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| Title: | Regional and Historical Connections of Four-Tablet Divination in Southern Africa |
| Author: | Binsbergen, Wim van |
| Year: | 1996 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Religion in Africa |
| Volume: | 26 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Period: | February |
| Pages: | 2-29 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Botswana |
| Subjects: | divination Shona Arabs Women's Issues Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Religion and Witchcraft Cultural Roles |
| External link: | https://hdl.handle.net/1887/9101 |
| Abstract: | This paper examines a system of divination which is widespread in the Francistown area of Botswana and which features conspicuously in the area's various noncosmopolitan medical systems. The system involves the manipulation of four small rectangular or triangular tablets made out of wood, bone or ivory. A striking feature of the Francistown system is its fragmented and kaleidoscopic nature in terms of nomenclature, iconography and interpretative catalogue. The oracular system contains features which do not match closely with the local symbolic system, language and cosmology of contemporary users. The author argues that this indicates to the alteration and erosion of local elements and the accretion of foreign elements. A study of the four-tablet oracular system in space and time shows that the system has spread gradually over southern Africa from a Shona epicentre. Furthermore, a comparison of the four-tablet system with Arabian geomancy and the 'Sikidy' system reveals strong indications that the southern African four-tablet system in its current form emerged about half a millennium ago on the Zimbabwean Plateau under Arabian influence. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |
