International African Institute

Fetishism Revisited: Kongo "Nkisi" in Sociological Perspective

Author(s): Wyatt MacGaffey
Source: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 47, No. 2 (1977), pp.
172-184
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African Institute
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1158736
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Africa, 47 (2), 1977 172

FETISHISM REVISITED: KONGO NKISI IN

SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE'

WYATT MACGAFFEY

ETISHISM, a word much in vogue in late nineteenth century anthrop

longer appears in serious scholarly use, except among art h
psychoanalysts, and Marxist economists. Tylor, the most influential vo
definition of fetishism, regarded it as a development of animism; fetish
doctrine of spirits embodied in, or attached to, or conveying influenc
certain material objects. Fetishism will be taken as including the worshi
and stones' and thence it passes by an imperceptible gradation into Idola
1874:11:144). Tylor went on to speculate that primitive man originally im
soul of a deceased person to inhabit some relic such as a bone; th
established, it evolved into a propensity to associate any unusual object with
the spirit, with its capacity for action, were embodied in an object speci
represent its character, the ethnographer would recognise an Idol.
This evolutionary sequence is entirely imaginary. Tylor's text gives no
actually examined any fetishes, nor did he notice that a 'fetish' is always
fabrication, not simply an unusual natural object. The locus classicus of 'f
the West African coast, especially Loango and its hinterland (Cabinda a
Zaire), inhabited by the BaKongo people, who use a kind of'charm' callfei
Portuguese narratives. The indigenous term is nkisi, pl. minkisi. The m
ethnographer Van Wing, writing in 1938, emphatically denied the Tylori
fetish, saying, 'There are no nkisi trees, nkisi plants, nkisi springs, etc. All t
on this subject in the printed literature, fetish plants, fetish trees, is merely
The natives never attach the word nkisi in apposition to a natural object
I959:383).
The notion of fetishism went out of favour more because it became an
embarrassment than because it was inadequate to the phenomenon. It im
African peoples were too immature to perceive the world correctly; intelle
led them to the moral error, in Christian opinion, of Idolatry. Non-anthropolo
whom this double condemnation is unacceptable have generally tended to
curiously enough, the equally Tylorian term animism, which merges in us
idea of 'vital force', or 'dynamism', to produce a concept so vague as to
intelligent examination of the data (Parrinder 1969:25-26; De Heusch 197
Anthropologists have done no better. Fetishism has disappeared into the
more neutral category of magic, on which Frazer remains as good an authority
In his article, 'Magic', in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Scien
Yalman, having insisted that magic must be examined in the total tapestry of
practice in the society in which it occurs, takes the opportunity to abandon th
in favour of witchcraft and sorcery, on which anthropologists have had much
say.

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 KONGO NKISI IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE I73

The present paper, based largely on published ethnography referring to

the century, re-examines the Kongo nkisi and the relationship between
and practitioner in the context of the Kongo ritual system. Primarily
complements the recent philosophical exegesis of minkisi by Dupre (I9

MAGIC

In an essay written in KiKongo at the beginning of this century,2 Nsemi Isaki

attempted to deal with the animate character of fabricated charms:

I. I Nkisi is the name of a thing we use to help a man when he is sick and from which
we obtain health; the name refers to leaves and medicines combined together.
1.7. Also nkisi is a hiding place for people's souls, to keep and compose in order to
preserve life.
4. I. The nkisi has life; if it had not, how could it heal and help people ? But the life of
a nkisi is different from the life in people. It is such that one can damage its flesh,
burn it, break it, or throw it away; but it will not bleed or cry out. Yet the magicians
think that a nkisi possesses life because when it heals a person it sucks illness out.
7.4. The medicines placed in a nkisi are said to be as it were forces in its body to help
it to work. The nki'si is as it is, but if it lacks medicines it cannot do a thing. So the
nkisi has medicines, they are its strength and its hands and feet and eyes; medicines
are all these. For this reason, whatever nkisi lacks medicines is dead and has no life.
6. i. The composition of nkisi-the ingredients and the songs-must follow the
original model. If you put ingredients together helter-skelter you injure the nkisi
and he will become angry over your failure to arrange the ingredients in the proper
order. A nkisi's strength is rooted in how it was discovered originally.

The life of a charm, then, is its effectiveness, and derives from its ingredients, which
must be ordered according to a specific tradition. The ingredients of the charm
Kinzenzi, intended to facilitate childbirth, are listed by Van Wing (I95 9:206), and may
be annotated as follows.3

Kodi, a large shell, which is the container of the charm. Related etymologically to
kola, 'to be strong', and by its spiral form to 'life' (zinga).
Mpemba, white clay, comes from streambed. The word means also 'cemetery' or
'land of the dead'. The dead live in or under the water, and are white in colour.
Nsadi, red earth. As earth, also associated with the dead. Red colour implies
transition.
Dust of kitundibila leaves. This plant, a kind of ginger (Amomum alboviolaceum) is
used as an aphrodisiac. Its fruit is phallic in form, and it never loses its leaves.
Mbika malenga, squash seeds, representing infants in the womb.
Powdered kinZengi, 'cricket'. Crickets and grasshoppers, eaten, are considered
diarrhetics.

The charm is intended to remove obstacles preventing birth and allow the child to
pass easily. It is invoked as though it were animate:

Eh! Kinzenzi, come, into this person, who desires to give birth, who desires to
sleep. Come, remove the placenta and the cord, that they be not blocked. Come,

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174 KONGO NKISI IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

stretch out, gently, for this our child. Thus our fathers had children,
mothers.

De Heusch, analysing the contents of charms of this kind, points out that they
always include two series of objects, metaphoric and metonymic. The metaphoric
group, including in this instance the shell, the ginger, the squash seeds and the cricket,
give concrete expression to the end in view. The metonymic elements, in this instance
the white and red earths, unlike the others do not evoke a desired state of affairs; they
establish a link between the powerful dead, the charm itself, and the client, giving him
the illusion that he controls an effective force: 'spirits of the dead metonymically
caught in a metaphorical trap' (De Heusch I97i :I82).
The totality of the rite identifies the charm with the client herself by recapitulating
metaphoric elements in her person. After incorporating the dead in the form of a
potion compounded of the white clay, corn and salt, she 'incorporates' the
metaphorical elements in her behaviour by avoiding them-specifically, kitundibila
and squash seeds. Avoidance differentiates terms otherwise posited as being in a
relation of similarity, which it thus paradoxically emphasises. For example, in eastern
Kongo, a chief was instructed not to kill or eat leopard: 'you are a chief, he is a chief'
(Mertens 1942:85). The symbolic relationship between chiefs and leopards, which
would not otherwise exist, is created by a disjunction which is acted, invoking a
conjunction which is thought.
Homology between the charm and the human client, in this instance the magician
himself, is enacted in the rites of a rain charm representing the rainbow, in which the
operator, to prevent rain, explodes gunpowder around the charm, fire being
antithetical to water, and himself avoids bathing; to obtain rain, he sprinkles the
charm with palm-wine, and bathes every day (Van Wing 195 9:4 o). Another text says,

When they wanted it to rain they put their nkiduku charms in water, and set up
statues out of doors and put them too in the water. No rain. Then the magicians
would be hazed and pissed upon and beaten with rods to make it rain. Still no rain.
Then they would give up, and say, It is God who created man, and he is preventing
the rain (Janzen and MacGaffey 1974:72, cf. Laman 1962:1 25).
Homology and the ontological ambiguity of charms are evident once again in
another example, an invocation addressed to a nkisi called Makwende, 'leopard', one
of the nkondi ('hunter') class, into which nails were hammered to procure the
punishment of an absent or unknown wrongdoer. It was believed that Nkondi would
be angered by the 'wounds' it had received and go 'fix' (kanga) the person against
whom it was directed. In this instance, the wrongdoer is a witch who has caused the
hunter's gun to miss its mark:

Do you, Makwende, listen, prick your ears, make your eyes clear-sighted, your ears
keen to hear. Lo! they set a banana at the edge of the water. Shall it put forth leaves ?
Cut it to pieces. The ntoyo bird, the kaka owl; the crocodile, the snake. See the path
upon which you are sent; plunder and strike the witch himself, male or female, who
is shutting the gun. Do you Makwende hammer an iron wedge into the witch's
breast, destroy his body.

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 KONGO NKISI IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE I75

The priest then engaged in the following exchange with his audienc

Nkondi kisye ! Answer: Se !

Nkondi kisye! Sye!
A, Yalala, Bu
E, ntangu ufwa, E,yayine!
Here sye! is an onomatopeic expression, appropriate to sacrifices, sig
suddenness of slaughter. Yalala is 'to stretch out' (the chicken's neck). N
'time of death'. So saying, the priest cuts off the chicken's head and smears
the afflicted hunter's gun (account adapted from Laman I953 :90).
The invocation is a cosmographic account, a word-picture of the scene i
charm is to operate. The witch is represented as a banana tree (a symb
mortality) standing at the edge of the water, that is, between life and de
birds and the two reptiles embody these alternatives, and simultaneously rep
cosmic domains of earth, water and air. The diurnal ntoyo, 'the bird of death
jacobinus, a small black and white bird; toya, 'to chatter') presages death
midnight, as does the owl (Bubo maculosus cinerascens), the 'chicken' of the an
hoots on the roof-tree. The amphibious crocodile, in fact and folklore, c
to the land of the dead, whereas the snake is a symbol of life-giving s
Makwende is a name of the leopard, chief of carnivores.
The killings implicated in the ritual are the following: (i) the chicken
chicken is conventionally a sign of the 'soul' demanded as fee by a magician i
activate a destructive curse, but in this instance it is, or is also, a representa
witch who is to be the victim of Makwende's wrath; (2) 'killing' the statu
it angry, so that it will in turn (3) kill the witch in exactly the same
ultimately (4) the hunter will be able to kill his prey.
The charm itself is thus both avenger and victim; its appearance ref
ambivalence. Its knees are bent, as in all Kongo sculptures, to show that
an animate being and not a corpse (Laman 1962:171). Nkondi figures to
museums (listed in catalogues as 'nail fetishes') usually have a protrudi
which suggest the verb venda, 'to lick', or specifically 'to lick or activate
bewitch another'; the figure thus asserts its power.4 According to an
description, the statue (teki) is given a threatening appearance (nkaduluya ns
people will think it has a damaging effect, and it is hung about with wea
hollow stalks filled with medicated gunpowder, and nets in which to ca
The appearance of the charm also represents, however, the identity to b
not upon the client, as in the case of a healing charm, but upon the victim,
changed to resemble the charm: it may be made damaged or defective, o
of defective figurines may be added to it (text, Janzen and MacGaf
illustration, Laman 1962:93). Its feet may be entangled in its own net, and kn
may be tied to it. The victim likewise will lose the use of his limbs, and be f
his going. Even before this happens he is already incorporated metonym
charm, to which nganga has attached mfunya: pieces of the target's hair or c
the peelings of manioc he has stolen.
The continuity of the absent victim, the charm, and the present victim is
evident in the composition of nkisi Na Kanga Vangu, of which Laman re

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176 KONGO NKISI IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

required the sacrifice of a man and a woman whose blood w

ingredients; 'both were bound very tightly, so that they shrieked
graphically represented the torment, the shrieks and lamentation
Kanga vangu should attack' (1962:69). As in most other accoun
European observer finds no satisfactory answer to his question whethe
sacrifice or merely a 'nocturnal' one took place. It is still believed that
costs the lives of one or more relatives; when the magician asks
'chicken' as fee, only the naive are unaware that a soul is demand
owner will mysteriously sicken and die some while later.
The significance of blood sacrifice appears to be that the client
already received, a 'killing' on his behalf, or at least hoped to avoid
towards himself. Van Wing's informants distinguished between
(nkisi mi nlongo) and those called nkisi mi nloko, 'cursing charms', or
'blood sacrifice charms', which healed by attacking the witch res
affliction. Van Wing's inventory of charms bears out the distinction i
he notes some exceptions (Van Wing 1959:307). A similar, bu
distinction has been noted in Dupre's analysis of Laman's materia
Doutreloux (1967:242).
Besides statues, minkisi were contained in baskets, pots, snail she
skins, and other materials. A charm with the same name and funct
appear in the same form. The symbolic values of the 'medicinal' in
necessarily constant from one charm to another; they were d
traditional recipe for each particular charm. What remaine
relationship of metaphorical elements to elements metonymically
dead (usually earths) and possibly also representing the person to
charm (his hair, nails, or other exuviae). A person so affected was s
(kotuswa) the charm, although in the course of the rite his healin
himself incorporate the charm in the form of medicinal potions p
ingredients, by observing taboos which symbolically identified him
and by other means. The entire procedure is conceptually and m
complex than the conventional idea of 'fetishism' allows for. It is also s
in important features to the cult of the ancestors, so much so that we
specify the nature of the difference between them.

MAGIC AND THE ANCESTORS

Van Wing repeatedly insists that the ancestor cult and magic are different in content,
manner and ethical value. It is curious that the intellectual and moral embarrassment
provoked in missionaries and anthropologists by fetishism, that is, a cult of spirits
supposedly contained in fabricated objects, is not likewise aroused by ancestor
worship, that is, a cult of spirits supposedly contained in graves. Van Wing's
dogmatism in the matter is conditioned by his interest, as a Catholic missionary, in
identifying the cult of the ancestors as an ethically respectable element in traditional
religion and contrasting it with self-seeking and superstitious magic. Missionary
ethnographers have been virtually unanimous in describing the personal use of minkisi
as a relatively new and degenerate complex. They have been encouraged in this view

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 KONGO NKISI IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE I77

by European norms regarding 'religion', expressed in anthropology in

Durkheim and others to distinguish empirically between religion and
by an indigenous distrust of minkisi, expressed from time to time, a
records take us, in iconoclastic collective renunciations of them (Ran
In spite of the force of ideals and norms, European and African, it is em
the case, as Van Wing's own ethnography shows, that charms were us
self-seeking magic, and were absent from the cult of the ancestors
1959:234, 152, 405). And in spite of the willingness of Europeans
between ancestor worship and a cult of fabricated objects, there is
difference between the two. The grave, known formerly as ngo a nkisi, (
is, like the charm, a collection of physical materials arranged in a pre
supposed to contain a sentient being. Some modern cement memori
graves actually have packs of medicines added to them, literally conve
minkisi. In the following mortuary ritual reported to Laman (1957:92
recently deceased person is invoked, as though he were Nkondi, to av
the witch responsible for his death; the magician loaded his gun with
nails of the deceased (metonymic), and a series of medicines announc
effect (metaphoric):

Investigate carefully the question of who has eaten you, whether a male
witch, whether two or three! Seek, seek, when you get to the place
remain. Whether they are in a strange village or here in our clan, purs
E, luyalu, [a fruit; yaala, 'to rule'], overcome all witches; luvemba
your eyes clear; nkandikila [a red fruit; kandika, 'to keep watch], k
crossroads. Wherever they may smell the odour of tobacco, do not forg
of lunungu Iwa nsamba [red pepper; samba 'to invoke'], sweep, sweep, cu

When the magician had concluded his speech and the corpse was at the
his shot and ran away without looking back.
In this instance the shot is the semantic equivalent of the chicken
Nkondi; a favourite way of dealing with witches was to shoot them w
loaded 'guns', and many charms related to Nkondi are equipped with them
of hollow tubes packed with gunpowder and other materials.
The difference between a charm and an ancestor in his grave is so
identity of the client in relation to the ritual object endows the sp
contained in the object with an identity of his own. The client of a
descendant of his; without descendants who perform rituals add
ancestors merge with the anonymous dead. The client of a charm h
relationship to that charm until he or a diviner acting for him decides th
can deal with his affliction; very often the charm is represented as the in
relationship, as having imposed the affliction as a sign that the per
should be initiated in the cult of this charm. 'Chiefs' (s. mfumu) were ini
of the groups they represented, and like other initiates incorporated
the spirit whose powers they mediated.

ANCESTORS AND CHIEFS

The similarity between 'worship' of the ancestors and etiquette addressed to elders,

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I78 KONGO NKISI IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

remarked by De Heusch, has led Kopytoffto argue that the term 'wors
be used to imply that, for Central African peoples, 'ancestors' are rad
from living elders (Kopytoff I971). In Kongo the important distinctio
ordinary persons, of any age, and those who exercise occult pow
including both the dead and powerful living elders. In many instanc
especially those initiated as 'chiefs', were no longer treated as ordinary
but as cult objects, containing some extraordinary soul which could be
produce extraordinary effects, good and bad.
We have already seen that the rituals of magic and of the ancesto
disregard or seem to override distinctions between spirits (invisible,
objects (visible, inanimate) and persons (visible, animate), insisting, so t
community of all three. The same effect is evident in rituals usuall
ethnographers as part of 'chiefship'. The verb 'to invoke' (sambila), n
pray', also describes an address to a chief, normally accompanied by 'gifts'
kola nut and palmwine (nsamba), as in 'sacrifices' to the dead, both kinds o
being nkayilu (kayila, 'to apportion'). The name given to the procedure
nkisi of the nkondi type to take action against someone, koma nloko (lit. '
curse'), is also given to the act of submission in which, by ritually thr
other than his own, an aggrieved party can induce him to take actio
oppressors (MacGaffey I972:2I6). The secular counterpart of this mo
resolution requires A, whose goat has been stolen by B, to steal another fr
more powerful than B; C then becomes A's patron, and demands dou
from B.
The initiation of chiefs required that they be put in contact with the de
by spending the night in a cave or cemetery. The traditional a
inauguration of'the last king of the BaSundi', that is, of the northern BaK
that in order to animate him with the spirit appropriate to a chief h
'fabricated' just like a nkisi. Selected in youth, he was imprisone
eventually castrated by the patrifilial children and grandchildren of his c
usual as the priests of the clan's corporate cult.

After being marked with chalk Na Menta was set on a leopard ski
bamayaala [children] at the head and the 'enemies' [affines] at the f
placed a rod over Na Menta's shoulders, set a leopard skin diadem o
necklace of leopard's teeth round his neck, a plaited cap (mpu) on h
loincloth about his loins (Laman I 95 7:141, adapted).
The effectiveness of this 'charm' was ritually tested in a battle whi
forces were expected to win.5 This particular account may be largely myt
structure of the ritual is not very different from the eastern practice of in
Van Wing, who has been followed in this respect by most comment
BaKongo (e.g. Soret I959), refers to mpu (lit. 'bonnet') as chiefship
political sense, but it was in fact a 'cult of affliction' as the term has been
Ndembu by Turner (1 968). The difference between a mpu of any kind and
Kinzenzi, described above, was that in principle the affliction was a co
the candidate was initiated as the representative of his clan, on the recom
a diviner (Mertens 1942 :47). The diviner's words, as given in one northern

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 KONGO NKISI IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE I79

yen'andi e! 'He has got mpu' (Laman archive, Cah. 26), indicate that mpu, like
is simultaneously the name of the spiritual personality, the material c
affliction it imposes, and the ritual of initiation which brings the cure. The
mfumu a mpu, usually translated 'chef couronne', is in fact equivalent to ngan
characteristic sign of a mpu need not be a bonnet at all and 'the basket of th
so conspicuous in Van Wing's account is in form and content indistingu
other charms (Van Wing 959:3 I 8).

CHIEFS AND PRIESTS

Further exploration of the field comprising magic, ancestors and chiefship discovers a
type of cult inadequately reported by the ethnographers and a type of spirit which,
because it may also be called nkisi, has given rise to some controversy and confusion
(Van Wing I959:383).
Although the mfumu a mpu, in eastern Kongo, is initiated to mpu, he is not so much
the officiant of its cult as one of its objects. He is not allowed to touch the charm. The
priest of the cult, who also initiates the chief, is the smith (ngangula), who is himself
initiated on the recommendation of a diviner in a situation of collective affliction
(Mertens 942:444). The same dualism is apparent in other chiefly cults, especially in
the centre and west. The priest himself is initiated in the cult of local spirits, for which
the most general term is simbi (pl bisimbi). Other terms included nkita (pl. ba-) and nkisi
nsi, 'local spirit'.
On the coast in 1928, the shrine of the great nkisi Bunzi was 'a mound like a grave',
with elephant and hippo tusks stuck in it, as in the graves of chiefs, together with many
spiral sea shells, and a small round hole, set off with white shells, into which palmwine
could be poured, as into a grave (Bittremieux 1929:65 i). Other local spirits addressed
in public cults elsewhere were incorporated in large statues called nkind'a vata set up in
the middle of the village, or in other objects indistinguishable from the general run of
charms (Doutreloux I967:24z). In the modern eastern cult of bankita the spirits are
incorporated in shrines in the form of large stones supposedly brought up from the
bottom of the river by the priests in a state of possession. Other charms elsewhere
employ smaller nkita pebbles. Such stones are the equivalent of the earths used to
represent the dead; the local spirits, who are a class of the dead, are regarded as older
and more durable than the ancestors, and for that reason stones are particularly
suitable to embody them. The stones are always employed in association with other
materials as prescribed by the rules of the cult and never stand by themselves as
'fetishes'.
It is apparent that the central ritual objects of the cults of the ancestors, of local
spirits, and of charms do not sharply differ in form, content or function. Following
Van Wing, Doutreloux attempts to distinguish between nkisi, pl. bakisi, personalised
forces, and nkisi, pl. minkisi, ritual objects, but in fact, from the beginning of the
century to the present, BaKongo have used the terms interchangeably. In any case, the
semantic segregation of noun classes is a tendency rather than a rule in KiKongo.
Despite the absence of clear linguistic differentiation, in the nineteenth century
there were, in principle, two kinds of nganga associated with the cults of personal
afflictions, on the one hand, and with the collective cults of political domains, on the

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i8o KONGO NKISI IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

other. In practice, the distinction between a cult devoted to perso

one serving the collective interest was undoubtedly as obscure as
world at large, but even that normative distinction was lost at the tur
The political system was destroyed, the memory of what chiefsh
corrupted by the introduction of colonially designated 'chiefs', th
with chiefships disappeared, and the meanings of nkisi and nganga we
the pressure of missionary inquiry and indoctrination, which too
reality of a unitary idolatrous phenomenon called 'fetishism', whose si
was the 'witchdoctor', 'fetisher', or 'sorcerer'. Laman (957:1
(1936:136, 166) and more recently Doutreloux, however, have all
contrast that obtained, in principle, between two kinds of nganga and
A recent indigenous writer says,

The term nkisi is used today, that is in so-called modern milie

medicines of a nganga-nkisi (nkisi priest, fetisher) or even those wh
proper sense of the term uses to treat the sick. But originally, and i
primary sense in customary life, a sense still current, the word n
simbi (or bisimbi) beings who inhabit the waters, the forests, the lan
opposed to the water), the high plateaux, etc. Belief has it that
former human beings ... (G. Buakasa 1968 : 54).

Doutreloux emphasises the sociological perspective when he writ

The priest of the spirits can be distinguished from the ordinary

acts explicitly in this capacity, especially in rituals linked to th
structure of the society, among them the investiture of chiefs (1967

Doutreloux also remarks that a high priest himself undergoes an init

that of the sacred chiefs, paying fees in the form both of visible slave
victims, and in due course initiating lesser priests in a hierarchy paral
chiefs.

THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE CULTS OF THE DEAD

People who die become homeless and anonymous ghosts (minkuyu, s. nkuyu) if they
have been witches in their lifetime. Others become ancestors (bakulu, s. nkulu) who are
themselves transformed after a very long time into local spirits (bisimbi, basimbi, s.
simbi). The most remote and powerful of the spirits are minkisi mya nsi, bakisi nsi.
Ghosts are believed to be served by witches, and no other cult is addressed to them.
The cults of the ancestors, local spirits, and charms associated with individual
afflictions are the three 'positive' cults of the dead. In all of them, invocations are
addressed to fabricated objects in rituals which exhibit similar symbolic structures. In
name and appearance nothing permits a consistent and unambiguous classification of
the objects in terms of the spiritual beings they represent or embody.
As in related Central African religious systems, the various spiritual beings, and
therefore the cult objects, are most clearly distinguished by their roles, that is, by the
activity pattern imposed on people by their perceived relationship to one or other class
of the dead. Verbal labels for and descriptions of the several classes of the dead are
largely interchangeable; attempts to classify the dead according to purely verbal

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 KONGO NKISI IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE i8i

statements by informants lead only to Van Wing's conclusion: 'On t

spirits there is no point in looking for well-defined concepts. Most of
only confused and contradictory notions of them' (1 959:290).
The personnel of the nkisi cult included the charm itself, the ma
(nganga), the client and, in the case of destructive charms, the witch agai
activity of the charm was to be directed. Since this use of charms to mod
well-being was undertaken upon private initiative, without public s
BaKongo regarded the practice with suspicion. It was very close
(kindoki), from which it was distinguished only by the legitima
dubious though that might be. Accordingly, from time to time Kong
have collectively renounced the use of charms, consigning them to bo
little profit in inquiring what class of the dead a spirit belonged to 'befor
in a given charm. Various accounts mentioned ancestors, ghosts, simbi
souls of people specially slaughtered for the purpose. Predominantly p
were supposed to have been energized by a spirit angry at his
imprisonment. Kinzenzi, Makwende and the like were the names of
spirits having an independent identity apart from the objects and
manifested them.
The approved cults were public cults addressed to the ancestors and to local spirits
(bisimbi, minkisi, bankita, etc.). These two classes of spiritual entities corresponded to
the two principles upon which communities were organised, descent and co-residence.
The personnel of the public cults included the spiritual figures, localised in grave,
shrine, or statue; the priest (nganga); the public, whether descendants of an ancestor of
residents of a community; and, in certain ancestral cults, a selected representative of
the clan, known in the ethnographic literature as a 'chief', who mediated between it
and the ritual object which represented its corporate identity and perpetuity. In
modern times, both chief and priest have disappeared, although the idea of a chief
remains vital and the function of priest has been taken over by the prophet (ngunza)
(MacGaffey I973).
Witchcraft, or rather the activities in which witches are believed to engage, may be
described as a negative cult of the dead, in which souls are illegitimately enslaved,
incorporated in animals, charms, or other prisons, and forced to 'work' for their
captors. They may be 'eaten' by the witch, in which event his body becomes the
container and his victims become so many makundu, or sacs of witchcraft substance,
endowing him with increments of witchcraft power up to a maximum of twelve. All
powerful elders, chiefs and magicians are said to obtained their powers by similar
means which differ from witchcraft in their legitimacy, which is in turn a function of a
social context entailing moral and political judgments (MacGaffey I97oa).

CONCLUSION

This survey shows the complexity of Kongo 'animism'. The fundamental concepts
are the immortality of the personality and the relationship between that personality, or
soul, and its visible container, by means of which it enters into social relationships, for
good or ill. In all the positive cults of the dead the supplicants enter, by means of the
ritual, into a social relationship with an invisible but wilful agency; chief, priests and

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i82 KONGO NKISI IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

magicians who have entered this relationship are transformed by it into e

beings endowed with some of the powers of the dead. Etiquette and w
clearly differ, and together they mark the scale of relative power. All po
by enduring personalities, or souls, varying in their age (the length of th
the universe) and in the circumstances of their incorporation in various k
or container. Among containers BaKongo do not distinguish as clear
expected between human bodies, fabricated objects, or (in some
animals.
Secondly, the nkisi cult has been shown to resemble strongly both the cults
connected with descent groups (ancestor worship, chiefship) and those connected
with localities. The conceptual system of Kongo ritual, of which magic is an integral
part, presupposing the same metaphysical causes and effects, has been summarised in
the chart, with a brief indication of modern changes.

PUBLIC PRIVATE

The dead: Ancestors Local Spirits Charms Ghosts

served by:
(i th cent.) Chiefs, Priests Magicians Witches
elders

(zoth cent.) Elders Prophets Magicians Witches

with effect on: Descent Local Clients Victims

groups groups

It is argued that whereas from an informant's p

distinguished by the motives of the participants and
the dead, from an observer's point of view the m
from the role configurations necessary to the pe
sociological perspective employed here will remind
is as well briefly to dwell on the differences between

There is no Church of magic. Between the magician

him, as between these individuals themselves, t
make them members of the same moral community
the believers in the same god or the observers of

This classification he regarded as universal; tha

would be recognisable as such wherever they occu
The present analysis, on the other hand, refers
'magic' is simply a convenient substitute for bungang
usage and may be quite different from practices also
parts of the world as 'magic'.6 Nor would anthrop
all cults not included in the scope of any corporation
Kongo magic and witchcraft are integral parts of a
Kongo religion though not exhaustive of it; the wo
any specific Kongo term, but there is no need t

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 KONGO NKISI IN SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE I83

BaKongo distinguish between practices supposedly beneficial to individua

beneficial to publics. Such a public corresponds to Durkheim's 'church', b
Durkheim regarded the corporate structure of public life not only as rea
primary source of the individual's understanding of all reality, I ho
corporate structure of Kongo life (primarily, the matrilineal descent grou
articulations) was an ideal rather than a reality (MacGaffey I 97ob). The source
ideal, and its relation to economics and to political history, are empirical
In addition, Durkheim's distinction between magic and religion carried
implicit condemnation of magic, similar to that of missionaries such as V
for that matter of the BaKongo themselves, and the message that colle
individual well-being depended on an intimate adjustment between religi
corporate constitution of society. On all such questions a truly empiric
should remain agnostic.

NOTES
I I am indebted to J. M. Janzen and
most J. S. significances attached to symbolic
of the
LaFontaine for comments on earlier versions of items are noted at various places in Van Wing's
this paper. own book.
4 A chief's praise-name says, Yandi i Ma Venda,
2 The complete text, translated in Janzen and
MacGaffey 1974:3 5-3 8, is one of a large numberwavenda
of ntanguye ngonda, 'He is Ma Venda, who licked
the sun and the moon'. The expression, implying
ethnographic essays written about 1915 at the
prodigious strength and daring, may be related to
request of the missionary ethnographer K. Laman
and employed by him and his colleagues in the
the kind of ordeal that required licking a hot iron.
four-volume series The Kongo (1953-68). The s In the Nkimba initiation, candidates were
original manuscripts ('Cahiers'), numbereddressed
in to resemble the actual nkisi of the cult,
sequence, are deposited in the Laman archiveNtafu
of Malwangu, which also bore a rod across its
the Svenska Missions Forbundet at Lidingo,
shoulders (Bittremieux I936:59).
Sweden (Janzen 1972). 6 In the same way, Kongo 'witchcraft' (kindoki)
is demonstrably different from Zande 'witchcraft'
3 The annotation is based on my own analytical
(MacGaffey I972).
index of Kongo ethnography, but in this instance

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Resume

UNE REVISION DU FETICHISME: LE NKISI KONGO VU DANS UNE

PERSPECTIVE SOCIOLOGIQUE

LES minkisi des Bakongo, exemple classique de 'fetiches', sont beaucoup plus complexes que
ne lindiquaient les theories simplistes de l'animisme et du fetichisme et meritent qu'on les
examine avec plus d'attention que ne leur a accordd l'anthropologie moderne. Ce rapport,
elabore a partir de textes indig&nes et de l'ethnographie des debuts de ce siecle, se concentre sur
le processus des rites et affirme la superiorite d'une approche sociologique envers ce sujet. On
demontre que les minkisi font partie integrante d'un systeme dynamique de rites dont les autres
traits majeurs sont la sorcellerie, l'autorite du chef et le culte des esprits locaux: tous les quatre
sont des cultes des morts. Toutefois la sorcellerie est un culte negatif et, en fait, fictif. Les trois
autres cultes reels et positifs, ou encore cultes agrees, se repartissent entre ceux qui sont la
responsabilite de groupements publics, les groupes de descendance (cultes des ancetres) ou
groupes locaux (esprits), et d'autre part ceux qui constituent la magie (minkisi) qui, comme la
sorcellerie, est pratiquee par l'individu lui-meme. Le nkisi proprement dit (charme, fdtiche) est
presentd comme etant une reprdsentation complexe du cosmos au sein duquel les vivants sont
associds metonymiquement aux morts tout-puissants et metaphoriquement aux especes
naturelles. Cependant la terminologie, le processus des rites et les objets qui sont au centre des
autres cultes, offrent essentiellement une structure symbolique semblable. L'autorite du chef en
particulier est envisagee comme un culte collectif de l'affliction. Les diverses categories ou se
repartissent les morts et donc les objets de culte qui les representent, se distinguent
particulierement bien par les roles qui leur sont attribues, c'est-a-dire par le mode d'action qui
est imposd aux individus par le rapport qu'ils percoivent entre ceux-ci et l'une ou l'autre classe.
Le rapport se termine par des references sommaires aux prolongements modernes.

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