E. E. Evans-Pritchard

E. E. Evans-Pritchard, in Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande, poses essential questions about human thought in his examination of the central role of witchcraft and magic among these Southern Sudanese people. Primarily, Evans-Pritchard's study brings into question the nature of reality itself, and the relationship of reality and the human mind. Examining this book, the Western reader might be tempted to dismiss the Azande as an absurdly superstitious people with little or no connection to the real and scientific world of cause and effect which that reader is convinced is the one and only reality. However, the reader would be more wise if he considered the often less than rational nature of his own culture and its belief systems.

For example, in San Diego, California, recently, in the very midst of modern Western civilization, surrounded by computers (the symbol of rationality), there took place a mass suicide of apparently intelligent people who believed--unto death--that the suicide would result in their being somehow transported to, or picked up by, an alien flying saucer. If this is seen as an aberration, can one say that the beliefs of the adherents of the major religions of the world are reason-based? Is not Christianity, for example, rooted in part in the belief that there is a spiritual struggle between good and evil in the world, and that that evil is personified by Satan, a fallen angel who was thrown out of Heaven for challenging God? Is this belief

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nge groups: The one indication [Evans-Pritchard] gives of an indigenous response to change in terms of belief and ritual is . . . his account of the new secret societies for the practice of magic. These must have represented a genuine innovation: it is significant that they were not merely banned by the Government but also cordially disliked by the conservative princes [of the Azande]. The associations may well have channelled discontents that later found more overtly political expression (xxiii). The fact that factions both in the imperial government and in the Azande social/political structure itself were threatened by such secret societies calls to mind the crackdown on right-wing militias by the U.S. government as well as disputes among those militias with respect to the appropriate forms of protest. Also, however, the two examples from such disparate cultures make clear the threat presented by non-traditional and non-rational thought systems. If understanding, rather than judgment or condemnation, is the goal of anthropology, specifically understanding another culture, then the first step to be taken in an analysis of the Azande thought system with respect to magic and witchcraft is to realize that every culture--howe

Category: History - E