Nya (cult)

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Nya is an possession cult and the deity it invokes in the south of Mali and in some villages across the border in Burkina Faso . Membership in the cult is limited to a minority of initiated men from socially superior families, the possessed men are not considered sick and the sessions are not healing ceremonies. The deity Nya, like many other figures of traditional religious cults of the Mande language groups , is worshiped at numerous shrines that can be found in almost every village in the region. In each of the points mentioned, the Nya cult differs from the typical characteristics of African cults of possession.

Cultural environment

The Nya cult is widespread roughly in the regions of Ségou south of the Bani River and Sikasso in the extreme south of Mali, as well as in an area east of the Banifing River, which forms the border with Burkina Faso here. The age of the nya cult is unknown. In the 1970s, Nya and a number of other cults were at the center of religious practice in southern Mali. Since then they have been pushed back by growing Islamic influence and increasing political instability. Furthermore, the influence of the supraregional market economy on everyday village life, state legislation and Western schooling reduce the reputation and power of the local socio-religious cults. The men involved in the cult lose their dominant position in the community as a result of Islamization and feel compelled to convert to Islam themselves in order not to fall into social marginalization.

Basically, Islam is in a competitive relationship and a power struggle with the African religions , which tend to be pushed back. Muslims accuse the followers of traditional cults of backwardness and superstition . Nevertheless, there is a cultural exchange that over time leads to the integration of Islamic elements into the African cults and an Africanization of Islam . The majority of moderate Muslims usually tolerate African cults of possession as long as they remain politically ineffective. The relationship between the cults of possession and the Christian churches is similarly shaped by competition, rejection and mutual exchange.

In Africa, spirits are often defined by gender. Clearly male and clearly female spirits depict social relationships in a parallel world, including the inequality between men and women. There are also spirits, to which the deity Nya belongs, whose male and female qualities can change depending on the situation and which - as in the Brazilian Candomblé - encompass a broad spectrum of soulful and timid male spirits to grim and dominant female spirits.

Male and female spirits can possess either people of the same sex or of the opposite sex, or both sexes indiscriminately. In general, obsessional spirits predominantly affect women. This applies both to patients who are unintentionally possessed by a ghost during healing rituals and to religious ceremonies in which ghosts are specifically invoked. From a sociological point of view, women in many cultures are excluded from the rituals of the “official”, that is, the male-dominated religion, and therefore practice their own cults. In the interpretation of the Tsar cult in Sudan and Egypt, gender segregation and prohibitions to act are held responsible as a cause of psychological problems in women who respond to this with a cult of possession as a therapeutic measure. The cult offers space for self-development in a private environment. More obsession cults in Muslim majority societies that are primarily affect women Bori and Dodo in northern Nigeria, Pepo in Swahili and gumatan n-trend with the Tuareg , named after the mortar used for this drum tend . Derdeba in Morocco and Stambali in Tunisia have a black African origin in an Arab-Islamic environment . One of the rare exceptions to an obsession that only affects men as patients is the Hamaja cult around the female spirit Aisha Qandisha in Morocco. Mainly women in the south of Togo are attacked by the spirit of a former slave during the Tchamba cult. The socially sensitive issue of centuries of slavery is dealt with here.

From a historical perspective, obsession cults spread during the social crises associated with the inevitable economic and cultural adaptation in West Africa during the French colonial era . All the usual explanations for the emergence of obsession cults as retreats within a dominant majority culture contain the inverse conclusion that these cults must decline as soon as they are officially recognized. The Nya cult contradicts this general view in several ways.

The ethnological knowledge of the Nya cult is essentially based on the field research of the three Belgian anthropologists Jean-Paul Colleyn (* 1949), Danielle Jonckers (* 1947) and Philippe Jespers, who worked together with the Mamara from 1971 to the 1980s . Speakers in southern Mali conducted field research.

Nya, worship and ritual

The numerous religious cult groups of the Bambara and Malinke , which belong to the Mande language family of West Africa, are divided into the two types jo (or dyo ) and ton in the Bambara language; the plural followed by –w is jow and tonw. With jo a kind of power alliance is called and sound refers to an age group, the Community Work: which may include joint field work, be a musical or a dance group. Both types are separated by gender: there are jow and tonw for women and men respectively. In the Mande area in Mali, for example, Ntomo and Kore belong to the tonw and Kòmò, Nama, Kono and Nya belong to the jow. All of the cult groups mentioned except for the Nya have wooden masks, the design of which makes them easy to recognize. Only the masks of the tonw are worn in public by dancers who perform with drums . The best known group is Kòmò. In the Kòmò cult the spirit speaks through the mask, in the Nya cult through the mouth of the possessed person.

The livelihood in the villages was traditionally subsistence farming , which was managed collectively on the basis of patrilineal kinship groups. With the introduction of cotton cultivation for export and the monetary economy in the 1960s, the collective organization of work subsequently collapsed and the Nya fractions gradually lost their power. Since then, where no central government institutions intervene, the local exercise of power has been divided between the village head, influential families, Islamic authorities ( imams and marabouts ) and the heads of the remaining cult groups.

Nya is a higher power called a deity who, according to mythical ideas, controls rain, ensures fertility and protects against witchcraft , which is widely regarded as a danger . Nya is predominantly considered to be female, but overall “she” is presented as an androgynous being, because depending on the context, Nya can also be addressed as “he”. When a man creates a holy place for Nya, he symbolically enters into a marriage with Nya and becomes her husband ( Nya-polo ), conversely a male voodoo spirit in Haiti takes his female caregiver as “wife”. Either way, in most obsessional cults, marriage is the usual analogy for the relationship between the possessed person and the possessive mind.

To worship Nyas, her followers gather at the several hundred shrines scattered around the region. There a magician possessed by Nya ( Nya ta denh ) gives advice and answers questions about everyday things. He acts as a messenger ( Nya-da, "Nya's mouth"), prophesying and mediating conflicts between villagers. Some places of worship are only visited by the inhabitants of the village, others attract religious followers from a wider area and sometimes consist of several shrines that have brought followers from their villages.

In African myths, hyenas are considered unnatural, scavenging, ugly, vicious, dangerous, devious and sacred.

Twice a year there is a sacrificial ceremony in an enclosed area outside the village called Nya-tu ("Nyas grove"). A procession with two or three possessed men, a music group and a loud crowd goes there. One of the possessed men takes three sacks with the three sacred altars ( fetishes , yapèrè ) from the Nya shrine in the village and carries them “into the bush”. The musicians sing prize songs accompanied by drums. Arrived at the place of worship Nya-tu , Nya releases the possessed men into freedom. The three altars are unpacked and placed in large clay pots. Dogs and chickens are sacrificed above the pots . Animal sacrifices are never intended directly for the heavenly gods, but for ancestral spirits and nature spirits who can be addressed directly. However, the ancestors can be seen as mediators and friends of the gods. Chicken sacrifice is widespread in Africa and is also found in Islamic countries. As a pet that is closely related to humans, the chicken forms a magical contrast to the wild spirit in the bush and is therefore suitable as a sacrificial animal - not only because of its easy availability. The equally domesticated and diurnal dog is considered to be a substitute for the nocturnal, wild hyena that is seen in connection with witchcraft. Dogs act as mythical helpers in the creation of culture and in a myth of the Beng, a small ethnic group in Ivory Coast , dogs brought death to people. Hyenas play perhaps the most important role among animals in oral narratives in Africa. At the six-monthly sacrificial ceremony for Nya, the unusually large number of 10 to 30 dogs is killed for Nya; According to Luc de Heusch (1985), dog blood is a substitute for human sacrifice .

A myth explains how people use the dog to the three sacred altars ( yapere ) were: Formerly, the altars prisoners of the "red ape" ( monkeys ). One day a hunter and his dog surprised a group of “red monkeys” as they stole peanuts in a field near the village. The dog drove all the monkeys to flight except for one who was trapped under three sacks and couldn't escape. The dog bit his throat. Back in the village, the dog revealed the secret of the contents of the three bags and had to die immediately afterwards for his betrayal. That is why dogs have their throats cut today as a sacrifice for Nya. The dog died because of the men to whom he had shared the secret knowledge. Nya killed the hunter because he was too obsessed. The story of the three magical sacks goes back to the earliest ancestors of man. As the knowledge of the secrets of the Nya cult was passed on from one village to the next, the first person possessed by Nya is said to have died shortly thereafter. In this way a mythical line is constructed in the form of a “murderous pact”, which reaches back from the cult participants to the first possessed hunter in the mythical time of the ancestors.

Nya is pictorially presented as a dove that sits on the outer wall of a homestead and can see both into the inner courtyard (the world of humans) and outwards (the world of ancestors and witches). Equipped with the magical powers contained in the bags, Nya takes on the fight against the witches of the other world. On the processional path "into the bush", the possessed man with the three sacks symbolically goes into the mythical world like Nya. When he carries the sacks, he looks into the world beyond and hunts for the witches. In his dance at the meeting place, he depicts Nya's hunt. Sometimes he tracks down a witch somewhere. The spectators who dance and sing themselves follow the ritual spectacle around him.

The sacrificial blood of the animals is supposed to feed Nya, while the meat is brought back to the village and eaten. The crowd goes back in the evening with music and singing just as they came. Nya again takes possession of the same men who bring her back to her shrine as "horses". In the symbolic language of obsessional cults, the possessed person is commonly understood as a “horse” that is “ridden” by his or her spirit.

There are cases that the sons of the men who belong to the circle of those possessed by Nya reject the cult tradition and then fall ill. This disease is seen as a punishment sent by Nya that can only be cured by initiation and possession. Soon after his birth, Nya announces in a ceremony from the mouth of the medium whether a boy will one day belong to the possessed. Nya never speaks herself; when the spirit takes possession of a person it is said to "take a mouth". Nya can also (through the medium) bless a pregnant woman and announce to her that if she gives birth to a boy, he will be her "horse" as an adult.

Such an possession ceremony lasts about two hours. The triggering factors for the trance state can be varied. Favorably, if not absolutely necessary, music and price songs have an effect on Nya. The music ensemble consists of two plucked bridge harps donso ngoni , in which there is a magical object, a large iron hand bell kenken , which like the double bell gankogui in Ghana can also have a magical meaning, an hourglass drum tanga , an iron scraper kara and three rattles being shaken by the singers. Fast drumming makes Nya dance, it says in a song. Only in rare cases does the hallucinogenic effect of thorn apples help trigger the trance. It takes several years for a man who has fallen uncontrollably into a trance in the early stages to become a medium of Nyas.

Several families have come together to form a nya cult group ( Nya-ton ). Three members are of particular importance: the person possessed by Nya, the blacksmith who often tends to the possessed, and the owner of the altars. He is the head of the cult. The blacksmith observes the possessed person, repeats his words and settles disputes if necessary, and he also slaughters the sacrificial animals. A mythical vulture brought the anvil into the world, which is why blacksmiths have an outsider position in society because of their origins anchored in myth. If possible, the three functionaries should come from different lineages in order to ensure broad acceptance of the cult events. The three are joined by the singers ( cèlè ), who are also important for the cult , without whose singing Nya would not take possession. The rituals for Nya are mostly performed by older men, women are excluded from secret knowledge and cannot be possessed by Nya. Female followers of the cult are allowed to provide support, only the leader's wife takes care of the shrine. The men justify the opposite role of the sexes compared to other obsession cults with the fact that they would have to protect themselves with the Nya cult from the witchcraft, which mainly originates from women.

Relationship to society

The social status of cult participants is also reversed. The Nya cult is not an institution with which, like elsewhere, a humiliated, underprivileged social group, i.e. women and men from the lower class, can create their own freedom and internal recognition. Men from the powerful lineages to which the Nya cult is restricted have nothing to do with obsession cults anywhere else. Nya always chooses men from the same families as the medium (“horse”). Nya 's "choices" are unrelated to any illness in the individual, and alleged mental disorders are not treated as part of a religious cult. In the obsession cults of the Songhai (Spirit Holey), the Hausa (spirits Dodo and Bori ) and other African obsession cults, the spirit first makes a person sick by taking possession of them and eventually gives them magical powers later to work as a healer. The nya cult differs from this and from cults of possession in the Islamic context.

The Nya cult is attributed to the power alliances because the organizers of the cult combine their ritually exercised power with political dominance. The task of the Nya is to secure the existing social position of the families involved in the cult with their magical powers. Accordingly, Nya appears as a deity who resents disregarding the rules of the cult and punishes those who deviate with misfortune and disease. The destruction of entire villages and the extermination of the inhabitants through epidemics or famine can be attributed to Nya's influence. To fend off witchcraft among humans, Nya must be recognized as the most powerful of all witches. With the voice of the possessed, Nya authoritatively decrees the observance of rules of conduct, in this she is successful as long as the recognition of the cult is social consensus. Until Mali's independence (1960), possessed men proclaimed the names of people whom Nya allegedly killed for their misconduct. Prize songs sung for Nya kept the memory of these cases alive.

Today, with the loss of power of the Nya cult groups, deterrent verses are formulated more generally. The French Catholic missionary Joseph Henry found in 1910 that the majority of the population of the Ségou region were followers of African cults. Around 1971 the proportion of Muslims there was roughly estimated at around 20 percent and by the turn of the millennium the percentage had reversed. Muslims do not speak of a coherent belief system about African religions, but only mention individual characterizing practices in this context. According to this, followers of traditional beliefs drink millet beer ( dolo ), make sacrifices ( ka boliw son ) and eat dogs.

Belonging to the Islamic community now offers a way out of the influence of traditional authorities and at the same time creates a new sense of community. Even traditional priests and members of the obsession cults adopt the Islamic faith when they see their influence waning. Islamic marabouts also claim magical abilities, which is why some healers even become marabouts in order to achieve an analogous social position. Marabouts do not deny the existence of the African cult figures, but claim that the power of the Islamic god is stronger.

literature

  • Jean-Paul Colleyn: Les Chemins de Nya. Culte de possession au Mali. Editions de l'EHESS , Paris 1988
  • Jean-Paul Colleyn: Horse, Hunter & Messenger. The Possessed Men of the Nya Cult in Mali. In: Heike Behrend, Ute Luig (ed.): Spirit Possession. Modernity & Power in Africa. James Currey, Oxford 1999, pp. 34-49
  • Luc de Heusch: Sacrifice in Africa: A Structuralistic Approach. Manchester University Press, Manchester 1986
  • Danielle Jonckers: Les enfants de Nya: les activités religieuses des jeunes garçons minyanka. In: Journal des Africanistes, Vol. 58, No. 2, 1988, pp. 53-72

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heike Behrend, Ute Luig: Introduction. In: Heike Behrend, Ute Luig (ed.): Spirit Possession. Modernity & Power in Africa. James Currey, Oxford 1999, pp. Xv, xvii
  2. ↑ IM Lewis: Spirit Possession and Deprivation Cults. In: Man, New Series, Vol. 1, No. 3, September 1966, pp. 307-329, here pp. 109f
  3. ^ Susan M. Kenyon: Zar as Modernization in Contemporary Sudan. In: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 2 ( Possession and Social Change in Eastern Africa ) April 1995, pp. 107-120, here pp. 108f
  4. ↑ Eric S. Charry: Mande Music: Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa. ( Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology ) University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2000, pp. 206f
  5. ↑ See Boureima Tiékoroni Diamitani: Observing Komo among Tagwa People in Burkina Faso: A Burkinabe Art Historian's Views. In: African Arts, Fall 2008, pp. 14-25
  6. ↑ Luc de Heusch, 1986, p. 175
  7. ↑ Erika Bourguignon: Suffering and Healing, Subordination and Power: Women and Possession Trance. In: Ethos, Vol. 32, No. 4 ( Contributions to a Feminist Psychological Anthropology ) December 2004, pp. 557-574, here p. 564
  8. ↑ See Jürgen W. Frembgen : The Magicality of the Hyena: Beliefs and Practices in West and South Asia. In: Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 57, No. 2, 1998, pp. 331-344
  9. ↑ Cf. BG Der: God and Sacrifice in the Traditional Religions of the Kasena and Dagaba of Northern Ghana. In: Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 11, Fasc. 3, 1980, pp. 172-187
  10. ↑ See Josef Henninger: About chicken sacrifices and related things in Arabia and its peripheral areas. In: Anthropos, Vol. 41/44, Issue 1/3, January – June 1946/1949, pp. 337–346
  11. ↑ Alma Gottlieb: Dog: Ally or Traitor? Mythology, Cosmology, and Society among the Beng of Ivory Coast. In: American Ethnologist, Vol. 13, No. 3, August 1986, pp. 477-488, here p. 579
  12. ↑ Luc de Heusch, 1986, pp. 203f
  13. ↑ Luc de Heusch, 1986, p. 176
  14. ↑ Jean-Paul Colleyn, 1999, p. 77
  15. ^ Jean-Paul Colleyn, 1999, p. 75
  16. ^ Matthew R. Anderson: A New Paradigm for Spirit Possession. In: Leaven, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2014, pp. 134–140, here p. 136
  17. ↑ Luc de Heusch, 1986, p. 175
  18. ↑ Jean-Paul Colleyn, 1999, pp. 69-72, 74
  19. ^ Joseph Henry: L'ame d'un peuple africain: les Bambara. Leur vie psychique, èthique, sociale, religieuse. Aschendorffsche Buchhandlung, Münster 1910 ( at Internet Archive )
  20. ↑ Maria Grosz-NGATE: Memory, Power, and Performance in the Construction of Muslim Identity. In: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Vol. 25, No. 2, November 2002, pp. 5–20, here p. 8
  21. ↑ Jean-Paul Colleyn, 1999, pp. 71f, 75f