the water. A ghost obtained in any of these ways becomes the slave of the wisimąn, and does his bidding.1 It is made to animate the bakru, to enter fowls, to go into inanimate objects such as wood or clothing, to enter into herbs, or earth, or water in order to carry sickness or death where it is directed to go, and it is the Yɔrka, too, that actuates the poison put into an enemy's drink or food.

Before discussing wisi itself, it is necessary to consider two examples of what may be termed ‘marginal’ wisi. These are a form of opo designed to enrich their owners, but since this is accomplished at the cost of the lives of the growing children of the family, native opinion classifies them as wisi. One such opo, less condemned by public opinion than the second, is that of the purchase of a snake, - the Dagowe, or Aboma - from a wisimąn, to keep in the house for ‘luck’. Whether acquired by the man or the woman of the household, such a snake serves all those who live in the same cabin with it. It is kept under the bed, or in some hidden corner, and is fed on eggs. Such snakes are said to exact as many as fifty eggs a day, and the Aboma requires yet more in order to be satisfied. The owner, however, is well repaid for such lavishness in terms of wealth, - money, and the prized things which money buys, such as bracelets, koto-yaki, kerchiefs, and ear rings. Not only must this snake be well fed in order that it may not leave the household, and the ‘luck’ leave with it, but it must have assurance of the owner's affection for it, and in proof of this, the owner must speak to it at night in terms of endearment. When children are born to such a household, the snake soon grows jealous of the attention paid them,

and kills them. Actually, then, it is held that the owner of such an opo sacrifices his children to his personal ambitions.1

‘Do one snake in the house bring luck? I knows a lady sitting in the market now. She got one Dagowe snake in she house. She sell fish, but sometimes one-two month she don't sit in the market at all, but she got plenty gold bracelet on all two hand, and chain, and plenty, plenty money. Everybody say the snake bring she money.’

The second ‘marginal’ case of wisi concerns the acquisition of bakru for ‘luck’. This special use of the bakru is so classified, under the definition that it is designed to enhance one's own position, rather than as a direct instrument of evil magic against a specific individual. ‘If you want luck, you go to a wisimąn and tell him what you want. Husband, some woman's husband, automobile, plenty money, bracelets. You pay a hundred or two hundred guilders and go home.’ After a short interval, the wisimąn comes at night and brings two children, a boy and a girl, who have the appearance of very black two-year-olds, except that their heads are large. These are, however, not children, but bakru, creatures fashioned by the wisimąn himself, and each is but half flesh, - the other half of the body is of wood. They have human voices, and human speech, and are given to teasing, which they do to trick and disarm people. Those who own them keep them under the bed, or locked in an empty room, and there they feed and care for them. They do not need to be clothed, however, for the garment they wear when they are brought to their owner, a checked blue and white dress, they never outgrow, or wear out. If they are struck, they turn to receive the blow on the wooden side. Sometimes, when one looks under the bed, the bakru are not there. That occurs because they have gone to amuse themselves on the road. They are not always visible on the road, but even when they are invisible, one senses their presence as a hot wind. A person who meets a bakru on the road strikes it only if he has a long stick, and above all ‘if he got luck with him for bad spirit.’ A man who has no ‘luck’ and strikes a bakru dies. The bakru, however, never die; even if one were to see them stretched out lifeless on the ground, they would not be dead. If a person returns later, nothing is to be found, for the bakru only simulate death, and once left alone, they return to the cemetery where their home is.

The accounts that follow summarize the incidents given by informants as first-hand knowledge of the existence of bakru. All who spoke of bakru recalled that when they were children, their mothers kept them from school many days, and some days did not even allow them out of the cabin into the yard, because there were bakru on the road. ‘Now it is better,’ we were told.

After the owner of a pair of bakru dies, and there is no one to care

for them, they disappear to live on the road. A favorite diversion of theirs is to mingle with children who are on their way home from school. They try to touch the children, to tease them, and to offer them a drink. It is death for a child to drink from the little bottle each bakru carries in his pocket. One three-year-old child, while drinking, had a bakru pour a single drop from his bottle into her glass. The water turned green immediately, and the child began to swell, so that by evening she was dead. In another yard a man who died three months before this account was given us, was said to have had a pair of bakru for a long time. Neighbors in the yard said he had bought them when he was eighteen, and he was sixty-four years old when he died. His wife had died the year before, and the bakru had killed off all their children when they were little. Since there was no one left to care for the bakru, they went to live on the road. A woman whose own aunt had had two such creatures, looked under the bed after her aunt died, caught a glimpse of the bakru, and fled. They were very black, - black hair, black skin, black eyes, - ‘lei̯ki Djuka-nɛ̨ŋgɛre pikin, - like Bush-Negro children.’

Another told how, late one night, she and her brother were coming home with their aunt. They saw two such bakru sitting on the stoop, playing with a string. The boy threw himself at the girl, and the girl at the boy, and both laughed. The three humans stopped to watch, and just then they heard a child crying. One had been born in the yard six weeks before. The girl bakru then said, ‘I wish I had a baby. I have been hearing the child cry all night.’ The boy bakru asked her, ‘Do you want a baby?’ The girl said, ‘Yes.’ Then they saw the two bakru get up, and the boy followed the girl. Both coughed as if to call someone, and the crying stopped. They heard, the next morning, that the child was dead.

Aside from the marginally sinister duties which the bakru and the snakes perform, these ‘little people’ have the more important rôle of carrying magic that is only evil in character. The bakru, who play a major part in the performance of wisi, are created by wisi-men out of the portions of bodies of the dead which, as we have said, come from a disinterred corpse, or a finger, or some hair taken from a corpse. These figures are made animate by injecting into them a dead soul, for it is said of bakru, as of wisi in general, ‘Bakru wroko nąŋga Yɔrka, - The bakru work through a ghost’, or, ‘Bakru wroko nąŋga Djɔmbi. Na Djɔmbi nąŋga na Yɔrka na srɛf-srɛf' sani. - The bakru works with the Djɔmbi. The Djɔmbi and the Yɔrka are the self-same thing.’ Thus, one informant, who said he was a dɔro-sei̯ pikin, an illegitimate child, explained why he was an only child. The legally married wife of his father had sent a bakru to his mother. ‘Dati bɛn dɛ wą wisi fō tap' hɛm bɛre. Dat' meki mi mama no kɩsi pikin noit' mɔro. - That was a wisi to stop pregnancy. That is why my mother never had any more children.’ Sterility,

indeed, is usually said to be the work of bakru. Another incident, given by a woman, told how when she was a girl a neighbor in the yard where she lived found a snow-white chicken underneath her table. This neighbor called together the women of the yard to find out to whom this chicken belonged, but no one claimed it. The woman then took a broom and struck it. There was one cry from the chicken, and it disappeared. Later that day, this woman and a rival of hers met on a plantation where they were both trying to sell fish. The other fell upon her and beat her, without her having the power to lift a finger in her own defense, though she had had a reputation of holding her own against men. ‘That was the bakru the other had sent her. The bakru make the woman come weak.’ Late that same night, when they were all sitting on their doorsteps, a bakru appeared at the gate of the yard. It could not enter, however, because there was a wɩnti guarding the yard. ‘That wɩnti was one lock to keep away bad things.’ This wɩnti was lodged in a tree close to the entrance of the yard, and was a Lɛba.

Another example of wisi which occurred during our stay was that sent against a friend of one of our informants, who, working about town, stepped on a nail late one afternoon, and by nine o'clock that night was dead. A death such as this could be explained only as caused by wisi. When the body was placed in the coffin a candle and some other objects, unknown to the church officials who were present, were put with the corpse. This was done to make the spirit of the dead come back to tell who had killed him. The dead person was expected to appear in a dream to name his enemy. Sometimes, instead of placing the candle and other objects in the coffin, or in addition to putting them there, the corpse is placed face downwards, and is so instructed that not before the spirit of the dead comes and reveals the one responsible for his death will his body be able to turn over and rest. In addition to this, in the case just cited, the parents of the dead man were waiting for the important wake of the eighth night after death to be held, after which they would be free to consult a lukumąn as to the cause of their son's death.

Wisi is worked by the use of menstrual cloths, perspiration, hair, finger-nail clippings, and wearing apparel that has touched the body of the person against whom evil magic is designed. These act as substitutes for the individual himself, and whatever form of destruction is intended is told to a ghost or the bakru animated by a ghost, who puts it into execution. Wisi, like obia, involves the pronouncing of a formula which, magically endowed, makes clear that the object belonging to the person against whom the magic is directed is being used to represent the person himself, and that whatever is done to this representational object shall befall the person meant to be harmed. A simpler form of wisi, which involves slow illness rather than death, is to place a broken basin containing faded, evil-smelling weeds, thorny bits of wood, pins, porcupine

quills, or other pointed objects, or toads either living or dead, in the center of the yard where the person against whom the evil is designed lives, or at the door of his cabin. In the morning, when this is discovered, an immediate alarm is raised, and no effort is spared to find the perpetrator of the deed. If he is found, he is taken before a magistrate and imprisoned as a wisimąn. If this is not possible, recourse is had to the lukumąn to find out what must be done to ward off the effects of this wisi, and, according to the prescription given, the person will set up a tapu, or will wash, or will appeal to his wɩnti or his akra to save him, or if the wisi had already entered his body, he will see that it is exorcized. Indeed, even if the wisimąn is discovered and imprisoned, this procedure would be gone through to insure the purification of the yard and its inhabitants from the bad effects of the wisi.

For protection against wisi, a person may go to any lukumąn, but actually selects a lukumąn who is known to be versed in the ways of wisi. For in the logic of Paramaribo Negroes, it is those familiar with the practices of black magic who know its cure. Perhaps in this logic lies the key to the fact that though there is an abstract differentiation made between lukumąn, wɩntimąn, obiamąn, and wisimąn, actually the practitioner of black magic can cure, and the obiamąn, whose duty it is to heal and to furnish protective magic, also supplies people with opo to enrich them at the expense of others. This, in a more attenuated fashion, holds for the wɩntimąn and the lukumąn. It is also because of these factors that, in order to practice his craft, a man invariably familiarises himself with all these branches of knowledge of the traffic with the supernatural. As a direct concept wisi is abhorrent to everyone, but as a measure of recourse in the hands of the weak against the strong, it has the sympathy of all.

Curing wisi involves exorcising the bad spirit that has been instructed to enter the individual whose death is sought. The idiom for this it to puru wisi, to ‘remove’ the evil magic. The ritual for this varies, though the principal elements of the exorcism include the knowledge of calling the spirit and forcing it to speak, and of driving it from the body of the person it has attacked. The ceremony of the final driving out of the spirit takes place at the crossroads, for the cross-roads is a ‘place where bad and good must cross’. Before the cure is begun, an offering is made at the crossroads for Ma Lɛba. The individual to be cured is stripped of his clothing, and the practitioner, dipping a broom into a mixture of water and herbs, beats the naked body of the patient as he pours the water over him. When satisfied that the spirit is about to come out, a bottle is held ready to imprison it, and this, quickly corked, is thrown into the river at low tide, to be carried out to sea at the turn of the tide. If the ceremony occurs away from the tidal belt, the bottle is thrown into a nearby river where there is fast water.

A more detailed description of exorcising will be given in our discussion of Yɔrka, for in all these ceremonies the pattern is the same, and the exorcising of wisi differs from that of a Yɔrka only in the details of names of the spirits invoked and to be exorcised, and the ingredients placed in the water used for the washing.


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