Ethnology 13, 3(1974):261-78.This article relates the introduction of a new cult to fight witchcraft and disease among the Irigwe. This cult is a response to social change but, contrary to the situation found among many societies in which new cults to fight witchcraft have been invented, the Irigwe simply borrowed an already traditional cult from a neighbouring population. The cult is aimed at ensuring the health and wellbeing of the cult members and of their families. There are several factors said to be causing disease among Irigwe women; for example, some spirits are regarded as principal causes of illness among adult women. A majority of married women are believed to be affected by such spirits and, once aflicted, must enter a special possession cult. However, these spirits are not believed to cause disease and mortality among children; witchcraft is held responsible for them. Witchcraft plays a significant part in political affairs where men are thought to be witches and in family affairs where women are believed to be witches. Old women, jealous of young fertile ones with many children, may send diseases to afHict members of their own or neighbouring compounds. Several ways are used to counteract witches: charms and medicines of local or foreign origin are utilized but witch-finders are even more powerful in this respect. Witch-finders are people whose immediate senior siblings are twins or, in former times, a surviving twin. Irigwe believe that one of the twins is a witch and this twin was put to death; whereas the surviving one had the innate possibility of neutralizing the power of witches. Witchcraft against women and children is thought to be practised by someone in the immediate neighbourhood. This is a factor that induces women to leave one husband in favour of a geographically more distant one in order to escape a suspected witch. However, accusations are very rarely made publicly and deserted husbands may only assume that witchcraft is the cause of the wife's departure.Marriage, among the Irigwe, is a complex matter: women are expected to marry several husbands one after the other, but a woman can return to any of the deserted ones if she chooses to. It is not difficulty for a man to marry many wives and one of the main concerns of male strategy is perhaps not so much to marry many wives as to keep his wives resident with him. One of the best ways to do so is to be rich enough to afford the fees demanded for the women's. posses-
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