Argonauts of the Western Pacific

by Bronisław Malinowski

These women have the power of making themselves invisible, and flying at night through the air. The orthodox belief is that a woman who is a yoyova can send forth a double which is invisible at will, but may appear in the form of a flying fox or of a night bird or a firefly. There is also a belief that a yoyova develops within her a something, shaped like an egg, or like a young, unripe coco-nut. This something is called as a matter of fact kapuwana, which is the word for a small coco-nut.⁷⁸ This idea remains in the native’s mind in a vague, indefinite, undifferentiated form, and any attempt to elicit a more detailed definition by asking him such questions, as to whether the kapuwana is a material object or not, would be to smuggle our own categories into his belief, where they do not exist. The kapuwana is anyhow believed to be the something which in the nightly flights leaves the body of the yoyova and assumes the various forms in which the mulukwausi appears. Another variant of the belief about the yoyova is, that those who know their magic especially well, can fly themselves, bodily transporting themselves through the air.

But it can never be sufficiently emphasised that all these beliefs cannot be treated as consistent pieces of knowledge; they flow into one another, and even the same native probably holds several views rationally inconsistent with one another. Even their terminology (compare the last Division of the foregoing chapter), cannot be taken as implying a strict distinction or definition. Thus, the word yoyova is applied to the woman as we meet her in the village, and the word mulukwausi will be used when we see something suspicious flying through the air. But it would be incorrect to systematise this use into a sort of doctrine and to say: „An individual woman is conceived as consisting of an actual living personality called yoyova, and of an immaterial, spiritual principle called mulukwausi, which in its potential form is the kapuwana”. In doing this we would do mulukwausi much what the Mediaeval Scholastics did to the living faith of the early ages. The native feels and fears his belief rather than formulates it clearly to himself. He uses terms and expressions, and thus, as used by him, we must collect them as documents of belief, but abstain from working them out into a consistent theory; for this represents neither the native’s mind nor any other form of reality.

As we remember from Chapter II, the flying witches are a nefarious agency, second in importance to the bwaga’u (male sorcerer), but in efficiency far more deadly even than he himself. In contrast to the bwaga’u, who is simply a man in possession of a special form of magic, the yoyova have to be gradually initiated into their status. Only a small child, whose mother is a witch, can become a witch herself. When a witch gives birth to a female child, she medicates a piece of obsidian, and cuts off the navel string. The navel string is then buried, with the recital of a magical formula, in the house, and not, as is done in all ordinary cases, in the garden. Soon after, the witch will carry her daughter to the sea beach, utter a spell over some brine in a coco-nut cup, and give the child to drink. After that, the child is submerged in water and washed, a kind of witch’s baptism! Then she brings back the baby into the house, utters a spell over a mat, and folds her up in it. At night, she carries the baby through the air, and goes to a trysting place of other yoyova, where she presents her child ritually to them. In contrast to the usual custom of young mothers of sleeping over a small fire, a sorceress lies with her baby in the cold. As the child grows up, the mother will take it into her arms and carry it through the air on her nightly rounds. Entering girlhood at the age when the first grass skirt is put on a maiden, the little prospective witch will begin to fly herself.

Another system of training, running side by side with flying, consists in accustoming the child to participation in human flesh. Even before the growing witch will begin to fly on her own account, the mother will take her to the ghoulish repasts, where she and other witches sit over a corpse, eating its eyes, tongue, lungs, and entrails. There the little girl receives her first share of corpse flesh, and trains her taste to like this diet.

There are other forms of training ascribed to mothers solicitous that their daughters should grow up into efficient yoyova and mulukwausi. At night the mother will stand on one side of the hut, with the child in her hands, and throw the little one over the roof. Then quickly, with the speed only possible to a yoyova, she will move round, and catch the child on the other side. This happens before the child begins to fly, and is meant to accustom it to passing rapidly through the air. Or again, the child will be held by her feet, head down, and remain in this position while the mother utters a spell. Thus gradually, by all these means, the child acquires the powers and tastes of a yoyova.

It is easy to pick out such girls from other children. They will be recognisable by their crude tastes, and more especially by their habit of eating raw flesh of pigs or uncooked fish. And here we come to a point, where mythical superstition plays over into something more real, for I have been assured by reliable informants, and those not only natives, that there are cases of girls who will show a craving for raw meat, and when a pig is being quartered in the village will drink its blood and tear up its flesh. These statements I never could verify by direct observations, and they may be only the result of very strong belief projecting its own realities, as we see on every side in our own society in miraculous cures, spiritistic phenomena, etc., etc. If, however, the eating of raw flesh by girl children really occurs, this simply means that they play up to what they know is said and believed about them. This again is a phenomenon of social pyschology met with in many phases of Trobriand society and in our own.

This does not mean that the character of yoyova is publicly donned. Indeed, though a man often owns up to the fact that he is a bwaga’u, and treats his speciality quite openly in conversation, a woman will never directly confess to being a yoyova, not even to her own husband. But she will certainly be marked by everyone as such a one, and she will often play up to the role, for it is always an advantage to be supposed to be endowed with supernatural powers. And moreover, being a sorceress is also a good source of income. A woman will often receive presents with the understanding that such and such a person has to be injured. She will openly take gifts, avowedly in payment for healing someone who has been hurt by another witch. Thus the character of a yoyova is, in a way, a public one and the most important and powerful witches will be enumerated by name. But no woman will ever openly speak about being one. Of course to have such a character would in no way spoil matrimonial chances, or do anything but enhance the social status of a woman.

So deep is the belief in the efficacy of magic, and in magic being the only means of acquiring extraordinary faculties, that all powers of a yoyova are attributed to magic. As we saw in the training of a young yoyova, magic has to be spoken at every stage in order to impart to her the character of a witch. A full blown yoyova has to utter special magic each time she wishes to be invisible, or when she wants to fly, or acquire higher speed, or penetrate darkness and distance in order to find out whether an accident is happening there. But like everything referring to this form of witchcraft, these formulae never come to light. Although I was able to acquire a whole body of spells of the bwaga’u sorcery, I could not even lift the fringe of the impenetrable veil, surrounding the magic of the yoyova. As a matter of fact, there is not the slightest doubt for me that not one single rite, not one single word of this magic, have ever existed.

Once a mulukwausi is fully trained in her craft, she will often go at night to feed on corpses or to destroy shipwrecked mariners, for these are her two main pursuits. By a special sense, acquired through magic, she can „hear”, as the natives say, that a man has died at such and such a place, or that a canoe is in danger. Even a young apprenticed yoyova will have her hearing so sharpened that she will tell her mother: „Mother, I hear, they cry! Which means that a man is dead or dying at some place”. Or she will say: „Mother, a waga is sinking”! And then they both will fly to the spot.

When she goes out on such an errand, the yoyova leaves her body behind. Then she climbs a tree, and reciting some magic, she ties a creeper to it. Then, she flies off, along this creeper, which snaps behind her. This is the moment when we see the fire flying through the sky. Whenever the natives see a falling star, they know it is a mulukwausi on her flight. Another version is that, when a mulukwausi recites a certain spell, a tree which stands somewhere near her destination bends down towards the other tree on which she is perched. She jumps from one top to the other, and it is then that we see the fire. According to some versions, the mulukwausi, that is, the witch in her flying state, moves about naked, leaving her skirt round the body, which remains asleep in the hut. Other versions depict her as tying her skirt tightly round her when flying, and beating her buttocks with a magical pandanus streamer. These latter versions are embodied in the magic quoted above in Chapter V.