The embodied spirit or soul (elimo) is dreaded almost as much as the other spirits. In dreams the soul visits various scenes, and no matter how quickly the dreamer is aroused the soul can always return in time to take its place in the awakened person. With regard to dreams, some of the natives believe in them, and bad dreams are often accepted as omens to warn them against going on journeys, and fishing and hunting expeditions that would be either fruitless or disastrous.
When a person faints, or becomes unconscious, massage with water is used, and on the patient reviving it is said that the soul has returned. The soul travels about to bewitch people, and some of their charms are made on purpose to destroy such wandering spirits. These wicked souls travelling about with such sinister motives are regarded as witches worthy only of death, and some of their witch-doctors reap a rich harvest in trying to kill them. A seriously sick person fancies he sees a relative or neighbour in a dream, and at once believes that the witch-soul of his relative has come to throttle the life out of him, so he pays a witch-doctor a goodly fee to kill the prowling spirit, or protect him from its malignant assaults.
I noticed that the mouths and nostrils of the recently dead were always plugged and tied, and to my questions on the subject I always received the same reply: “The soul of a dying man escapes by his mouth and nose, so we always tie them in that fashion to keep the spirit, as long as possible, in the body.”
The shadow of a person, his reflection in water, or in a looking-glass, and more recently a photograph, is called by a word (elilingi) that is often used interchangeably with the word for soul (elimo). They repeatedly informed me that a “dead person casts no shadow,” and that therefore he has no soul, hence to say that So-and-so has no shadow is, with them, equivalent to saying that he has no soul, i.e. that he is dead. These two words were frequently employed when speaking of the soul, and also of the shadow of a person; but the word for soul (elimo) is never used for the shadow of a tree, house, animal, etc., but they speak of a fallen house or a fallen tree as having no shadow, i.e. they cast no shadows—a sign that they are dead.
If for some reason a man does not see his shadow reflected when he looks into some water, he thinks someone has taken his spirit away, and that he will soon die. Even if at midday he does not see his shadow, because he is standing on it—the sun being absolutely vertical at noon so near the Equator—he will go to a witch-doctor, who will make medicine that he may recover his shadow or soul. I once asked a chief to sit for his photograph a second time, and he laughingly refused, on the ground that I had sent his soul once to the white man’s country, and he could not let me have it again. And it was a considerable time before he consented to sit again.
The most troublesome spirit, however, with which the native has to contend is the disembodied spirit (mongoli). Directly the soul (elimo) leaves the body it becomes a disembodied spirit (a mongoli), and this distinction should be carefully borne in mind.
It is generally believed that the disembodied spirit of a good man—good according to the native code of morals—remains in the nether world (longa); but that of a bad man is punished in the nether regions and driven out. Then if the spirit belongs to a member of a bush-tribe (or to one whose family originally came from the bush), it will inhabit the forests or bush-lands, and unless properly appeased by gifts or conquered by charms it will turn aside animals from the hunting-traps and try to spoil all hunting operations. If the spirit belongs to a member of a riverine tribe, then, after being turned out of the nether world, it haunts the river and creeks and endeavours to hinder successful fishing. Hence it is no uncommon thing, when a village fails in its fishing, for the inhabitants to join their brass rods together to buy an old man or old woman—old and therefore cheap—and throw him (or her) into the river to conciliate the water-spirits. Hence, also, all the care taken by a fisherman to conceal his name while fishing under the general term mwele,[[37]] lest the disembodied spirit of an enemy should hear it and, recognizing him, keep all the fish from his traps and nets.
[37]. The natives can give no meaning to this word, and from their use of it to hide a name it is something like our phrase: Mr. So-and-so.
Sometimes these spirits can be heard walking through the forests, and the noise they make is called bie-bie; and at times they visit the town and cause “a rustling in the grass roofs, as though searching for a place through which to drive their spears.” The land and water are full of these disembodied spirits, hence the timorous folk are afraid to travel by night. Certain witch-doctors can see these spirits, and when they are mischievous they pretend to capture them and secure them in saucepans and calabashes.
Men may become the mediums by which these spirits hold communication with the living, generally to the advantage of the medium, as the following incident will illustrate: Baloli, the head-man of his family, died, and was buried in the usual way. Some time afterwards his younger brother, Mangumbe, became subject to frenzies, during which his brother Bololi spoke his oracles through him. Mangumbe admired and coveted the wives of a certain man in his town and tried to buy them, and failing in that he desired to exchange others for them, but their husband refused all offers.