Sanguma

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In Papua New Guinea, Sanguma is the belief in magical damage spells caused by witches or evil spirits.

Origin in Madang Province

The term may originally come from the monumbo language around Bogia , Madang Province , and was used solely for the local type of damaging sorcery and the sorcerer herself.

According to reports, the victim is rendered unresponsive by the wizard and his accomplices through mesmerization . Thorns treated with poison are then inserted into different parts of the body, whereupon the victim dies in great agony. A thorn in the tongue prevents the victim from being able to name the perpetrators.

Sanguma today

Unexplained deaths or illnesses, crop failures, accidents, or adultery are often associated with Sanguma. In many cases, men and women accused of sorcery are threatened, killed or forced to flee. It is common to find single women or people on the fringes of the community who are accused of witchcraft or the use of the evil eye .

In the Sorcery Act of 1971, which came into force during the time of the territory of Papua and New Guinea , under Australian colonial rule, and is also valid in the now independent Papua New Guinea, the practice of Sanguma magic is expressly forbidden. This also applies to other types of harmful witchcraft, sorcery and enchantment, but not to those with positive ones, e.g. B. healing effect ( engl. Innocent sorcery ). The law makes no statement about the effectiveness of these magical phenomena. In the case of effectiveness with harm to the environment, the polluter would have to be punished. The law also regulates the defamation of innocent people accused of sorcery.

According to Amnesty International, Papua New Guinea has the highest AIDS rate and AIDS- related mortality in the entire Pacific. The inland impassability leads to poor medical care and health education, so people are looking for an explanation of the illness and deaths on supernatural grounds. The name Sanguma is also used for similar forms of sorcery in other parts of the country.

Sanguma was also the name of a musical group from Papua New Guinea active from 1977 to 1980 . They combined the country's cultural tradition with western instruments to create a style called PNG Contemporary and were one of the country's first internationally performing groups.

literature

  • Michael Bruce Goddard: Substantial justice: an anthropology of village courts in Papua New Guinea. Berghahn Books, 2009
  • Philip Gibbs, Josepha Junnie Wailoni: Sorcery among the Plains Arapesh . In: Anthropos, Vol. 103, H. 1. 2008, pp. 149–158
  • Carl A. Schmitz: Magic of Death in Northeast New Guinea. In: Paideuma, Vol. 7, H. 1, June 1959, pp. 35-67
  • Piet Bogner: Sangguma - black magic of the Papua Goldmann 1988

Web links

  • Sorcery Act 1971. Papua New Guinea Consolidated Legislation
  • Don Niles: Sanguma . September 4, 2002 (On the origin of Sanguma magic in Madang)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Amnesty Journal, January 2011, p. 43