Azande witchcraft

[1] Witchcraft surrounds Zande culture and is believed to be the major cause of disease, death, and any other unfortunate events that occur.

It can manipulate an animal such as a buffalo to kill someone or cause a structure such as a storage house to collapse on top of someone.

[2] Although they believe that witchcraft is the cause of most negative occurrences, the Azande do not blame it for human errors.

In turn, while the witch is performing their witchcraft, the victim's relatives can prepare a plan of defense and strike back at the evil magic,[3] but before they are allowed to do this, they must seek advice from an oracle.

If someone believes witchcraft is being used to cause misfortune upon one of their relatives, they may seek the wisdom of the oracles to see if that is the case.

In pre-European times the Zande chiefs consulted the oracles about different types of military decisions that they needed to make.

The answer to the question lies in the fate of the chicken whether it dies or lives after it is administered the poison for a set amount of time.

[7] An example of an instance that the “benge” oracle may be used in is can be seen in the ethnographic video Witchcraft Among the Azande by anthropologist John Ryle.

The adultery case has to go before the “benge” oracle to see if the women should get to live or die and if she is guilty or telling the truth.

[6] An example of an instance in which the termite oracle can be used in the ethnographic video Witchcraft Among the Azande when a woman in the village is sick and her husband wants to know whether or not she is going to live or die.

[10] Witch doctors must go through extensive training;[3] when their assistance is needed, they come together and perform a dance near the home of one who is sick or dead to locate the origin of the evil magic.

[3] Earlier (colonial) observers on Azande witchcraft frequently cast the practice as belonging to a primitive people.

Anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard (who acknowledged the importance of the work done by Claude Lévi-Strauss[12]) argued that the pervasive belief in witchcraft was a belief system not essentially different from other world religions; Azande witchcraft is a coherent and logical system of ideas.

Unlike his predecessors who published on magic, he actually did field work, studying in what was then Anglo-Egyptian Sudan for many years.

[4] A critical assessment of his book from 2017 concluded that his "efforts to clarify meaning in this way [seeing magic as a logically consistent system of thought] have proved hugely influential, and have played a major part in guiding later generations of anthropologists".