Introduction to Igbo Medicine2

IGBO MODES OF MOBILIZING EXTRAHUMAN FORCES TO RESPOND TO ILLNESS AND PROBLEMS IN SOCIETY - IGA N’AJUJU

In this part two, I will discuss with details the concept of mirror divination and draw out the experiences and perspectives healers and clients give out in dealing with some more challenging health and other related issues that make them approach and use the oracle for consultation. I aim to show that people do not just go to divine for the unknown alone, but also to mobilize the cultural forces in the ecological fields to respond to their needs in time and space.

In order to illustrate its significance, I will describe here how the grand mirror is consulted. Mirror divination (afa enyo) encompasses both afa enyo nta (small mirror) and afa enyo ukwu (grand mirror), each of which is distinctive, and is intended to deal with intractable cases that often take people on long journeys.[i] With small mirror divination (afa enyo nt), diviners use small mirrors to reflect images as inversions of one another, such that a client may see the inverted image of him- or herself in the mirror. This utilizes revelations that we cannot ordinarily see on our own. Generally, however, when the Igbo talk about iga n’enyo (going to the mirror), they mean going to consult the grand mirror (big mirror), which is sanctified and empowered with medicine for consultation. On the contrary, a small mirror reads problems almost as symbolic reflections. Each reflective outcome produces an interpretation in its own right. Questions are raised and the mirror will be turned in different directions until a decodable reflection or appearance is registered on it. This allows healer/diviners to capture messages uncommon to our ordinary perceptions. In particular, mamiwota specialists use this type of technique. Because it is a small mirror with facilitating medicines packed around it, it is easy to carry, hence being a resourceful and important aetiological device.

Reputed experts of this mode offer, on a weekly or daily basis, a consultation referred to as iga n’enyo. The origin of grand mirror divination is linked to the drive to overcome problems encountered in seed divination (afa igba mkpuru okwe). Informants noted that divinatory evidence often attracts the police, who harass diviner/healers and demand to see visible evidence of pronouncements that might be associated with family dissent and court actions. Attempts to overcome the mockery of the divinatory art and the embarrassment resulting from law enforcement authorities’ tendency to capitalize on the opportunity to humiliate clients and healers made the need for some extra power and evidence that would prove the authenticity of the oracular revelations inevitable. Devices such as the grand mirror emerged in response to the need to prevent that inadequacy. It is said that the extra-human force behind the grand mirror appeared from the sea, and practitioners quickly point to and present related symbols. Informants claim that the mirror sees to all corners of Igboland and beyond, and that several spirits help to mirror the family, the water, the forest, and the market. Professional grand mirror divination takes place mainly on the Nkwo, Eke, and Orie market days, and apart from Afo, as a recent visit to the field reinforces.[ii]

I furthered my inquiry into this area by accompanying clients to the grand mirror house called St. Joseph in Umudim, near Owerri. This grand mirror house, or centre, is not a religious organization per se; it is, rather, a consulting house for spiritual communion, set up and named by the healer. Divinatory consultation here is principally tied to prayer petitions and invocations, which are seen as means of discernment. The technique originated from the water by the aid of a powerful spirit, referred to as Ezenwaanyi or Mamiwota.

Peculiar to the process of questioning the grand mirror is that it entails an all-night or all-day session, each session generally lasting 6 to 9 hours. Clients are given instructions about what to do and expect, and about proper conduct. An encounter with the diviner/healer in the evening or early morning precedes the actual confrontation with the oracle. I will focus on an evening session here.

Prior to clients entering the mirror house and beginning to view and question the grand mirror, the healer anoints their eyes. Inside the mirror house, each client occupies a cabin equipped with a grand mirror (enyo ukwu), also called a “wonder mirror” (enyo ebube). When clients are properly seated before the sacred grand mirror, the healer shuts the door and leaves the consults alone in a kind of seclusion designed to promote self-immersion and deep self-questioning. As a matter of modus operandi, undergoing such questioning in a group context means that one of the consultants becomes a proper witness to the diviner’s interrogation of the grand mirror oracular realm. The forces reflected in the grand mirror are subject to wise interrogation. They are summoned and asked to explain why they intrude into the lives of the long-suffering client, under whose name the grand mirror reflexive discourse is opened. Consultation is therefore a self-participatory interaction. The consultant may voice any question suggested by the images in the mirror. The information thereby gathered is transmitted to the diviner/healer at the end of the viewing session (early the following morning around 7 a.m.) and leads to a second assembly.

In the morning, the diviner opens the door and leads the group out, usually to the front of the consultation house where the preparatory session took place. He makes sure that none of the participants speaks to one another. When all are seated tension and curiosity mount among the accompanying members, who now watch things from one side. Each person (there were 11 people involved in this particular session) is, in turn, asked to give his or her account of the divination experience. The healer asks questions such as: What led you to participate in the session? What did you ask? What did you see? What did you experience? How did you present your case to the forces that appeared? The various consultants are to report, in detail, their experiences with regard to these questions from the diviner. The diviner may explain the facts underlying each account, sometimes indicating why, for instance, a particular illness has taken the form manifested in the ill person. Stolen items, cases of sorcery, and episodes or circumstances of severe illness are analyzed according to how the attacker is dealing with the distressed. When this second assembly is finished, the healer moves the process to a more customized or personalized session, which I will denote in the third meeting.

After this public interaction is completed, the healer meets with each consultant separately in his antechamber for further interaction and private communication. He will then turn to other investigative facilities in communion with the forces in order to further determine the therapeutic and ritual options appropriate to the problem at hand. He will then prescribe a remedy. A consultant may be advised to go home and think over the outcome of the divination and then come back for further action. This was the case of one participant, Mr. Iroha, whose case concerned a car theft and the downturn of his son’s fortune, as well as his incapacity to deal with the predators. The question now is this; is grand mirror helpful? How well can grand mirror handle such cases and, in this ongoing predicament, how does relief become meaningful?

The grand mirror technique is generally acclaimed for its efficacy. Users acclaim its results and consider its application symbolic, genuine, and assuring. First, it allows each consultant to see things for him- or herself. Second, sorcery can be undone on the spot through procedures using such things as magic needles or pins (aga, nwandudu amuma), provided by the healer/diviner. Third, an offender may be forced to confess right there in the mirror, cancel his or her source of attack, indicate what was used in the attack, and specify what can be done to counteract it. To indicate his or her refusal to perform any of these actions, the offender would show his or her back instead of face (ihu, iru). The significance of showing front-side (ihu, iru) and backside (azu) corresponds with the ideas of persistence, truth, acceptance, agreement, regret, willingness to negotiate, co-operation, or rejection versus their opposites. And the mirror reflects all of these symbolically. In cases of death or insanity, the attacker would clearly be shown and forced to explain the reasons for the attack. Stolen goods or abducted persons are seen in the mirror, and the current circumstances of the stolen goods or kidnapped person/s are seen. Whatever the situation, the consultant is made to see all there is to envision.

The afflicted and his or her accompanying group may decide to seek revenge against someone who has killed their relative or caused a member to suffer insanity or another form of harsh misfortune. In some instances, the client may request that the healer/diviner call the person out in the mirror so that revenge may be sought by piercing the offender’s image with the magic pin or needle (aga, amuma). The request for on-the-spot revenge may come from the healer or from the client who is asking what can be done. From whichever side it may be sought or suggested, the diviner plays the role of healer/judge or healer/retaliator by introducing and explaining the consequences of retributive actions (ime na imegwara). This is necessary because, if a client decides to terminate the life of an offender out of uncontrolled anger, the other consultants may similarly ask for further retaliation against that client’s revenge. This may unleash death upon death via attacks and counter-attacks. Rather than permitting such incidents, which allegedly may happen in extreme cases, the healer seeks alternative means of dealing with the situation, calls upon the conscience of the clients, and advises them on the use of iju ogu. That is, a resort to effective use of their innocence in prayers and symbolic application for justice – thereby enhancing their fate and consequence through laying down in petition to the extra-human forces to take revenge on their behalf based on the principle of equity and retributive justice. By so doing, a healer also protects his own conscience in terms of the imperatives and repercussions involved in the healing process.

Soliciting declarations from the forces regarding aetiology and suggested therapy may shed light on problems other than the ones that consultants are already aware of. It is also not out of place to suggest that divinatory pronouncement may sometimes, in turn, generate conflicts. When such problems arise, the grand mirror procedure is considered reliable, and, in short, the crucial “last resort.” However, cases abound that further question this efficiency. A diviner/informant told of a case, reported by the Nigerian daily newspaper, The Punch,[1] about this new divinatory technique of revealing the secrets underpinning human suffering: A team of newsmakers from the mentioned press had participated in the grand mirror divination. Their participation provided them with an opportunity to interrogate other participants, and even to take photographs of an insane person from neighbouring Yoruba, called Tunde, who was undergoing treatment. Having reported their findings with the pictures they took, a judiciary case was laid against the healer by the patient’s caregivers. But the evidence, which can always be verified, was found in the grand mirror technique itself, culturally viewed as a means by which to settle such matters. This does not mean that other investigation modes and procedures are not reliable, but the technical problem of offering indisputable evidence to the unbeliever is resolved by the way in which the grand mirror reflects events and circumstances surrounding each problem through self- or group-participation, in which all consultants are seeing and interacting in the viewing session. The argument that the healer only sees and says what suits him or her is thereby counteracted. Law enforcement agents find it easy to pretend that traditional ways of showing genuine evidence for the reasons behind human suffering have been overtaken by more modern methods. On the contrary, however, ethnographic records support the fact that great credibility is given to divination into human suffering through the grand mirror cultural mode. To explain this better, let us introduce the case of a village community from the Okigwe area of Igboland.

In 1978 through 1980, a village in the Okigwe area was involved in a case concerning quick and premature deaths among its progressive individuals. Members of the local community were worried and complained, thereby generating public concern. The burden of diligence caused the community to assemble and seek insight into their misfortune. After a long discussion, they decided to consult reliable customary ways of knowing. A famous healer in the field, Dibianta, and his field of grand mirror, was chosen. On the agreed day, sixteen village elders presented themselves at the house of the healer and were allowed to enter the praying house to see things for themselves. With no exception, all participants saw the culprit, who was himself among them, causing the problem of early deaths amongst the villagers. Even the said perpetrator agreed that he had also seen himself. His admittance to having seen himself on the grand mirror as the source of the problem made sense to all of the participants. Details, from where the culprit had placed the dangerous medicine, namely on top of a palm tree, to where he set himself against the village’s successful people, were also uncovered. The culprit, having seen for himself facts he could no longer deny, admitted the whole truth about his evil acts.

Greatly angered, the community elders went home and tried to deal with the matter in their accustomed manner at the community centre (obom, ogboto). Here, the perpetrator’s hands were tied behind his back and he was tortured, severely beaten, and threatened with being killed during the night. Before this could be achieved, however, the news escaped to the culprit’s family. The police were quickly called to intervene and bring the situation under control. The family of the offender, in collaboration with the police, turned the story upside down. The claim became that the diviner had manhandled and tortured the accused, Okoroigwe, with beatings and the use of dangerous medicine in order to force him to verify the community’s claim of the deaths of its members and to punish the offender’s family for their non-progressiveness.

Okoroigwe, however, did not yield to the charges that his family brought against the diviner. Rather, he testified that he was not in any way victimized by the dibia afa, or compelled to accept the claims levelled against him. He verified that he went through the consultation process in the same way as the others, and that he did, indeed, see himself and his activities unveiled in the grand mirror. In addition, Newspaper coverage in The Punch was also tendered to justify the activities with which the mirror divinations are associated.

The question arises as to why the confessing offender would not seek the refuge offered by the controversy raised by the police and his family. A large part of the answer to that question lies in the fear of further extra-human revelations and retaliation. Informants often point out humiliating treatments to which they have been subjected by the police with regard to divination decisions. One said that “apart from no confidence shown by the Church on what healers are doing, healers seem somehow not protected on the side of the police as well.” This harassment has resulted in healers taking more steps to back-up their divinatory statements with some undeniable evidence or proof, such as the ability for clients to see things for themselves and then bear witness to what they have seen. Informants argue that it is because of the dismissive attitudes of healthcare agents and police that diviners have tried to adjust their techniques accordingly. The need for useful changes designed to respond to these issues are equally true in regard to the divination devices healers subject their approaches to.

[1] Efforts made to lay hands on this Newspaper report by The Punch (in late 1970) did not come through untill the after the time of our writing. But the healer citing it did so with every air of pride and certitude, knowing that he was sure of his information in that regard. According to the healer the report was entitled “Dr. Dibianta discovers a new technology of revealing secrets on human suffering.”

[i] Reputed experts operate on a weekly basis a mirror divination, referred to as iga n’enyo. The origin of grand mirror divination is traced to the drive to overcome the divination problems proper to seed divination (afa igba nkpuru okwe). At times, as it was confided, evidence of police harassing diviner-healers is too embarrassing to openly voice out or might heighten family dissent and court actions. To overcome the mockery of the divinatory art, there was a need for some extra power and evidence to indisputably prove the authenticity of the oracular revelations as applicable to any crisis presented. Devices such as the grand mirror emerged in response to the need to forestall the inadequacy of material evidence. It is said that the extra-human force behind the grand mirror appeared from the sea. Informants claim that the mirror sees all corners of Igboland and beyond and that several spirits pull together and help to mirror the family, the water, the forest, and the market.

[ii] Fieldwork follow up, April 2001 and October 2003, respectively. In general, divinations are not carried out on afo market days. And healers do not engage in medical practices as such on those days. It is a day during which healers and diviners rehabilitate themselves, paying respect to the deity of medicine and divination, including their ancestors. Julius Nwosu is a reputed healer and masquerade specialist, whose house we entered for discussion on core aspects of divination. “It was on a wrong day”, he said, and “there was nothing he could do to show us things connected with the great art of knowing”. His major concern was that to do anything on the odd day (ubochi nso) would break the rule and offend the institution, incurring its wrath.