Invisible Agents. David M. Gordon
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a root, or part of an animal or person could be used, as long as it was understood and manipulated in the correct way, often through metaphor and metonymy. For example, the chibyalilo planting ceremony (from the verb ukubyalo, “to sow”), which was performed to ensure that a seed grew into a plant, required objects that grew and expanded, such as bark from a tree that became swollen when wet, the skin of a type of animal that grew in size when wounded, or the soil from a termite mound that rose from the earth. All people could use bwanga; it was part of everyday life. But individuals who faced difficult circumstances employed specialists, men and women of knowledge who were adept in knowing the powers of objects, shinganga (literally, the father of the art of bwanga).128
At the center of the Bemba polity, the presence of shinganga and the use of bwanga were discouraged. The Bemba royals claimed that they were immune from bwanga and that they were personally responsible for the welfare of the people and the land. The bwanga used in the chibyalilo agricultural ceremony, for example, were linked directly to Chitimukulu. In his village, the wife of the relic (muka benya) wore a belt made from Chilimbulu’s scarified skin and planted the first seeds. People could then plant their own gardens and be sure of prosperity. The crops would grow, like the termite mound under which the first Crocodile Clan royals were buried. Nevertheless, while the royal clan tried to control the use and proliferation of bwanga, it remained an autonomous invisible agent used in quotidian life.129
During times of war, sickness, and death, when emotions afflicted all, government intervention in the invisible world was most urgently required. If Chitimukulu should fall ill and fail to perform the appropriate ancestral rites, the land would spoil, no rain would fall, crops would not grow, and general misfortune would abound. During such times leaders needed to demonstrate their spiritual agency. Rites of passion, which involved a leader having sex with his head wife (“the wife of the land”), ensured the fertility of the land and blessed the most significant tools of agriculture, the ax and the seed. During and after such acts, when the king was most closely linked to the land, both good and bad fortune could result.130 Such rites affirmed and acted out aspects of the original charter, especially the dangerous sexual relations between the migrant Chiti and the autochthon Chilimbulu.
The graveyard where the kings were buried became the spiritual center of the Bemba polity, the place where the ancestral kings remained. It combined the ancestral graves and shrines of the Crocodile Clan with their particular bwanga, their chiefly babenye relics. Many of Chitimukulu’s sacred babenye relics, such as the skin of Chilimbulu, were kept in a shrine hut at Mwalule, allegedly built by the prophet Luchele Ng’anga. These relics were the keys to the land, and their possession indicated ownership over the land. A usurper had to capture the relics before conquering the land. Three elderly women, the “wives of the relics” (bamukabenye), were their protectors. About once a month Chitimukulu’s chief councilors, the bakabilo, came to Mwalule to make sure the relics were well kept and to perform ceremonies appropriate to agricultural, hunting, or military affairs.131 The territory around the graveyard was known as Chilinda (the place that is guarded). The actual graveyard fell under the control of the autochthon Kabotwe’s descendants, who retained the title of the father of the graveyard, Shimwalule.132 That Chitimukulu’s graveyard, Mwalule, would be cared for by a former “slave” indicated the sacred power of subordinates and dependents. The story established a social hierarchy, but recognized the spiritual agencies of those at the bottom of the hierarchy, illustrating the acts of negotiation involved in developing the consensus between conquerors and autochthons necessary to consolidate a polity.
The Mwalule graveyard and its babenye shrine center joined other local rulers and places, with their distinctive stories, to the royal court. The Chishimba Falls, for example, where the Chambeshi River cascades in a series of magnificent waterfalls, were long associated with the suicides of a father, Chishimba, and his daughter and her suitor, after a failed marriage. Chitimukulu took the lamp used to illuminate the marital hut and kept it as bwanga, one of his babenye relics, at the Mwalule shrine. At Chishimba, a goat was given to the ngulu spirit, and left in a cave behind the waterfall. The royal clan appropriated or at least associated older stories of love, familial strife, and serene natural wonders with their spiritual center. A story and a relic attached an ancestor, such as Chishimba, to Chitimukulu’s court. The ancestor’s name became the title of a local ruler or a bakabilo councilor to the king.133
A few abstract nature spirits escaped the focused politico-religious attention of the Crocodile Clan rulers. The most general of such nonancestral spirits was Lesa, an omnipresent but remote spirit. Lesa was prevalent across the region from at least the late eighteenth century and probably much earlier; in 1799 Father Pinto, of José Maria de Lacerda’s expedition, reported belief in “the existence of a sovereign creator of the world . . . ‘Reza’[Lesa] . . . a tyrant that permits his creatures’ death.”134 The linguistic spread of the term and of proverbs regarding Lesa suggests an even older presence.135 Oral testimony indicates that Lesa might have replaced older ancestral cults of the earth or bush, especially those linked to Shakapanga (the father of the bush) or Mushili Mfumu (the earth chief). There is some evidence of Lesa as a feminine owner of the earth, a “mother-earth” spirit that “gives birth to crops as a mother brings forth children.”136 However, many names related to Lesa indicate an association with thunder and with the sky, which contrast with the spirits of the earth below.137 The earliest recorded stories about Lesa tell of it giving a man and a woman the choice between food and eternal life; the couple chose food, and hence humans became mortal, returning from the sky to the earth below.138 Of course, this story may have been influenced by biblical Eden narratives that could have spread across the region from the eighteenth century, if not earlier. Indeed, since so many proverbs and narratives have been influenced by the Christian missionary translation of Lesa as the Christian God, a precise precolonial definition of Lesa is elusive.139 Nevertheless, while Lesa may have been thought of as the original spirit, omnipresent and allowing life and death, it was marginal compared to the ancestral and nature spirits who intervened directly in the affairs of family and in the immediate bounties of nature, or who were agents in causing illness and death.
Lesa or similar spirits were favorable and benevolent spirits, an indication of emotional well-being, the way relationships between people and nature should be in the absence of turmoil. Yet times of death and upheaval led to a proliferation of angry and jealous spirits, almost evil, that disrupted normal life. Chiwa and chibanda were the bad living dead, those who died with a grudge, from suicide, or who were wrongly accused by their relatives.140 Or they were roaming ancestors, unable to find their people and have their names restored to newborn babies.141 Stories of capture and consumption by such angry spirits were frequent. Specialists dealt with this type of spirits; if the disruption was connected with the dead, they dug up the bones of the dead and burned them, so that they could no longer haunt the living. In other cases, disembodied chiwa evil, almost an evil wind (umuze uwipe), inspired people to do harmful acts, such as killing a neighbor or relative.142 Sometimes harm originated from savage mythical figures, such as Mwansakabinga or Kanama, who kidnapped and carried away young children.143 Such angry forces inspired antisocial actions in men; agency lay in what the missionary Edouard Labrecque termed “occult” forces, rather than living people. A murderer, for example, was one who was “seized” by such magic (Bamwikata bwanga).144
Jealous people mobilized occult forces and were perhaps even initiated into associations of witches (baloshi). They accessed spiritual power to harm others and were also experts in the use of poison. Among the Luba, witches were detected by the use of potions or horns with powder inside, objects that gave people the power to see the invisible. If caught, the accused persons could be subjected to the mwavi poison ordeal. Those who were guilty would die instead of vomiting the poison. The killing of a witch was dangerous, as unless certain ritual prescriptions were followed, the spirit of the witch returned to cause havoc in the community. People cut up and burned witches in a ritual that resembled the burning of the original jealous husband, Mwase, so that they could no longer employ their witchcraft.145 At the center of the Bemba polity, the Crocodile Clan claimed to deal with such dangerous individuals, obviating the need for other shinganga.
Good fortune could also “fall upon” (ukuwilwa) people. When possession was good, it meant a step on the path toward recovery from sickness, misfortune, or even anger and jealousy. A benevolent ngulu spirit spoke through the possessed