Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/492

450 to ensure good luck; he brought the rain when there was a drought, or stopped it when the fields were being inundated with abnormal storms; he made the fetish for the caravan to carry on the road, which would soften the heart of the white trader so that he would give a good price for the produce offered for sale; he made the charms that would protect a whole town, or an individual, or an animal. There was no condition of life which he was unable to affect either for good or evil, and his services must not be despised, or some catastrophe would follow. Such were the pretensions of the Congo nganga, and over the natives he wielded tyrannical and empirical power.

There are two phrases that contain the whole theory and practice of the Congo medicine-man's black and white magic.

When a man has been injured by a known or unknown enemy and wishes to inflict on him disease, misfortune, or death, he selects a nganga who possesses a fetish that has control over certain diseases, and pays him a fee to loka e nkisi, i.e. curse by the aid of a charm or fetish. The fetish is beaten with a stick, informed what it is to do, and then hung up outside the invoker's house, and the spirit of the fetish flies off to obey its orders. This is the simple modus operandi followed by all ngangas, who invoke their fetishes to use their various powers against the enemies of their clients. Any ordinary man who owns a fetish can curse an enemy with it by per- forming the same ceremony. If a man has not a fetish of his own powerful enough to satisfy his hatred, and does not want to go to the expense of engaging a nganga to loka e nkisi, he can, for a smaller sum, borrow for a limited time a strong fetish, and can himself loka e nkisi. When this ceremony is performed, it is not necessary to mention a name, but only "the thief who stole my goods," or "my enemy who sent me bad luck," or "the one who