Acts of Sacrifice as Materialising the “in betweenness” of Worlds

MICHAEL Rowlands??

Abstract：Deriving from a quote in Marcel Mauss essay on techniques of the Body， as well as based on the exploration of cases from ancient Mesopotamia， the eastern Mediterranean， and Africa.The author voices his concerns on the relationship between sacrifice and “materializing”. He states that sacrifice can animate， i.e. give life to sacrificial objects and by doing so turn them into subjects or agents who are dependent on the sacrificial process for their flourishing. Sacrifice as a life giving act creates a person through eating and feeding the recognition by the subject of its dependence on the source of that creativity. This can be the basis for contrasting it to funerary rites where it is death and the corpse that is envisaged as the sacrifice which is offered in some form as “feeding” the Gods.

Key Words：sacrifice； materializing； feeding； in betweenness

My general framework derives from a small quote by Marcel Mauss in his essay on techniques of the Body. At one point he says “Technical actions， physical actions ， magico-religious actions are confused for the actor ”（1936：82）. In other words there is no way， Mauss argued， that you can separate these aspects in a single technical action： instead the resulting product is an actualisation or materialisation of what would otherwise be considered separate actions. A technique， wrote Mauss， is a “traditional and efficacious action” on something， including religion and magic （Mauss 1936：82）. He saw techniques as practices having a tangible effect on the body and mind of the subject and together with Hubert， he emphasised this point in his work on sacrifice （Hubert and Mauss 1964）. Amongst his sources of inspiration he paid particular attention to the descriptions of breathing techniques of Taoism made by his friend Marcel Granet ， using them to advocate what he called a sociopsychologicalbiological study based on the study of technically efficacious action （Mauss 1936：93）.

Sacrifice as a technique of the body may seem a bit obvious as an example of efficacy， at least from the Girardian victim or scapegoat point of view （ Girard 1977）. But if efficacious and traditional action is reserved only for what is done to something as an act of fabrication， then I would argue that the argument made by Mauss has not been fully exploited （ cf Rowlands and Warnier 1993：513-550）. Sacrifice as technique can certainly be equated with efficacious action， i.e. to heal， to cue， to transform etc.， but it is also material in the sense that as a practice it has physical effects ， for example， the production of the person as an object.

Rather than the usual emphasis on the immateriality of ritual action， the goal of sacrifice is to animate something found or made. Sacrifice attracts and fixes a spirit， that is either deemed to already exist in an invisible form or more often is a made to exist by being activated in a material realm that may be a fixed site or a shrine or mobile object like a wooden figure， a drum， a calabash etc. That sacrifice animates is the same as saying that as a technique it creates a subject， a living entity that can be channelled to achieve certain ends. I will add that this apparent objectsubject relation is mediated by another techniqueactivation i.e.by the ways things are conceived as “charged” with ontological potentials of various kinds， and how a lot of attention and care （ritual or otherwise） is given to controlling the ways in which these potentials are activated in different ways. I guess the URexample here would be consecration （including initiations， baptisms， blessing of lands or crops or seas， creations of talismans or cult objects， wearing of masks， plying of music， dancing and percussion etc.） although the illusions here to anointing or blessing are perhaps better covered with a more general notion of “feeding” .

At roughly the same time as Mauss was writing on techniques of the body， a similar argument was being made in art history by the Assyriologist Leo Oppenheim in his writing on the care and feeding of the Gods in Ancient Mesopotamia （Oppenheim 1964）. He criticised art historians for studying ancient images of Mesopotamian Gods as representations rather than as animate beings. What he saw as their unwillingness to see objects as animate beings could be attributed， he argued， to what he called the effects of “releasing events （ i.e. iconoclasm–being free of the power of relics and idols to define belief） in the religious development of the Western world” （ 1964： 183）. Oppenheim showed how in Ancient Mesopotamian cities， it was the duty of a king to care for and feed the images of the city deity. Physical images of gods were fabricated and repaired by craftsmen in special workshops in the temple of the city god and during special nocturnal ceremonies they were endowed with “l(fā)ife” i.e. their eyes and mouths were “opened” so that the image could see and eat. The ritual was called “washing the mouth”， opening it so the city deity could eat， be fed and be washed， therefore imparting a special sanctity to the god. Still the fact that the images were made by human hands rather than their having a divine miraculous origin， created a problem resolved by the way sacrifice， as life giving acts， made the difference transforming human fabrications into divine beings. It is worth noting that sacrifice in the Old Testament JudeoChristian sense of life taking， does not share the sense of divine images being made by care and feeding. Divine images in the temple of Uruk in the Seleucid period were fed two meals a day， at the opening and closing of the temple. Whatever the dishes， whether liquids， meat， bread， or fruit， only after being touched by the fingers of the images of the deity， could they be sent to the king and his court for consumption. When Sargon II conquered Babylon in 709 BC， he delayed his entry into the city until being accepted by the city God which meant only after the priests of Marduk （ the city God） had brought him the “l(fā)eft overs” to eat from the morning sacrificial meal. In other words his body had first to be transformed through sharing in the food touched by the deity in a sacrificial meal or the sprinkling of water from a bowl touched by the fingers of the image of the city god upon the king and the priests， meant their bodies had in part been absorbed into that of the god. The idea that you had to eat the food of the city god to belong corporeally to the city， is even more pronounced in Ancient Egypt where gargantuan feasts were often produced and the “l(fā)eft overs” were consumed sometimes by all the inhabitants of a city. The consumption of left overs ， an important point here， meant that neither the king nor city priests sat at the same table as the city god who was considered aloof to all their dependency and instead the eating of left overs was their recognition of their inferiority to Gods. Parry has described a parallel making of offerings in Hinduism that involves the distribution of Prasad， understood to be the left overs of the offerings given to the deity that are then to be consumed by humanity （ Parry 1979）. They are linked to another concept jutha which is the pollution incurred when people eat meals i.e.the utensils， food， or anything that might have been in contact with saliva. The implication of Prasad is that human beings by being allowed to eat the left overs of gods demonstrate their own inferiority by avoiding pollution （ according to Parry 1979：100 sacramental Prasad as the food distributed as sacrificial food is technically divine jutha ）. Incidentally there is an interesting contrast with Vernants description of commensality in Ancient Greece and more broadly circum Mediterranean sacrificial acts where feeding was always a communal act； banquets in which Gods and men sat together， realised also in the Christian Last Supper theme （Vernant）.

Sacrifice as a life giving act creates a person through eating and feeding and the recognition by the subject of its dependence on the source of that creativity. This can be the basis for contrasting it to funerary rites where it is death and the corpse that is envisaged as the sacrifice which is offered in some form as “ feeding” the Gods .The burning of flesh and the collecting of bones in Vernant description of Homeric funerary rite was based on the description of the funeral rites made for Patroclus by Achilles in the Iliad. The flesh of Patroclus was burnt on the pyre as an offering to the Gods； the bones were then collected wrapped in ox hide and placed in a golden urn in two layers of sacrificed pig fat before being buried in a funeral mound on the site of the funeral pyre （ Illiad）. The idea of “ burnt offerings” in the sense used by Vernant to mean an act of commensality to provide food for the devotees， involved roasting meat and the baking and the breaking of bread to be communally shared as the opposite to the burning of the bones / of unguents and perfumes （ classically frankincense and myrrh in the ancient classical world ） to create the smoke and odours for the consumption of invisible yet anthropomorphised deities.

What our two cases from the Ancient worlds of Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean share in common is the more general point that Agamben drew from a reading of Aristotle on the nature of life making （ Agamben 1998）. In Homo Sacer， Agamben uses the distinction made by Aristotle between bios and zoe as the conditions for bare life and their cultural constitution as relevant for contemporary understandings of the governing of persons. Activating the potentials of living subjects requires not only a lot of care and attention but also choices made in what kinds of objects and substances can be conceived as being charged with the potentials to achieve the nurturing of life. But the view that there is “ some kind of good in the mere fact of living itself ” （ Aristotle Politics quoted in Agamben 1998：2） maintains a distinction between the reproductive and the cultivated life and this we have to question as a general feature of human wellbeing.

Sacrifice as Technical Action Turning Objects into Subjects

In the Grassfields region of Cameroonblood is treated as a transfusion and used often to animate objects and substances . In this broad sense of activation， a contrast can be drawn between the more wellknown kingdoms or Fondoms of the region， where the rites that involve sacrifice are mediated through ancestors and ancestor cults whilst in the more remote areas in the northern Grassfields towards the Nigerian border—ancestors are shunned and closed male associations are mostly involved in rites involving sacrifice （cf Warnier 2007； Baeke 2004）. In terms of longer term histories， this distinction between presence or absence of ancestors is important and we probably have a historical trend of increasing centralising of power through ancestor cults associated with the impact of the slave trade in this part of West central Africa， up to the present where access to funerary rites and being remembered is a prestige event open to all those with sufficient wealth and influence （Geschiere 1997 ）.

But the efficacy of blood as a substance also varies with the rite and objects involved. Here I will take up the description given in one of the best ethnographies made for sacrifice in this part of west central Africa by Vivien Baeke who wrote a superb ethnography Les temps de Rites on the Wuli of the Northern Grassfields region （Baeke 2004）. This is an area where ancestors are shunned—i.e.the spirits of the dead are treated as ambivalent. Men， who were members of closed male associations and had access to powerful antiwitchcraft objects/substances， could at death become malicious ghosts which roam around but if treated properly can be persuaded to inhabit objects associated with a particular association held in a special shrine. If offended， malicious spirits of the dead will go to the wild/forest/bush， team up with bush spirits and turn to witchcraft. If persuaded to stay with living people， the objects or shrines they inhabit will already contain “water spirits” derived affinally i.e. the water spirits are mythical affines of men and the dead/ghosts are agnatic descendants . When a son， as a possessor of one of these objectstakes his fathers place in the association and is initiated into it in turn—it is said he “marries” this object i.e. a reminder of the power of the alliance/ marriage between water spirits and men. In the kingdoms or fondoms to the south ，those with ancestors， the relation is reversed. Witchcraft substance is said to be transmitted from affines. Hence the historical reconstruction of the replacement of matriliny by patriliny in some accounts， is a gloss of a more complex historical dynamic. But the objects belonging to particular cult associations can do nothing without appropriate feeding—in particular fed with the blood using the transfusion “metaphor” referred to earlier.

Vivien Baeke generically calls all these objects associated with male associations—Ro objects—and they are principally manipulated to detect and punish witches and deal with various transgressions （Baeke 2004 ：231-290）. Each object has particular powers of healing and detecting the cause of afflictions i.e. the same object that can catch witches ， can also heal /cure because the cause is the same. All this is familiar stuff （cf Geschiere 1997） and it is the activation of the water spirit which in turn， manages the potential malevolence of the ghost spirit that determines a particular outcome for good or bad. “Seeing” the objects and manipulating them is therefore in the power of men in particular closed agnatic male associations and yet what they manage is basically matrilineal and a product of affinal ties.

So what are these objects ？ In the current fashion of stressing the materiality of things ， why do these shrines always look like a jumble of things？ Apparently lacking any connection between them， yet clearly what is seen as disorderely to the tidy European mind is precisely the source of the power of shrines and collections of objects associated with these assoiations. In the Wuli case， Baeke describes objects as clusters distinctive of each association with each object possesing a particular power or bush medicine attached to it （ Baeke 2004：240-241）. It is of course very tempting to create an itinerary of objects， medicines， their names and create connections and associations between them. But I think this is a bit of a classificatory trap since the intention revealed in Baekes ethnography， is precisely to differentiate things and show that the capacity to differentiate is a matter of efficacy. The diversity of things attributed to having such efficacy is striking. Paul Gebauer，the missionary who first described these cults in the Mfumte region in the 1930s ， also emphasised that the making of difference and differentiation was itself not only a source of power but also the basis for the creation of long term social relationships （Gebauer 1964） .

Vivien Baeke herself makes a Luc de Heusch point in differentiating objects made of iron/terracotta or wood as being linked to fire and the dry season/dealing with afflictions and combating witchcraft whilst calabashes/horns and fibre masks are associated with the wet season and fertility rites （Baeke 2004 ：271-276）. In the first discordant noise and cacophony accompany the use of iron implements （machetes /knives） or terracotta figures to frighten and expose witches and bad substances whilst masks and “music” played on similar instruments accompany the wet season rites of fertility and funerals.

But she distinguishes what she terms reparation rituals—distinguishing objects of fire/dry season manipulated to inflict diseases ， heal others and punish witches and which involve sacrifice—i.e.feeding the objects with blood—distinguishing these from seasonal fertility and initiation riteslinked to water， music，dance and the appearance of fibre masks.

Comparing her ethnography with another—that by David Zeitlyn on Mambila，she sums the whole North Grassfields region stretching to the Mambila region on the Adamawa plateau as structured by a symbolic classification： “ Among both peoples we find that dancing masks are to periodic rites， what sacrifice is to reparation rites” （Baeke 1995： 91）

Returning to our argument based on Mauss on techniques of traditional and efficacious actions，the notion that time or periodicity in ritual cycles goes with a focus on masquerades/music and dance （e.g.in death celebrations） should contrast with reparation as events requiring intervention to repair the damage—illness/death etc.—has much wider application over the whole coastal/forest area of CameroonGabonEquatorial Guinea. But what sets things apart as a formal dualityin practice is resolvable by understanding how they work as techniques to create an imaginary sense of causation—hence the “in between” theme of my title.

Let me take up the description of sacrifice both in Vivien Baekes ethnography and more widely in this Cameroon setting. As I have argued， blood from a sacrifice is treated as a kind of transfusion to feed the object or site where it is poured. Chickens are the principal victim ； not because they are plentiful or cheap but because they are anomalous in a way I will come to later. When a new shrine object is created ， a chicken is sacrificed and its blood poured on it. The important stipulation is that the chicken must be alive when this is done （ rather gruesome to watch ） ； the birds beak is forced apart and downwards until the burst blood vessels spill on to the object. In the Wuli case this is done to attract the water spirits to the object in its shrine and these spirits will in turn attract ghosts of the dead in the vicinity ie those spirits of the （male） dead that would otherwise make their way to the bush， disappear and return as malevolent ghosts. In the southern Grassfield kingdoms with ancestors， a similar sacrifice of blood from a live chicken is done in the presence of a Fon/King，e.g.at his annual dance celebrating royal ancestors.

The importance attached to live sacrifice relates the object whether terracotta figurine or a Dane gun （i.e.iron） to how the powers of fertility/i.e.living blood， act to domesticate death and the potential harm caused by wandering spirits of the dead. But the fact that they do so in different ways has already been suggested by the evidence for the origin of water spirits from the matriline for the Wuli contrasting with agnatic ancestral rites for the southern kingdoms.

Clearly however there is a structural analogue between the water spirits of the Wuli and the body of the Fon of the southern kingdoms in the Grassfields. We relate this distinction to the argument made by Warnier that the body of a Fon or King is a container of ancestral substances on which all his people depend i.e.ancestral fertility which he spreads to people as saliva， semen， ejaculation， breath （Warnier 2007）. In the Cameroon Grassfields， a vast array of practices testify to the fact that subjects treat their body as a container provided with an envelope and apertures through which a number of substances such as food， drinks， medicines， breath， spirit， etc. may pass， as they enter the body or leave it （see Warnier 2006， 2007， 2009， 2012）. All those material realities need maintenance， monitoring and expenditure of some amount of care， as well as an interpretation of what happens to them. Controlling the apertures of the body and the quality of its envelope is a matter of concern. For example， among the Bamileke Miaffo describes when a powerful man or a king dies， people feel concerned lest his spirit escapes through his mouth and nostrils and stays with the living to haunt and torment them （Miaffo 1977：46）. This is why as soon as a death become obvious， the head is enclosed in a clay pot or tightly wrapped in a raffia bag or in banana leaves. Sacrifice is therefore part of a much larger repertoire of techniques for controlling and managing the contents of the body and in particular the passage of a spirit at death. Ingestion and absorption of substances is as much a feature as their transmission； hence my “eating” metaphor is meant to cover a range of flows and absorptions. We could give a lot more evidence for such a concern with the skin as an envelope， its apertures， the transit from outside to inside and viceversa， and the contents （cf Warnier 2007： 63-81）. This cultural repertoire is extensively shared in a vast area including at least the Grassfields， together with the coastal and forest areas of Cameroon， Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. This seems to point to a very ancient civilization in which the self is identified to its skin as a container of sorts （ Rowlands 2003： 39-54）.

But “sacrifice” in a much broader sense of finding out the causes of death has developed forms of technical action in different parts of this huge area—The Wuli are part of a wide area of distribution in which autopsy was publicly practiced in order to ascertain the cause of death. In the past， vernacular public autopsy used to be practiced in a vast area over the Nigerian/Cameroon border and in the forest hinterland of the Bight of Benin （Salpeteur and Warnier 2013）. Autopsy was used to discover the cause of death which invariably meant either because of witchcraft or because the person was a witch and this had killed him or her. In other words there was no such thing as a good death in the areas where public autopsy was practised，and the only way to find out what caused the death either because the person was a witch or by the witchcraft of others was through invasive physical examination i.e.quite literally that the bodily contents will tell the truth through physical examination. The best way to know about it will be to split open the body and have a look inside. Burt in certain cases—techniques of divination that will be used achieve some kind of X ray or scanning of the corpse to establish what happened ， often using body substances such as hair， nails clips， etc. （on divination techniques， see Gebauer 1964 and Baeke 2004）. Depending on the result， both techniques will impact on the living subjects， after having impacted on the corpse. In these cases the corpse is literally being treated in much the same way as an animal sacrifice . For example， in the unlikely event of a leopard being caught these days but certainly in the past， the body would have been split open from navel to the thoracic region and its internal organs examined to detect whether it was an animalhuman transform. Wild game animals from the forest are also opened up and their internal organs examined akin to the autopsy of a corpse. Also a sacrificed chicken or goat—once the living blood has been poured，is also cut open and its condition verified. Hence there is good reason to say that in those areas where autopsy was and increasingly still is practiced， the corpse is treated as a sacrifice or rather what is artificially designated as a sacrifice is part of a much wider repertoire of techniques for establishing the cause of illness or death and a process of activating objects and substances to detect and punish the culprit. It goes without saying therefore that there can be no understanding of death in the areas practising autopsy as anything but caused by witchcraft and the treatment of the corpse as a sacrifice is part of an armature for detection and extrusion of death from life.

But in the kingdoms with ancestor cults， the whole issue of autopsy is treated with repugnance and contempt，as something done in the past or if now still—it is taken as a sign of backwardness and underdevelopment. In fact in the 21st century in Cameroon， autopsy is on the rise and in urban areas where fears of uncertainty and accusations fly between the often close kin involved in funerary rites. But repugnance is the overt public response to any hint of autopsy being used and it would be quite reprehensible to even show the photos taken by Gebauer in the 1930s witnessing such an event taking place .

So what do they do instead in the southern kingdoms？ Do they bother with establishing cause？ In the past at least they certainly did and used the poison ordeal to establish whether a witch was causing unusual deaths. But in contrast to the Wuli case—where all deaths must in some way or other be attributed to witchcraft—in the southern Grassfield kingdoms and elsewhere in this coastal/forest world of west central Africa cause is anomalous because， the goal for hundreds of years has been protection； building an armature that makes death from witchcraft the exception rather than the rule. This of course is what ancestors and their living descendants are for and why they became so powerful ， at least historically for the limited few who could make such claims （ unlike today when everyone does） .

As I suggested earlier in comparison to the Wuli water spirits who come into a group through marriage and are first invited through living sacrifice to inhabit objects and domesticate the wandering ghosts of the dead who cannot be ancestors； in the southern kingdoms ， the role of water spirits is taken up by ancestors. Historically the reasons for this are very likely to do with the slave trade and expansion of access to wealth through European trade goods /guns etc.but whilst this maybe the trigger it would be a very boring determinant.Hence I come back to Baeke insightful conclusion： “ Among both peoples we find that dancing masks are to periodic rites， what sacrifice is to reparation rites.” （Baeke 1995：91）

And it is true that music/dance and masquerades feature more prominently than offerings of blood and sacrifice or rather that the latter becomes part of the armature of the former. The point to focus on here is how the dead become ancestors and in turn whilst some may lurk around in ghostly form great care is taken in the burial to close the openings of the corpse so that the spirit will not escape. The aim instead is to channel the spirit in the right direction to the bush or a watery place where it can team up with spirits of the bush or the wild so that together they will form the basis of the armature of protection against “witchcraft”—which is also a metaphor anyway for all kinds of malevolence of external origin， including the state power，colonial rule，and epidemics etc.（cf Argenti 2007）.Care over treatment of the corpse is part of this curating and cajoling process . Hence the horror expressed by friends when they hear of the autopsies conducted among the Wuli/Yamba groups to the north . Care in the sense that the body will be washed ， oiled and camwood rubbed onto it. It will be buried seated （ in a niche to the side of the shaft dug so wandering spirits/witchcraft elements cannot get direct access to the body）. A bamboo reed will be placed in the mouth of the corpse leading up to the surface and set in a broken pot， so that raphia wine can be poured down to feed the corpse. In the past，quite soon after the burial a “cry die”or a death celebration of the deceased would be held （ now it can take a year or more to hold because of the prestige implications ） that would confirm the spirit has been dispatched and remembered.

And the central aspect of the cry die is to play the music and perform the dances associated with the dead spirit. The other central point is to feed and entertain both the living and the dead.Eating and dancing are thus the basic means of expressing the harmony on which the armature of protection against evil depends. Of these eating is primary， in particular acts of commensality in which food and drink brought by all constituents are mixed together and shared out to all who will sit together and eat. Prior to eating and the playing of music—are the speeches concerned with demonstrating that there are no grievances—nobody is there to say harsh words or be angry since this will disrupt the connections with the dead spirits （ cf Nymanjoh and Rowlands 2013）.

To illustrate the importance of eating and dancing in the death celebration we can refer to the fact that in most African languages and all the Bantu ones， a lexical distinction is made between different types of eating. In particular distinctions are made between the swallowing of soft， ground food and eating that involves chewing or tearing food. In Mankon and the “Ngemba speaking” （Western Bantu borderland） region of the Grassfields in Cameroon， the two words are dzie and kfuru. The emotional connotations are quite different. Dzie is “good eating”i.e.nourishing and unifying. It implies a sense of wellbeing gained from sharing and eating food together， good words being said and occurs at events promoting social harmony or the resolution of conflict—like a death celebration. The successor to the title of a dead elder， for instance， is described， at his installation as one who “eats the house”（dzie nda） i.e.restores its unity. Kefuru ，on the contrary is perceived as potentially harmful and dangerous—the focus is on the teeth and acts of tearing apart e.g.when people eat meat， or show their teeth during acts of extravagant consumption. A commensality of bad nocturnal cannibalism is opposed to the good diurnal commensality and the sharing of ground， soft， mixed vegetable food that can be swallowed in a lump （cf Rowlands and Warnier 1988； Warnier 2007；Nyamnjoh and Rowlands 2013 ）. Kfuru is widely associated with witchcraft where emphasis is on the destructive consumption of the lives of others， usually often referred to by witches metaphorically as “goats” or “fowls”. When humans transform into an animal to hunt other animals， or to prey on the domesticated animals of others， they usually privilege taking the form of predatory animals i.e. they will kill their prey by tearing with their teeth. Little children on the other hand， when they transform into animals to follow their mothers to the farm， because they have been left unattended at home， or miss their mothers， it is usually into a harmless type of snake， a chameleon or such like. So there is indeed a wildness associated with eating fellow flesh， and a sense that humans indulge in such destruction only as a last resort. The expression “be dze be” is reported in the Wimbum area， to mean those those who eat others contrasting with the Bum expression gheta kuta ghet—those who eat others （ Nyamnjoh pers.comm ） Sometimes someone might therefore appear to dze only to turn out to kfuru those which he/she was expected to protect， such as lineage heads who turn out to deplete rather than enhance. Similarly， that which you dze might turn out to be harmful to your system， almost as if it was something that you kfuru. It is also significant that most things eaten raw are usually considered as kfuru， however soft they might be. It would appear that there is no hard and fast rule， overwhelming though our case may be， for the distinction between the two terms and slippage or ambiguity between them is a constant feature . In a seminal article， Ramon Sarro has described a similar distinction in types of eating among the Baga， a group of swamp rice farmers living on the coast of the Republic of Guinea（Sarro 2000）. As in many other African languages， the Baga have two verbs for eating， kidi and kisom which he describes， in relation to Baga notions of personhood， as opening two antagonistic symbolic domains. We can justifiably describe distinctions of eating as a widespread feature of African languages and modes of thought.

However the act of ingesting or swallowing food is certainly more complicated than it might seem. There are two types of eating， two types of masticating and swallowing food and two images （at least） of the parts of the body involved.There are also several different ideas of personhood and moral agency involved which I would argue have remained stable over long periods of time and are maintained despite long distance migrations and spatial dislocations.

We find another duality in the role of music and dance that like food can be distinguished into the more commensal and entertaining and others that are disturbing and cacophonous with the latter usually also associated with the night and with warnings to those who should not see the instruments or the figures carrying them. But music usually accompanies figures that are being called or attracted to come into a place by the noise of the instruments being played. The most frequent of these that cross the barrier between pleasure and fear are double gongs or bells that can be struck to create rhythms or discordance whilst xylophones， harps and whistles are more likely to accompany dancers.

But how should we interpret the idea that dancing masks to periodic rites are what sacrifice is to reparation rites？ Possibly it is because they are solutions to the same problem—i.e. how to animate objects and substances so they will be both traditional and efficacious. We can compare it to Bernard Ankermans photos taken in Bamum in 1912 and see there is a remarkable continuity of form over a period when， particularly in the French mandate period， the periodic rituals in which these figures would be called to—were largely suppressed. The figures are attracted to the village by the music played for them so they will come from the forest—behave in a wild manner， scaring women and children， and will need to be held back by men holding ropes. There are similar types of figures in all the Grassfields kingdoms but the Tikar figure is particularly interesting for the argument I am making that a fusion between an ancestor spirit and bush spirit in the forest is quite literal in the anthropomorphic and non anthropomorphic features of the masquerade. This is also the interpretation made by the ethnographer Severin Abega，so I feel on safe ground here and I think this can be more widely attributed to masquerade figures in the whole coastal/forest region （Abega 2000）. The masked figures bring things from the forest with them in bags to the king/elders lined up to greet them who also show that they have the power to control their wildness through their ancestral spirit connections. The latter also need to be fed which would loosely be called sacrifice in the sense that not on this occasion but when the fon/elders go to either the burial places/ or pla ces in forest or lake where ancestral spirits live ， they will sacrifice chickens or a goat； but not as living offerings. The throat of the chicken or goat will be cut and the blood poured on stones marking the place where ancestor spirits can be located， whilst the meat shared is taken to be cooked and eaten by the descendants. In other words sacrifice among the Tikar fits into the eating/music classification of Vivien Baekes：

“Among both peoples we find that dancing masks are to periodic rites， what sacrifice is to reparation rites” （ 1995： 91 ）

Conclusion

Sacrifice as a life giving act creates a person through eating and feeding the recognition by the subject of its dependence on the source of that creativity. This can be the basis for contrasting it to funerary rites where it is death and the corpse that is envisaged as the sacrifice which is offered in some form as “feeding”the Gods. But difference lies also in the acts of “l(fā)iving sacrifice” that blend into a wider set of practices that involve food and eating and creativity. My focus on life making is not intended to contrast simply with sacrifice as an act of killing because in the circumstances I have been relating， it is not clear that “killing” is understood to be the outcome or necessary mediation of sacrifice. Killing is not dwelled upon as a sad act or a necessary part of the bargain with deities and spirits but rather a transmission process in which a symbolic reservoir of energy is transformed from one form into another or encouraged to transfer from one site or object into another. The focus seems to be more on flows and connectivity and encouraging a “fixing” of a mobile energy so that it will remain long enough in one place to have a desired effect or deliver a quite pragmatic protective or curative function. In this sense Warners argument for the body as a container with a sort of porous boundary between inside and outside is literally a better way to understand that “sacrifice” may be simply the manner of release and flow. The fact that all life is constituted through similar acts means that “sacrifice” is only one aspect of a much larger understanding of life making. The real problem comes in confronting the processes that interfere and interrupt such acts as well as the technical actions that exclude participation in them. Sacrifice here may have the more destructive sense of breaking open or unblocking the means of flow and connectivity. Fear and anxiety about the likelihood of such an inevitable state of affairs promotes instead responses ranging from constant testing and exposing the conditions of malevolence to a more protective armature that should never be dissolved. Violence is therefore not constitutive of the efficacy of sacrifice but rather the outcome of its perceived failure.

Acknowledgments

The author extends grateful thanks to the organisers and copresenters at the Anren Conference on Sacrifice for their collegial support and friendship and to the generosity of the Anren Town Museum.

References：

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