Weiss, B. (1996).The Making and Unmaking of the Haya
Lived World:Consumption,Commoditization,and
Everyday Practice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
HEALING
Healing is a sustained ritual process of righting
the disequilibrium generated by spiritual, nat-
ural, psychological, and social factors, which are
often expressed in the form of physical or mental
problems. Healing practices are part of the
complex conceptual framework that constitutes
a people’s worldview, such as in their religious
beliefs. In indigenous African societies, religion
and disease/illness causation are intricately inter-
twined. Beliefs about illness have contributed to
health concerns, and the healing methods have
addressed the need for healing in African soci-
eties. This entry examines how ideas about heal-
ing are connected to religious views, looks at
some examples, and describes how a typical
healing might occur.
Religious View of SicknessReligious worldviews are quintessential to under-
standing traditional healing systems and medicine;
how the people make sense of illness or misfor-
tune; and what therapeutic and prophylactic
mechanisms they adopt. Traditional healing is
holistic, encompassing the physical, mental, psy-
chological, material, and emotional aspects that
result in a total well-being and wholeness. It
focuses not only on symptoms or diseases, but
also deals with the total individual. In a sense,
healing focuses on the person, not the illness.
In most African cosmologies, sickness, diseases,
and other misfortunes are largely linked to super-
sensible origins such as the wrath of divinities and
neglected ancestral spirits, malevolent spiritual
entities, witches, and wizards and sorcerers.
However, people also recognize nonreligious eti-
ologies of disease. Diseases are viewed as a direct
intervention by the deities or the malevolent spiri-
tual beings, a signal that some adjustment to the
person’s life is expedient. Diseases or misfortune
of any other kind is a signifier that an overhaul of
a person’s psychic motor is necessary.
In the mental and social attitudes of many
Africans, there is no belief more ingrained than
that of the reality and existence of witches. All
strange diseases, abnormal occurrences, physical
disorders, ailments, accidents, untimely deaths,
inability to gain promotions in office, failure in
examinations and business enterprise, disappoint-
ment in love, barrenness in women, impotence in
men, and failure of crops are attributed to witches
and other spiritual agents of malevolence. This
explains why they are very much dreaded and
feared in the society.
When confronted with illness, impending dan-
ger, and misfortune, there is usually recourse to
divination in a process of explanation, prediction,
and control. The people divine in their quest to
know the behest of the Supreme Being, the divini-
ties, and the ancestors, on the one hand, and to
inquire about the particular kind of fortune or
misfortune involved in their destinies, on the other
hand. The diagnostic process, cure, or prevention
that follows is often undertaken and supervised by
diviners and healers who play an interlocutory
role between the physical and spirit worlds.Some Examples
Among the Zulu in Southern Africa, the roles of
izangoma diviners and izinyanga healers are dif-
ferentiated, although not mutually exclusive. The
role of the Nganga is central within the Bwiti ritual
world in Gabon and Cameroon. She or he is
believed to have extensive knowledge of healing
practices. Most healers or medicine men rely on
some type of divination in diagnosing a client’s ill-
ness, and a divinatory technique may also be used
in determining the appropriate treatment. Those
who play these special ritual roles in the society
undergo special medical training, which involves
the novice being apprenticed to a practicing healer
for several years. Epistemologies of healing are
also transmitted from one generation to another.
Diviners/healers are sometimes tied to specific
deities in charge of divination and healing. The
izangoma are called to their profession by their
ancestors usually manifesting inthwasa/intwaso,
an illness syndrome.
Among the Yoruba, Orunmila is the oracular
deity of divination and augury with whom
the practice of Ifa is associated. Orunmila isHealing 309