-
4 Belief and the Body
- Indiana University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
4 Belief and the Body In previous chapters, the sacred sites examined have all been geographical locations, those places and spaces that the Anlo once—and in some cases still do—imbue with spiritual signi¤cance. But what of the human body? Did the Anlo think of this site as sacred as well? It would seem so, given the fact that in the last chapter we saw that nineteenth-century Anlos conceptualized the body of a living human being as an entity that contained two distinct souls, the gbogbo, or life soul, which was evident through the body drawing in and expelling air; and the luwo, sometimes called the personality soul, which entered the body upon birth as a soul that had once lived before but which could be reborn into the body of a newborn. This belief in®uenced the placing and spacing of the dead. It informed the ritual practices associated with the belief in reincarnation. But how did this belief inform Anlo notions about the body itself? What was the relationship between the corporeal self and its spiritual components? Were the gbogbo and the luwo simply animating principles, or was the body understood to be a fusion of the material and the spiritual, components that were separable upon death but even then still intimately linked to one another? As this chapter demonstrates, it was this latter conception that characterized Anlo understandings of the body, an understanding that also allowed the Anlo to believe that if they took action on one aspect of the self (whether the physical body, the luwo, the gbogbo, or any external spiritual force added thereto), they could also in®uence the other. But how were these beliefs connected to Anlo notions about the health of the body? What causal factors did nineteenth-century Anlos associate with various illnesses, and what part, if any, of the spiritual aspect of the body in®uenced one’s own health or the health of another? We know that like other African communities, most in Anlo deemed illnesses to be of either spiritual (gbogbomedo) or non-spiritual origins (dotsoafe ). They also believed that naturally induced diseases could be rede¤ned as spiritual if they were particularly dif¤cult to cure or life threatening. Maladies such as measles (agbayi) and yaws (dzobu)—rarely fatal and almost always contracted in childhood—were believed to be naturally caused, for example , by too much sun, by exposure to bad water, or because one was simply 83 born with the disease that emerged only later in life. In such cases, no one saw the need to consult a diviner, since these were not spiritually induced diseases . Rather, families employed purely herbal remedies that were commonly known within their communities.1 Other diseases, such as smallpox, leprosy, and certain forms of respiratory illness and insanity, were de¤ned, however, as spiritually induced. Smallpox was thought to be caused by the deity Sakpana calling the infected person to its worship. Leprosy was attributed in some instances to the work of a witch (dzoduametowo or adzetowo). The respiratory disease known as alokpli in®icted people when they violated certain spiritually sanctioned rules of behavior.2 But were all spiritual illnesses caused by agents external to the body? Given the fact that nineteenth-century Anlos believed the body contained its own spiritual elements, did they also believe that the spiritual self could induce illness within the physical body? Evidence from the nineteenth century suggests that yes, they did believe that one’s own spiritual self could induce illness in the physical self. But then how was the body conceived? What was the relationship between its component parts? And equally important for this study, how did the coming of Christian missionary in®uence and British colonial rule affect Anlo notions of the body and the nature of bodily illnesses? This chapter addresses these questions by exploring nineteenth-century Anlo beliefs about the body. It argues that most conceived of the body as a spiritual site of embodied power that had the ability to affect and be affected by the spiritual self and others. It also argues that it was these beliefs that the Anlo used as a basis for understanding the nature of illness. I then examine the ways in which late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European conceptions of the body challenged Anlo beliefs about the body and how the Anlo reconciled these very different conceptions by constructing new synthetic notions about the body and illness by...