Christopher Goffard - You Will See Fire

Once, Kaiser would recall, he installed a drain under an old woman’s hut Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. , but she remonstrated with him over the shallowness of the ten-foot hole he had excavated. No, she said—they might claw down into the earth and witch me with my used bathwater: the omorogi. These were malign grave-robbing entities in human form, witchdoctors capable of casting a hex on anyone whose clothing, hair, fingernails, or excrement they could lay hold of and boil into a lethal brew.

Against those forces stood friendly diviners who could diagnose frightful omens and determine whether they were a function of witchcraft or, perhaps, of ancestor spirits angry at some slight. Other divines prescribed the proper sacrifices to banish spells, indicating whether the occasion called for the slaughtering of a black hen or a white he-goat. Kaiser viewed these divines as “ clever rogues Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. and excellent students of human psychology.” Professional witch-smellers were paid to scour one’s hut and root out the charms hidden in the roof and the walls. Having surveyed the grounds ahead of time and planted the charms, they waited for a crowd to gather, removed the alleged artifacts with a flourish—animal tails, potions, little pots—and dramatically announced that they would identify the witches responsible unless the plots were ceased immediately. Even progressive-minded Christians, lectured at church not to believe in witchcraft, secretly kept potions as a hedge against it. Some converts to Christianity abandoned it to take multiple wives, and some abandoned it in the face of serious illness or death: Confronting such calamities, you took no chances with new and unproven gods like the Nazarene.

For the Kisii, the supernatural was everywhere, but they lacked what some anthropologists called “an organized cosmology Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. .” Their religion was essentially an ancestor cult. In a volcanic peak, shapeless as the wind that swirled around its high ridges, dwelled immortal ancestor spirits called “grandfathers”—a fickle, prickly, demanding pack that meted out rough justice in human affairs, punishing homicide and adultery and incest. They sent death and disease, killing bolts and madness, barren wombs and ruined crops. They were not deities, the object of daily prayer and ritual, but their hand was detected when misfortune struck; in this sense, they more closely resembled demons or furies. When angry, they placed omens in your path—an aardvark or copulating snakes—to signal their need for appeasement by funerary and animal sacrifices.

Kaiser perceived the Kisii outlook as one of profound “fear and fatalism,” Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. akin to the pagan Europe of his Irish and German forebears. This enlarged the exhilaration of his missionary work. He saw himself bringing the good news of Christ’s victory over death and evil, liberating a superstition-enslaved people from their terrors. People sought his protection against the curse left by a lightning strike on a homestead; a sprinkling of his magic water could remove it. Once, he came upon the corpse of a young girl killed by a lightning bolt, and was warned not to touch her: It was certain to bring death, unless goats were sacrificed. Kaiser disregarded the warning, hammered together a wooden coffin, and lifted her into it for burial. If he didn’t banish the belief in curses, he seemed at least to possess a special power to defeat them. His celibacy set him apart from the community’s normal rhythms and aspirations, and that sense of apartness—coupled with his connection to the spirit world, his ability to influence hidden forces—made him a relation of traditional Kisii diviners.

In a study of the Kisii conducted a few years before Kaiser’s arrival, ethnographers Robert and Barbara LeVine described them as a “distinctively paranoid” Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. people who viewed families and neighbors as nests of potential enemies. They sued one another with astonishing frequency—over stolen cattle, boundary lines, beer-party brawls. Litigants were expected to fabricate elaborate stories to avoid admitting guilt, which is why, outside the courthouses, there stood small flowering omotembe trees—oath trees—on which they were made to swear; to lie was to invite supernatural disaster, and to refuse the oath was tantamount to confession. In matters of justice, families closed ranks, and many killers avoided trial for want of witnesses. Punishment by the human justice system was regarded as meaningless against the rage of the spirits.