Sorcery and the Nyoro: A Mini-Essay

      For the Nyoro, a Bantu-speaking tribe in western Uganda, most diviners work part time, with the majority of their efforts spent farming and their services typically costing only a few shillings. These mystics use several different methods to obtain answers: throwing nine small squares of leather onto a mat, with their placement revealing truths; sprinkling water onto the ashes of a burnt leaf, with the patterns providing clarification; slaughtering a goat and running a stick dripped in the animal’s blood between the diviner’s fingers, with the designs giving information; examining the entrails of a sacrificed bird, with the organs yielding answers on the client’s health; and tossing nine cowry shells, with the openings of the shells falling downward being a negative sign and upward being positive. During the session, the client and diviner sit facing each other on opposite ends of a goat skin laid upon the ground.[1] Although diviners can determine the origins of spiritual misfortunes, they can also diagnose sorcery. For the Nyoro, sorcery is a much broader term than in other parts of the world. Like other cultures, the Nyoro define sorcery as an intentional act to harm another person through herbs and charms; however, the Nyoro also consider the act of using herbs and charms to counteract curses sorcery. Hence, if an afflicted person acquires medicine from a diviner or creates their own concoction to kill the sorcerer who has harmed them, they also become a sorcerer. While the punishment for sorcery was once death (the convicted was wrapped in banana leaves and set ablaze), modern Nyoro try the sorcerer in the chief’s court and, if found guilty, banish them from the village. Due to the serious nature of sorcery, diviners are not willing to directly state the name of whomever may have cursed the client. Rather, the diviner merely states the reading confirms the suspicions of the client or provides a vague description of the culprit and allows the client to make their own identification. Typically, sorcery is done under the cover of darkness, when the sorcerer places an animal horn filled with medicine, bits of hair, and nail clippings in the roof of the victim’s house.[2]

Works Referenced

Beattie, John. Bunyoro: An African Kingdom. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960.
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[1] Beattie, 71-73.
[2] Beattie, 72-75.