Divination’s Grasp

Richard Werbner takes readers on a journey though contemporary charismatic wisdom divination in southern Africa. Beginning with the silent language of the divinatory lots, Werbner deciphers the everyday, metaphorical, and poetic language that is used to reveal their meaning. Through Werbner's skillful interpretations of the language of divination, a picture of Tswapong moral imagination is revealed. Concerns about dignity and personal illumination, witchcraft, pollution, the anger of dead ancestors, as well as the nature of life, truth, cosmic harmony, being, and becoming emerge in this charged African setting.

Preface
Introduction
Part I. Socio-linguistics and poetics
1. Deep Dialogue with Evans-Pritchard
2. In Praise of the Moral Imagination
3. Acrobatic Stylistics, Agonistic Vision
Part II. From Tablet Archive to Wisdom Séances
4. Poetics and Archives
5. Family Séances: Rhetoric, Deliberations and Decisions
6. Cosmic and Personal Understandings: Diviners, Headmen, Strangers
Part III. From Hooved Archive to Charismatic Séances
7. A Charismatic Diviner's Archive: Hooved Divination
8. The Cross-Over: Originality, Hybridity and Metamorphosis
9. The Charismatic Séance: Arguments, Intimacy and Intimations
Conclusion: In Comparison
Notes
Bibliography
Index