Nggam () is a type of

divination Divination () is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic ritual or practice. Using various methods throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a should proceed by reading signs, ...

found among many groups in western

Cameroon Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ...

. Among the best documented is its practice by the

Mambila people The Mambilla or Mambila people of Nigeria live on the Mambilla Plateau (in 'Sardauna' local government area (formerly, Mambilla LGA) of Taraba State in Nigeria). A small fraction of Mambilla migrants left the Mambilla Plateau for the Ndòm Plai ...

of Cameroon and

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

, in which the actions of

spider Spiders (order (biology), order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight limbs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude spider silk, silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and ran ...

s or

crab Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura (meaning "short tailed" in Greek language, Greek), which typically have a very short projecting tail-like abdomen#Arthropoda, abdomen, usually hidden entirely under the Thorax (arthropo ...

s are interpreted by the diviner. The form used by the neighbouring Yamba people was described by Gebauer in 1964 based on experience in Mbem going back to before 1939, and more recently by Hermann Gufler (1996 and 2003). Good documentation of Nggam has been also published for the Bekpak ( Bafia) people by Dugast and Leiderer and for

Bamileke people The Bamiléké people are an ethnic group of Central Africa that inhabits the Western High Plateau colloquially known as the ''grassfields'' of Cameroon. According to Dr John Feyou de Hapy, Bamiléké means "people of faith". Languages The B ...

by Pradeles de Latour. The crab form has been studied in north Cameroon by Walter van Beek (2013, 2015). The comparative linguistics of spider divination in Cameroon was surveyed by Blench and Zeitlyn in 1989/1990. In 2021, Argentinian artist

Tomás Saraceno Tomás Saraceno (San Miguel de Tucumán, 1973) is an Argentine contemporary artist whose projects, consisting of floating sculptures, international collaborations, and interactive installations, propose and dialogue with forms of inhabiting and se ...

developed a project and website where you can learn about the practices of the Nggam dù spider diviners. On the website it has videos that show the methods the diviners use to answer people’s questions and also has interviews with diviners who all live in the village of Somié, Cameroon. The Mambila form of nggam featured in the 2024-2025 exhibition "Oracles, Omens and Answers" at the Weston Library, the University of Oxford, and there is a chapter about it in the related book

References

External links

Mambila spider divination

Nggam dù - Spider divination with Somié, Cameroon
Divination {{Nigeria-stub

See also

References

External links