Philosophy and purpose

What is the philosophy and purpose of using an object as a recipient of vast powers that can drastically change someone's life? Are any clear aims established?

The Minkisi:

Fundamentally, the minkisi are used to solve a problem or a set of problems. These are very much anchored in the society, and serve as a spiritual way to achieve justice, through a carefully orchestrated social hierarchy. More specifically, the purpose of the Minkisi is to improve the well-being of an individual or a group, to cure a disease, to punish a criminal or favor fertility. Simply put, the nkisi is a container that captures the spirit of the dead and makes it available for use by the living. It then follows that the most important minkisi are vital agents of justice for whole communities in terms of wealth, justice and healing. In his book 'Kongo Political Culture' MacGaffey says that the governing idea of minkisi “is that souls and bodies are built in modular fashion, so that an animating force can inhabit objects and animals as well as human beings and be transferred from one to another."

There are four types of spirits that come from the land of the dead. They include ancestors, local spirits, ghosts and the spirits contained in nkisi objects.

One of the most interesting philosophical properties of the Bakongo is the lack of clear boundary between human and thing. An nkisi is similar to a human being in that you can appeal to it, but it conserves intentions of its own. It has its own rules and requires respect to achieve its goals. The BaKongo view humans and minkisi as being envelopes containing an invisible force and spirit. Furthermore, the human body is often used as a metaphor for ideas on power, hierarchy, success and failure. In addition to Minkisi being like a body, villages can be perceived as a body as well. Thus the material, the superficial always contains complex and multiple metaphors refering to each other.

The Voodoo doll:

The Voodoo religion contains the interaction of three levels of spirituality. First, there is an all-powerful God who is detached from the everyday life of mortals. Second come spirits, or Loa, who interact with mortals in everyday life, and have specific functions, such as granting wishes for love or prosperity. An offering must be made to the proper Loa for one's wish to be granted. Each Loa has a favorite number, color and fruit. Last in the level of spirituality come ancestors who become spirits after their death. The Voodoo spirits interact with people by a magical process called gris-gris.

The Voodoo doll in Louisiana is thought to have been used by slaves to attempt to control their masters. It would permit the unleashing of hate, humiliation and suffering upon an inanimate object with the aim of hurting someone powerful. This example clearly denotes the use of a thing as a mediator between two humans unable to interact with each other as equals. In this form, the doll mediates social relationship, although it does not have true societal consequences, unlike the Minkisi. However, many present-day Voodoo practitioners are wary of the violent image of the Voodoo doll, which has hugely diminished. In Louisiana Voodoo, there are four main categories for gris-gris: love, power and domination, luck and finance, and uncrossing.

Similarities:

Clearly, the importance of conjuring spirits is crucial to both the Voodoo dolls and Minkisi. These spirits are what alter the object from being an inanimate thing-- confusable with a doll-- to being a powerful agent. The idea of agency in a thing is defined by Alfred Gell as "persons (and things) who/which are seen as initiation causal sequences of a particular type." He also argues that we rarely attributed agency to things because it can be insulting to the value we attribute to human beings as opposed to the way we value things (interestingly, the thing he uses as an example is a child's doll.) What is interesting about both the Nkisi and the Voodoo doll is that they are things, but they resemble humans, thus putting them in a grayer category. However, one could argue that this huge agency is only made possible when the user believes in the power. Interestingly both the Voodoo doll and the minkisi are involved with the spirits of ancestors.

However, the Voodoo doll in Louisiana is the result of a huge cultural mix in a time of great suffering. This lack of ethnic homogeneity has meant looser rules and codes for the practice of the Voodoo doll. Furthermore, it evolved in a time of great oppression and restriction, thus reducing its potential scope. In contrast, the Nkisi is an extremely group specific figurine in a small, relatively isolated geographical area. As a result, the purpose and philosophy of Minkisi is much clearer, seemingly more complex and part of a rigid social structure.

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