WALK WITH A SURGEON-SANGOMA
In addition to medicinal walks, dream councils and diagnostic divinations there was an outside ritual bath where visitors could be cleansed and released from the shades and intrusions of their past and present conditions.
The bulk of my time, however, still consisted of maintaining my surgical practice as well as honoring the ancestors requests to practice sangoma medicine in a yurt out of my home.
TSHISIMANE - THE SOURCE
Some time before I began my initiation with P.H. at the turn of the millennium, I found myself doing a 10 day retreat at Leshiba Wilderness in the Soutpansberg mountains in the far north of South Africa quite close to the Zimbabwe border. Leshiba was owned by friend of mine, John Rosmarin, who invited me to come and immerse myself in this unique, pristine and stunning mountain wilderness. He and is family would be at the coast for Xmas and I would be alone with only a skeleton staff to support me, if needed. I had full run of the place, a 4x4 Landcruiser and two bush camps at my disposal which qualified as being minimalistic. The camps fitted perfectly with my Inward Bound philosophy of having as little between one and nature as possible.
I spent my days walking the bush and enjoying all that an alfa state of consciousness and Wilderness Rapture had to offer.
Little did I know that some years later I would purchase the properties called Uniodale and Calitzdorp that abutted the southern fence of Lesheba. The place was to become an indigenous healing center with all that I had learned from the sangomas and also all that I had acquired from my Inward Bound adventures.
"In real time and in the dream"
Around the time of my initiation or Thwasa I had a dream I was driving to my favorite uncle's farm. I arrived and was greeted by two Bushmen. (Sam's farm was 40 miles north of Johannesburg in savanna grassland but this dream seemed to be in the Soutpansberg or at least the nearby Waterberg mountains. The dream looked very much like the property I eventually found and purchased.
The mountain in the dream and in real time had two levels; a lower bush covered one and a higher rocky one. In the dream the rocks were shimmering and vibrating. This was a "Big" dream as described by Jung and for me it was huge. The two Bushmen magnified it significantly.
Only later I recalled that 15 years earlier in a vision in the Amazon jungle I had had a similar dream of a valley somewhere in the bush where there was a house without a roof. This property had a house without a roof.
I had subsequent dreams of being on Sam's surreal farm where there was a baobab and a kiepersol or parasol tree -
and there was the latter right in front of the house. Baobabs were exceptional on this slope of the Soutpansberg but there was a stunning one close to the access dirt road. Baobabs were prolific on the hotter, dryer, northern slope of the mountains.
I realized I had found what I was looking for and the Ancestors now confirmed I was in the right place. This was vitally important for me when I questioned my sanity and why I would now be building an indigenous healing center in the remote north of South Africa when I had a perfectly good life in California.
There were many challenges to come both with the construction and also the play of light and dark that pervaded the area.
This is some of what became of the final product.
The main reason the Ancestors had brought me there was to learn what I had not yet learned in the initiation; medicinal plants (plants of power) and more about witchcraft. I was to experience the tricks of the trade of witches and sorcerers who lived in the village below and learn how to counter them. Being a white sangoma, especially, I was a reproach to them.
Learning the myriad of trees and plants in this incredibly biodiverse region was daunting. I confined my interests to healing plants of power used by all sangomas in different ways according to how they were instructed by their guides. I developed my own method but also studied what was described in the few books available on the subject.
Divination taking place in the ndumba or healing place.
My other council from the Ancestors was to spend as much time as I could with the older sangomas - soon to die and sadly carry a lot of primal and vital information with them. This I also did with gusto. Sangoma wisdom is an oral tradition and some of the ancient principles are being lost.
Hlongwani a wonderful old, highly skilled Tsonga sangoma
However, non valid land claims had been lodged against the properties and that was soon to partially divert my healing attentions. The claims were skillfully lodged by the head claimant who was also using witchcraft to assist in getting rid of us. They were instituted after the cut-off date and were invalid. Officially the claimants had to prove that their ancestors had been evicted from the land which had not been the case. The property had first been owned by a missionary who had started a school and was admired. He was followed by benevolent farmers who had encouraged the workers to stay rather than moving away to the big cities for better salaries which was customary. Land claims, however, became a free for all where all the criteria for a valid claim were ignored and the claimants hugely favored.
Click on the link to highlight then play
Those who wish to learn more on the journey can click and play this video (12 minutes.)
There is another more detailed one (45 minutes) especially about Tshisimane (also on the web site with other Videos) called
Wounded Healer done by South African T.V.
If you like, click and play
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