SORCERY IS A REAL FEAR

I write this report as a white man who has some fear of sorcery. It

is real in Papua New Guinea and varies from clan to clan. Sorcery

is about people dying at the hands of a magic man or woman.

Sorcery is often in the mind. A person who believes a magic curse

has been made may well die. There is belief in some areas that a

magic man or woman can pass their spirit into a bird or animal and

carry out evil.

In the Sepik are sangguma who can waylay a person in the gardens,

kill their spirit and then send them on their way. They will die within

a few days often incoherent.

There was a report many years ago that gave me fear. It was from
missionaries in the Sepik who stated magic had blossomed with the
discovery by villagers of Ratsak available in the trade stores.

Some coastal people believe the wound from a sorcerer will only

be obvious once the person has died and been laid out. A careful

inspection may reveal wounds to the body that appear after death.

People of this country know to be careful. They know that a person

enters the house and place curses or poison on clothes and cooking

utensils.

People in this country take care on who is allowed into their house.
Visitors will sit under the house. It is nothing personal. Everyone

does it.

People have been known to be killed with battery acid placed in the

tea. This is a gruesome killing as the digestive tract is destroyed.

Lately we have a foolish UN advisor speaking out that sorcery is the

cause of men killing women. This is never further from truth. Women

are also involved in killing of men in the villages. They may support

village action against a man or woman believed to be a sorcerer.

Sorcery is becoming vicious in the highlands and partly caused by the

breakdown of the health system. Drugs are not available so that people

with malaria and HIV/AIDS will die. It is caused by the break-down

of the education process. Most teachers will believe in sorcery.

There is stigma against HIV/AIDS. A person dies slowly over several

of years. Many highlands sufferers do not have access to ARV drugs.
So their decline is accompanied by loss of weight until skeleton-like.

They suffer dementia that has them hallucinating over evil spirits which

gives all indications of magic. They wake screaming of being attacked

by imaginary people. Personalities will change and they seem to be evil
and calculating in their conduct. They have been attacked by a sorcerer.

In the Middle Ages in Europe, the people with dementia were thought

to be possessed by evil spirits. Someone was to blame. So too Papua

New Guinea.

Sorcery will remain with this country. So too sorcery killings. People do

not just die of natural causes. They are killed at the hand of a sorcerer.

Heart attacks and strokes are the work of sorcerers. These have nothing

to do with diet, fatty food, cigarettes, alcohol and lack of exercise. Kill

the old lady. She did it.

Our uncle was walking along the road and just fell dead. Sorcery. It was

not that his heart was blocked by a dob of fat from a life-time of eating

lamb flaps.

In the middle ages, European villages had women who were mid-wives

and makers of medicines. The priests felt threatened by them and gave

them the name of witches.

Over hundreds of years, thousands of women were burned at the stake.

It was an act of genocide. Good women died for being village traditional

doctors and experts in herbs.

To end on a lighter note, we may recall the movie “ The Life of Brian”.

There was a scene of a group of medieval peasants gathered to kill a

sorcerer. But from among them rose a wise man (John Cleese) who

questioned them.

One peasant shouted that the sorcerer turned him into a toad. John

Cleese told him he was not a toad.

Well, I turned back again, didn’t I.