A Shared Intentional Space of Witch-Hunt and Sacrifice

Abstract

In this article, the issue is whether witch-hunts can be seen to share certain aspects with the realm of sacrifice. With resource to recent developments in the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, it is argued that witchcraft is ‘the other side of sacrifice’ in more than one sense: firstly, as the witch is sacrificing its victim and breaking through to the social world from a world beyond and, secondly, as the witch-hunt is a movement with the purpose of sacrificing the accused witch for the healing of the community. The argument hinges on the alignment of the space intended by sacrifice and the space revealed by the appearance of the witch – as both articulating an engagement with ‘the very source of life’ (Hubert & Mauss 1964: 98).

Keywords:

• Witchcraft
• divination
• sacrifice
• Melanesia
• Vanuatu

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Maya Mayblin and Magnus Course for inviting me to the conference in Edinburgh in 2011 and for all their effort and engagement with this article. I am also grateful to Rane Willerslev for comments and Bruce Kapferer and Annelin Eriksen for input to my argument on several occasions. The three review reports from Ethnos have also been very helpful in the process of developing the argument, and editor of Ethnos, Nils Bubandt, has contributed a lot to the final version.