Spirits That Heal: The World of the Spirits in Today’s Equatorial Guinea

Abstract

Today in Equatorial Guinea, the world of spirits – of the dead or non-human entities – constitutes one of the main aspects in the field of the occult. The belief in spirits is something shared by the population in general, but there are specialists, mainly nganga (healers or shamans), who understand the spirits within a complex esoteric dimension, which includes knowledge as well as a whole range of practices that are made manifest especially during the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In this article, I will present results from fieldwork carried out in Equatorial Guinea over recent years. I will focus on the conceptualization of the spirits among the Fang, the type of relationship that is established between traditional healers and these spiritual entities, how they are invoked, and the specific role that they have in therapeutic practices.