Mind, Body and Spirit in Basket Divination

An Integrative Way of Knowing

Bibliographic Data

ID3217690
AuthorsSónia Silva (0000-0002-5266-7742, Skidmore College, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume5
Issue4
Pages1175-1187
Publication date2014-12-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel5041175
OpenAlexW2010215546
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited29

The statements of researchers on the topic of basket divination and the statements of basket diviners in northwest Zambia, Africa, do not fully agree. While researchers rightly stress the importance of observation, analysis and interpretation in basket divination, going so far as to describe diviners as scientists, they fail to recognize that divination is not an abstract, disembodied undertaking. Truthful knowledge is not flushed out of the diviner's mind as a set of theoretical propositions; it is instead delivered by an ancestral spirit that becomes objectified in three symbiotic forms: physical pain, configurations of material objects laid out inside a basket, and the diviner's translation of those meaningful configurations into words. In basket divination, human bodies, artifacts, words, and spirits work together in symbiosis. Knowing is a spiritual, intellectual, and embodied undertaking. The challenge then is to conceptualize basket divination as an integrative way of knowing in such a way that one does not fail to recognize either the neurobiological substrate that we all share as humans or those others facets-such as the numen-without which basket divination as a cultural practice would cease to exist

Art · Divination · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Literature · Mind–body problem · Sociology · African cultural and philosophical studies · African history and culture analysis · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Philosophy · Psychology