Counterintuitive mentationTo turn to a different domain, a very frequent type of counterintuitive
concept is produced by assuming that various objects or plants have
some mental properties, that they can perceive what happens around
them, understand what people say, remember what happened and
have intentions. In Chapter 1, I briefly mentioned the Cuna statuettes
that serve as the shamans' auxiliaries. A more familiar example would
be that of people who pray to statues of gods, saints or heroes. Not
just artifacts but also inanimate living things can be "animated" in this
sense. The pygmies of the Ituri forest for instance say that the forest [69]
is a live thing, that it has a soul, that it "looks after" them and is par-
ticularly generous to sociable, friendly and honest individuals. These
will catch plenty of game because the forest is pleased with their
behavior.
For a more detailed illustration, consider anthropologist Wendy
James's account of "ebony divination," a recent and successful cult of the
Uduk-speaking peoples of Sudan. People report that ebony trees have
capacities that mark them off from other plants and natural objects. The
trees can eavesdrop on conversations people would not care to hold
within earshot of other people. Because of their position ebony trees are
also apprised of other occurrences: "[Ebony] will know of the actions of
thearum[souls, spirits, including people who were not given a proper
burial] and of dhatu/(witches) and other sources of psychic activity."^5
If ebony trees just archived past conversations, plans and conspira-
cies in a store that was inaccessible, this would not be of much interest
(recall our examples of spirits that forget instantly or of a God who has
no idea what is going on around him). But the trees can sometimes
"reveal" what they overheard. To recover the juicy gossip or the
witches' schemes a diviner takes a twig from the ebony tree, burns it
and plunges it into a bowl of water. Divination messages are "read off"
in the way the stick burns and in the patterns formed by ashes falling
on the surface of the water. The smudges not only indicate the nature
of the problem at hand but also a solution, for instance by directing
the diviner to the place where a particular soul is held hostage, having
been separated from the person. So ebony trees provide traces of past
misdeeds and remedies to current difficulties.
Ebony trees are not the product of an unbridled imagination; they
support precise inferences within narrow constraints. For instance
WHATSUPERNATURALCONCEPTSARELIKE