Description:
This book offers a major contribution to the study and analysis of divination, based on continuing fieldwork with the Mambila in Cameroon. It seeks to return attention to the details of divinatory practice, using the questions asked, and life histories to help understand the perspective of the clients rather than that of the diviners.
Review Quotes:
"The book, with its exceptional ambition and thorough ethnography, is essential for all social scientists studying divination." - Erwan Dianteill in International Journal of Divination and Prognostication
"David Zeitlyn offers a stimulating account following over thirty years of meticulous interaction with the practitioners of the spider divination system of the Mambila [...] I recommend Zeitlyn's work as not only one that exposes the reader to Mambila spider divination but also serves as an affirmation to some of the similarities in the modus operandi of African systems of divination." - Emmanuel Ofuasia in Arụmarụka: Journal of Conversational Thinking