rite of affliction

is a rite performed to overcome hidden intentions as divination had previously revealed to be fracturing the social body.

Divination is itself a public response to a mounting crisis in the life of the community whose representatives decide to have recourse to it. Chihamba is the most important of that class of Ndembu rituals I have called 'rituals of affliction'... one of the manifest functions of such rituals is to overcome precisely such hidden intentions as divination had previously revealed to be fracturing the social body (Victor Turner 'symbol, myth, ritual' : 27)

rite of affliction, n.All

rite of affliction