Death by Magic

Death is a thing that every culture must deal with and in the Azande culture, death is caused by witchcraft. If someone dies prematurely, their passing is not blamed on the illness or accident that killed them, but on witchcraft.

However, not all death is blamed on witchcraft. The death of babies is attributed to a vague Supreme Being, the sudden onset of violent illness leading to death is blamed on sorcery (which is different from witchcraft), the unexplainable death of whole blood-brother groups may be explained as a problem in the blood not witchcraft (though the family might still try for vengeance), and the death of very old persons is often explained by non relatives as simple old age (though never in front of the deceased's kin).

However, murder via witchcraft must be avenged through death by vengeance magic or compensation.

Upon the death of your kin, you would go and visit the Poison Oracle to find who murdered him with witchcraft. This vengeance is not carried out in the spirit of anger or hatred, but rather in the spirit of pious duty and respect for one’s kin. It is a condoned killing. One could beg the question that vengeance would start untold blood feuds within the clan, but that is not the case since the identity of the murdering witch and the avenger are kept secret by the prince. So when the kin of the murdered ask him to give them the name of the avenger, the prince will politely decline and the family will know their kin was a witch, so the matter will end there.

It is only after the victim’s kin has avenged their death that they are permitted to stop the rituals of mourning. However, since the identity of those killed with vengeance-magic are kept secret between the prince and the witch’s kin, often families will continue to mourn for a while so that no one knows that their kin was a witch killed with vengeance-magic.

(More on this topic in my next post…)

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. Witchcraft Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Clarendon P: Oxford. Print.

Chase, Oscar G."The Lesson of the Azande". Law, Culture, and Ritual: Disputing Systems in Cross-Cultural Context. NYU Press: New York. 2005. pp. 15-29.