Blood, kin, and shared mediumship in xinguilamento ritual practice (Luanda, Angola)

Abstract

Xinguilamento is an Angolan ritual based on possession by ilundu spirits. Ilundu are considered to be hereditary illnesses transmitted between family members across the generations. Treatment requires the reunion of the ill person’s relatives to induce possession in some of them. This ritual is emblematic of what kin share among themselves and with ascendants who in their lifetimes were mediums. This paper examines the role of substances—notably blood—in xinguilamento. All key rituals involving ilundu spirits are based on actual blood. This blood might therefore appear to allude to the consanguinity upon which ilundu illness and therapy are grounded. However, upon further examination, this blood proves rather to be the vehicle for new initiatory relationality. Located at the crossroads of kinship studies and anthropological research on substances and ritual materiality, the paper aims to provide an expanded understanding of blood, both as a concept and ethnographically.