medicine, placing it in either the horn of an antelope (Lekorla) or then a little tin box (nkobbi). Then seating himself upon a mat within a circle drawn in chalk, on the ground he shakes a little rattle (nquanga) at the patient, and goes through some form of incantation, until the patient trembles and cries out with the voice of the deceased, when they all know that the nkulu has taken up its residence in his head. The medicine and earth together with the nkobbi is called nkulu mpemba, and shows that the deceased died of some ordinary disease; but when the medicine and earth are put into the lakorla it shows that the deceased died of some sickness of the head, and this is called Nkulu mabiali.
Fiote says the "shadow" ceases at the death of the person, I asked if that was because they kept the corpse in the shade; what if they put the corpse in the sun? The young man asked, turned to his elderly aunt and re-asked her this question. "No," she said emphatically, "certainly not!"[1]
- ↑ Miss Kingsley writes as follows on this: "The final passage is an unconscious support to my statements regarding the four souls of man. The shadow dies utterly at bodily death; therefore it does not matter whether the corpse is in the sun, or no, because the shadow it might throw would not be the shadow of the man as he was when alive; it would only be the shadow of the dead stuff."
