Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande

Edward E. Evans-Pritchard (b. 1902; d. 1973) was one of the most important British anthropologists of his time. Trained by Malinowski (see Chapter 17) and influenced, foremost, by Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown, Evans-Pritchard was professor of social anthropology at the University of Oxford from 1946 until 1970. His fieldwork among the native population of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan resulted in several anthropological classics such as Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937), The Nuer (1940), Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer (1951) and the late yet highly influential Theories of Primitive Religion (1965). His Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic, of which we present an excerpt, was widely discussed beyond the boundaries of anthropology during the so-called “rationality debate” of the 1960s and 1970s.

The excerpt begins with introductory remarks on some basic concepts used in Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic, including the important distinction of “mystical”, “common-sense” and “scientific notions” that underlies Evans-Pritchard's interpretation of the Zande belief in “witchcraft”. By “witchcraft”, Evans-Pritchard refers to the Zande habit of attributing experiences of misfortune to mangu, a substance or organ that allegedly resides in the bodies of some members of their society and has the power to emanate by night and “devour the soul of its victim”. According to Evans-Pritchard, this pattern of explaining misfortune is ubiquitous in Zande culture and accompanied by a complex ritual sequence of identifying the “witch” (mostly by the ritual “enquiry” of venomed chicken that operate as oracles) and applying ritual counter-measures against the assumed aggressor.