Adapted and translated from the journal Anthropos 81, 1986: 671–681.

The photos  taken in 1989 and 2001,  were inserted into the text in 2025. 

 

 

Evil in the Divine Being

The Mongoose Cult of the Bulsa and Koma (Northern Ghana)

 

Franz Kröger

 

Abstract

This paper analyses the evil qualities in spiritual beings venerated by the Bulsa and Koma of northern Ghana. In particular, the mongoose, both in its animal form and as a spiritual being, is regarded as malignant and harmful. Surprisingly, the Bulsa mongoose is also associated and sometimes even equated with a particular ancestress, namely the shrine owner’s maternal grandmother. In addition, the mongoose shrine is often strongly associated with war and bloodshed. Among the Nankana, such a shrine can only be acquired by a man who has killed another human being. These widely differing meanings and functions can perhaps be ascribed to the deep fear of a powerful and malicious supernatural being and the desire to overcome this fear through ritual activities.

[Northern Ghana, Bulsa, Koma, rituals of the mongoose, matrilineality, evil]

 

About the Author

Franz Kröger (PhD Ethnology, University of Münster, 1978) is a retired lecturer who has taught at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, and the Institute of Ethnology, University of Münster. His research interests lie primarily in religion, language, material culture and social structure. He has made numerous research trips to West Africa, focusing mainly on the Bulsa and Koma peoples of northern Ghana.

His publications include Übergangsriten im Wandel (1978), Ancestor Worship among the Bulsa of Northern Ghana (1982), Buli–English Dictionary (1992), Materielle Kultur und traditionelles Handwerk bei den Bulsa (2001), First Notes on Koma Culture. Life in a Remote Area of Northern Ghana (2010) and numerous articles in anthropological journals.

 

Introduction to the history of religions: Evil

The question of the place of evil within a given world view has long occupied theologians, philosophers and the founders and teachers of the world religions. In the study of religious ethnology, however, it tends to play a marginal role, and anthropological publications on the subject are fairly few in number compared to theological ones.
Belief in a good god, who is often also the creator and all-knowing sustainer of humankind, confronts people with the question of how evil came into the world. If it came from this good creator god, then this god cannot be described as unreservedly good. If, however, it exists as a power in its own right, opposed to the goodness of the creator god, and also exercises a certain power over humanity, then the omnipotence of this god must be qualified.
In the world religions, this problem has led to various concepts and ideas. Some religions native to the Middle East and Mediterranean assume a dualism between a good and an evil cosmic force, as for example in Zoroastrianism, the religion founded by Zarathustra, or in the Manichaeism and Gnosticism of late antiquity. According to this view, the conflict between good and evil plays out in world history with the ethical decisions of human beings.
Important for the development of the Christian point of view on this issue was the Church Father Augustine (354–430 AD) from North Africa, himself a follower of Manichaeism in his youth. In his Confessions, we find assertions that evil (malum) is only a lack of good (privatio boni) and ‘extends to pure nonexistence’ (quod omnino non est) [endnote 1]: God gave His intelligent creation, humanity, and in an early phase also the angels, free will to do good or refrain from it, that is, to turn to God or away from Him. Such a view of the nonexistence of evil in its own right is by no means obsolete today. In Everyman’s Encyclopaedia, for example, we find the following, almost Augustinian, definition of evil: ‘Evil has no positive existence. It is the privation of good… For science there is no evil in the world… it is a theological problem’.
In the history of religion, other forms of relationships between divine beings and evil can be found alongside the dualistic approach already mentioned and the Christian–Augustinian view. In the polytheistic religions of the ancient world, for instance, the human-like gods display good and bad qualities and have the freedom to violate moral laws. On some occasions, many morally negative qualities and behaviours are combined in one god, as is the case with the Egyptian god Seth, for example, without that god’s being excluded from the community of gods as an entirely evil opposing force. In other cases, however, gods are punished for their bad deeds, as can be witnessed in numerous examples in Greek and Roman mythology (e.g. Sisyphus).
For Africa, the East African theologian and ethnologist John Mbiti (1976) examined the similarities between different religions on the basis of data from hundreds of ethnic groups and also addressed the problem of evil. His conclusion was that many African peoples categorically state that God did not create evil and cannot perform evil; all evil that comes from or is allowed by God is a just punishment for man (104). Among the Ashanti of southern Ghana, Mbiti found a view that is quite consistent with the Augustinian–Christian approach to evil and may even have been influenced by it: ‘God has created the knowledge of good and evil in every person and allowed him to choose his way without forbidding him or forcing His will on him’ (204).
In daily life, according to Mbiti, most natural evils, illnesses and even natural disasters (drought, locusts, etc.) are ultimately interpreted as having been caused by humans themselves – in extreme cases by predominantly evil people, sorcerers or witches. The cause-and-effect relationship between moral and natural evil is thus reduced to a circle of human actors. If a natural disaster is sent by a divine power, such as an earth deity, it is as a justified punishment for a moral or ritual offence. On the other hand, Mbiti explains, some African peoples attribute a certain autonomy to evil: ‘Some societies see evil as originating from… spiritual beings other than God’ (1976: 204). This is visible in the belief in spiritual beings that can be seen as ‘agents of evil’ or even personifications of it. The idea of a great conflict between a good and an evil principle in the cosmos and world history, as found in some oriental religions, does not seem to exist in Africa.

 

The ideas of the Bulsa and Koma about evil

The present work aims to examine the concept of evil in the traditional religion of the Bulsa and Koma of northern Ghana. The Bulsa, a people with about 100,000 members, still depend mainly on agriculture and have a social structure determined by the lineage system, as Fortes (1969) described for the Tallensi of the Upper East Region In addition to belief in a creator god, Bulsa religion is characterised above all by ancestor- and earth-veneration. The religious, economic and social structure of the Koma (approx. 2,000 members), who are immediate neighbours of the Bulsa, is similar to theirs [endnote 1].
According to the beliefs of the Koma and Bulsa, evil can exist in some divine beings and in humans, bush spirits, animals and, to a certain extent, inanimate objects. A person can use their free will to choose to do something evil, but evil can also be a destructive entity that has merely chosen the body as its dwelling. In the latter case, it cannot be destroyed through ritual actions but can be separated from the human body and rendered harmless. In the ritual of wen-piirika, the bestowing of a first personal shrine (tintueta-wen-bogluk) on a young person, the young recipient is rubbed down with a white chicken: all evil, whether self-inflicted or not, is thereby transferred to the chicken, which is killed without bloodshed and then disposed of. Were it to be eaten, the evil would return to the eater, here in the form of a force that can be manipulated by simple human actions.
During the same wen-piirika ritual, four lumps of earth are formed: one large and three small. The shrine is made from the former, while the latter three are later thrown away, since they now contain only bad elements from the excavated earth, having been separated from the total mass, which contained good and bad elements. Even in mundane activities, such as the construction of daub walls, some builders remove a piece from each damp clod of earth before using it.
In many spiritual beings, the Bulsa do not see evil as an intrinsic quality but rather judge these beings primarily in terms of their useful or harmful influence on humans. The god of heaven and creator (Naawen among the Bulsa, Nabidie Ngming among the Koma) is generally seen as a benevolent god but one who only very rarely intervenes in human affairs. Most other deities and supernatural powers (e.g. earth deities and ancestors) are usually helpful to people if the latter submit to their will, observe the taboos imposed and regularly provide them with sacrificial offerings. However, negative character traits are also sometimes attributed to them, most frequently moodiness.
Hostile, malicious, unpredictable spirits which cannot be appeased by sacrifices and from which people usually flee when confronted are mostly associated with the culturally undeveloped bushland, but they are usually relatively harmless in character and are largely powerless outside of that bushland. The invisible bush spirits called kurikpaarisa (sing. kurikpaarik) throw stones at or slap the faces of human intruders, such as hunters, shepherds or women collecting wood, leaving their faces red for days but failing to cause any further serious consequences.
Kikerisa (sing. kikerik) are dwarf-like, usually invisible bush spirits that live in a parallel society analogous to that of humanity, that is, in families and compounds, and as with humans, there are good and evil representatives of their kind. They can make contact with people and harm them or help them, acting, for example, as the speaking spirit helpers of a diviner. According to some information, people with dwarfism or certain physical characteristics (cleft lip, extra fingers or toes) arise from the sexual union of a human woman with a kikerik, or these spirits enter in some other way into the body of a woman, who then gives birth to a kikiruk (pl. kikita).
A group of sacred objects – living or inanimate – regarded as manifestations of a supernatural power are referred to by the Bulsa as ngandoksa (sing. jadok). Most are wild animals of the bushland, among which reptiles (chameleons, snakes, lizards, crocodiles) are particularly prominent. Domestic animals, plants and inanimate objects only occasionally take on jadok properties. Ngandoksa can enter into a ritual symbiosis with humans, although this is usually attributed neither to a culpable violation of a taboo or a moral transgression nor to the honourable selection of the human: a person may, for example, see bush animals copulating or kill them during the hunt without knowing of their supernatural character. The consequences of such an unintentional affront to a sacred animal may involve prolonged illness and misfortune. In consultation with a diviner (baano), these will be interpreted as a coercive measure by the animal to receive sacrificial offerings from the person at a newly erected shrine (jadok bogluk). In extreme cases, the jadok may even force a person to become a diviner so that it can enter human service as an auxiliary spirit. The dichotomy of ‘threatening bushland–safe settlement land’, also present in other areas of life, is resolved here by the ‘domestication’ of a bush spirit.
None of the spirit beings mentioned so far can be described as a true embodiment of evil per se. For the most part, indeed, they do not receive any sacrifices (except for the ‘domesticated’ ngandoksa). In a sense, some of them are even on a par with humans, since they can force humans to do certain things, but humans can also take them into their service.
The Bulsa take an ambivalent attitude towards the ti-baasa (‘evil trees’, sing. ti-biak) or, more precisely, towards the evil spirits that manifest themselves in these trees. Unless humans become the objects of aggression or harassment, the trees are largely left alone (in both a positive and a negative sense), although people avoid sleeping under them. At harvest time, a band of millet stalks is wound around those trees that stand near the compound on agricultural land so that they cannot damage the harvest of the surrounding fields. If the trees show hostility towards the inhabitants of a compound, however, for example by afflicting individual inhabitants with physical illnesses or mental confusion, the head of the compound (yeri nyono) is faced with the decision either to sacrifice to them in the future and add them to the ranks of his bogluta or – if he has the necessary means of protection (tiim, medicine) – to cut them down, dig them up and burn them together with all their roots.
Among the Koma, the fear of evil trees (tii-biati, sing. tii-biang) has led to the consequence that their villages, which are more compact than those of the Bulsa, are often surrounded by a wide, treeless belt, with only a few trees left in the actual settlement area. A special shrine (kogla) and its owner are able to recognise evil trees as such and destroy them by girdling and subsequent burning (Kröger and Baluri: 200–202).
This phenomenon of evil trees is the first time we have encountered a supernatural power that is considered evil in its essence and becomes harmless through sacrifice but is usually not particularly helpful to humans (unless one considers the ceasing of its malicious attacks to be a help). Evil trees that receive offerings are often called tanggbana (earth shrines), but they do not have the power and influence of a clan tanggbain and are referred to as ‘children’ or ‘dependents’ (bisa, sing. biik) of a large earth shrine. In contrast to the latter, they do not exert an integrating influence on social units, as in the bringing together of clan lineages for joint sacrifices. Rather, they are essentially evil forces that must be appeased and whose influence is usually limited to a compound and its surrounding farmland.

 

The mongoose cult among the Koma and Bulsa

While the above-mentioned ngandoksa can theoretically manifest themselves in all animals and even in plants and inanimate objects, one species of bush-dwelling predator, the common slender or dwarf mongoose (Herpestes sanguineus), also called the red mongoose or red-eared mongoose, occupies a very special position in the religious life of the Bulsa and Koma. The question of why a particular species should be granted such a notable religious position has been answered differently by various authors.
Mircea Eliade gives a very general explanation in his Patterns in Comparative Religion (1958: 11–12):

It is unlikely that there is any animal or any important species of plant in the world that had never had a place in religion… But somewhere, at a given time, each human society chose for itself a certain number of things, animals, plants, gestures, and so on and turned them into hierophanies.

According to Mary Douglas (1967: 236), animals that do not fit into the rough classification schemes of the ethnic groups concerned, such as scaly-tailed animals, tend to be tabooed and sacralised:

Under any very simple scheme of classification, certain creatures seem to be anomalous. Their irregular behaviour is not merely puzzling, but even offensive to the dignity of human reason. We find this attitude in our own spontaneous reaction to ‘monstrosities’ of all kinds.

These theses probably provide the best explanation for the veneration of the mongoose, as it is likely that it is this animal’s extraordinary qualities that have led to its cultic worship in various parts of the world, including in ancient Egypt and India [endnote 2].
The Bulsa ascribe to the dwarf mongoose (juik in Buli, the Bulsa language) extraordinary abilities as a hunter and enemy of humans. This small predator, whose prey includes venomous snakes many times larger than itself, must, in their view, possess supernatural powers. My Koma informant and part-time hunter David Sagri was able to provide a detailed description of how the mongoose (juang in Konni, the language of the Koma) hunts: its prey includes both non-venomous snakes (e.g. the waang mining, Bothrophthalmus lineatus) and venomous cobras (buntuu-nyiiru) but not the viper or python. According to David Sagri, the mongoose deceives and confuses snakes by waggling its tail, and when the snake tries to bite, the mongoose pounces swiftly on its neck and kills it.
In the stories of the Koma and Bulsa, real experiences and observations are mixed with fantastic embellishments and additions. One Bulsa farm owner reported that his dog had tracked down a mongoose during the hunt and seized it in its teeth. When the mongoose’s blood splashed onto the dog’s fur, however, the dog died on the spot.
Among the Koma, it is said that a mongoose can even kill a buffalo. Ben Baluri (Kröger and Baluri 2010: 220) from Yikpabongo describes the act as follows:

[The mongoose,] which is considered a wonderful [meant in a magical way – F.K.] and dangerous creature, is able to trail the buffalo (haaging naaging, lit. ‘bush cow’). When it has found it, it jumps and sits on the buffalo’s head and begins blowing air into its nostrils. It continues to do this until the animal suffocates and falls down dead.

The zoologist A. H. Booth (1966: 67) similarly explains the unexpected and astonishing characteristics of this animal, also mentioning its bad reputation among the native population of West Africa:

[The dwarf mongoose] spreads among small birds and mammals a perfectly justifiable horror wherever it goes… It has, moreover, an evil and well-earned reputation as a chicken-thief. I once caught one… in a trap… It then escaped from the cage in which I deposited it, by biting through the wire… To keep it as a pet would be asking for trouble.

Despite these peculiarities, however, the Bulsa could easily have incorporated the mongoose into their system of jadok-worship. This paper argues that the mongoose not only has a cult of its own, which exists alongside that of ngandoksa, ancestors, earth shrines and medicine shrines, but this differs fundamentally from other Bulsa cults in representing a power regarded as evil.

 

The acquisition and ownership of a mongoose shrine among the Bulsa

Before I elaborate on the unique position and significance of the mongoose cult within the religious system of the Bulsa and Koma, the most important rites associated with the mongoose cult must be described. The call to acquire a juik shrine is similar to that for a jadok shrine: an individual (male or female) attracts attention through unusual behaviour, falls ill or experiences accidents or family difficulties, or domestic animals, especially chickens, die in an unexplained way. A diviner eventually ascertains that a juik wishes to receive sacrifice from the person in question. Unlike in the case of ngandoksa (for example), this call need not be preceded by a fateful encounter with a living mongoose. Even the non-tabooed killing and eating of such an animal does not inevitably lead to its sacralisation and ritualisation among the Bulsa.
On 10 December 1988, Akanpaabadai, who had been suffering from various illnesses for several years, went with Anamogsi, his father and head of the compound (Wiaga-Badomsa), and me to the diviner Akanming [endnote 3]. After some introductory rituals, in which the divining spirit (jadok) was summoned by the shaking of a calabash rattle, the diviner’s stick pointed to the following symbolic objects in his bag (the name in Buli and the symbolic value of each object are given in brackets):

• The dried part (sangbela) of a dawadawa fruit (wa-kpak = an old matter),
• A calabash shard with multiple holes (nying-tuila = illness),
• The skull of a mongoose,
• A moon-shaped calabash shard (chiik = moon, month),
• A conch shell (yogsik = coolness, well-being or nying-yogsa, health),
• An empty corn cob (ngandiinta = nourishment; millet, offering of millet water),
• A chicken foot (kpiak = chicken; offering of a chicken),
• A dog’s lower jawbone (biak = dog; dog sacrifice),
• A calabash shard with a carved cross (su-kpagsa = crossroads) and
• A dried piece from the larynx (?) of a mammal (loeluk or tutok liirik, throat).

The result was unequivocal. As an earlier divination session had already revealed (symbolic object: dawadawa fruit = old matter), Akanpaabadai’s illness (perforated calabash shard) was due to the fact that a juik (skull of a mongoose) demanded a shrine from him. Only after the appropriate ritual, known as juik ferika, which was to be performed over the next few months (moon-shaped calabash shard), could he fully recover (conch shell).
Although the prescribed juik ferika ritual is almost always conducted in a similar fashion in Wiaga and its implementation fell to a representative of a different lineage, the diviner also provided some instructions regarding the procedure: the client should sacrifice millet water (symbolic object: corn on the cob), a chicken (chicken foot), a dog (jawbone) and explicitly a piece of the dog’s throat (larynx) at a crossroads (shard with a cross).
Over the following weeks, Akanpaabadai informed his mother’s parents’ compound in Wiaga-Bachinsa and subsequently his mother’s compound in Gbedema-Jagsa about the upcoming ritual.
It began at 5 p.m. on 14 January 1989 at a crossroads in front of the compound. One of the two paths led to the compound of Akanpaabadai’s mother because, as an informant assured me, the path to the MoMo compound always led via the mother’s compound. The officiant of the ritual was Apuuk from Wiaga-Goldem (Akanpaabadai’s MoMoSiSo). He had brought with him a medicine that consisted of the crushed roots of the bang plant and crushed nimbisa grasses. Both ingredients, which could not be identified more closely in botanical terms, can be bought as juik medicine (juik-tinangsa) at the market, usually from the same trader who offers mongoose furs.
With the help of a red and black stick, Apuuk stuffed some of this medicine into a dried mongoose skin, while another portion was later placed under a stone set up at the side of the path. The way in which the skin is stuffed does not appear to be an essential part of the ritual, because according to one informant from Kadema, there, the skin is stuffed with kapok wool or rags, and according to another from Wiaga-Zamsa, there, soil or cotton wool is used, while Baluri reports that among the Koma, a portion of the sacrificial food is (also?) used (Kröger and Baluri 2010: 224).
Apuuk wrapped the stuffed skin in a purple waist cord (mi-muna), as worn by adult Bulsa women, and then dug a small hole with a hoe immediately beside the path. On the pile of excavated earth, Akanpaabadai sacrificed the following:

• Millet flour water (zu-nyiam): none of those present drank it.
• A small white chicken (kpiak): the slaughtered chicken was released after the blood had flowed out and died after fluttering onto its side, which indicated acceptance of the sacrifice; a supine position would have meant non-acceptance. Akanpaabadai placed its raw meat, a piece of its liver (pang), its entrails (nue-mangsa), one foot (nang) and its beak (noai) on the earth heap as offerings.
• A brown [endnote 4] dog (biak): its blood was poured into a clay pot (bimbili). Akanpaabadai laid a piece of string (the collar) dipped in blood and a piece from the throat (loeluk) on the mound.
• Millet beer (daam): contrary to the usual practice, this beer is to have been brewed for only two days (usually three), meaning that it is not yet fully fermented. Only the officiant, Apuuk, and Akanpaabadai drank the beer.

Akanpaabadai is pouring the rest of the millet beer into the drain.

The children of the household, who had been brought to the compound before the sacrifice, now prepared the dog on an open fire in the forecourt (pielim) of the compound. At 8:45 p.m. (after dark), grilled pieces of meat were sacrificed to the juik on the mound. As strangers, Anamogsi and I were not part of the matrilineage of the officiant and were, therefore, excluded from the preparation of the sacrifice: we were only allowed to witness (and film) the sacrifice itself. After Akanpaabadai converted to Christianity (around 2003), he told me that this exclusion did not apply to the preparation of the sacrifice but only to the transporting of the mongoose pelt to the edge of the path. I also learned that during this walk to the path, the carrier must not speak or encounter another person. Mr Isaac Akapata (2009) notes in a short report on the juik ritual in Biuk, his home village, which is inhabited by Bulsa but belongs to the Kasena-Nankana District: ‘When the shrine is being carried out for sacrifice, everybody is warned to stay indoors’. According to an informant from Badomsa, when the juik is being transported to the edge of the road, a man is tasked with keeping everyone away by shouting ‘Merini’ (‘Give way’).
The officiant, Apuuk, took the rest of the sacrificed chicken and most of the dog to Goldem to eat himself. Anamogsi, was offered some meat, but he refused to accept it. Only Akanpaabadai received a front and a hind leg of the dog. The children who had prepared the animal roasted the intestines (nyueta) over an open fire, as is common practice with sacrifices.
While other inhabitants were allowed to participate to a limited extent in the sacrificial rites described so far (Akanpaabadai’s younger brothers, for example, helped kill the dog), the rituals of the following morning had an even more esoteric character. At 5:10, that is, before the ‘awakening’ of the compound, Akanpaabadai brought the mongoose skin to the roadside, and only after that did he fetch me and allow me to observe the sacrifice of millet beer (daam). Anamogsi, the head of the compound, only approached to a point about 30 metres from the place of sacrifice. Immediately after the beer offering, I had to go back to the courtyard where I was staying; I was then fetched again for the final part of the ritual. Since the juik had already been offered millet beer the previous day, the most important part of this day’s ritual was probably not the beer offering but perhaps actions and verbal utterances from which Anamogsi and I were excluded.
Finally, the entire area where the sacrifices and other rites had taken place was sprinkled with white ash from the wood burned to brew the millet beer. The meaning of this ritual could not be fully explained. Anamogsi said that these ashes also ‘belong to the juik’, that is, scattering them is also seen as a kind of offering. On the other hand, ash has a constant meaning in the rites of the Bulsa: similar to what happens when wood is burned, rites involving ash are also intended to transform a ‘hot’ (dangerous, unhealthy) state into a ‘cool’ (peaceful, healthy) one. This idea is expressed above all in the rites called pobsika (pobsi, to blow), in which two people between whom there have been ritual tensions and taboos blow ash into each other’s faces. Ashes are also considered a source of protection, for example in the painting of ash crosses on mud walls to keep evil spirits and ghosts away from the compound. The fact that the hearth ashes in rites such as those I witnessed in January 1989 are spread over a large area, rather than poured over a mound of earth, as in the case of sacrifices, suggests that they have a defensive character in this context and are not offered as part of the juik ritual itself. If the interpretation proposed here is correct, then the question naturally arises of who is to be protected from whom – whether the juik needs protection or, as seems more likely to me, whether the evil influences of the juik should continue to be warded off.

The stuffed juik skin, wrapped in  awoman’s purple waist cord, had its front and hind feet tied together, and Akanpaabadai hung it on the inside wall of his sleeping quarters together with two chilli pods and a pod of the dawadawa tree (Parkia biglobosa). Every year at harvest time (until he converted to Christianity), he would once again make an offering to his juik in front of the vertical fieldstone set up at one side of the road. He was not allowed to consume the first fruits of the new harvest before doing so. He then added a millet cob beside the skin, so the number of cobs next to the pelt could be used to determine the age of the juik’s presence in the household.
Among the Bulsa, it is common to present a child to a shrine (ancestor, earth, medicine, jadok, etc.) in a ritual called segrika (see Kröger 1978: 65–82). The initiative for this comes from the supernatural powers worshipped in the compound, one of which claims the child for itself (lueri, lit. ‘to choose’) to henceforth act as a kind of protective spirit (segi) for that child. If a married man is the owner (nyono) of a juik shrine, then in practice, this shrine lays claim to all children born subsequently, and as early as when they are one to two months old (so that no other supernatural power can forestall it or so that no other child is born to the same mother before this ritual?). Such children always receive their name from the juik; examples include Ajuik (older son), Ajuikbil (younger son; bil = small), Ajuipok (older daughter; pok = woman), Ajuilie (younger daughter; lie = daughter), Ajuite (te = bil), Ajuimoaning (for a child with light skin) and Ajuisobluk (for a child with very dark skin). The name Ajuikperik (wonderful, mysterious juik) is given when the presentation (segrika) of that child has already been made to another shrine and the juik subsequently claims the child for itself.

Immediately after the juik segrika, the father hangs a stuffed mongoose skin around the neck of the child concerned using a string. The child should wear this skin all the time, but in practice, this is rarely done. Wetting the skin with blood, for instance by injuring the child, can have serious health consequences for the child and/or the father. For safety and to prevent the fur from rotting quickly due to perspiration, the juik pelt is put into the skin of a rat (e.g. dayiuk, Cricetomys gambianus) or, more recently, a PVC bag.
After a few years, but at the latest when another child is born, the skin is discarded in a ritual called juik yierika (yieri, to remove). According to my observations and notes, the associated sacrifices of millet water, a white chicken, a brown dog and pre-dawn millet beer differ little from those described above for juik ferika. In this case, however, millet porridge (saab; here sa-gaang) is also prepared, though not, as usual, by a woman in her kitchen (dakiri) but by men in front of the compound and according to a somewhat simplified recipe without nocturnal fermentation. In Abasitemi Yeri, another Badomsa compound, I watched a man heat the blood, meat and liver of the sacrificed dog in a large pot in front of the compound and then stir in dry millet flour with a simple millet straw until a firm porridge was formed. After the sacrifice at the crossroads, the sacrificer attached millet porridge to the long stirring stick (sapiri) and flung some of it in all four directions ‘so that the other juisa also get their share’. There is no similar ritual attached to sacrifices at other shrines, although I have seen one at a Koma funeral feast after the gravediggers had shared a meal (Kröger and Baluri 2011: 393). In Abasitemi Yeri, great care was taken to ensure that after the sacrifice, only those who themselves had a juik or had received one as segi (guardian) ate the millet porridge. While a portion of the millet beer is set aside for the usual millet beer sacrifices and for entertaining other residents and guests, here, the rest of the beer sacrificed in the juik yierika was poured down the drain (voong) after the few authorised participants had drunk from it.

While all other Bulsa shrines are inherited, the ritual relationship between the juik owner and the juik is temporary and ends with the death of the juik owner. Neither female nor male descendants can take over the juik shrine and its sacrifices. This is also evident in the juik rituals immediately following the death of the owner. I have not yet been able to attend such a ceremony, but I have received detailed and credible information from Wiaga-Chiok (Awiiga Yeri) and Sandema-Longsa (Agoalisui Yeri). When an old juik owner was dying in Chiok, the mongoose skin was hung around his neck. Only a matrilineal relative, in this case the son of the deceased’s MoMo, who also had a juik, was allowed to remove it. The brief wearing of the pelt by the dying and dead man was considered a kind of farewell (banti v.) from the juik, whose skin was then hung on a stick outside the compound in Chiok and left there until it had completely rotted away.
When a juik owner died in Agoalisui Yeri (Sandema-Longsa), the head of the compound took the skin to the deceased’s grave, fastened it to a stick and said: ‘Ngoa juika a ta cheng’ (‘Take the juik and take it away’). The skin was immediately carried away by dogs. According to information from Wiaga-Badomsa, the bereaved are only allowed to begin mourning the dead after this ritual of farewell.
The children of the deceased can later acquire another juik, but this is a different juik, since the house of the MoMo from which the juik spirit comes to them is not the same as the house of the MoMo of their father. A juik can, however, force additional worship and sacrifice by the original owner’s full brother. In such a case, the juik ferika ritual must be performed by the first owner’s brother as officiant. The new shrine of the second owner is considered secondary and less powerful than that of the first.

 

The mongoose cult among the Koma

According to the current state of research, the mongoose cult of the Koma seems to be at least as well developed as that of the southern Bulsa. An intensive study nonetheless remains pending. My early stays with the Koma were short, and only in 2008 and 2011 did I spend more time there studying their mongoose cult in greater detail. The notes of Ben Baluri Saibu from Yikpabongo are an important source for the following descriptions [endnote 5]. The results of research conducted so far show that despite some deviations, the Koma mongoose cult bears great similarities to the attitudes and ritual practices of the Bulsa, as can be seen in the following list:

• The juang (Buli juik) is considered dangerous, malicious, powerful, demanding and difficult to deal with.
• The call for sacrifice comes from the juang and manifests itself in illnesses and conspicuous behaviour on the part of the person concerned. A diviner (buguri, pl. buguti) conveys the juang’s demand and gives instructions on how to perform the ritual.
• There is a great deal of similarity in the performance of sacrifices: the juang only accepts brown or white dogs, white chickens and millet beer as sacrificial offerings; in contrast to the Bulsa, however, among the Koma, the juang also spurns millet water (zon nyaang). Sacrifices among the Koma are also made at a crossroads on a mound of earth, and the skin itself must not come into contact with any sacrificial offering. The Koma, however, do not mark the sacrificial site with a vertical stone.
• After every harvest, the juang, like the Bulsa juik, demands a primitial sacrifice, but among the Koma, it also demands one before the first sowing. If the millet ripens earlier in a neighbouring village than in the juang owner’s, they must obtain some cobs from that village for the primitial sacrifice.
• Only the children of a juang owner – not the owner himself – receive a juang name in the siging ritual, such as Juang or Juanggbing (little, i.e. younger juang).
• The juang shrine, whose worship ceases with the death of the worshipper, is tied to a single individual. New juang shrines can also arise among the Koma in the matrilineal descendants of the deceased.

Unlike the Bulsa, the Koma know a creation myth for the juang cult: long ago, an old woman found a dead mongoose in the bushland. She took it home and, at the animal’s request, the first juang shrine was created from it. An old woman as the initiator of original changes in the life of an ethnic group is a common topos in the stories of the Bulsa and probably also of neighbouring ethnic groups. Usually, this old woman breaks a taboo or behaves in an irregular manner that has negative consequences for the whole group. She does not adhere, for example, to the prohibition against adding potash (kaam) to meat, which humans were allowed to cut from the divine sky, which in prehistoric times was still close by (Schott 1993: 38–41). Elsewhere, she wounds heaven with her pestle when pounding millet, causing it to withdraw to its current distant position. Among the Bulsa, taking home an animal found dead in the bush is at least considered dangerous, and in some cases I know of, the animal demanded ritual veneration and its installation as a divining jadok. Something similar may be reconstructed for the juang rite, even though Ben Baluri has assured me that the taking home of a bush animal found dead is not seen as forbidden among the Koma.
I did not find a creation myth for the juik cult in the Bulsa area. However, Mrs Isaac Akapata provided me with a written report from the Bulsa village of Biuk (Kasena-Nankana District):

[Juik-veneration] is believed to have originated from a chief shepherdess who created [the cult] and worshipped the juik in the bush. After her death, it kept revealing itself to the descendants of the shepherdess who continued… to worship it till now.

It is noteworthy that this myth is known both in the most southwesterly areas where the cult is practised, among the Koma, and in the extreme northeast (Biuk).
According to my (still incomplete) information, there seem to be two ways of acquiring a juang among the Koma. Kparibaga, the head of a compound and juang owner from Yikpabongo, is the only Koma individual to report that a juang is taken from the compound of the MoMo and is also called ‘grandmother’ (MoMo; Konni nungkuung) by the owner. Ben Baluri (Yikpabongo-Bakodeng) describes the acquisition process as follows (Kröger and Baluri 2010: 221–222):

Among the Koma the carrier is always chosen by a mongoose-shrine that is already in possession of another person, usually in the same patrilineal clan and it is up to the diviner to find this specific person and his juang.

These statements correspond with those of my informants David Sagri (Habondeng) and Musa Karemu (Barisi-Latideng). When David was to receive a juang, the diviner asked him to associate two pebbles in his mind with two juang owners from his patrilineage. The diviner then selected one of these two pebbles and thus the officiant of the juang fering (Buli juik ferika) ritual. During an extended liminal phase, which Ben Baluri compares to that of a suitor’s courting his future bride, the initiand must frequently visit the juang owner, bringing gifts (e.g. cola nuts), and serve him in the fields until the juang fering ritual can finally be performed. Among the Koma, this often takes place at a greater distance from the compound at a crossroads, without either of the paths’ leading to the compound of a matrilineal ancestor.
After the ritual, which is otherwise similar to that seen among the Bulsa, the initiand’s hair is cut, but a crest is left along the sagittal line, as can sometimes be seen on European punks in the style known as a mohawk. This hairstyle is often found in the so-called Komaland or Koma Bulsa terracottas excavated in and around Yikpabongo (Anquandah 1998). The construction of a connection between the bearers of the culture (approx. 13th–17th century) that created these figures and the present-day Koma must be regarded as pure speculation (see Kröger and Baluri 2010: 223–225; Figs. 135 and 136). If, however, the terracotta figures with sagittal head crests represent people newly initiated into the mongoose cult, then this cult existed in this area of northern Ghana as early as 400–800 years ago.
When the Koma initiate brings the stuffed mongoose skin into his compound to make offerings to it as his own shrine, the duplication of a juang shrine has taken place, with the same animal individual now worshipped in the initiate’s household as in the compound from which the shrine was transferred.
Since the fate of the juang shrines after the death of their owners has not been sufficiently investigated among either the Bulsa or the Koma for a comparison to be made, I shall quote Ben Baluri on this point (Kröger and Baluri 2010: 226–227):

Unlike other shrines, which are passed on from one generation to another, most informants argue that the Juaŋ-shrine belongs to one living male person only. If this person dies, the particular personal Juaŋ cannot be venerated any longer… Patrilineal relatives (chomballi) then take the shrine and three white straws (minchii yiala), circle round the compound (a baari tigiŋ) three times and hang everything on the wall at the main entrance to the compound (sanua daaŋ). If the deceased person was a hunter, his quiver (daagiŋ) with three arrows (yiima) is also hung on the wall. After some time, these things will be taken down and thrown away, which means the definite end of any veneration to that particular Juaŋ.

 

Differences between the juik/juang rites and other rites

In several respects, the juik/juang rites and beliefs differ from those related to other shrines:

• Some Koma informants count the juang among the jadoga, which are not quite identical with the Bulsa ngandoksa (sing. jadok) and otherwise only include the chameleon, the python and the crocodile. For the Bulsa, however, the juik does not fit into any of the other categories of supernatural powers worshipped. This means that its shrines cannot be described as earth shrines, ancestor shrines, medicine shrines, divination shrines or similar, and its cult has characteristics that do not occur in any other cultic worship.
• The ownership of a new shrine is usually associated among the Bulsa and Koma with high prestige, ritual power and possibly also material income. Some Bulsa and Koma undertake long journeys to other ethnic areas to acquire medicine shrines or ‘offshoots’ (secondary shrines; Buli biik) of strong earth shrines. If a diviner discovers that his client must acquire a mongoose shrine to put an end to constant illnesses and misfortunes, however, the client is not at all pleased with this news. Many resist such a request for months or years until further illnesses force them to take the first step towards acquiring an appropriate shrine. I only know of similar resistance to the acquisition of a shrine among the Bulsa in the context of diviners’ shrines, but in that case, the resistance of men who, for example, serve in Christian churches or hold university degrees is understandable, since the related divinatory activity would take up much of their time and they wish to avoid the censure of the non-traditional groups to which they belong.
• Unlike in ancient Egypt (for example), no single mongoose deity is worshipped in multiple shrines: each is an independent supernatural entity that has religious significance only for the individual worshipper. This does not, however, lead to individual names for each juik, as it does for the tanggbana and ngandoksa. If these names exist at all, they are unknown to the people, as one of our informants remarked.
• The Bulsa rules of inheritance and succession, including those concerning the numerous shrines found in a compound, have been described in detail elsewhere (Kröger 1982: 52–77 and 2001: 243–262). In summary, all of a man’s important goods and offices pass first to the living male persons of the oldest generation (i.e. the deceased’s own). After the extinction of this generation, the oldest descendant of the next generation becomes the successor and heir, regardless of the age and status of his biological father. The fundamental principle of Bulsa society, that inherited or acquired goods are not only individual possessions, does not apply to the juik cult. Rather, as already mentioned, a mongoose shrine is the individual property of a single person, and children cannot inherit it from their father or any other deceased person.
• Some of the sacrificial rites associated with a juik or juang shrine differ significantly from those associated with other shrines. The actual shrine, the stuffed mongoose skin, must never receive sacrifices itself. Juik sacrifices take place along a path outside the compound, where (among the Bulsa) a stone marks the place of sacrifice. Even this stone, however, must not come into contact with the offerings; instead, all libations are poured onto a pile of excavated earth beside the shrine. Additionally, while there are also prescribed colours of sacrificial animals for certain other rituals among the Bulsa and Koma (e.g. at the Koma blacksmith shrine or in Bulsa cleansing rites), the determination of colours for juik/juang sacrifices seems to be handled particularly strictly.
• An important characteristic of sacrifices – probably throughout Africa – is the strong emphasis on the sense of a numerically extensive sacrificial community, including those present and absent: at least among the Bulsa, the sacrificial meat is often subsequently divided into such small pieces that almost every lineage member receives at least a tiny part (Kröger 1982: 74–77). Before a sacrifice, all disputes in this sacrificial community must be settled. For certain mongoose rites, however, participation is restricted to a small circle of people. Among the Bulsa and Koma, only those who have undergone initiation into the mongoose cult or been presented (segi v. / sigi v.) to the mongoose shrine in childhood may participate in the sacrificial meal. In the case of the Bulsa, the presence of a matrilineal bond with the sacrificer and thus also with the juik is often an additional, unchangeable prerequisite for participation in certain sacrificial meals.
• Although the mongoose shrines are included, for example, in the line of house deities at the harvest sacrifices (faata, sing. fiok) of a Bulsa compound, there seems to be a certain antagonism towards the other supernatural beings of a compound. As described above, the juik demands all children of its owner as its protégés shortly after their birth, in order perhaps to forestall the other spirits revered in the compound.

Most Bulsa earth shrines (tanggbana) do not prohibit members of their cult community from acquiring a juik, but at the same time, as Akanpaabadai put it, they ‘do not love the juik’ (ba kan yaali juik). A child wearing a mongoose pelt around their neck is not allowed to enter a tanggbain under any circumstances. Owners of a tongnaab shrine obtained from the Tallensi (cf. Kröger 1986: 674–676) are strictly forbidden from acquiring a juik and from participating in any sacrifices at a juik shrine.
In understanding the relationships between different supernatural powers, it is useful to consider their respective abilities to possess shrines belonging to others. Almost all Bulsa and Koma possess a personal shrine (Buli wen; Konni yin), in which an aspect of the god of heaven (Naawen) is worshipped that is responsible for the person concerned and which becomes, after their death, an ancestral shrine. All other shrines acquired during the lifetime of the individual remain the property of the new ancestral shrine even after their death and are inherited with it according to a rotation procedure (Kröger 1982 and 2003). When an elderly man from Badomsa showed me his personal wen in the form of a small clay mound, I noticed a second mound of similar shape next to it. My informant explained that the mother (wen-ma) of his wen is worshipped in this shrine. This wen-ma is not identical with the wen of the worshipper’s mother, which is called ma-wen and is worshipped, as described above, in a stone by the road to the parental home of this woman. Of all other supernatural powers, only ngandoksa can have wen shrines, which are usually directly adjacent to their own shrines. When I asked one elderly woman whether she had a juik, she responded in the negative but added that her chameleon jadok was the owner of a juik. The idea that a juik can own another shrine seems to be ruled out by other informants from both ethnic groups.

Only among the Koma has a certain antagonism developed between the juang and the sky god Nabidie Ngming. Among the Bulsa, the sky god Naawen, creator and sustainer of the world, is not usually invoked or mentioned in sacrifices, although it is generally claimed that all sacrifices are passed onto him in some form or that he has some share in them.

Before each offering addressed to a specific spiritual recipient, the Koma let a few drops of clear water fall to the ground and say, for example:

Creator God, this is your water. You have created us and there is nothing greater than you. Therefore, I give you this water. Accept it so that I can also give this water to A (here, the name of the actual recipient of the offering is mentioned).

When the offering is being made to a juang, neither this introductory prayer nor the libation for the creator god may be performed: the juang forbids this act because, in its earthly existence, it claims at least temporal priority over the sky god because it was allegedly on earth before him [endnote 6]. Among the Koma, offerings to a juang begin with a reference to the above-mentioned origin myth of the cult, according to which an old woman took a dead juang she found in the bush back to her house:

Hɔgu ja-kuung jabiisiking, fi nyaang wonna.
The old woman’s find, this is your (clear) water. (Kröger and Baluri 2010: 221)

The casual and often laughter-filled way in which a community of sacrificers interacts with an ancestor is frequently noted by foreign observers of a Bulsa ancestor sacrifice. When millet beer is offered, for example, one sometimes hears a disrespectful comment perceived as a joke: ‘Don’t give him too much! If he’s drunk, he can’t help us any more.’ Even outside the sacrificial rituals, there are few signs of any sacred awe for the up-to-one-metre-tall earthen ancestral shrines. The larger ones serve as a place to sit in front of the compound, children play on them, and I have even been asked to stand on a high ancestral shrine to take a photograph. Attitudes towards the juik and its shrine are quite different. While gathering information and participating in juik rites among the Bulsa, I quickly noticed a great deal of anxiety among the actors and informants. Many informants who were otherwise communicative and willing to cooperate refused to answer my questions about the juik, let alone let me participate in a ritual.

My first opportunity to witness a simple sacrifice at a juik shrine was in Gbedema, the paternal compound of a woman living in Germany. I was warmly welcomed and promised every kind of assistance in my work. Before the juik sacrifice took place in a thatched round house, however, the young sacrificer told me that I must stay outside, a few metres from the entrance. Shortly before the sacrifice began, he asked me to wait a few metres further from the action behind a wall, which meant I was practically excluded from the sacrifice.
It was only when the juik cult came to Anyenangdu Yeri (Wiaga-Badomsa) in 1989 that better research opportunities arose. The day before I took part in the juik ferika described above, involving the awarding of a juik to Anamogsi’s son, I also invited my Christian assistant to attend this ritual. He was frightened and told me quite categorically that he did not wish to have any contact with juik cults.
The course of the juik ferika described above was also not the same as is usual for rituals in Anyenangdu Yeri. For all other sacrificial rituals, the presence of children, who are to gradually acquire ritual knowledge and skills through observation and participation, is expressly desired. The shooing away of all children into the interior of the compound (also common among the Koma), the retreat of the women, the observance by the unaffected men of a respectful and safe distance from the sacrificial events and the precise definition of which rites I was allowed to witness and which did not correspond in any way to the usual procedures.

 

Fear, malice and matrilineality

The latter comparisons lead us back to the initial question of the appearance of evil as an extraordinary characteristic of a divine power. For our considerations, it is important to note here that the aversion and fear felt by the Bulsa and Koma relate not only to the spirit being constituted by the juik but also, to a certain extent, to the living small predator Herpestes sanguineus. Although the Bulsa are allowed to hunt and kill this animal and, according to one source, to consume the female of the species, they remain aware of the particular vulnerability of the hunter. Among the Koma, the consumption of the juang is strictly limited. Ben Baluri (Kröger and Baluri 2010: 221) has reported from his childhood experiences that while there was no fundamental ban on hunting the juang in his herding group, its consumption was prohibited. When individuals broke this prohibition, they called the animal – perhaps as a protective measure – chiing (ground squirrel), possibly feigning ignorance of the species; in any case, the word juang was not used. Baluri (Kröger and Baluri 2010: 221) noted that ‘The reasons for this prohibition are not clear. Some believe that juang by nature is a devil’.
All my informants among the Bulsa and Koma associated the divine being of the juik or juang with evil. Unlike the malevolent bush spirits, it causes damage within compounds, especially when it is involved in ritual acts. The reason for the ‘evil deeds’ of the juik, such as punishing ritual mistakes or moral offences, is often not apparent to those affected, in contrast to the punishments by the ancestors. Furthermore, the purpose of the afflictions caused by the juik is not always to emphasise the desire for a shrine or patronage (segini). In addition, they usually go far beyond the measures of the ancestors, who indicate such a desire, for example, by having a child cry heavily or an adult experience illness. When asked directly whether a juik can also do good, Atongka, a juik owner from Wiaga-Badomsa, replied that once a shrine has been erected, there is no more trouble, and nothing stands in the way of successful chicken breeding. The good of a juik is thus seen, as in the statements of other informants, as the aversion and absence of evil.
The juik takes an indifferent attitude towards some of the moral laws of Bulsa society. Theft, especially within one’s own lineage, is considered a serious offence by all Bulsa and is associated with the concept of daung (literally ‘dirt’). The delinquent can be punished by some earth sanctuaries and ancestors immediately after such an act. To offer a stolen animal as a sacrifice to an ancestor is an almost inconceivable offence for a Bulsa individual and results in the strictest sanctions. In stark contrast, some informants claim that the juik accepts even stolen sacrificial animals without negative consequences for the sacrificer. From what has been said so far, one might develop the impression that the juik is a spirit feared by humans, far removed from the ideals of human society and also from some of its moral concepts.
Consequently, I was surprised when a woman from Anamogsi’s compound suddenly pointed to a juik stone on a footpath and said, ‘N mawa le la!’ (‘That’s my mother!’). Since the juik stones strongly resemble a certain form of female ancestral shrine (ma-wen) in their appearance and placement along footpaths, I believed that there was some confusion on her or my part with such a shrine. Anamogsi later explained, however, that the woman was right: her son had taken his juik from the compound of his MoMo, that is, this woman’s mother. The woman’s equation of the shrine’s giver, her son’s MoMo, with the shrine itself nonetheless remains peculiar. I am, however, aware of other Bulsa shrines named after their original acquirer or their origin. The identification of the juik shrine with the MoMo of the acquirer can go so far that some informants even describe the shrine as a female ancestor shrine. In my opinion, this is not justified, because the MoMo often has a real ancestor shrine (ma-bage) in the form of a knobbed pot in the same compound (of the son or another patrilineal descendant of her daughter).
Associating the juik with the matrilineality of a family can shed light on at least some of the unresolved problems concerning it. After the establishment of the juik in a compound, its shrine constitutes a foreign element because it is associated with the matrilineage of its owner, who is also the only one allowed to sacrifice to it. This involvement of matrilineality may also at least partially explain why the other residents behave so reservedly towards the shrine: it is a shrine which does not belong to the compound’s patrilineage and to which no other residents, except the mother and full siblings of the shrine owner, have any familial relationship. When I asked Anamogsi why he only attended his son’s juik sacrifice at a remove of about 30 metres, he answered that this was a foreign shrine and that he had nothing to do with the affair.
It is more difficult to explain the disproportionate fear of this supernatural being through its association with a mother – or indeed its maliciousness. Although Bulsa children have much closer and more affectionate relationships with their mothers than with their fathers, female ancestors are considered more difficult, moody and inaccessible than male ones. M. Fortes found similar attitudes among the Tallensi of northern Ghana (1969: 235):

But the spirits of female ancestors are believed to be specially hard, cruel, and capricious. This is remarkable when we consider the love and devotion a mother shows for her child throughout life.

Since Fortes generally sees an individual’s relationship with their ancestors as strongly influenced by their relationship with their parents during their lifetime (1969: 234ff: ‘The Ancestors as Parent Images’), the deviation from this hypothesis in the case of the ‘mothers’ is inexplicable to him. Among the Bulsa, attitudes towards the benevolent yet easily angered and punishing ancestors show similarities to the relationships between children and parents. The Bulsa affirm, however, that the deceased father who receives sacrifices does not retain the personality traits he exhibited in his lifetime. A weak, yielding and kind father does not exhibit these characteristics as an ancestor but rather takes on characteristics similar to other ancestors, who may have been authoritarian, strict or even cruel during their lifetimes. The Bulsa explain this by the fact that one does not sacrifice to the soul (chiik) of the living father but to his wen, the divine power worshipped in a clay shrine (see above), with which the ancestor himself may have had a tense relationship during his lifetime, since the personal wen of a living person can behave towards that person in much the same demanding and punishing way as can an ancestor to a sacrificer.
The veneration of female ancestors, who, like all women married into families – and likewise, the juisa – are strangers in a Bulsa compound, differs greatly from the veneration of male ancestors both in its outward form and in the attitude of the descendants. While the wen shrines of men, from the personal wena (pl.) to the founding ancestors of a lineage, always consist of a mud substructure with an inserted offering-stone, for the wen shrines of women, we find three very different forms.
Girls and married women have their wen in a small clay mound with a stone at its apex, a shrine that is not different from that of a living male Bulsa. Their shrines receive sacrifices from their fathers or husbands. The deceased mother of a Bulsa man, as described above, is worshipped on a stone (ma-wen-bogluk) located beside the footpath to the woman’s parental home. The shrine (ma-bage) of the MoMo, like that of the FaMoMo, FaFaMoMo, and so on, takes the form of a ceramic knobbed pot (puuk), located in the ancestral house (kpilima dok or dalong) of a compound.
To better understand the ambivalent, fear-ridden relationship of a juik owner to the shrine acquired from the house of a matrilineal ancestor, one must examine the relationship of Bulsa individuals to their matrilineal ancestors in general and to ancestors’ shrines. This differs greatly from the prevailing attitude towards patrilineal, male ancestors. After willingly giving me information about his male ancestral shrines and his ma-wen, Anagunsa, an older informant from Sandema Yongsa, refused to make a statement about his ma-baga (pl.) because – as he put it – he would then no longer be able to sleep peacefully at night, since a MoMo is considered difficult and rejects contact with outsiders.
The Bulsa people’s affection for their own mothers, as attested by Fortes for the Tallensi, may be the reason why the owner and sacrificer of a ma-wen attributes less unpredictable and strict characteristics to it. Moreover, this ancestress is usually known not only to her son but also to many other inhabitants from her lifetime [endnote 7]. The ancestresses honoured in ma-baga, on the other hand, are often strangers to those making the offerings, especially when, for example, an individual’s FaFaMoMo demands a shrine and sacrifices through a diviner’s instructions. Often, in such a case, not even the name and parental compound of the woman in question are known, so with the required shrine, a completely foreign ancestress enters the compound. It is, therefore, not surprising that the juik, associated with the MoMo and not with one’s own mother, is also a stranger, who is met with similar fearful suspicion to the (FaFa)MoMo.
Whether the malevolence of the juik as a spirit can also be explained by the antagonism between it and the benevolent creator god, as appears to be the case among the Koma, we lack a solid foundation to determine, especially with regard to information from Bulsa informants. It is more likely that the extraordinary characteristics of the mongoose as an animal influence the character of the spirit being. Its origin in the wild bushland, with all its attendant dangers, may also play a role. In contrast to other spirits that originally came from the bush (e.g. the tanggbana earth shrines), no real religious domestication took place with the mongoose, despite its connection to matrilineal ancestors, because, as shown above, a mongoose shrine is not easily integrated into the series of other Bulsa shrines. A certain restraint and lack of familiarity therefore remains. Even after the initial sacrifice, which at other shrines is accompanied by the giving up of a negative bush character, the mongoose is said not to have completely abandoned its malice and disregard for moral norms, as seen in the case of the above-mentioned acceptance of stolen offerings. A final interpretation of these peculiarities cannot be given here.

 

The spread of the mongoose cult in northern Ghana

Although Herpestes sanguineus is found throughout Ghana and other areas of Africa, and although the inhabitants of northern Ghana and the neighbouring areas of the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Togo belong to the same language family (Gur) and are also subject to great cultural similarities, to my knowledge, the mongoose cult only exists among some ethnic groups in northern Ghana and in a pronounced form only among the Bulsa and Koma.
In Bulsa country, the juik cult is found mainly among the southern Bulsa (e.g. in Fumbisi, Gbedema and Kanjaga) but also in Wiaga and Kadema. Among the northern Bulsa, it is not yet widespread. When I began my first fieldwork in Sandema-Kalijiisa-Yongsa in 1973, there was not yet a juik shrine in this subsection of 21 compounds, but by 2005, there were already four. On the occurrence of the cult in northern Ghana, Ben Baluri writes (Kröger and Baluri 2010: 228):

Although the [Koma] juang shrine is the possession of one living man only, it is said to follow members of its owner’s family in a matrilineal succession. For example, if an initiate’s daughter is married away in Sisaalaland, it is possible that her male children will become initiates. This may explain why the shrine is venerated among the Sisaala, Tampulim (Chakalisi), the Bulsa… and those Mampruli-speaking tribes which are the immediate neighbours of the Koma. With the exception of these, inquiries have shown that the shrine is not known among other Northern Ghanaian tribes.

The tendency indicated towards new appointments among the matrilineal descendants of a Koma shrine-owner, even when a woman, once married, lives among another ethnic group, has no regulative effect and is subject, as the Koma say, to the pure arbitrariness of the juang. Among the neighbouring ethnic group, these shrines are seen as foreign.
Baluri’s thesis that the mongoose cult has spread from the Koma heartland is supported by its greater prevalence among the southern Bulsa; on the other hand, the fact that juik-worship is not referred to by the Bulsa as a foreign cult and has a name that differs from the Konni term speaks against this.
Although I do not agree with Baluri’s opinion that the juik cult among the Bulsa is only a more recent offshoot of the Koma cult, I did agree at the time of our co-authorship about its almost exclusive occurrence among the Koma and Bulsa. In 2011, after an interview at the chief’s compound of Biuk, very close to Nankana villages, I had to revise this opinion. The head of the Akanwari Yeri reported that only those who have killed another person can acquire a juik shrine, which serves to prevent the killer from going mad as a result of being haunted by their victim. The ritual, called juik ngarika (Wiaga juik ferika), differs greatly from that of the Koma and other Bulsa. For example, the initiate must shoot an arrow three times at a bone taken from the victim’s grave and endure the pouring of boiling water over their skin. The rituals, rules and taboos concerning the mongoose skin, on the other hand, resemble those found among the other Bulsa. The skin is stuffed with medicine (herbs); sacrificial blood and millet water must not touch the fur; and the shrine is kept in the room of its owner, where, unlike in Wiaga but similarly to Gbedema, it also receives its sacrifices. When war dances (leelisa, sing. leelik) are performed in the compound, the owner fetches the pelt and holds it in one hand during the dance.
Finally, the informant mentioned that the Nankana (Nankanse, Gurunsi) also practise the juik cult under the name tobega. Rattray also mentions such a cult for the Nankanse (1932: 204–205 and 310–311) without recognising any similarity to the juik cult of the Bulsa. He speaks, for example, of ‘a species of squirrel’ (310) or ‘a kind of squirrel’ (311). That the dwarf mongoose is also involved here is clear from his statements that although the fur itself may be sacrificed, no libation may wet the black tip of the tail, the most striking characteristic of Herpestes sanguineus.
The tobega initiation ritual, reserved for the killers of fellow humans, shows some similarities with the juik rites of the Bulsa. Among the Nankana, too, the skin stuffed with medicine receives dog sacrifices, of whose flesh only previously initiated persons may eat, that is, only those who have been ritually cleansed after killing another human. The mongoose shrine (tobega) can also become the protective spirit of a child among the Nankana. According to Rattray (1932: 194), the pelt, just as Akankpiengkum (Agoalisui Yeri) reports for the Bulsa of Sandema-Longsa, is hung on a stick in front of the compound at the ash heap after the death of the owner.
In 2009, Emmanuel Asiyuure Apalle, a student at St. Victor’s Seminary (Tamale), wrote a thesis on ‘Murder and Its Purification Rites among the Gurunsi of Northern Ghana’. In this work, tobega is used to refer to the jackal (21), an animal that, to my knowledge, is extremely rare in northern Ghana today. It is not certain whether the author has, as with Rattray’s attempted identification of the tobega, made a misidentification. The animal is, however, described by the author as a scavenger, which applies more to the jackal than to the mongoose.
Apalle’s description of the initiation rite is similar in many respects to Rattray’s, for instance in the exclusivity of the circle of participants, who must have killed a fellow human, and the sacrifice of a dog. Apalle also mentions the ritual in which the participants pierce bones with arrows. These, however, are bones from corpses of members of a foreign ethnic group (e.g. Mossi) or a ‘stray person’ (27), even if they represent the bones of the person killed by the ritual subject (30: ‘it represents the relics of the deceased’). This ritual is not mentioned by Rattray, but it was by my Bulsa informant from Biuk. Other rituals and taboos described by Apalle also resemble those of the Bulsa. For example, the prohibition on speaking imposed on the participants of the Gurunsi procession on their way to the house of the newly initiated resembles that imposed on the offerer of the juik on their way to the sacrifice site.
The rituals for those who have taken human life are described by Rattray, as in the present work, in the context of the mongoose/tobega cult, although this animal plays almost no role in the Nankana/Gurunsi cults. It is striking, however, that many of these individual rites are very similar to those of funeral celebrations and those performed by gravediggers. Apalle mentions that after performing the tobega rites, initiates are also allowed to touch corpses that have died outside the compound (i.e. of a bad death). According to Apalle, those initiated into the Gurunsi tobega cult prepare their ritual meal outside the compound, as described above for a juik sacrifice and the Koma gravediggers’ meal.
After the burial of a person, the Bulsa and Koma perform a ritual called gaasika or gaasing, in which certain close relatives of the deceased put food in their mouths and then spit it out three or four times in succession, just as Apalle describes for the millet beer drunk at a ritual meal in the tobega cult. The phenomenon of imitating the deceased in terms of clothing and characteristic actions, which plays an important role in funerals among the Bulsa and Koma, also appears in the tobega cult:

The particular activity that the deceased was performing before his or her death has to be re-enacted in the course of the ritual process. Thus if he/she was a thief, the murderer has to steal an item to perform the ritual. For performing this kind of ritual for a deceased woman the murderer has to perform many activities attributed to women. Examples are picking fire wood, dress [sic] like a woman, grind [sic] millet at the grinding stone (mill), cooking etc. (Apalle 2009: 22)

In the rites described so far for the Bulsa, Koma and Nankana/Gurunsi, the mongoose (juik, juang, tobega) and its skin, stuffed with medicine, vary in importance. In connection with the cult of the tobega, Rattray also describes rituals among the Kusase, an ethnic group living in northeastern Ghana, that bear a strong similarity to the tobega rites of the Nankana. In these descriptions, however, neither the mongoose nor its stuffed pelt is mentioned. A comparison of mongoose rites among the Koma/Bulsa with the tobega rites of the Kusase shows no similarities at all, yet there remains a certain fluid transition between the Bulsa/Koma and Kusase rites.

Mongoose shrine types

Before attempting to organise the seemingly chaotic variety of manifestations of the rites described here – for which we cannot even find a common name – and examining them for their different functions and meanings, we should first identify some subtypes of juik/juang/tobega rites within the ethnic groups considered and demonstrate that these sometimes have similarities with the (mongoose) rites of other areas.
Among the Bulsa of Wiaga, a distinction is made between a relatively harmless white mongoose (juik pieluk) and a particularly dangerous and malicious creature (juik tuak, bitter mongoose). Among the Nankana, Rattray differentiates between shrines for those who have personally killed another person and shrines for those who have instigated manslaughter or murder. More important for our investigation, however, are subtypes of mongoose shrines whose worship deviates so far from the ritual norm within an ethnic group that one can almost speak of an independent cult.
In Asik Yeri (Wiaga-Badomsa), for example, there is a shrine that one of the inhabitants calls ‘war-juik’ because sacrifices used to be made to it before a military campaign. Nothing is known about the origin of this shrine and its first ancestral acquirer in Asik Yeri; in any case, apart from the name, it has no connection to the mongoose or its pelt. It is, therefore, surprising that my informant and other residents call this war shrine their ancestor, without being able to explain this designation in more detail. Sacrifices are made to the following parts of the shrine on the flat roof of Asik Yeri: a medicine pot (tibiik), two brass bangles, two twisted iron bangles and a stone that is considered the actual abode of the juik. This shrine does not accept animals as a sacrifice but only millet water, which, as in the cases of the Koma juang and Nankana tobega shrines, is sacrificed to it at harvest time before any inhabitant of the compound has eaten any of the new millet. This is not necessarily, however, proof of a connection to a mongoose cult.
The Koma of Yikpabongo distinguish between two types of juang shrines: the typical and most widespread one, which consists of the stuffed mongoose skin, and a medicine shrine, which they call juang-nyina (nyina, teeth) or juang gbiang (evil juang). The latter is the far stronger and more dangerous shrine. In Seidu Tiging, it consists of a medicine pot that the grandfather (FaFa) of the current compound head acquired in Gambaga (Mamprusiland). As with the juik in Asik Yeri, there is no connection to the mongoose except for the name. In the past, the owner of this shrine would also sacrifice to it and tie the pelt to his forehead before a military campaign to become invulnerable in battle.
The association of the juik/juang/tobega with war seems to be a widespread phenomenon. In some Bulsa compounds, a bow and a quiver with arrows hang beside the mongoose skin. The inclusion of a juik pelt in war dances at Biuk should be recalled, and in the past, the acquisition of a tobega shrine usually took place after a bloody campaign. If we wish to regard the accentuation and revival of matrilineal kinship relations as the essential meaning of the mongoose cult among the Bulsa and its cleansing and reconciliatory properties after the killing of a human being as the essential meaning of the cult among the Nankana and Bulsa at Biuk, then its association with war adds another complex of meaning.
To gain a better insight into the extraordinary range of variations seen in mongoose rites, it should be assumed that rites are not, as was believed in early ethnological research, something static that has been passed down from generation to generation in the same form since time immemorial. While Goody (2010: 65) observes that ‘in the sphere of ritual and religion there is considerable variation even between neighbouring peoples’, I would like to go one step further and point out the presence of considerable differences in the mongoose rites found in different villages within one ethnic group.
Although diffusionist influences (per Goody, external points of reference) cannot be ruled out and are even highly likely in the case of the acquisition of a shrine from another ethnic group (e.g. the juang-nyina from Gambaga) or in the case of the rites of the Bulsa village of Biuk, which lies close to Nankana villages, I would still, again in the sense of Goody (2010: 66–67), assume an internal origin as the most important explanation for the diversity of mongoose rites in small areas.
Platvoet (1998: 176) seeks to explain the large deviations in the performance of complex rites by distinguishing between core and peripheral areas: while the core exhibits a certain stability, aspects in the peripheral areas allow for innovation. This only partially applies to the mongoose rites of northern Ghana described here. Although we find most of the observed differences in the peripheral areas, for example in the accompanying taboos and the type and colour of the prescribed sacrificial animals, the deviations also affect core areas to some extent. In a comparison of the Koma and Bulsa rites (of Wiaga and Sandema), although there is a great deal of overlap in the peripheral areas, an important core area, namely the cult’s connections with initiates’ matrilineal female ancestors, is almost completely absent among the Koma. To explain such differences, which concern the fundamental function and meaning of the rites, using the ethnic–cultural differences between the two groups is not satisfactory, because as a whole, the Mongoose rites of the two ethnic groups are more similar than those found in the two Bulsa villages of Wiaga and Biuk.

 

Conclusion

The remarks above on mongoose cults among the various ethnic groups of northern Ghana have resulted in a colourful picture of the forms, contents and meanings of this cult, without the provision of incontestable interpretations for this diversity. The functions of mongoose cults, listed again below, seem to exist without any strong internal relationships among them:

• The accentuation and revitalisation of matrilineal bonds through a connection to the malignant juik (in the case of the Bulsa of Wiaga);
• Purification to protect from the consequences of murder or manslaughter (Bulsa of Biuk, Nankana);
• A connection to warfare (Wiaga Asik Yeri, Koma, Biuk, Nankana/Gurunsi); and
• A remedy for illnesses and misfortunes that exceed the usual extent and the unexplained death of domestic animals, especially chickens.

The connection between these functional complexes and the mongoose cult is only apparent in the last case: since the mongoose can kill chickens in large numbers, it is used as an antidote in the event of the unexplained death of domestic animals.
The common feature of the remaining functional complexes is best described as their relationship to something foreign, a traumatic event or simply an evil force, as exemplified by the behaviour of the small predator that gave all such cults their name. Although the mongoose is not generally seen as the incarnation of evil, it has acquired a cosmic significance among the Koma through its quality as the counterpart to the benevolent creator god and its temporal priority over him. The mongoose is said to have evil properties, but these can be limited by worshipping it in a shrine, which grants humans a certain influence over the evil potentially done to them by a supernatural being.
The growing spread of the Mongoose cult could perhaps be explained by the challenges of a newer time in which war, feuds and homicide have become rarer but in which the individual is constantly confronted with evil due to the decline in traditional values, the loss of the security provided by the traditional family, increasing, relentless competition and a rising crime rate. As a reaction, an attempt is made to accept these harmful influences, comply with them and integrate them. The inclusion of the experience of evil in ritual acts can, therefore, be seen as an attempt to transform it and thus neutralise it – or at least limit its disastrous effects.

 

Cited literature

Akapata, Isaac (Fr.)
2009 Biuk. A Village with Bulsa Traditions. Buluk. Journal of Bulsa Culture and Society 5: 34–41 (www.buluk.de).

Anquandah, James
1998 Koma – Bulsa. Its Art and Archaeology. Roma: Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente.

Apalle, E. Asiyuure
2009 Murder and Its Purification Rites among the Gurunsi of Northern Ghana [unpublished dissertation].

Augustinus Aurelius, see Flasch, Kurt, and Burkhard Mojsisch

Booth, A. H.
1966 Small Mammals of West Africa. London: Longan.

Bozman, J. F. (ed.)
1967 Everyman’s Encyclopaedia. Vol 5. London: J. M. Dent & Sons [5th ed.].

Douglas, Mary
1967 Animals in Lele Religious Thought. In: John Middleton (ed.): Myth and Cosmos. Readings in Mythology and Symbolism. Garden City and New York: The Natural History Press.
1978 The Problem of Evil. In: Natural Symbols. Explorations in Cosmology. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Eliade, Mircea
1958 Patterns in Comparative Religion. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

Everyman’s Encyclopaedia, see Bozman, J. F.

Flasch, Kurt, and Burkhard Mojsisch (eds.)
2009 Aurelius Augustinus, Confessiones / Bekenntnisse. Latin/German. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam.

Fortes, Meyer
1969 The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi. The Second Part of an Analysis of the Social Structure of a Trans-Volta Tribe. Oosterhout: Anthropological Publications; London: Oxford University Press.

Goody, Jack
2010 Myth, Ritual and the Oral. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kröger, Franz
1978 Übergangsriten im Wandel. Kindheit, Reife und Heirat bei den Bulsa in Nord-Ghana. Kulturanthropologische Studien 1. Hohenschäftlarn: Kommissionsverlag Klaus Renner.
1982 Ancestor Worship among the Bulsa of Northern Ghana. Religious, Social and Economic Aspects. Kulturanthropologische Studien 1. Hohenschäftlarn: Kommissionsverlag Klaus Renner.
1986 The Ritual Calendar of the Bulsa (Northern Ghana). Anthropos 81: 671–681.
1992 Buli–English Dictionary. With an Introductory Grammar and an Index English–Buli. Münster and Hamburg: Lit Verlag.
1993 Black Crosses and Divination Objects. Dead and Living Symbols of the Bulsa. In: W. Krawiets, L. Pospisil and S. Steinbrich (eds.): Language, Symbols and Symbolic Uses in Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology, Religion and Law. Festschrift for Rüdiger Schott for His 65th Birthday, pp. 93–107. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot.
2001 Materielle Kultur und traditionelles Handwerk bei den Bulsa (Nordghana). Forschungen zu Sprachen und Kulturen Afrikas 10. Münster and Hamburg: Lit Verlag.
2003 Elders – Ancestors – Sacrifices: Concepts and Meanings among the Bulsa. In: F. Kröger and B. Meier (eds.): Ghana’s North. Research on Culture, Religion, and Politics of Societies in Transition, pp. 243–262. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Kröger, Franz, and Ben Baluri Saibu
2010 First Notes on Koma Religion. Life in a Remote Area of Northern Ghana. Münster: Lit Verlag.

Laube, Johannes (ed.)
2003 Das Böse in den Weltreligionen. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgemeinschaft.

Mbiti, John S.
1976 (1969) African Religions and Philosophy. London, Ibadan, Nairobi and Lusaka: Heinemann.

Platvoet, Jan
1998 Das Ritual in pluralistischen Gesellschaften. In: Andréa Belliger and David J. Krieger (eds.): Ritualtheorien. Ein einführendes Handbuch. Opladen and Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.

Rattray, Robert S.
1932 The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Ricoeur, Paul
1967 The Symbolism of Evil. Translated from the French by Emerson Buchanan. Boston: Beacon Press.

Schott, Rüdiger
1970 Aus Leben und Dichtung eines westafrikanischen Bauernvolkes. Ergebnisse völkerkundlicher Forschungen bei den Bulsa in Nord-Ghana 1966/67. Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, Geisteswissenschaften 163. Cologne and Opladen.
1993 Sunsuelima – Folktales of the Bulsa in Northern Ghana. Series S: Folktales of the Supernatural. Vol. 1: Tales of the Sky-God (Wen, Naawen). Part I. Forschungen zu Sprachen und Kulturen Afrikas 2. Münster and Hamburg: Lit Verlag.
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Thiel, Josef Franz
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Endnotes

1 I worked with the Bulsa during 13 research visits (totalling almost five years) between 1973 and 2011 and with the Koma during 7 visits between 1984 and 2011.

2 In my opinion, it is absurd to derive the mongoose-veneration of the Koma and Bulsa from the ichneumon cult of ancient Egypt. Such a derivation is contradicted not only by the time gap of several millennia but also by the basic content of the two cults. In Egypt, the ichneumon (Mungo ichneumon) was associated with the cult of the dead and the Sun and was – like other animals regarded as sacred – mummified.

3 On the procedure of a divinatory session among the Bulsa, see Schott 1997 and Kröger 1993.

4 The colour of the dog thus corresponds to that of the sacrificial recipient (black dogs are completely taboo). Cf. also J. F. Thiel (1984: 119): ‘In ancient Greece, chthonic deities received black animals; swift horses were sacrificed to the sun god Helios and pregnant sows to Demeter. You can see that there is an inner connection between the recipient and the gift: you could almost call it analogy magic’. It cannot be ruled out that juisa (pl.) prefer dog sacrifices because the dog is one of the greatest enemies of the small predator.

5 Kröger and Baluri 2010: 219–228 and further written information by Baluri.

6 Further details about the early existence of the juang and sky god could not be determined.

7 Transferring personal attitudes from the lifetime of an ancestor to his or her shrine is, in a way, a contradiction to the assertion made above that it is not the personality of a person to which sacrifices are made at a shrine but the wen, an element separate from it. It seems, however, that in the Bulsa attitude to the shrine of an ancestor known in an individual’s lifetime, it is sometimes the divine wen and sometimes the mourned and beloved father or grandfather who gains the upper hand. When I asked the head of a compound whether his recently deceased father would allow me to take part in a certain ritual, he replied: ‘Why should he forbid it, since he allowed you to take part in all rituals during his lifetime?’

• The Permanent Establishment of Ritual Deviations
• Bulsa Rites of Passage (English Version)
  • Title, Contents and Preface
  • Introduction
  • Chapter I: Pregnancy
  • Chapter II: Birth
  • Chapter III: The Guardian Spirit, Naming and Names
  • Chapter IV: Scarifications
  • Chapter V: Wen Rites
  • Chapter VI: Excision and Circumcision
  • Chapter VII: Courting and Marriage
  • Chapter VIII: Death and Burial
  • Chapter VIII (contd.): Funeral Celebrations
    • The Kumsa Funeral Celebration
    • The Juka Funeral Celebration
    • Funerals and Rites of Passage
    • The Role of Women in Funerals
    • Redundances in the Two Funeral Celebrations
  • Conclusion
  • Appendix
• Übergangsriten im Wandel, Deutsche Version
  • Titel, Vorwort, Inhalt, Einleitung
  • Schwangerschaft und Geburt
  • Namensgebung und Namen
  • Skarifizierungen
  • Wen-Riten
  • Beschneidungen
  • Brautwerbung und Ehe
  • Tod, Trauer und Bestattung (1. Teil)
  • Tod und Bestattung (2.Teil)
  • Die Kumsa Totenfeier
  • Die Juka Totenfeier
  • Schluss
  • Anhang
  • Literaturverzeichnis
  • Gesamtedition der Übergangsriten
• Buli Language Guide (2020)
• Buli Names
• The Bulsa Educational Elite… Discussions in a Facebook Group
• The English and American Image of Germany in the Past
• The Ritual Calendar of the Bulsa
• Evil in the Divine Being