Note 65.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

The Evil Eye is a striking example of the belief in orenda that has survived into civilized communities. Here the whole maleficent potentiality of a person is concentrated in a glance; and the amulets so often worn on the body or suspended on the wall or at the door of a house are directed to intercepting and so exhausting the influence. In many cases, either by means of them or by a word or gesture, a counter-orenda is exercised, intended to annihilate, or at least neutralize, the evil influence. An analogous superstition may be cited from the Upper Congo. The Boloki believe that an occult power is possessed and exercised by many individuals. They call it likundu. Like the Evil Eye, its possession and exercise may be unconscious. “A person is accused of possessing likundu when he or she is extraordinarily successful in hunting, fishing, skilled labour or the accumulation of wealth. There is apparently,” says Rev. J. H. Weeks, “only a certain amount of skill extant, only a certain number of fish to be caught, only a certain amount of wealth to be gained; and for a person to excel all others is a proof that he is using evil means to his own advantage, and in thus defrauding others of their share he lays himself open to the charge of possessing likundu.” Consequently “a person who possesses this likundu may unconsciously cause the hunting skill of any hunter in his family to fail.” When the charge is seriously made “it causes much annoyance, and can only be disproved by either drinking the ordeal or refraining from doing that which has brought the charge,” of which Mr Weeks goes on to give an illustration that had come under his own observation.65.1