Regional and non-regional cults of affliction in Western Zambia

A generic relation holds between two types of cult of affliction in formerly Barotseland. Cults of one type, the non-regional, form a substratum out of which cults of the other type, the regional, may spring forth under certain conditions, and into which they submerge again under different conditions. The author compares in some detail, to a large extent based on oral-historical data, the development of two regional cults in order to make clear the presumable importance of two series of variables: characteristics of idiom and internal organizational structure, of the cult, and the structural characteristics (the demographic pattern and the occurence of other formal interlocal organizations) of the geographical area which the cult transforms into a cultic region