When a bad sickness comes upon a town, the old priest of Ale, who is always the head chief, beats upon the long drum to call all the people together in order to find out the cause of the trouble. Then Kola nuts are laid upon the place set apart for offerings. Each man in turn kneels down and picks up the kola with his lips, eats it and goes away. This is done until the guilty one comes. When a wizard bends down to take Ale’s kola, the Earth Spirit catches him and he is forced by her power to confess how he spread the pestilence. Before all the people he must speak out, saying: ‘I killed this man. I killed that man. That woman also I slew!’--until all his crimes are known. When everything has been told, his belly swells up and he dies. No man touches him. It is by Ale’s power alone that he is slain. This aversion to witchcraft is characteristic not only of the Earth Mother but also of her spouse the Thunder God; for, though certain magicians can raise a tempest by their spells, it is held to be extremely dangerous for witch or wizard to practise magic rites during the time of storms. When a man is struck by lightning, it is thought that Amade Onhia slew him on account of his crimes. Such men are never buried, lest the evil within them should defile Ale. The corpses are therefore flung away into the bush of the unblest dead. Similarly among Aro and some other Ibo tribes no tree struck by lightning can be used for firewood; since food cooked upon this would be accursed and even the light and heat given out by such logs would have a sinister influence on all whom it might reach. With these peoples the bed-rock of religious ideas has perhaps been attained in this direction; and, unless the fascination of the subject has misled one with will-o’-the-wisp-like glamour, then surely in the cult of the Earth Mother, of the Sky Father, by whose fecundative showers her fruition is brought about, of the kindly ancestors, whose spirits still watch over their descendants and aid in the sending of rich harvests--lastly, and most intimately of all, by sympathetic magic through that mysterious link thought to lie between the generative organs, both male and female, and the fruitfulness of the animal and vegetable kingdoms--the innermost workings of primitive minds may, in a measure, be reached at last. [Illustration: FIG. 47. Shrine of Ojuku juju at Woji] FOOTNOTES: [1] See also figures on the ancestral tablet described on p. 121. [2] 1904, pp. 134, 135. [3] In the Mbari houses of the neighbourhood of Omo Akani, Owerri District, where the Juju Ogugu holds sway, monkeys also are shown in the act of procreation. [4] A different word to Abara ‘Juju.’ [5] Our informant did not know of any link, yet it seems not without significance that the phallic pillars, raised by maidens before marriage to ensure plentiful offspring, also bear the name of Eki. See chapter vii.