The Sorcery-Spirit
Foi · numen · Foi traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Illness and untimely death are attributed to sorcery, whose agency the Foi personify as a malevolent spirit-power set in motion by human practitioners. Working unseen, it consumes the victim's vitality; countering it demands divination and ritual response. Weiner treats this sorcery complex as inseparable from the circulation of pearl-shell valuables and from the way the Foi account for and settle death.
Domains
- sorcery and witchcraft
- illness and affliction
Powers
- consumes the victim's vitality unseen
Sources
- Illness and untimely death are attributed to sorcery, whose agency the Foi personify as a malevolent spirit-power directed by human practitioners and bound up with the exchange of pearl-shell wealth and the management of death.: J. F. Weiner, The Heart of the Pearl Shell: The Mythological Dimension of Foi Sociality (University of California Press, 1988). (secondary)