David Zeitlyn at Aeon Magazine:
Blood from a chicken’s crest was sprinkled over a fire, and its bleeding head was touched against hot stones and a cooking pot. The chicken was then held over the flames and its feathers burnt off before it was cooked with a set of 19 leaves and other ingredients (which must remain secret). Then, as I looked to the east, palm wine mixed with potions was poured into my eyes to ‘open’ them so I could see clearly. And, finally, a portion of the prepared meal was put to one side and later dropped into the hole of a spider (or crab) to ensure that it would continue to tell the truth. This is how, in a Cameroonian village, I was initiated as a spider diviner by the late Wajiri Bi in 1986.
I had travelled to Cameroon as a young anthropologist hoping to study traditional religion and how it connected to local power structures. My research led me to Somié, the smallest of three Mambila villages on the Tikar Plain near the southern border of Nigeria. Somié was settled by the Mambila people, who live between Nigeria and Cameroon in the zone sometimes called the ‘middle belt’: where north meets south in both cultural and ecological terms.
more here.
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