Within Santal religion, healing and divination unfold within a world understood to be alive with spirits (bongas), ancestors, and sacred powers. Illness, misfortune, and social disturbance are not seen as random events, but as signs that relationships with these unseen beings or with the moral order have been disturbed. Several ritual specialists serve as mediators in this realm: the ojha or guru as shaman-healer and exorcist, the village priestly figures who conduct communal rites for collective well-being, and various herbalists and midwives whose knowledge of plants and remedies is passed down through families. Their work is embedded in communal life, especially around sacred spaces such as the grove (jaher than) and village altars, where offerings are made for health, protection, and agricultural prosperity.

Healing practices combine practical herbal knowledge with sacrificial and ritual means of restoring balance. A wide range of local plants, roots, barks, and leaves are used as decoctions, pastes, powders, or fumigations to address common ailments such as fevers, stomach troubles, skin diseases, wounds, and children’s illnesses. When sickness is attributed to offended bongas, neglected ancestors, witchcraft, or broken taboos, ritual healing comes to the fore: animal sacrifices (often fowl, sometimes goats or pigs), offerings of rice beer and grain, and vows of future offerings are made to specific household, lineage, or village spirits. Exorcistic rites address illnesses understood as spirit intrusion or possession, with the ojha entering altered states through drumming and chanting, confronting or negotiating with the spirit, and using charms, amulets, or symbolic transfers of illness into animals or objects that are then cast away or sacrificed.

Divination serves as the diagnostic and interpretive counterpart to these healing rites, seeking to discern the hidden causes of misfortune and the will of the spirits. The ojha may enter trance and allow a spirit to speak through altered voice or behavior, identifying which bonga is offended and what ritual is required. Object-based divination is also prominent: rice or other grains are cast and their patterns read; eggs may be balanced or broken and their behavior or internal signs interpreted; oil or water is observed for shapes, reflections, or movements that reveal omens; and the behavior of a chicken or other animal during ritual handling may indicate whether a proposed offering is accepted. Alongside these more formal techniques, omens in daily life—such as animal cries, bird flight, or unusual dreams—are read before important undertakings like journeys, marriages, or major sacrifices.

Underlying these practices is a concern not only with curing particular ailments but with reweaving the fabric of right relationship among humans, spirits, and land. Protective and preventive rites—charms at the body or doorway, fumigation of houses and cattle sheds, seasonal rituals to guard against disease—aim to keep harmful influences at bay before they manifest as crisis. Beliefs about witchcraft and harmful spiritual powers introduce a further layer of complexity, as divination may be used to identify suspected sources of harm and to prescribe counter-rituals using strong herbs, iron, and specialized incantations. In this way, healing and divination in Santal religion form a single, integrated field of practice, where spiritual, social, and bodily well-being are approached as inseparable dimensions of one living cosmos.