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Anyuak doctor divining


Date of Photo: March-May 1935 by Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard
Anyuak doctor divining

A female doctor in Pochala village casting leather cards on a skin during a divining session to discover the cause of a person's sickness. The leather pieces are known as war or shoes, since the footprint is considered an important aspect of the human personality, and are cast and 'read' in configurations of pairs. Divination is carried out at dawn or dusk since the cards reproduce the flight of birds in the air and thereby help understand the spiritual dimension of the sickness at hand.