Eight theories of religion second edition

In addition to God, the spirit of the sky, the world of the Nuer does embrace other, lesser spirits. They fall into two main groups: the “spirits of the above,” that is, spirits who live primarily in the air, and “spirits of the below,” those associated strictly with earth.

Spirits of the above include deng, the son of God; mani, the spirit who leads in war; wiu, the god of the clan assembled; and buk, a female spirit, called the mother of deng, who is associated especially with rivers and streams. Though their primary dwelling is the air, these spirits can seize and enter the bodies of human beings. When this happens in a temporary way, the sign of it in the person possessed is sickness. But there is also a more lasting kind of possession experienced by those who are recognized as prophets. Such persons are actually described as permanent possessors, or owners, of a spirit. Historically, the main role of these figures was to serve as inspired leaders in battle, especially during cattle raids upon the neighboring Dinka tribe. But in the modern era, Evans-Pritchard notes, that duty is seldom carried out. In no case does the spirit of the sky, Kwoth nhial, ever stoop to possess a human being. He is far, far above anything like that.

If we ask what is the relation of these secondary kuth, or spirits, to God, we meet one of the most complex and subtle points in the whole of Nuer theology. Typical of his approach, Evans-Pritchard makes a very close comparative analysis of Nuer speech patterns in order to determine exactly how, and in exactly what contexts, they use the terms Kwoth nhial (God) and kuth nhial (spirits of the air). The usage patterns show that in certain contexts the Nuer clearly think of the air spirits as beings with their own identity, separate and distinguishable from each other. Just as clearly, they fall between God and humanity; they are lesser spirits, beings whom the people often regard more with annoyance than fear. At the same time, being kuth, they are in other respects thought of as inseparable from Kwoth nhial, the supreme God. In other words,

they are many but also one. God is manifested in, and in a sense is, each of
them. I received the impression that in sacrificing or in singing hymns to
an air-spirit Nuer do not think that they are communicating with the spirit and
not with God. They are, if I have understood the matter correctly, addressing

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Among other things, this short sample of Evans-Pritchard’s analysis shows why his work has been so much admired. He was an anthropologist who worked with great discipline, precision, and determination. Not content to find out in a general way what the Nuer think, he can be seen here, as in many other places, striving to catch each connection, sort out any confusion, and make clear each shade of difference or emphasis. In the process, of course, he was also able to win from Western scholars a respect for Nuer thought that had rarely been given to primitive peoples in the past. Instead of a culture marked by savagery and superstition, he presents a people whose material life may be very simple but whose theology is abstract and sophisticated, in certain respects strongly resembling both Jewish monotheism and Christian mysticism.¹²

Among the spirits of the air, those called colwic are a special class; they are the spirits created directly from the souls of human beings struck down by lightning. When lightning strikes a hut and kills its occupants, the Nuer regard this awesome event as a direct act of God, who has chosen to take back these souls for his own use. The bodies of such people, as we noted, are not buried in the normal way, for they have been instantly transformed into spirits. In their air-spiritual form, however, they often keep their connection to their original human families, serving as their patrons and protectors.
Spirits of the Below

As family guardians, the colwic spirits provide the Nuer with a link between one form of their gods and one part of their social structure: the family, or lineage. We find further connections of this sort the moment we turn to the other main class of divinities: the “spirits of the below,” whose natural ties are to the earth rather than the sky. These spirits are held in much lower regard than those of the air; in fact, they seem hardly even to qualify as kwoth, though that is what they are called. It is interesting to notice that after all the attention lavished on the topic by earlier theorists of religion, this is where the controversial phenomenon of totemism finally appears in Nuer religion—much farther down the scale of importance than Frazer, Durkheim, or Freud could ever have imagined. The Nuer do recognize totem spirits, which they associate with animal species, such as the crocodile, lion, lizard, snake, egret, and even

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plants, gourds, rivers, and streams. Consistent with totemic customs elsewhere, members of a specific tribe or clan are said to give “respect” to their totem animal. They do not eat it; they acknowledge it when seen; and they bury it if they should happen to find it dead in the wild. The totem animal, however, is not the same as the totem spirit. The Nuer clearly think of these two as separate, though they are, of course, closely related. They take the totem animal to be a physical symbol of the totem spirit, which is a manifestation of Kwoth. The totem animal is always less important than the totem spirit. But totem spirits, in turn, are always less important than spirits of the air; unlike the air spirits, they must remain connected to their physical symbol, the totem animal.

Totemic and colwic spirits both exhibit what Evans-Pritchard calls the “social refraction” of religion. As white light is split by a prism into different colors, so the Nuer seem to think of Spirit, or God, as in these cases “refracted” into different bands, or levels, of divine power that apply in a particular way to different clans or social groups. In these cases, though the Nuer feel they are still worshipping God, they worship him as figured, or symbolized, in association with one lineage, clan, or social group in particular. Spirits of the air sometimes also assume this role when they possess a prophet who becomes a public spokesman for a clan, or when they are called upon in a special way by a certain lineage. So too with fetishes and nature sprites, which often are quite literally owned and inherited through families. Interestingly, EvansPritchard notes that the lower we travel down the scale of Nuer spirits, the

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nearer we come to the kind of elaborate and ritualized ceremonies that are normally associated with religion in the West. God, the spirit of the sky, is worshipped through simple prayer and sacrifice, while such things as hymns, possessions, and divination become more common as we descend through the spirits of the air and down to the spirits of the below.

It is only natural to think of Durkheim when we follow these connections between layers of divinity and levels of society. In some respects, Nuer spirits obviously mirror social groups and attachments. But to Evans-Pritchard, this is hardly the complete picture. “An interpretation in terms of social structure,” he writes, “merely shows us how the idea of Spirit takes various forms corresponding to departments of social life. It does not enable us to understand any better the intrinsic nature of the idea itself.”¹³ In language that recalls Eliade’s strong opposition to reductionism, we are told that the value of a sociological model “is limited, for it does not help us to understand the specifically religious facts any better.” Evans-Pritchard then adds,

Were I writing about Nuer social structure this is the feature of the religion that
it would be most necessary to stress. But in a study of religion, if we wish to
seize the essential nature of what we are inquiring into, we have to try to exam-
ine the matter from the inside also, to see it as Nuer see it.¹⁴
Symbolism

After discussing spirit in its multiple forms, Evans-Pritchard turns to an important—and now famous—discussion of Nuer symbolism. He points out that this is the subject on which the primitive mind has been most commonly misunderstood. He begins with a very careful analysis of language, particularly what the Nuer mean when they say one thing “is” another. When a bird, for example, perches on top of a hut, they are known to say, “It is kwoth” or spirit. Or they may say that a crocodile is spirit, meaning that it has the

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significance of spirit for people who call the crocodile their totem and give reverence to the crocodile totem spirit. Again, they sometimes say that an ox is a cucumber, but only in situations where an ox must be sacrificed and none can be found or spared, so custom allows for a cucumber to be substituted—to be placed, that is, in the role of the ox. To all appearances the cucumber is still a fruit, and no one would pretend to deny it. Conceptually, however, it is in this situation given a new role, that of a (substitute) ox in sacrifice.

Against the full background of Nuer theology, then, it is clearly true, and not in the least a contradiction, to say that twins are birds. But if so, then there is also no need to claim, as Lévy-Bruhl did, that people like the Nuer have a prelogical mentality; their thought, in their terms and in ours, is quite logical enough.

Evans-Pritchard tells us further that Lévy-Bruhl was not the only one to fall into this kind of error. Earlier investigators like Müller and Tylor tended to make the same mistake when they claimed that primitive people believed the sun or moon was a divinity. Being insufficiently informed about the larger context in which primitive or ancient peoples might have made such statements, they failed to make enough allowance for metaphors, figures of speech, and multiple meanings of words. When some primitives name the sun a divinity or spirit, they may mean no more than that such an object suggests or symbolizes divinity to them, or that it simply shares one of the qualities of divinity—its grandeur or brightness or beauty. In Evans-Pritchard’s view, most anthropological writers have been sorely deficient in appreciating the richly poetic habits of speech adopted by primitive peoples. In their imaginative way

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The Nuer believe that there are three parts to the human being: the flesh, the life (or breath), and the soul (or intellect). At death, the first of these goes into the ground and decays; the second goes back to God, who gave it; and the third lingers for a time near the realm of the living until it eventually disappears. The Nuer are not happy if it stays for long. They have a true horror of death, in part because all of their attention is centered on this life, which they wish to have and enjoy in abundance. Says Evans-Pritchard, “They neither pretend to know, nor, I think, do they care, what happens to them after death. There is an almost total lack of what in Western religions falls into the category of eschatology.”¹⁵ The Nuer prefer not even to talk about death. Their main concern at funerals is to make sure that the souls of the dead are given their full status as ghosts, so that they can be separated completely from the affairs of those who remain on earth. The only way a ghost can trouble the living is through cien, or vengeance, which may come if a person were wronged while alive and then died before a reconciliation could be made. When this situation occurs, it is necessary to make a sacrifice to God and a gift of reparation to the ghost. Since only wrongs done in life can lead to cien, the living can at least rest assured that only the recently dead will ever try to bother them. The dead, and their ghosts, are rather quickly forgotten in Nuer life.

For the Nuer, “soul” is something that only humans possess, and EvansPritchard notes that this fact bears directly on Tylor’s famous animistic theory of religion. Tylor, as we saw earlier, thought that early peoples developed their idea of spirits and demons out of the idea of the human soul, which they got from dreams and visions. This primitive concept of a soul led naturally to that of a spirit and thence to gods. If we look closely, however, that is not the case with the Nuer, who find these two to be very different and even opposed things. Soul is a part of all human beings, and it is created; spirit exists outside of human life, and when it enters a person, it always does so as an invasion from the outside. Even in the case of the colwic spirits, those persons taken by lightning, the Nuer are careful to say that their souls must be replaced by spirit at the moment they are taken. The one is so different from the other that any idea of derivation seems impossible. And in that Evans-Pritchard finds a lesson. We should notice, he warns, how Tylor’s theory, which seems perfectly reasonable and natural when it is pieced together out of scattered fragments of mythology and folklore, looks very different when brought up against the concrete evidence of an actual system of primitive religious thought.

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The idea of sin—including the suffering that is associated with it—is central to understanding the human side of Nuer religion. The Nuer conceive of wrongdoing in two basic forms, both of which are defined by the concept of thek, or “respect.” Among the Nuer as in other tribal cultures, various things are prohibited out of respect for others. A man, for example, ought not to be seen naked by other women in his wife’s family; a new wife avoids her husband’s parents; engaged or newly married couples ought never to eat in each other’s presence, and so on. When these rules are broken, even unintentionally (as they most often are), the acts are considered faults, and they bring a measure of shame upon those responsible for them. In other cases, however, breaches of thek are more serious; they may involve such things as adultery or incest, and they are known as nueer, acts regarded as “death.” These are usually intended actions, and they are not just shameful but sinful. Their consequence is sickness, which in Nuer thought will lead to death unless there is an appropriate sacrifice to God, who is the guardian of the entire moral order.

Though it has its human effects, all sin ultimately is sin against God, and its main consequence is to bring God, by way of his punishments, into the affairs of the community. This is a dangerous situation, for, ideally, the Nuer want God to rule but at a safe distance, looking after his world and his creatures with pleasure and not needing to enter it with punishments. The only way the danger of such divine involvement can be cleared is through sacrifice. The ceremony of sacrifice is almost the only element of Nuer religion that might qualify as a full-scale religious sacrament, though even here the most important instances are largely personal affairs—transactions between one or a few persons and God.

Sacrifice in Nuer life is of two kinds: personal and collective. The second of these—group sacrifice—seems to be the less clearly religious and perhaps less important. It occurs in connection with rites of passage, especially weddings and funerals, and its purpose is to make sacred an otherwise secular event. “It sacralizes the social event and the new relationships brought about by it. It solemnizes the change of status or relationship, giving it religious validation. On such occasions sacrifice has generally a conspicuously festal and eucharistic character.”¹⁶ The level of attention given to sacrifice on these occasions, and the emotions on exhibit, vary greatly from one person to the next; some are indifferent and almost bored, others are serious, while still others may be happy and jovial. Their attitudes do not offer much support, Evans-Pritchard observes, for the views of those theorists who find the essence of religion in some unique feeling of awe, ecstasy, or fear. Many kinds of emotion seem acceptable.

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Unlike the group rites, personal sacrifices are more seriously religious occasions. When properly done, they require the death of an ox—the most precious possession any Nuer can claim. The ceremony, which can be held in almost any location, is conducted normally by an older male, preferably the head of a family, and occurs in four stages. There is a presentation of the designated victim to God; a consecration, in which ashes are rubbed on the back of the animal; an invocation, in which the celebrant “states the intention of the sacrifice and matters relevant to it”; and finally the immolation, in which the ox is killed, usually with a quick single spear thrust from the side into the heart.

It is not sufficient, in Evans-Pritchard’s view, just to describe the procedure of Nuer sacrifice for his readers. Turning once again to a close analysis of language, he probes and explores to discover its meaning. In this connection, he notes that anthropology has in general proposed two main views of primitive sacrifice: the gift theory and the communion theory. The latter was put forward in connection with totemism by Robertson Smith, who by now has become a familiar name in our discussions. Smith believed that by killing the animal and eating it, people engaged in an act of social communion, or solidarity—a sacred sharing of food and friendship with each other and with God. There were no “bargains” or trade-offs involved. The gift theory, on the other hand, proposes just that: an exchange, or trade, in which something is given to God, who gives his favor in return. Nuer ceremonies, Evans-Pritchard tells us, clearly belong in some sort of “gift” category. Their central purpose is to give something very precious to God, even though God, of course, does not get anything he does not already have. The important thing is that a human being, responsible and

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at fault, undergoes a loss, a denial of the self, that connects deeply with a personal sense of guilt for wrong and expresses the desire for evil to be purged, expiated, cleansed, and expelled. It is not a case of God being angry and needing to be pleased. It is a case of the human need to make a transfer of that which is evil in oneself to the ox as a representative, “so that in its death that part may be eliminated and flow away with the blood.”¹⁸ Dramatic as the ceremony may be, the key thing is not the ritual but inward intention. In this serious and necessary transaction, the person who sacrifices—and the community about him—finds a release from the dangerous visit of spirit to human affairs. With the atonement complete, God can at last “turn away” and be finished with the entire matter. The family, clan, or tribe can again feel out of danger.

As with Witchcraft and the other Nuer books, one cannot read Nuer Religion without coming to appreciate the careful and thorough work of its author. Only the most patient study in the field could yield the precise, sympathetic, and systematic account of primitive beliefs and rituals that appears in its pages. From its narrative two things clearly emerge: (1) a picture full of correctives for nearly every one of those theorists who has formed a personal image of “primitive religion” without ever having come into contact with the real thing and (2) the portrait of a complex, well-ordered religious system, one that seems almost surprisingly Western and even “modern” in character.