A Modern Sorcerer Speaks

Author: Alison Damick

"One doesn't play the lute to a donkey." With this African proverb, Anthropology Professor Paul Stoller of West Chester University in Pennsylvania introduced his speech entitled "A Sorcerer's Path," in the Robert A. Jones Conference Room on March 18. He went on to explain that this proverb, which was repeated to him many times over the course of his 25 years in sorcery training in West Africa, expressed the essence of what he hoped to convey in his lecture: the importance of scholarly and academic humility in any discipline.
Stoller, an internationally recognized anthropologist and novelist, has spent many years in the field in Niger studying the Songhay culture.
He discussed this work and his experiences with both the spiritual and social worlds of the Songhay with Middlebury College students and professors who attended the Tuesday night dinner and lecture.
He spoke of the mundane and often frustratingly monotonous beginnings of his training in sorcery. He had to memorize one incantation after another and learn to find and administer healing plants. From these initial descriptions, it seemed as if Stoller was learning from a traditional indigenous herbal healer and that his memories of the people and the culture were nothing less than interesting and compelling. However, as his story gains intrigue it also quickly grows darker.
Stoller explained that there are two paths in the study of Songhay sorcery: that of Power and that of Plants. Having started down the path of Power, he did not truly realize its potency and the danger associated with those involved in it until after the death of his first and primary teacher in 1988. Until then he had only encountered minor examples of the consequences of overstepping one's boundaries in sorcery, such as when a "Mean Chief" spell that he composed to expel an unsympathetic boss seemed to result in the illness of the boss's family member.
After his teacher's death, however, Stoller told how he discovered that this teacher had been "protecting me from all sorts of rivals."
He spoke of diseases contracted and mishaps encountered - perhaps at the hands of rival sorcerers competing for power - and the insecurity that came with living a life in the path of Power.
Stoller recalled a method he once used to prevent food poisoning. "I used to travel with a chicken and have it eat the food first," he said. "But I got tired of it, you know, and yeah, it really freaked me out when it died." A sardonic smile accompanied this last comment.
Acknowledging a question regarding the skepticism that he inherently receives from modern audiences about his work, Stoller leaned back thoughtfully and replied, "We are incapable of understanding fundamental things until experience brings us to it."
Experience became a theme in his talk. He continued with the idea of his personal battle with cancer as a learning opportunity he has incorporated into his work as an anthropologist.
"Illness provokes learning and leads to wisdom," he said. "The experience has reoriented my approach to anthropology. I've come to believe that another important aspect of anthropology is to bear witness to experience."
His studies of Songhay rites and rituals carried over to his coping with illness.
He even alarmed several doctors with incantations and spitting rituals. "The purpose of ritual," he explained, "is to create a semblance of control in uncontrollable circumstances," a semblance that helped him deal with his illness.
Stoller has not returned to Niger in years. He feels that, "there is a dissidence, a lack of harmony, for me. I had stepped beyond my capacity [as a sorcerer]."
He has published many acclaimed works, however, recounting his experiences with the Songhay. These include: "In Sorcery's Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship Among the Songhay of Niger" and "Fusion of the Worlds: An Ethnography of Possession Among the Songhay of Niger."
His work has won many prestigious awards and been the focus of much media attention throughout the years.