Symbols in Ndembu Ritual [written in 1957]

Certain ritual symbols, as the author said, are regarded by Ndembu as "dominant." In rituals performed to propitiate ancestor spirits who are believed to have afflicted their living kin with reproductive disorders, illness, or bad luck at hunting, there are two main classes of dominant symbols. The first class is represented by the first tree or plant in a series of trees or plants from which portions of leaves, bark, or roots are collected by practitioners or adepts in the curative cult. The second class of dominant symbols in curative rituals consists of shrines where the subjects of such rituals sit while the practitioners wash them with vegetable substances mixed with water and perform actions on their behalf of a symbolic or ritualistic nature. It has long been recognised in anthropological literature that ritual symbols are stimuli of emotion. In each kind of Ndembu ritual a different group or category becomes the focal social element.