Gebusi - Religion and Expressive Culture



Religious Beliefs. The Gebusi cosmos is populated by Numerous spirits, including those of fish, birds, and other animals. Of particular importance are the true spirit people ( to di os ), who aid the Gebusi in finding the causes of sickness, the identity of sorcerers, the location of lost pigs, and the success of anticipated hunting expeditions. Although spirits may cause transient illness, virtually all deaths among humans are believed to be caused by other living Gebusi through either sorcery or homicide. Sorcery is also seen as a predisposing cause of accidental death and suicide. Following spiritual indictment, sorcery suspects are enjoined to perform corpse or sago divinations in a largely futile attempt to establish their innocence.

Religious Practitioners. Spirit people are contacted by male spirit mediums in all-night spirit seances held on average once every eleven days. The spirit medium sits quietly in a darkened longhouse and self-induces a trance. His own spirit departs and is replaced by beautiful spirit women who chant: in high falsetto voices. Their songs are echoed line by line by a chorus of men who sit around the spirit medium. During the seance, spirits perform spirit-world cures for sick Gebusi and have strong de facto authority in making sorcery pronouncements. Spirit mediums should be neutral parties in any Sorcery attribution and have no special authority except via the spirit world in seances. They are not remunerated for their services, which are considered a civic duty.

Ceremonies. The harmony and beneficence of the Gebusi spirit world is celebrated in an all-night dance performed at feasts and other important occasions. The elaborate and standardized costume of the male dancer(s) brings together in iconographic form the diverse spirits of the upper and lower worlds, symbolizing their unity and harmony in dance. Sociologically parallel is the overcoming of real and/or ritual antagonism between visitors and hosts through feasting, drinking kava, dancing, and ribald male camaraderie during the night. On occasion, male homosexual liaisons take place in the privacy of the bush outside the longhouse. Gebusi believe boys must be orally inseminated to obtain male life force and attain adulthood. Insemination continues during adolescence and culminates in the male initiation ( wa kawala, or "child becomes big") between ages 17 and 23. Initiation is largely benign. Initiates receive costume parts and other gifts from diverse initiation sponsors and reciprocate with major food gifts. Novices are ultimately dressed in beautiful red bird-of-paradise (spirit-woman) costumes and are the focus of several days of feasting and ceremony attended by most Gebusi.

Arts. Gebusi make fine initiation arrows, armbands, and string bags, and they design elaborate dance and initiation costumes.

Medicine. Curing is done primarily via the spirit world; there is little intervention of a physical nature.

Death and Afterlife. A divinatory outcome indicating guilt of a sorcery suspect validates the spirits' indictment and foreshadows execution and cannibalism of the suspect, whose spirit reincarnates thereafter as a dangerous wild pig. Until recently, bodies of persons killed as sorcerers were butchered and cooked with sago and greens in a feasting oven and cannibalized fully, except for the intestines, which were discarded. The cooked body was distributed and eaten widely throughout the community, excluding close relatives and classificatory agnates of the deceased. Other Gebusi are not cannibalized and upon death reincarnate in bird, animal, and fish forms appropriate to their age and sex. A funeral feast is held when death results from sickness or accident.

User Contributions:

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: