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(American mythology)
A soulless body. In the Voodoo cult of Haiti, a zombi is the slave of a magician. The soul may have been removed by magic from a living person, or the body of someone recently deceased may have been brought up out of the grave after the soul had been separated from it by regular rites of death. As the lord of the dead, Ghede has the power to animate corpses as zombis.
[Caribbean French and English Creole, from Kimbundu -zumbi, ghost, departed spirit.]
The word zombie refers to the ‘living dead’. In folklore zombies are portrayed as innocent victims who are raised in a comatose trance from their graves by malevolent sorcerers, and led to distant farms or villages where they toil indefinitely as slaves. Zombies are recognized by their docile nature, by their glassy empty eyes, and by the evident absence of will, memory, and emotion. Part of their souls may also be captured by the sorcerers. Zombies can only return to the world of the living upon the death of their masters. Accounts are sometimes cited of actual people who have undergone this ordeal, were declared dead, and later turned up at the homes of their kin in various degrees of health.
Sources indicate that the word is of African origin. The cadaver or spirit of a deceased person is called zumbi in the Bonda language, ndzumbi in Gabon, and nzambi in Kongo. However, the conviction that zombies exist is more widespread. It is encountered not only in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in the Caribbean and in Latin America.
A controversial theory by Wade Davis suggests that there may well be an ethnobiological basis for popular reports of the zombie phenomenon in Haiti. He refers to a case of zombification which had been verified by a team of physicians. In 1962 Clairvus Narcisse was pronounced dead at a hospital, and buried 8 hours later. In 1980 Clairvus reappeared, claiming that he had been made a zombie by his brother because of a land dispute. Davis argues that Clairvus was mistakenly diagnosed as dead, buried alive, and taken from the grave. Among the various preparations of Haitian sorcerers, Davis identified a marine fish containing tetrodotoxin, an extremely potent neurotoxin which induces a complete state of peripheral paralysis and imperceptibly low metabolic levels. He postulates that the Haitian belief in zombies could be based on those rare instances where the individual receives the correct dosage of the poison, is misdiagnosed as dead, and is taken from the grave by a sorcerer. Moreover, Davis argues that zombification is a form of punishment imposed by Bizango secret societies to maintain order in local communities.
Other scholars of Haiti regard the belief in zombies as purely mythical. From a Marxist perspective zombification — the image of people who have lost their minds and souls and are left only with the ability to work — is explained as symbolic comment on the historical process of colonialism.
In many parts of Africa zombies are an integral aspect of witchcraft beliefs; particularly where witchcraft discourses address issues raised by inequalities of wealth and power. For example, among the Bakweri of Cameroon new forms of wealth signalled a transformation in occult forces. When land was alienated for plantations by German and British colonists, the Bakweri were confined to reservations, and the plantations attracted a workforce from elsewhere. In this context a concept of nyongo witchcraft emerged. The Bakweri suspected prosperous outsiders of forming witch associations, taking deceased kin from the graves, and of transporting them by lorries to mount Kupe where they used the zombie spirits to work on invisible plantations. Yet the nyongo men themselves were in danger. If they were no longer able to sell their intimates to fellow witches, their colleagues would kill them, and reduce them to slavery. Initially these ideas exaggerated ambivalence towards wealth and hindered the emergence of a new elite among the Bakweri. However, when the Bakweri themselves earned much money from the cultivation of bananas, in the 1950s, nyongo witches were soon flushed out and brought under control. Hence the ban on individual enrichment was broken.
Similarly, in Malawi, witchcraft discourses constitute an argument about the morality of accumulation. Accumulation is endowed with moral adequacy when entrepreneurs make their constitutive relations visible by supporting their kin financially; and by redistributing wealth through patronage, gift-giving, and feasting. It is perfectly legitimate when entrepreneurs, who are motivated by these concerns, use medicines to protect their businesses and to ensure a steady flow of many customers. By contrast, accumulation which is motivated by individualism and greed is morally despised. In this situation entrepreneurs are said to achieve prosperity at the cost of human lives. Zombies are believed to reside with them, to protect their money, and to affect the minds of customers so that they can come to the business in large numbers. Zombies thus serve exactly the same purposes as medicines, but are an index of morally disputable witchcraft.
In South Africa discourses of zombies capture the illicit desire to dominate and the fear of being dominated. At a symbolic level the image of witches who keep many zombies resonates with the status of white industrialists and farm owners who employ many black labourers. The employment of zombies as servants in a nocturnal ‘second world’ echoes the daunting experiences of migrant labourers who leave their rural households for alien industrial and mining centres. The tasks of zombies resemble those of domestic assistants and farm labourers. They clean the homes of witches, fetch water and firewood, herd cattle, plough, sow, harvest, and run errands. The unique features of zombies exaggerate some of the less apparent consequences of domination. Zombies are only a metre tall; are similar in appearance; are hypnotized so that they display unquestioning obedience; and their tongues are cut. These features allude to the diminutive, childlike status of African labourers; who are all treated alike by their bosses; and are unable to express themselves. Moreover, zombies are sexless, are devoid of human desires, and are fed a meagre diet of maize porridge — the staple diet of South African labourers. Narratives of zombies also reflect upon the dependence of the dominated. Should witches die, their zombies will wander about endlessly in search of porridge. Being undead, they cannot return to their kin. Persons who aspire to positions of influence; and strong-willed mothers-in-law who command great authority over the wives of their sons, are those most often accused of keeping zombies.
— I. Niehaus
Bibliography
See also witchcraft.
[ZAHM-bee] Extraordinarily potent, this cocktail is made with at least two types each of rum and liqueur plus two or three fruit juices such as pineapple, orange and lime. It's usually served in a large goblet over crushed ice, garnished with slices of pineapple and orange and a maraschino cherry. The origin of the name is unknown, but it's been said that one or two of these drinks can make one feel numb . . . Rather like a zombie.
Don't try this at home! but here's a recipe. First put on some gloves and catch a bouga toad. Carefully collect some of its gland secretions, said to be a hundred times more powerful than the heart medicine digitalis and hallucinogenic. Then (perhaps keeping your gloves on) catch some puffer fish for their tetrodotoxin, said to be one of the strongest poisons in the world. Add tarantulas, millipedes, seeds and leaves of poisonous plants, and skins from poisonous tree frogs. Mix the poisons together, and for extra effect add ground-up human bones. Then sidle up to an unsuspecting victim and surreptitiously apply a little of the brew to that person's skin.
There! The victim will keel over and appear dead. Go ahead, have a nice funeral. Then give the victim a potion known as "zombie's cucumber," and your prey will wake up and seem to have risen from the dead. But there will be no personality, no memory, not even the ability to speak. You'll have a living body without a soul. In other words, a zombie.
It's tricky, and not everyone agrees that this is the right procedure. So maybe you'd better leave it to a professional, an expert in voodoo known as a bokor. It is said that you'll find such experts in Haiti, the home of voodoo.
Once you have a zombie, you'll find lots of uses for it (no longer he or she). The zombie makes a fine slave, working indoors or out at whatever physical task you choose. It will obey without question and not talk back.
The word shows up in English in an 1819 history of Brazil, which says that Zambi "is the name for the Deity, in the Angolan tongue." In 1872 a dictionary of Americanisms includes a more familiar definition: "Zombi, a phantom or a ghost, not unfrequently heard in the Southern States in nurseries and among the servants."
Like voodoo, the word zombie has an African origin. It comes from a Bantu language of the Niger-Congo language family, either Kimbundu or Kongo. Here we will credit Kongo, also known as Kikongo, which is spoken in Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola by a total of more than three million people. One other well-known English word from Kongo is chimpanzee (1738).
1. [Unix] A process that has died but has not yet relinquished its process table slot (because the parent process hasn't executed a wait(2) for it yet). These can be seen in ps(1) listings occasionally. Compare orphan.
2. A machine, especially someone's home box, that has been cracked and is being used as part of a second-stage attack by miscreants trying to mask their home IP address. Especially used of machines being exploited in large gangs for a mechanized denial-of-service attack like Tribe Flood Network; the image that goes with this is of a veritable army of zombies mindlessly doing the bidding of a necromancer.
For more information on zombi, visit Britannica.com.
In Haitian voudou superstition, a zombie is a dead body revived by magic to act as a soulless robot. In recent years stories of zombies have spread throughout Western countries in Hollywood horror films about the walking dead. According to the folk tradition, the houngans, or voudou priests, are said to dig up corpses and reanimate them by magic rituals. Another way of creating a zombie is to feed the victim a preparation that stupefies the soul, leaving the body a living corpse.
To cure a zombie, it is said one should give it saltwater to drink. Special burial techniques are sometimes used to prevent corpses from being used as zombies. The corpse may be buried face down and its mouth filled with earth; sometimes the lips are sewn together, presumably to prevent the soul from leaving by the mouth. A somewhat naive custom is to strew handfuls of sesame seed on the grave (a common practice in eastern Europe to entertain vampires), so that the spirit of the deceased will always be occupied in counting the seeds.
Firsthand accounts of zombies have continued into the late twentieth century. Author Alfred Métraux stated that six months after the death of a friend he saw that friend as a zombie at the house of a houngan. Harvard ethnobiologist Wade Davis, who visited Haiti in 1982, succeeded in penetrating the secret societies and understanding and documenting the voudoo culture. He has suggested that certain powerful drugs might be capable of influencing centers in the brain concerned with conscious control. A person given such drugs would appear dead, would be buried alive, and revived several days later. They would then be given hallucinogens and forced into a new life as an unpaid laborer.
Davis' theories were recently validated by an expedition to Haiti that was the subject of a remarkable BBC television program presented by John Tusa in 1984. In interviews with houngans, the secret of creating zombies was disclosed. A poisonous substance from the puffer fish (Diodon hystrix) is carefully prepared by the houngan and administered to the victim, who thereafter appears dead and is buried. He is exhumed by the houngan and used as a zombie. The poison stupefies certain brain centers.
The poison was analyzed by Leon Roizy, professor of neuro-biology at Columbia University, and identified as tetrodotoxin, found in the puffer fish, the exquisitely dangerous gourmet dish of Japanese Fugu, requiring skillful preparation by experienced chefs in order to avoid poisoning the diner.
When eaten sliced raw (sashimi), the flesh is relatively safe, but among eaters of the partly cooked dish known as chiri, which includes toxic cooked livers, there are over a hundred deaths annually.
Sources:
Davis, Wade. The Serpent and the Rainbow. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
This refers to a player at a poker table who shows no emotion and literally gives away no tells. This player's face often keeps an expressionless look for the duration of the game.
SoundPoker Says: This is often a very good poker player and will only be beat with better cards.
See Also: Looking out the Window, Poker Face
A zombie is a reanimated human body devoid of consciousness. In contemporary versions these are generally undead corpses, which were traditionally called "ghouls". Stories of zombies originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system of Vodou.
Other more macabre versions of zombies have become a staple of modern horror fiction, where they are brought back from the dead by supernatural or scientific means, and eat the flesh or brains of the living. They have very limited intelligence, and may not be under anyone's direct control. This type of zombie, often referred to as a Romero zombie after the filmmaker that defined the concept, is archetypal in modern media and culture.
According to the tenets of Voodoo, a dead person can be revived by a bokor or Voodoo sorcerer. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. "Zombi" is also another name of the Voodoo snake god Damballah Wedo, of Niger-Congo origin; it is akin to the Kongo word nzambi, which means "god". There also exists within the voudon tradition the zombi astral which is a human soul that is captured by a bokor and used to enhance the bokor's power.
In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of Felicia Felix-Mentor, who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. Villagers believed they saw Felicia wandering the streets in a daze thirty years after her death, as well as claiming the same with several other people. Hurston pursued rumors that the affected persons were given powerful drugs, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote:
Several decades later, Wade Davis, a Canadian ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in two books, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being entered into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre (French: 'powder strike'), induced a 'death-like' state because of tetrodotoxin (TTX), its key ingredient. Tetrodotoxin is the same lethal toxin found in the Japanese delicacy fugu, or pufferfish. At near-lethal doses (LD50= 5-8µg/kg)[2], it can leave a person in a state of near-death for several days, while the person continues to be conscious. The second powder, composed of dissociatives like datura, put the person in a zombie-like state where they seem to have no will of their own. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice. There remains considerable skepticism about Davis's claims,[3] although there is wide belief among the Haitian people of the existence of the "zombie drug". The Voodoon religion being somewhat secretive in its practices and codes, it can be very difficult for a foreign scientist to validate or invalidate such claims.
Others have discussed the contribution of the victim's own belief system, possibly leading to compliance with the attacker's will, causing psychogenic ("quasi-hysterical") amnesia, catatonia, or other psychological disorders, which are later misinterpreted as a return from the dead. Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing further highlighted the link between social and cultural expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychological aspects of zombification.
In the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed that the souls of the dead could return to earth and haunt the living. The belief in revenants (someone who has returned from the dead) are well documented by contemporary European writers of the time. According to the Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were[4], particularly in France during the Middle Ages, the revenant rises from the dead usually to avenge some crime committed against the entity, most likely a murder. The revenant usually took on the form of an emaciated corpse or skeletal human figure, and wandered around graveyards at night. The "draugr" of medieval Norse mythology were also believed to be the corpses of warriors returned from the dead to attack the living. The zombie appears in several other cultures worldwide, including China, Japan, the Pacific, India, and the Native Americans.
The Epic of Gilgamesh of ancient Sumer includes a mention of zombies. Ishtar, in the fury of vengeance says:
translated by Maureen Gallery Kovacs
In philosophy of mind, zombies are hypothetical persons who lack full consciousness but have the biology or behavior of a normal human being; thought experiments involving them are often used as arguments against the identity of the mind and the brain. The term was coined by philosopher of mind David Chalmers. They are referred to as philosophical zombies or "p-zombies". [5]
Some zombie fans continue the George Romero tradition of using zombies as a social commentary. Organized zombie walks, which are primarily promoted through word of mouth, are regularly staged in some countries. Usually they are arranged as a sort of surrealist performance art but they are occasionally put on as part of a unique political protest.[6]
The world's largest zombie walk was held on October 29, 2006 in Monroeville Mall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the setting of Romero's original Dawn of the Dead film. The walk consisted of 894 attendees who all were instructed to bring canned food for a local food drive.[7]
Zombies have been the subject of many modern horror films, most notably the work of George Romero, and occur as antagonists in many video games. In popular culture, zombies are typically depicted as mindless and shambling monsters with a hunger for human flesh.
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - zombie, robot, person, der bevæger sig tranceagtigt
Nederlands (Dutch)
levenloos persoon, tot leven teruggebracht dode
Français (French)
n. - (lit) zombie, (fig) automate (péj), mort(e) vivant(e)
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ζόμπι, βρικόλακας
Italiano (Italian)
zombie, morto ambulante
Português (Portuguese)
n. - cadáver reanimado por vodu (m), zumbi (m)
Русский (Russian)
зомби, тупица, малохольный тип
Español (Spanish)
n. - zombi, muerto resucitado por magia negra, autómata
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - zombie, levande död (vard.), sl. ormgud (enligt voodookulten), sl. romdrink (am.)
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
巫毒崇拜, 生性怪癖的人, 蛇神
中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 巫毒崇拜, 生性怪癖的人, 蛇神
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 죽은 자를 살리는 초자연적인 힘, 무기력한 사람, 기인
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 蛇神, ゾンビ, ふぬけ, 変人
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) جثه يظن انها اعيدت الى الحياة واصبحت شخصا عديم الارادة ( زومبي)
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - אדם אדיש ומשעמם, מת שקם לתחייה
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Some good "zombie" pages on the web:
 Drink Recipe www.webtender.com |
 Haitian Mythology www.pantheon.org |
Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "zombie" at WikiAnswers.
Copyrights:
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 | World Mythology Dictionary. A Dictionary of World Mythology. Copyright © Arthur Cotterell 1979, 1986, 2003. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| World of the Body. The Oxford Companion to the Body. Copyright © 2001, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Food Lover's Companion. Food Lover's Companion. Copyright © 2001 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Word Origins. The World in So Many Words, by Allan A. Metcalf. Copyright © 1999 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Hacker Slang. The Jargon File. Copyright © 2007. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more |
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| Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Copyright © 2001 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Poker Guide. ©2006 SoundPoker.com All rights reserved. Owned and Operated by Poker Interactive Inc. Read more |
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