Witch Doctor

Witch doctor, also sometimes witchman, is an unfortunate term created by English speakers during colonial times in Africa to refer originally to healers using supernatural means, but it became a generic term for any sort of traditional healer anywhere, regardless of what methods were employed or what affliction was treated. It reflects a time when the label witchcraft was applied pejoratively to any supernatural practice or belief system that appeared radically different from the observer's custom, in spite of efforts by anthropologists to specify meanings. Early 20th-century anthropologists used the label witch doctor for specialists who treated victims of witchcraft, or who sought to cleanse alleged witches of their unwanted powers, especially when the healer used methods similar to those ascribed to witches. An early and influential usage of the term was by E. E. Evans-Pritchard in his classic 1937 work on Zande witchcraft, wherein he defines witch doctors as “diviners who are believed to diagnose and combat witchcraft in virtue of medicines which they have eaten, by certain dances, and by leechcraft” (this latter term is an archaic English synonym for medical healing, from the era when physicians employed bloodletting; its use by colonial-era anthropologists continued because healing methods worldwide often include sucking an offensive substance from the body of the patient). Some scholars attempted to justify the term by showing that the specialist may be well-trained, insightful, and effective, like Michael Gelfand's sympathetic 1965 study of the Shona nganga. In 1978, George Foster and Barbara Anderson, in their book about “the new field of medical anthropology,” distinguished between “the shaman with his direct contact with the spirit world, and the witch doctor (to use an outmoded but still useful term from the African literature) with his magical powers.” But all such usages of the label are inadequate because they confuse witchcraft, sorcery, magic, spirit invocation, shamanism, and other beliefs and practices, and thus give no precise meaning to the term.

A great variety of traditional practices have been variously designated by the label witch doctor. Some referents and synonyms are medicine man (or woman), native doctor, diviner, prophet, shaman, healer, curer, spiritualist, herbalist, exorcist, and others. The label used may denote a general category of specialist (e.g., healer), or it may be a role term, indicating the dominant method employed by the specialist (for example, diviner, exorcist, or herbalist). Priests and shamans are highly trained specialists, distinguished by different techniques and different sociocultural contexts, but both perform a number of situational roles, in any of which the label witch doctor might be applied. Traditional healers typically draw from a wide stock of spiritual, mystical, material, and psychological methods, and may combine several in a specific treatment.

The witchcraft Evans-Pritchard referred to is a specific phenomenon found around the world in settled societies: It is an invisible evil power that vests itself in certain people, and thence moves freely among the “bush” and the world of spirits and its human host. It works in mystical ways. The power enables its bearer to leave his or her body, change form, fly, and work directly upon its target, and this can be done without magic or spiritual assistance. Wherever the belief exists, there will be specialists who combat it, and many of them, too, work in mystical ways. In many parts of Africa the witch doctor works through specially developed sensory perception; he may be called a “smeller” of witches, using the native term that means both olfactory and extrasensory perception. Among the Bachama of Nigeria witches are located and engaged in battle by a special fraternity of [Page 2318]men who have demonstrated an ability to “see” into the spirit world; their “sight” works through invisible apertures at the center of the forehead and the occiput.

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