Traditional Concepts of ‘Tonal’ and ‘Nagual’ – An Academic Overview
Table of contents
Introduction by Richard Jennings
Another book Castaneda would have had access to in writing The Teachings of Don Juan, and that might have helped shape his descriptions of “nagualism” and sorcery is a collection of essays entitled Magic, Witchcraft, & Curing, edited by John Middleton. Univ. of Texas Press (1967). Included in this collection are an essay by Claude Levi-Strauss entitled, “The Sorcerer and His Magic” and Anthony F.C. Wallace’s “Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul: A Type of Psychoanalytic Theory among the Seventeenth Century Iroquois.”
According to John Middleton’s 1967 introduction: “The debate as to the borderline between ‘religion’ and ‘magic’ is an old one in anthropology . . . . We may say that the realm of magic is that in which human beings believe that they may directly affect nature and each other, for good or for ill, by their own efforts (even though the precise mechanism may not be understood by them), as distinct from appealing to divine powers by sacrifice or prayer. Witchcraft and sorcery are, therefore, close to magic, as are processes of oracular consultation, divination and many forms of curing. . . . .”
There is a vast literature of the ‘primitive’ and the exotic dealing with witchcraft, sorcery and magic. Most of it is nonanthropological—in the sense of its not being related to other aspects of culture—and most of it is scientifically worthless. It is only in recent years that anthropologists have made serious studies of these matters. They have seen magic and witch beliefs not as stages in the evolutionary development of religion, as did Tylor and Frazer, nor as survivals of earlier cults, as did Margaret Murray, nor as sensational accounts of savagery. They have regarded them as important aspects of social life, in all societies. . . . [T]he most significant works in this field were Evans-Pritchard’s classic Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937) and Kluckhorn’s Navajo Witchcraft (1944). They showed that beliefs in magic and in witchcraft are integral parts of cultural life, and can therefore be understood only in their total social context. They have a coherent logic of their own, given certain premises as to the mystical powers of certain human beings (even though ‘scientifically’ these premises may not be correct). These beliefs provide explanations for coincidence and disaster, they enable individuals to project their hopes, fears and disappointments onto other human beings, and by thus personalizing the forces of what we might call ‘fate’ or ‘chance’ enable those afflicted by them to deal with them by direct social action against the assumed evildoers. . . . . The plan of this volume of readings is simple: I have gathered ethnographic accounts of magical beliefs and behavior so as to cover most of the usual aspects described by anthropologists—magic, witchcraft and sorcery, divination, and curing. All the writers whose work is included have placed their analyses firmly in their social context. They are describing, not exotic bugaboos, but beliefs actually held by actual people who accept them and take note of them in their everyday lives.”
The following excerpts, taken from an article that was originally published in 1964 in the journal Ethnology, provide a remarkable pre-don Juan overview of the anthropological literature on “nagualism.”
Excerpts from “Nagual, Witch, and Sorcerer in a Quiché Village”
By Benson Saler
One of the oldest war horses in the Middle Americanist’s stable is a semantically skittish creature named Nagual. This curious beast has a respectably ancient pedigree in the literature on Middle America, references to it being encountered in early Spanish historical and ecclesiastical writings (for bibliographies see Brinton 1894 and Foster 1944). In the nineteenth century “nagualism” excited and to a significant extent was the product of the imaginations of Brasseur de Bourbourg (1859) and Brinton. The latter, indeed, opined (Brinton 1894: 69) that “nagualism” “was not merely the belief in a personal guardian spirit, as some have asserted; not merely a survival of fragments of the ancient heathenism, more or less diluted by Christian teachings, as others have maintained; but that above and beyond these, it was a powerful secret organization, extending over a wide area, including members of different languages and varying culture, bound together by mystic rites, by necromantic powers and occult doctrines; but, more than all, by one intense emotion–hatred of the whites–and by one unalterable purpose–that of their destruction, and with them the annihilation of the government and religion which they had introduced.”
Brinton’s colorful conjectures with reference to “nagualism,” along with certain other (if more pedestrian) notions on the subject, have been exploded by the scholarship of George Foster, who demonstrates with ample documentation that “in Mexico and Guatemala the word nagualism has been used as a convenient container into which could be dumped a variety of magical beliefs and practices which among themselves show considerable variation and no necessary relationship” and that “As a trait or complex, there is no such thing as nagualism” (Foster 1944: 103; italics his). Accepting an Aztec derivation for the word nagual, Foster (1944: 89) is of the opinion that this term was originally applied to the “transforming witch”:
The word appears to have spread to other south Mexican and Guatemalan languages, probably as the result of Aztec migrations that carried branches of this group as far as Nicaragua. The original application of the word to the transforming witch did not always remain, for in this region it encountered another basic American concept, that of the guardian animal spirit or personal totem, to which it came to be applied.
Inasmuch as the words tonal and nagual are both Aztec in origin, Foster (1944: 103) suggests that the logical procedure would be to use the former in the sense of fate or fortune, and the derived idea of the companion animal; nagual, in its original sense of the transforming witch, would be applied to those individuals believed capable of metamorphosis.
. . . .
That the word nagual is assigned various meanings in the ethnographic literature is in large measure a direct consequence of the fact that the diverse Indian groups which were the objects of investigation themselves employ the term in different ways. Thus, for example, while Lewis (1951: 279) tells us that among the Nahuatl of Tepoztlan “The Nagual is a person who has the power to change into an animal, such as a dog or pig,” Nash (1958: 71) writes of the Quiché of Cantel: “All know why four crosses mark the entrances and exits of the municipio–that with this symbol a nawal or guardian spirit keeps evil from entering the village.”
In broad and general terms, the kinds of meanings most frequently associated with nagual in the ethnographic literature can be classed under two headings: the “companion” or “guardian” spirit and the “transforming witch.” Some contemporary Middle American Indian populations may entertain beliefs about one or both of these constructs, whereas the belief systems of other groups do not incorporate notions about either. Some populations, while holding beliefs about “companion spirits” and/or “transforming witches,” do not employ the term nagual; other Indian groups, however, do use that word. Furthermore, some populations make terminological distinctions between the “companion spirit” and the “transforming witch” while others, such as the Tzeltal of Amatenango (Nash 1960: 121 22), may not.
Basic to many beliefs in “companion” or “guardian” spirits in Middle America is the notion that the vital force and destiny of a human being are linked to some organic or inorganic object or natural phenomenon–the individual human being’s alter ego. Should the alter ego suffer harm, it is widely believed, the individual whose destiny is linked to it is likely to suffer harm in corresponding degree. Among some populations the alter ego is known as a person’s nagual; among other groups, however, terms other than nagual are applied to it in the local vocabularies. While the alter ego may sometimes be a natural phenomenon, such as wind or a comet (Wagley 1949: 65), it is most commonly reported to be an animal. Contingent on associated local beliefs, nagual in this sense, or some equivalent term in a given local vocabulary, has been variously translated as “guardian spirit” (Parsons 1936: 80; Wagley 1949: 65; Nash 1958: 71), “spirit-counterpart” (Siegel 1941: 70), “birth-spirit” or “birth-guardian” (Parsons 1936: 80), “soul-bearer” (La Farge and Byers 1931: 134), “companion-spirit” (La Farge and Byers 1931: 134; La Farge 1947: 151-53), and “destiny animal” (Bunzel 1952: 274). Subject to local variation, there are diverse methods for determining a person’s alter ego, insofar as it is believed possible to do so: the perception of some animal, object, or natural phenomenon under conditions or circumstances that are construed as unusual (Wagley 1949: 65-66; Bunzel 1952: 274); identifying the tracks of an animal in ashes or sand (Parsons 1936: 80); calendrical associations (Mendelson 1957: 398); and observation of the coincidental harm that befalls some object or animal and a given human being at roughly the same time (Wagley 1949: 66; Bunzel 1952: 274-75).
Basic to contemporary beliefs in “transforming witches” in Middle America is the presumption that certain human beings have the power to change themselves into various forms–usually infra-human animals. A common corollary belief holds that individuals who activate their powers of metamorphosis normally do so in order to accomplish sinister ends. Examination of only a small number of sources indicates that belief in transforming witches, whatever the local terms applied to them may be, is widespread in Mexico and Guatemala. It is found among such diverse peoples as the Nahuatl of Tepoztlan (Lewis 1951: 279-80), the Zapotec of Mitla (Parsons 1936: 80, 226-27), the Tzeltal of Amatenango (Nash 1960: 121-26), the Maya of Chan Kom (Redfield and Villa 1934: 178-79), the Mam of Todos Santos (Oakes 1951: 170-77), the Kanhobal of Santa Eulalia (La Farge 1947: 151-55), and the Tzutuhil of Santiago Atitlan (Mendelson 1957: 405).
The possibilities of ethnological misunderstanding arising from the fact that different populations which make use of the term nagual do so in different ways are exacerbated by the practice of some ethnographers in employing the term generically even where, properly speaking, the native vocabularies themselves may lack it. Villa (1947: 580), for example, utilizes nagual as a convenient synonym for the lab of the Oxchuc, Tzeltal: “. . . certain spirits known as lab in the vernacular or nagual to the outsiders. . . . .”
Because of the variety of applications of nagual in the ethnographic literature, any simple, parsimonious definition of the term would be problematical at best. Foster (1944: 103), in an effort to obviate further confusion in the literature, soundly advises that:
The investigator should . . . always make clear what particular practices and beliefs are being described, and he should specify whether the words nagual and tonal are included in the native vocabulary, or whether he is applying them in the generic sense.
In my own field work [footnote omitted] among the Quiché of Santiago El Palmar, I encountered conceptions approximating the ideas of both “companion spirit” and “transforming witch” given above. The Palmar Quiché make terminological and categorical distinctions among the companion spirit, witch, and sorcerer, and these distinctions are tacitly expressive of certain pervasive postulates in their world-view. It is to the exposition of their conceptualizations of nagual, witch, and sorcerer that the remainder of this paper is addressed.
[Background material on the demographics and ethnic makeup of Santiago El Palmar omitted.]
NAGUAL
The Quiché of Santiago El Palmar employ the term nagual in varying ways. The range of application of the term, insofar as I was able to trace it, may be subsumed under five categories.
(1) Several informants, when questioned as to the meaning of the term, reported that “some people” believe that there is an affinity between a human being and a single, living animal, which is the person’s nagual. Integral to the assumed affinity between a person and his nagual is the belief that the character traits of the animal are likely to find an echo in those of the human being whose destiny is linked to it. Should, for instance, an individual’s nagual be a balam (tigre in Spanish), the person is likely to be “brave,” “outspoken,” physically “strong” and adroit, and possibly even a bit “savage.” It was also said that if a person’s nagual were injured or killed, the person himself might suffer harm, but informants were vague as to the particulars and probabilities. No informant, however, went so far as to insist that the relationship between an individual and his nagual is such that harm to the latter must inevitably be mirrored in harm to the former.
Although several informants thus approximated in their reports the definitions of nagual as companion animal spirit encountered in the ethnographic literature, none appeared to subscribe seriously to this conceptualization. They maintained that nagual in this sense is a creencia, a belief that some people entertain and others do not. Yet while none of my informants seemed to give emphatic credence to the notion of a companion animal spirit, neither were they prepared to reject it entirely, to place it beyond the pale of the possible.
(2) Many informants associated the word nagual with the signs of the zodiac. Soon after a baby is born its parents, or some other relative, or, more rarely, non-kin friends of the parents, may search out the baby’s birthday in an almanac or request someone to do it for them if they are illiterate. (A number of Indians own almanacs; those who do not can consult one in a neighbor’s house or in the municipal building.) The almanac, thus utilized, reveals under which of the twelve signs of the zodiac the baby was born. The zodiacal sign is said to be the baby’s nagual and to have some predictive value as to the character the baby may manifest as it develops. If the nagual is a bull (Taurus), the baby may grow into a person who is physically strong and resolute; if it is a balance (Libra), the baby may develop into a fickle person, etc. But while the zodiacal nagual is thus imbued with some value as a predictive device, it is far from being regarded as a pre-eminent and inevitable causal factor in the development of personality dispositions. The Palmarefios take cognizance of other determinants of personality, and they do not ascribe even major causality to the zodiacal nagual. As is the case with horoscopes elsewhere, correlations of an ex post facto nature are sometimes made, reinforcing the identification between prediction and actuality.
(3) Several informants referred the term nagual to that day of the 260 days in the Maya-Quiché calendar round on which a person was born. While recording a man’s army experiences, for instance, his mother interrupted the narrative and said that her son was able to endure the rigors of army life “because his nagual is four horses” (cuatro caballos). That is, she went on to explain, her son had been born on the day 4 kiej. Translating kiej as “horse,” she maintained that her son had great strength–the strength, metaphorically speaking, of four horses. A calendar shaman with whom I discussed this particular case, however, found the woman’s interpretation of 4 kiej to be uninformed and unsophisticated. A person’s nagual, the shaman asserted, is the day name of the day on which the person was born — not the day number. In the case under discussion, the man’s nagual is kiej, but not 4 kiej. Kiej, the shaman went on to point out, can be translated variously as “horse,” “camel,” or “deer,” but this is not to say that the man’s nagual is a real horse, camel, or deer. The day-name nagual signifies something; it is a symbol which must be interpreted in accordance with the canons of calendrical. divination. Kiej is a day name especially associated with shamans; to be born on a day with this name suggests that one may become a shaman. But the day number of the day on which one was born must also be considered. The numbers, from one to thirteen, are held to represent a continuum, the lower numbers being “weak” and the higher ones “strong.” For divinatory purposes, the weaker (i.e., the lower) the day number, the less probable are the implications in the day name; conversely, the stronger (i.e., the higher) the day number, the more probable is the interpretation of the day name. The calendar shaman interpreted 4 kiej as follows: kiej suggests that the person might become a shaman, but 4 is a weak number, and consequently there is no great probability that the individual will actually become a shaman. With reference to the differing interpretations of 4 kiej by the shaman and the woman, the distinction made by Radin (1927, 1953) between “the thinker” and “the man of action” is possibly relevant. [Footnote: I shall discuss Radin’s distinction at some length in a monograph on Palmar Quiché calendar shamanism now in preparation.]
(4) An old woman, with whom I was discussing the saints, spontaneously referred to St. James the Apostle, the patron saint of El Palmar, as “the nagual of El Palmar.” I questioned several other people regarding this usage, and they all maintained that it was acceptable, but I never heard anyone else employ the term in this way.
(5) An Indian medium who is said to suffer possession by the Earth Essence, “El Mundo” or “Santo Mundo,” is known as an aj-nagual mesa, which title I translate as “one who pertains (aj) to the spiritual essence (nagual) of the Table (mesa).” The medium allegedly becomes possessed while sitting at a consecrated wooden table (see Saler 1962a for further details), which immediately suggests that El Mundo, the Earth Essence, is the nagual of the table. In point of fact, however, nagual mesa is best appreciated within a wider context. The calendar shaman (aik’ij, “one who pertains to the days”) also employs the term mesa, but in his case it does not mean a specific, consecrated wooden table. For the shaman, the mesa of the World is any place on which people burn copal to El Mundo, the Master of the World and the spiritual essence of the material earth from which man draws his food. And the mesa of a shaman is a special power, symbolized by the possession of a wooden cross, which distinguishes a minority of shamans “who have received the mesa” from the majority who have not. The potsherd altars which surround the village are the consecrated “burning places” or “tables” of El Mundo, and a shaman, when divining, will often invoke the altars by name, in effect invoking their spiritual essences to come to his aid. Since each altar is a material manifestation of the Holy World, El Mundo is the spiritual essence of each altar. The shaman’s conception of El Mundo as the spiritual essence of the material earth, and particularly of certain consecrated landmarks thereof, is paralleled by the contention of the aj-nagual mesa that he receives the Earth Essence at the locus of a consecrated wooden table.
As is apparent from the above, no single, simple lexical definition of nagual can approximate the total psychological reality of the term for all the Quiché of Santiago El Palmar. The term is employed in varying ways by different individuals, depending on context. Even an apparently idiosyncratic usage–the reference to St. James the Apostle as “the nagual of El Palmar”–was judged acceptable by my informants, presumably because it fell within the semantic range of tolerance with which the Palmareños have invested the term.
All the varying meanings, however, attest to certain pervasive themes and associated attitudes in the Quiché world view. In the first place, the Indians hold that there are a variety of extra-human forces at work in the cosmos which affect the unfolding life histories of human beings. Every man is under the influence of his special fate, and one may sometimes gain a predictive understanding of such influences from the zodiacal nagual or the Maya-Quiché day nagual. But human life is not exclusively shaped by extra-human forces. Man is not passive and without responsibility. Human and extra-human agencies interact in structuring the course of one’s life. Some of the extrahuman forces which influence human life are favorably disposed, or can sometimes be persuaded to be favorably disposed, toward individual persons. Thus the Earth Essence which possesses the aj-nagual mesa, according to those who believe in such possession, is held to possess the medium in order to help the latter’s clients. The emphasis is on aid and assistance to the individual qua individual. But the woman who called St. James the Apostle “the nagual of El Palmar” seems to me to have generalized on this theme, extending it to the level of the societal. Just as the Earth Essence may favor and succor an individual, so, too, a patron saint may be supposed to favor and succor the community at large.
Though there are extra-human forces in the cosmos which may directly or indirectly influence human life, man lacks a perfect knowledge of them. It is a cardinal tenet in the Palmar Quiché world view that the universe and its principles of action are imperfectly understood, Knowledge is limited. Hay algo más allá; there is something beyond. Though one may doubt a mystery, a prudent person realizes the limits of his own understanding and does not doubt completely. It is probably only a “superstition” that you will suffer harm if some living animal whose destiny is allegedly linked to yours should suffer harm, but who can say so with certainty?
THE TRANSFORMING WITCH
Industriousness is a highly valued virtue in the normative system of the Palmar Quiché. A man should work to be materially secure (por necesidad, as several informants phrased it), to obtain for himself and his family such rewards as he can above the level of mere subsistence, and to receive the approbation of God and his fellow men. A person whose behavior is interpreted by others as manifesting a lack of proper respect for industry is likely to become an object of malicious gossip, and he may even be accused of possessing evil and preternatural powers. A hard worker, on the other hand, is likely to be admired, especially if he prospers materially and does not antagonize other people; a prudent person should neither boast of his accomplishments nor flaunt his wealth lest he excite the “envy” of others and thus become a candidate for black magic.
A person’s industriousness or putative lack thereof, though by no means the only criterion by which others judge him, tends to be generalized by the Indians to betoken the presence or absence of other virtues. To accuse a person of being lazy, as in gossip, is to imply that he is remiss in his familial obligations, and such an accusation can be expanded to encompass charges of antisocial behavior of concern to the community. One such charge is that the individual in question may be a transforming witch.
The transforming witch, or win, is the polar opposite of the good man. He is at the same time a stereotype of loathsome evil and an example of the possible consequences of an indolent disposition. A win is a lazy and avaricious human being who magically metamorphosizes himself into an animal or bird at night and stealthily enters the houses of his sleeping neighbors to rob them of money and goods. In human form a transforming witch may be either an Indian or a Ladino, but he is characteristically conceived of as male rather than female. In animal form he may take sexual advantage of sleeping women–a heinous indignity since it combines bestiality and rape. He is also a malicious nuisance who interferes with the sleep of people fatigued from hard and virtuous labor by deliberately making noises near their homes at night.
A lazy and avaricious Indian or Ladino who desires to become a win is said to sleep for nine nights in the cemetery, where he prays to the Devil. On the ninth night the latter appears and engages the man in combat with machetes or swords. If the Devil succeeds in inflicting the first wound, the man will die within seven days. If, on the other hand, the man first wounds the Devil, the latter will confer on him the power to become a win. Thereafter he returns frequently to the cemetery to transform himself into his nonhuman form, to commune with the Devil, and to feast on the bones of the dead.
It is clear that a person becomes a win through his own deliberate initiative. My informants attributed the desire to achieve witchhood to laziness coupled with cupidity. On further questioning, they expressed mystification as to why the person was so indolent and grasping in the first place. They agreed that a win begins as a human being with some excessively grave character defect, but they were at a loss to explain from whence such a defect comes. When I asked if it might be predestined, perhaps through the agency of nagual, they treated the suggestion as something they themselves had not previously considered but would now ponder.
There are certain signs by which a person of discernment can recognize a win. In the form of an animal or bird, the transforming witch behaves in a manner alien to genuine members of the species, and any animal or bird encountered at night that acts in an unexpected manner can be suspected of being a win. It is also a suspicious circumstance if any animal or bird met at night appears unusually ugly for its species and/or has blazing red eyes. In human form, the transforming witch is reported to have blood-shot eyes, large and protruding canine teeth, sometimes a cross of lines or “letters that no one can read” on the skin of his upper torso, and, in addition, a propensity for sleeping rather than working during the daytime.
If one encounters a win in his nonhuman form, that which he assumes on his nefarious missions, his power to harm can allegedly be negated by reciting the “Our Father” nine times, especially if it is then repeated another nine times backwards (which no one I asked could do). In his nonhuman form a win cannot be killed with a gun, knife, or machete, but he can be beaten to death with a stick, kicked to death, or strangled with bare hands or a rope. Informants stated that it would be imprudent to kill a witch in his human form: “If I kill a person, the police will arrest me and put me in jail, but if I kill a dog or buzzard, it is not a murder.”
I collected 54 drawings of transforming witches made by boys between the ages of seven and fifteen. Twenty of them depicted the win as birds, nine as dogs, five as human beings, and three as pigs; there were also one cat, one rooster, and fifteen creatures that I was unable to identify.
Every Indian whom I questioned on the subject claimed to believe in the existence of the win, regardless of differences in levels of acculturation. This unanimity is noteworthy in view of the fact that there was a certain amount of disagreement in Santiago El Palmar with respect to a number of other beliefs. Even the elder of one of the two small Protestant sects in the pueblo, a man who has enjoyed firsthand contacts with missionaries from the United States for several decades, appeared convinced of the reality of the win. “Your countrymen,” he informed me, had told him repeatedly that witches do not exist, but in this the good missionaries were mistaken. Not only are there witches, but when he left the Catholic faith, gave up the practice of calendrical shamanism, and became a Protestant, transforming witches persecuted him by flying over his house for a number of nights to prevent him from sleeping. The local Secretary of the Revolutionary Party, a Seventh Day Adventist and a champion of agrarian reform, also believed in transforming witches; though he has never seen them, he has heard them at night. An Indian who teaches school on one of the coffee fincas reported that, when he was outside of his house one night, he was attacked by buzzards who swooped down on him and extinguished the flame of his candle; he was of the opinion that the buzzards were witches sent against him by his father-in-law, a shaman whom he accused of being a sorcerer and with whom he had had a long and acrimonious dispute over land.
Transforming witches may figure in an individual’s self-evaluation. A person who fears them–or, better still, is attacked by them–can derive a measure of conscious comfort therefrom inasmuch as witches normally threaten or attack only virtuous persons. Thus to fear that one is the object of the malignant at tentions of the win is in effect to reassure oneself as to one’s own moral state. A case in point is the Protestant elder referred to above. He was one of the first Indians in the village to become a Protestant. In relating to me the events leading to his conversion, he spoke of his doubts about rejecting the old religion and embracing the new. He recognized that a sincere conversion would inevitably cut him off from many of the customs of his (Catholic) face-to-face group. Inasmuch as the referential dimensions of morality in his society are partially grounded in the traditional religion, the very thought of rejecting this religion precipitated anxiety. Once he had taken the step, indeed, he was subjected to the contempt and open threats of other Indians in the village. Anxieties stemming from these sources were reduced by a fervent identification with the new religion, reinforced by dreams in which God approved of his actions and demonstrated the falseness of the old religion, and by the “persecution” he suffered from witches, which he himself interpreted as additional proof that he trod the path of righteousness. Having already received the approbation of God, he found a further corroboration of his virtue from infernal powers.
The transforming witch, like many another image of evil discussed in the ethnographic literature, can be interpreted as a cultural formulation involved in processes of ego defense. With regard to the mechanism of projection, for instance, the win image can play a role in protecting an individual from the conscious awareness of his own proclivities to aggressive behavior and lack of industry. By attributing one’s own antisocial tendencies to the transforming witch, hostility can be directed from the self to that object. The win is in a sense an ideal target for hostility. Because he transforms himself into a bird or animal, be in effect vitiates the human condition. Hence hostility to the witch is hostility toward something no longer fully human and thus does not directly challenge the cultural ideal of treating human beings with sympathy.
The win can also be considered with reference to the mechanism of displacement. Nash (1958: 78), writing about the Quiché of Cantel, gave it as his impression that “aggression is never very far from the surface. . . .” I formed the same impression with regard to the Quiché of Santiago El Palmar. Among the Palmareños, as among the Cantelenses, aggression is vented in a number of ways, some of the characteristic modalities being gossip, drunkenness, and litigation before the local justice of the peace over trivia. In addition, there are sometimes heated public quarrels among women occasioned by alleged adultery, failure to return borrowed objects, and real or imagined slights. These arguments infrequently degenerate into physical assaults. Interestingly enough, public quarrels and physical fights almost never occur among men unless they are drunk and therefore, in the Indian view, not responsible for their behavior. (In psychodynamic perspective, the greater public circumspection of men as contrasted to women may be related to the characteristic depiction of the witch as masculine rather than feminine.) While Indians of both sexes accurately characterize women in their society as being more overtly hostile than men, the cultural ideal is to contain one’s hostility whatever one’s sex. This ideal, however, is only imperfectly realized. In compensation for efforts to suppress overt hostility, aggressive tendencies find partial expression in being redirected from the objects and situations that stimulate them and displaced to an object of loathing, the win.
LOCALIZATION OF TRANSFORMING WITCHES
Where are transforming witches in their human form to be found? My informants showed a significant amount of individual variability in answering this question. Taken as a group, however, they exhibited a general disposition to localize witches along a diminishing continuum from outgroup to ingroup. To come to some understanding of these facts, it will be necessary first to consider the spatial dimension involved. Four geographically identifiable population entities are recognized by the Indians of Santiago El Palmar as of primary economic importance in their lives: (1) the pueblo, (2) the montes, and (3) the coffee fincas which together comprise the municipio of El Palmar, and (4) the Pacific coastal plain where many village Indians rent land and go to raise corn. The highlands and their inhabitants are of less immediate economic importance to them.
[Description of the ethnic, economic and historical backgrounds of the four population areas omitted.]
The Coast
The pueblo Indians consider the Pacific coastal plain the worst of the four population groupings under consideration, and they associate it with negative stereotypes: The coast is a very good place for agriculture, and the people who live there are very rich, but they are also very outspoken. They do not much care for each other. If an Indian man of San Sebastián (Department of Retalhuleu) wants a girl but she does not want him, he makes magic to seduce her. That is their way; when they want something, they want it. The Ladinos of the coast are very rude. They are not like the Ladinos of (highland) Quezaltenango, where there are many lawyers. The Ladinos and Indians of the coast are always looking for money. If a poor person from El Palmar goes to the coast, they ask him, “Do you have any money?” If he says “No,” they tell him not to bother them. There is much evil magic on the coast and many witches. The climate there is very bad; when we go there to make our milpas, we always come home sick. The people on the coast are accustomed to the climate, but we are not. The climate in El Palmar is better; it is not as hot. And the people of El Palm are more friendly.
In terms of these stereotypes, the fincas and Pacific coast are decidedly unpleasant places, places where many evil people can be found. The montes, though not precisely evil, are relatively isolated and “uncivilized,” and dark things can happen there. This is not to say that any of the regions is entirely evil; “in whatever place, there are good people, and there are bad people.” For the most part, my informants did not voice blanket condemnations, but they did manifest a general agreement as to the relative ranking of each place in terms of sinister associations.
[Table of informant responses omitted.]
As indicated in Table 1, all seventeen informants maintained that there were “many” transforming witches in the Pacific coast. The coastal plain lies beyond the borders of the municipio of El Palmar, and the Palmar Quiché perceive the coastal population as the out-group farthest removed from their own in-group, not only spatially but also in terms of the prevailing behavioral stereotypes. But what of the pueblo itself? This is the population grouping for which we might expect the informants to manifest the most intense solidarity feelings. Yet, while ten informants denied that there are witches among their neighbors of the pueblo, three asserted that there are “a few,” and four stated that there are “many.”
. . . .
THE SORCERER
The sorcerer (ajitz, “one who pertains to evil”) is a person, characteristically depicted as a male Indian, who attempts to harm other individuals through magic. In other places, I was told, sorcerers are likely to be practitioners whose services are hired by others on a client basis, but local sorcerers, insofar as informants believed that such exist, were said to act primarily for themselves and to have few or no clients.
Unlike the transforming witch, the sorcerer’s evil abilities do not derive from a covenant made with the Devil. A sorcerer is reputed to be a master of magical formulas and rites, which he has learned from another sorcerer or from “books of magic” (occasionally described to me as “books of the Jews”). In point of fact, however, it is very doubtful that there is any formal instruction in sorcery, let alone manuals on the subject. Certain beliefs about the methodology of sorcery are widely held, and anyone who desires to try his hand at black magic has a number of common knowledge instrumentalities upon which to draw. During the course of my field work, for instance, a young man from the montes, with the help of male friends, opened the grave of a Ladina in the cemetery, removed a few bones, and reburied them on land belonging to an Indian woman, with the objective, most informants said, of rendering the Indian woman witless to the point where she would sell her land cheaply. Unfortunately for the alleged sorcerer, however, he was seen in the act, apprehended by the Ladino police, and quickly removed to Quezaltenango, the departmental capital. The young man had been observed drinking before the event in question, and there was considerable discussion in the village after his arrest as to whether he was actually a sorcerer or merely a drunk who had been carried away momentarily by rum and cupidity. The fact that he had utilized a sorcery technique, I was told, did not necessarily mean that he was a “legitimate sorcerer.”
A genuine as contrasted to a spurious sorcerer, apparently, is one who seriously and soberly performs a magical act against another human being. The commonest of such acts are doll burial, the exhumation and reburial of human remains, the burial of other objects (e.g., photographs, nail clippings, hair, or a piece of the clothing of the individual against whom the action is directed), prayers recited over copal fires or burning, black candles, and incantations delivered in the cemetery. In all cases, the act is believed to be potentially most effective if performed at night.
While a sorcerer may likewise be a transforming witch, informants did not think such an association was necessary or even likely. The two categories of evildoers are terminologically and conceptually distinct; “apart the afitz, apart the win.” Interestingly enough, all the informants who maintained that there were “many” transforming witches in the village also asserted that there were at least some pueblo residents who might occasionally attempt sorcery, and all but one of the ten informants who declared that there were no witches in the village also said that there were no individuals in the village who would seriously attempt sorcery. Even those who thought that some of their neighbors might incline toward sorcery, however, were for the most part skeptical as to whether their magical actions would be successful.
COMPARISON OF THE WITCH AND THE SORCERER
Some of the relevant data for comparing the witch and the sorcerer are presented below in tabular form.
| Characteristic | Witch | Sorcerer |
| Motivations for initiating evil actions (in decreasing order of probability) | Material gain; revenge; envy; accommodating another evil being; sexual gratification. Coupled with the above is a sadistic satisfaction in the suffering of the virtuous. | Revenge; material gain; envy; sexual gratification; accommodating a client. Derivation of sadistic gratification from the suffering of the virtuous is not necessarily true of all sorcerers. |
| Objects against which evil action is likely to be taken (in decreasing order of probability): | Anyone (excluding members of the witch’s families of orientation and procreation) who is virtuous and has something worth stealing; anyone (normally excluding members of the witch’s family of procreation but including members of his family of orientation) who has offended the witch, anyone (probably excluding members of the witch’s families of orientation and procreation) against whom a sorcerer or other evil being has enlisted the witch’s aid; sleeping women (excluding those with whom a sexual relationship would be incestuous). | Someone (excluding members of his family of procreation but including members of his family of orientation) who has offended the sorcerer; someone (excluding members of his family of procreation but including members of his family of orientation) of whom he wishes to take material advantage; someone (excluding members of his family of procreation and his parents but including his siblings) who is wealthier, more industrious, more handsome, or in other ways more lucky and successful than himself; women who have rebuffed his sexual advances. The above refer to evil actions performed by the sorcerer on his own behalf. |
| Types of evil action likely to be attempted (in decreasing order of probability) | Nocturnal thievery; nocturnal annoying of victim (as by making noises near his house to keep him awake); nocturnal rape. | Murder by magic; rendering the victim (or some close kinsman of his) sick; rendering the victim witless or favorably disposed; very low probability of any attempt to harm the victim’s crops or livestock. |
| Public vs. private nature of the attempted evil action | The witch, though he singles out specific victims, is perpetually and relentlessly at war with the society of the virtuous. | The sorcerer is normally at odds with a private person rather than the society at large. |
| Source of special capacity to accomplish evil | Power derived from a compact with the Devil. | Knowledge of special rites and formulas learned from other sorcerers, books, or common gossip. |
| Probability of accomplishing evil intentions | High. | Low. |
The reader will note that the most probable offense of a witch is theft, whereas that most likely to be attempted by a sorcerer is magical homicide. Yet the witch is considered far more reprehensible and loathsome than the sorcerer. If we were to assume that the offender is judged exclusively by the character of his offense, we might conclude that the Palmar Quiché consider theft a greater offense than murder. This, however, is not the case, for all informants agreed that murder is more serious and reprehensible than theft. How then do we account for the differential evaluation of the witch and sorcerer? Why is the witch considered the more evil? Several factors seem to me of especial moment in formulating an adequate answer.
In the first place, the witch is a dramatic construct in the Palmar Quiché world view. He represents, among other things, an extreme in unsocialized egocentricity and a symbolic warning that antisocial proclivities, if allowed full rein, may result in a loathsome debasement of the human condition. He is, I believe, a cultural expression of the view that immoral man may, through perversity, even become non-man. Significantly, however, man cannot achieve the infra-human state solely by his own volition; he requires the help of an infernal power. In order to obtain such help, however, he must take the first positive action himself. Furthermore, he must defeat the Devil in combat, thus proving to satanic satisfaction that his human strength, resolve, and evil character are deserving of transmogrification to the infra-human state. The witch has obtained superhuman help, whereas the sorcerer has not. The witch is so evil and loathsome because, among other things, he transmogrifies the human condition. The sorcerer, though evil, still remains a man.
A second factor of consequence, I believe, revolves around the public-private distinction. The sorcerer singles out specific victims, as does the witch, but his canons of selection are likely to have a different focus. The sorcerer is usually motivated by personal feelings directed against specific individuals, some of whom may even, by local standards, be adjudged deserving of punishment because of their own immoral or imprudent actions. The intended victim is, in any case, his or his client’s private enemy. The witch, on the other hand, is animated by a perverse delight in harming or harassing any person of virtue and is thus at war with society at large. From a social point of view his transgression is manifestly the greater.
The witch and the sorcerer may also be compared with respect to the likelihood of their accomplishing their respective sinister intentions. A witch is quite likely to succeed unless his potential victims counteract him by defensive maneuvers, e.g., hiding valuables that he might covet or reciting the paternoster. A person who attempts sorcery, however, is very likely to fail regardless of whether or not his intended victim takes defensive measures. The sorcerers of San Sebastián (Department of Retalhuleu) are said to be powerful, and those of Samayac (Department of Suchitepéquez) that same “Zamayac” which Brasseur (1859: 823) and Brinton (1894: 3637) cited as an ancient center of “nagualism” are alleged to be very powerful indeed, but the Palmar Quiché do not accredit their own sorcerers or would-be sorcerers with much potency. Formerly, a number of informants related, Palmar sorcerers “knew much” and were powerful, but contemporary would-be sorcerers are deficient in the knowledge of powerful rites and spells and are therefore little to be feared. The witch, however, is feared because he depends not on traditional knowledge, which may become ineffectual with the passage of time, but on power granted him by the Devil.
. . . .
CONCLUSION
My primary aim in this paper has been to describe Palmar Quiché beliefs about nagual, witch, and sorcerer and to relate those beliefs to certain assumptions in the Indian world view. As a secondary goal, I have attempted to relate those beliefs and assumptions to selected social realities of life in Santiago El Palmar. . . . .
To an extent, this paper represents a selective response to an assertion made by Wisdom (1952: 122), who, after identifying nagual as companion animal, went on to say that “Nagualism has by now got confused with the animal transformation of sorcerers and witches. It is relatively unimportant anywhere, and seems to be confined to Mexico and the Guatemalan highlands.” I am not of the opinion that the beliefs usually subsumed under the rubric “nagualism.” are “relatively unimportant anywhere.” [Footnote: Among the studies demonstrating the importance of “nagualistic” beliefs in communities less acculturated than Santiago El Palmar, one of the most emphatic is that of Villa Rojas (1947), who indicates clearly how, among the Oxchuc Tzeltal, such beliefs relate to kinship and social control.] Without embracing an extreme functionalism, I would say that beliefs of this sort are quite likely to be important if only because they exist. Though sometimes their meaning may be obscure and their importance oblique, it is the task of the anthropologist to penetrate the obscure and to appreciate the oblique.
Contents copyright © 1999 by Richard Jennings (or other author, as designated). All rights reserved.
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