Sorcery:
a traditional perception of health and illness from North-West Australia
During research into rock paintings in the
Kimberley region of North-Western Australia, links between the ancient
art and traditional hunter-gather beliefs and practices became apparent.
This article follows an examination of Shamanism, Aboriginal perceptions
of illness and rituals of healing in the context of the Dreamtime. For
many thousands of years an holistic rationale existed in Australia where
sickness can be understood as psychosomatic manifestations of social control,
"cured" by the group for the healthy survival of the group.
"There cannot be a history
of disease as experience, there can only be a history of medicine - that
to say, a history of theories about the nature of diseases and of the recipes
employed at different times for their treatment, together with a history
of the way in which organised societies have reacted to the problems of
disease within the community." (Huxley, 1980, p.118)
Understanding the social organisation
of a group is the key to explaning the rationale behind the concepts that
they hold. If illness is seen as a tangible expression of social dysfunction
then the prognosis will be shaped to fit the overriding needs of the social
control mechanismus that define it.
Traditional Aboriginal perception
of illness was that of a tangible sanction originating from the intervention
of "higher powers" from the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime provided an all-pervasive
guide to life, a law of living, a code of behaviour that had to be followed,
and based on the realtionship between each person and their Spirit Ancestors.
These Spirit Ancestors travelled across the land singing songs of creation,
interacting with the landscape and with other Beings resulting in the creation
of the present material existence, whilst endowing some creations with
anthropomorphic characteristics, personalities and special powers. The
Dreaming can be seen as a pool of time and space presented to the consciousness
of each adult individual. It is a body of history, a collective and social
schema of the ways to live. The initiated adult was able to access and
participate in this system using the maps of their consciousness learned
ritually in the ceremonies of the Dreamtime.
An individual's cognitive awareness
was controlled by a self regulating mechanism that would induce illness
as and when they contravened any formal social laws. The cause of illness
was therefore a statement of social behaviour. As a form of social control,
illness inhibited wrong-doing by providing a powerful threat of punishment
that was both inescapable (because ist came from the individual's own psyche)
and socially undesirable. Hence, Philis Kaberry gave an account of Aboriginal
women sickening if they saw an object that was sacred to the men (Kaberry,
1939, p. 250). The implication that certain foods, objects of behaviours
were taboo meant that the daily life of an individual was regulated by
beliefs that led to the fulfilment of social obligation.
Behaviour of an individual
was controlled at such a deep level that punishment would usually take
the form of physical suffering in some way. This could occur when the violations
were spiritual or social. A single explanation for this process is insufficient,
however, the various works of Seligman and his colleagues in the 1970s
for example, could be generealised to enable an understanding of these
psycho-social mechanisms. These studies demonstrated the ability to induce
severe and potentially fatal depression under experimental conditions of
extreme emotional stress. If the results of these studies were to be compared
to the "self-fulfilling prophecy" nature of Aboriginal concepts of illness
it could be argued that the threat of illness (resulting from deviant behaviour)
acts as an inhibitor of such behaviour. This would also imply that any
person who contravened their social laws would be sanctioned by their own
biological systems in a form of "learned helplessness" (Seligman, 1980).
The laws of the Dreamtime provided
boundaries for behaviour so that people were certain of their responsibilities
and limitations. For example, there were rules in the wunan (ritualised
gift exchanges) concerning trespass on another group's territories, for
observing debts, and for keeping respect for the land (Reid, 1982). This
process provided a system of socially obliged courtesy that reduced open
conflict. When problems arose the whole group was usually affected. So
there were further strategies which proscribed procedures to minimise major
rifts within the group and to prevent any person from resorting to sorcerous
practices. This was done by members of the group with more social power,
the older men and women.
Sorcerous practices similar
to "pointing the bone" (Elkin, 1938, 1944) could identify malpractices
of certain individuals whose actions the group wished to sanction. After
such a public display of discipline, the tainted individual would either
submit to the pressure of the psychological punishment and die, or seek
the aid of a highly initiated person, practised in the skills of healing
and medicine. Therefore, if self regulation of unacceptible behaviour did
not work, social sanctions of sorcery (or accusations of sorcery) would
be levelled at the individual to reinforce formal social controls.
The psychosocial sickness model
works within a tight network of human relationships where people are dependent
upon one another to fulfil their obligations. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle
was constantly at threat from extremes of the climate which directly affected
economic resources. A lage part of survival lay in regulating group behaviour
so that individuals participated in environmentally stable strategies.
Socialisation of the young provided each person with the norms and values
of the group to such a degree that the individual experiences sickness
as psychosomatic manifestations of social control. In these terms, medicine
or the practices used in healing by the manifestations of social control.
In these terms, medicine or the practices used in healing by the elders
can be seen as the procedures for reintegrating the individual to conform
to group norms and reinforcing the importance and power of the law for
the rest of the community.
"Sorcery" occurred where open
conflict would have been dangerous. Sorcery itself is shown to be highly
undesirable because it was practised in secret, and concealment of ones'
actions implied deceit that was potentially destructive. Thus the lessons
of the Dreamtime tended to insist that all conflicts were brought into
the open to be dealt with in a socially acceptable manner.
The people with greater insight
into these psychological relationships were the old people, capable of
healing if sorcery was said to have occurred. These people, initiated to
a higher degree than the rest of the group, were invested with knowledge,
power and status. This included the ability to see invisible phenomena,
and their relationship with the spirit world was complex. The role of highly
initiated people in other aspects of social organisation should be emphasised
to establish the interrelationships that occurred in every sphere of religious
and secular life. These clever people were only used in extreme cases and
their specialist abilities were "expensive" both literally and to the group,
that is to say, the members of the group had to experience a lesson of
considerable importance. According to Cawte, Aboriginal doctors practised
"medicine" and "law" together. The doctor is, "... an agent of social order
who operates in the context of sickness" (Cawte, 1974, p. 24)
In Western cultures, the social
nature of phenomena such as health and illness are often studied in isolation
of the sociological processes of which they are essentially a part. The
"sick role" is now regarded as an important social construct which is manipulated
as part of the socialisation process. For example C.H. Berndt discusses
"cautionary tales" in Aboriginal mythology which build upon three main
features: cause, symptom and outcome (Berndt in Reid, 1982) to show behaviour
and sickness in a direct cause and effect relationship.
Traditional Aboriginal life
accommodated the practical aspects of social order and behaviour to suit
availability of resources and economic demands. The Dreaming was a social
construct that reconciled these needs to both the law and the metaphysical
processes which shaped the balance of health. An important part of the
Dreaming was the belief in cyclicity that was expressed throughout the
revolutions of life, health and illness, and death. This included the perpetuation
of well-adapted psychological and social strategies to suit the physical
environments of Aboriginal Australia.
Although generalisation of
some concepts can be useful in translations of cultural information, it
is essential to study medical beliefs and practices as originating from
the societies that produce them. This case study has given one example
of a cultural context where Western concepts of medicine are inadequate
to explain Aboriginal understanding of health and illness.
S.A. Fransman and Graham
King
B.A. (archaeology)
traveller, lived and worked
9 month in Australia)
References :
Cawte, J. (1974), Medicine
is the law, University Press of Hawaii
Elkin, A.P. (1938), The Australian
Aborigines: how to understand them, Angus and Robertson Ltd., Sydney and
London
Elkin, A.P. (1944), Aboriginal
men of high degree, Australasian Publishing Co. Pty, Ltd., Sydney
Huxley, A. (1980), Moksha:
Writings on Psychodelics and the Visionary Experience 1931-1936, edited
by Horowitz and Dalmer, Chatto and Windus, London
Kaberry, P.M. (1939), Aboriginal
Woman: sacred and profane, George Routledge and sons Ltd., London
Reid. J. (1982), Land and Spirit:
health and healing in Aboriginal society, University of Queensland Press
Seligman, M.E.P. (1980), Human
Helplessness: Theory and applications, N.Y. Academic Press
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