内心的猪

在巴布亚新几内亚 Southern Highland 行省的 Kaluli 族群,当地灵媒的两个主要职责,是:

  • 给人治病
  • 和找寻村民丢失的猪

这两件事有什么关联呢?在当地文化里,一个人之所以生病,是因为他内心的猪,走失了……

Séances maybe called for a variety of reasons, including entertainment, but most commonly are called to cure illness and to find lost pigs. One of the principlec ausesof illness, from the Kaluli point of view, is that a person’s invisible wild pig (or cassowary) aspect may be trapped or injured by hunters of the spirit world, resulting in pain and disability for the visible person. If the animal is taken from the trap and eaten by the spirits before it can be rescued, the person will die. An even more serious cause of illness (which may or may not be involved with the trapping of the wild pig aspect) results from an invisible attack on the victim’s body by a witch…

Schieffelin, E.L., 1985. Performance and the cultural construction of reality. American Ethnologist12(4), pp.707-724.

以 Kaluli 人的观点,导致疾病的主要原因之一,是一个人的不可见的野猪(或食伙计)可能被魂灵世界中的猎人困住或伤害,从而导致人可见的疼痛和残障。如果落入陷阱的动物,在被及时救出之前,被魂灵们捕获并吃掉,那么这个人将会死去。更严重的一种导致疾病的原因,是受害者的身体,被巫师进行不可见的攻击……