This week's blog reveals important information about the dark side

         Witchcraft and sorcery arise from a heart of envy. Therefore anyone can be a witch or a sorcerer e.g. a spouse who is jealous of her mate or a businessman or politician seeking to eliminate the competition. The trait can be inherited. A distinction should be made between Wicca or white witchcraft and dark witches. Here it will be used to refer to someone who uses occult forces for evil. 

The general term, witchdoctor, which is sometimes used by whites in South Africa to embrace all traditional healers, is not only inaccurate but demeaning and insulting. Most sangomas work on the light side for the sake of good and not bad. 

Witches in African tradition are regarded as a necessary depravity. Jungian philosophy and Kabbalah believe the same thing about the dark side. There can be no good without bad, no rose without a thorn.

Witches and sorcerers work with the help of evil spirits. They too have real power and are able to manipulate the "Field" which is non-denominational, or spiritually neutral. Evil messages go through the "Field" just as effectively as do healing ones. Illness and misfortune can occur because of hexes imposed by these malevolent people. 

         In the West we tend to disbelieve in witchcraft and consider it a primitive idea. However, witchcraft also abounds in the West in many different forms, including the more “primitive” variety described above. The employee who undermines his competition by innuendo, gossip, and back-stabbing is practicing witchcraft just as effectively as someone in Africa using noxious potions. Witchcraft, like jealousy, is universal. There are only ten commandments, and one of them is to not covet your neighbor anything that belongs to your neighbor. This commandment strikes at the root of witchcraft and sorcery. 

Kabbalah describes the “evil eye,” which is synonymous with evil intention or witchcraft.  Just thinking harmful thoughts about someone can have a noxious effect.  Kabbalah’s concept of the “evil tongue” we would label gossip. There is a fable about a rabbi who was seen by someone from his congregation taking fruit from a stall in the market. This fellow spread the word that their rabbi was a thief and the rabbi was excommunicated. The man responsible for the rabbi’s plight felt guilty about what he had done and went to speak to the rabbi. When he told him what he had seen in the market, the rabbi informed him that the stall from which he had taken the fruit belonged to his brother-in-law who had given him permission to take whatever he wanted. The man apologized and asked how he could make amends. The rabbi instructed him to take a piece of paper, tear it up into a thousand pieces, go to the highest hill in the village and toss the pieces into the wind. When asked if that would be enough to atone for what he had done, the rabbi replied, “No, you must now go and pick up all the pieces. The “evil tongue,” which many use to a greater or lesser extent, is another form of witchcraft. The media are common perpetrators.

         

Sorcerers and witches also use herbs, poisons and body exuviae of their victims (hair, nails, urine, and so on).  The Law of Contagion states that once two things are in contact they can affect one another. Hence the importance of exuviae for sorcery. The hair or nail from the victim can be used with harmful medicines to cause illness or even death.

         Witches use “familiars” which they ride or send to perform their treacherous deeds. Familiars in Africa include spotted hyenas, baboons, polecats, weasels, genets, wildcats, snakes, owls, and bats. Witches can manipulate these animals to their own advantage e.g. a snake positioned where it can bite a targeted victim. Witches are also said to sometimes ride these animals to transport their spirits. The tokolosh (English) or thikoloshe is a dwarflike being with one buttock and oversized genitals, and witches are said to use them as sexual consorts.  The Tokolosh cannot climb, and hence many Africans, to protect themselves from intrusions at night, will raise their beds up on several bricks.

 Homesteads and people affected can be protected from witches by various rituals and medicinal plants. There is no curse that cannot be remedied but in order to reverse it the diagnosis of the problem must be forthcoming. Divination bones will reveal the answer. This is why the witch typically chooses to be "the traitor in the gates" and would prefer no one know they are a witch so there nefarious deeds go unchecked. The belief that witchcraft only works on people who believe in it is incorrect. Just as distant healing can work without the knowledge of the person who is being healed the same is true for distant hexing.

Historically before the arrival of white Europeans in the African interior, witches and sorcerers were used as scapegoats, sniffed out and eliminated much as they were in the middle ages by the church. In this way unfavorable events, such as drought, could be blamed on the witch and be "officially corrected."

"Pollution" occurs as a result of contact with some occurrence or phenomenon that is impure and is recognized by the Zulu as “Dirt” or “Dirty.” Some causes of energetic pollution or ritual impurity are similar to those sited in the Old Testament especially around issues of blood or death. They include menses and sex during menses, pregnancy, miscarriages, abortions, birth (especially of twins,) attending a dead person and eating the meat of an animal that died of disease or old age. To some Africans pork is ritually unclean. Pollution can also result from illness, taking a journey and by having certain objects that have been subjected to negative influences.