What  Southern African and other Indigenous Wisdoms 

have to Offer the West # 5

 

Shape Shifting and Animal Whispering

Shape shifting seems to be a far fetched possibility even to those of us who accept the paranormal. It is more likely that shape shifting can occur in deep trance, in the mind's eye of the practitioner and possibly also in those who are doing the observing. Imagining a shaman transforming into a lion, however, is a bit of a stretch. I believe it can be real but have no personal evidence that this is so. I did once meet a San elder who was a lion shaman but he was dying of Tuberculosis and no longer shape-shifted. 

To experience the wild beings, you must dance with them.

On my many visits to the San, I did witness their incredible ability to mimic a particular animal's behavior which is at first key to shape shifting and "becoming" the animal. 

Numerous rock art figures (rendered after the event) show the trance dancer beginning to attain an animal like form. This is called a Therianthrope - part animal - part human.  The Ancestors endorse that this is possible, as did Malidoma Some' in a conversation I once had with him. These teachings may support the possibility.

 

“All humans are endowed with the attributes of animals.” Cordova

We are all one though not the same.

We are all connected, some of all in each. All are spirit manifestations and exist in one another.

“Earth am I, air am I, water, fire and spirit am I. Earth are you, air are you, water, fire and spirit are you…"

 Celtic proverb

We are all made of the same elements and we will all return - dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

This type of ability also helped them in their hunting when they linked their mind to the mind of their prey.

 

"We put on animal mind and see how they are moving." 

There are three stages that occur in advanced trance states and these  were depicted on the rock faces by many indigenous tribes - in the Americas often associated with the use of entheogens -  mind-altering plants used in sacred rituals.

The first stage is Entoptics, simple lines - wavy or straight, chevrons and lattices. 

The second phase is that of Construals where the entoptic take on more complex shapes that can resemble mandalas.

Both of these phases can be seen in this Chumash rock art in Santa Barbara county California.

The third phase of trance - Therianthropes - can be seen in these etchings of San rock paintings below as well as in Native American rock art.

 

The Music of the Spheres

 

"ˆWhen the stars of the morning sang together." Job

 

Pythagoras was said to be able to hear the music or singing of the spheres or the stars as did the ancient Chaldeans and the Zohar. 

We should thank the stars for their song. Their light emanates from their singing and when they sing they glow. That is how they reveal themselves.

The Zohar teaches when we pray in the morning it is a continuation of the singing of the stars.

The Druids called it the Oran Mo'r, the Great Song or the sacred tune of the universe. 

The San too talked about the singing of the stars. To hear the music or sounds of the spheres requires an exquisite purity and an absence of ambient noise.

“Because we are stars we must walk the sky.”

Song of the San Bushmen Lion Shamans

 

The Silence of the Stars
 
“When Laurens van der Post one night - in the Kalahari Desert told the Bushmen he couldn't hear the stars singing they didn't believe him. They looked at him, half-smiling. They examined his face to see whether he was joking or deceiving them…  
Then they led him away from the crackling thorn-scrub fire and stood with him under the night sky and listened. One of them whispered; Do you not hear them now? And van der Post listened, not wanting to disbelieve, but had to answer - No. They walked him slowly like a sick man to the small dim circle of firelight and told him they were terribly sorry
And he felt even sorrier for himself and blamed his ancestors for their strange loss of hearing…” David Wagoner

The Zulu people refer to themselves as ‘the people of the heavens' - Star People.

 

Aldo Leopold who was a wilderness adept also seems to have heard them.

 

The sound of waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills, by no means audible to all.  To hear even a few notes of it you must first live here for a long time, and you must know the speech of hills and rivers.  Then on a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen for a wolf to howl, and think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand.  Then you may hear it—a vast pulsing harmony—its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries. Aldo Leopold

 

The chants and music of both Bantu and San were also no doubt influenced by the cacophony of nature’s sounds and the amazing animal and bird songs around them.

 

What  Southern African and other Indigenous Wisdoms 

have to Offer the West # 4

Its all very well looking at the extraordinary paranormal abilities of the San, the sangomas and other indigenous peoples but how can that apply to us? We should have our own proclivities for the paranormal and must identify our own strengths. We cannot expect to duplicate what they have experienced. Below are some of those more commonly described. We each may only have one or two of these depending on our inherent nature and that potential. I wasted a lot of time in my early years trying to replicate the experiences described in yoga texts and elsewhere. The Ancestors say; "you are to find the ones meant for you ..."

Synchronicity

We are all able to experience synchronicity when we are attuned to some inner or spiritual pursuit. This is the phenomenon where an outer event coincides with an inner event and it is not coincidental. For instance you are thinking of a college friend that you have not seen or contacted in years and synchronously the phone rings and its him/her on the line. In some way when this happens we are picking up on the intention of the call with that thought of the person. The thought is connected with a certain energy arising from the Field. As our spiritual practice deepens these events become more common.

Superfluidity 

Superfluidity is a state of mind or spirit where things are unravelling perfectly in accord with the universe. A musician has a faultless recital which just "flows." A surgeons feels that some sort of divine intervention has intervened during a challenging surgical procedure which unfolds effortlessly. This has also being called being in the zone.

Power Animals

Having an encounter with a "power animal" may occur because your guides are manipulating an animal to empower you or send you a message - say a humming bird that circles around your head and then hovers while facing you. Usually the animal concerned is not behaving normally.  These type of encounters are also not coincidental.

Coherence

This is commonly experienced in group meditations where the sum of the parts of the meditators is greater than the whole and the meditation for each individual is more propound than it would have been meditating on their own. There are many other examples of coherence. Indigenous healing rituals usually occur when many people are present creating coherence and more power.

Dreams scripted by your guides to instruct or warn.

"Truth bumps" when truth that has been expounded that creates piloerection sometimes also sending shivers up the spine. On occasion this can also cause one to tear up.

Music

Experiencing a particular genre of music that makes you come alive. I believe this may be an indication of a past life that enhances the profound feeling. The music is familiar to your soul essence.

More advanced levels of expertise

The Oneness Experience or Unity Consciousness 

In Yoga - the Knower, the Known and the Experience of Knowing fuse and become one thing. You may be looking at a rainbow: The Knower - that's you, the rainbow - the Known - and in the process of the experience you become the rainbow. 

Maslow described this as a Peak Experience.

These phenomena are not rare but sadly we often trivialize them, rationalize them away or forget them or others invalidate them for us. They are sacred and only to be shared with the right kind of person.

In its more sophisticated manifestation it is called Unity Consciousness or the Oneness Experience in Eastern traditions and Union or Unity with the Divine in Kabbalah. 

Other more advanced levels of expertise

Telepathy, Precognition, the three "Clairs" - Clair-voyence (seeing what seeing eyes cannot,) Clair-audience (hearing what hearing ears cannot hear,) Clair-sentience (feeling what the five senses cannot feel,) distant viewing, diagnosis or healing, and telekinesis.

Many scientists refuse to concede that such phenomena are real. Hence they try and find names that sound profound but essentially confirm that they do not know what the hell is going on. Neither do we but we do not pretend that we do but rather acknowledge how useful and even life saving these blessings can be. Here are some of these terms. Medical Intuitive, Remote Viewing, Energy Medicine, Physiological Arousal, Cathartic Conversion Experience, Distant Mental Influence on biological systems…

Click and play below. 

The San dancer travels out of body to glean non-local information from the Field which can help the clan. S/He also may learn who among them needs healing. The other dancers help those to come out of trance and back into their bodies. In this video (shot by myself in the Kalahari in 2000) several of the clan tranced. One of them finds the person who needs healing, putting "Num" into her - the same magical energy that enabled them to trance. The San are known for their renowned healing abilities. The dance can go on all night and is a more extreme example of Coherence facilitated by the clan - it takes a village.

                    San Bushmen Out of Body Spirit Healing Trance Dance

What  Southern African and other Indigenous Wisdoms 

have to Offer the West # 3

The Bantu tribes of Southern Africa are distinct from the San. There are numerous Bantu tribes in Southern Africa. They all use similar divining and healing methods. The Bantu tribes migrated south centuries ago and when they arrived they encountered the San who had already been there for millennia. 

There are many paths to the mystery wisdom exuding from the growing things that surround us, from the color of the sky and from all the Beings of nature.

Spiritual Skills arising from the Primal.

 

Contacting The Field

 

The Field is mostly Unknowable – more was made knowable to indigenous peoples who were the first yogis, sages and mystics.  

 

“Whatever being (Still, Growing, Wild or Talking) comes to be, be it motionless (Still Beings) or moving, derives its being from Field and Knower (The Creator) of the Field. Know this!” Bhagavad Gita

 

Information, knowledge, doubt, denial, disbelief, ego and judgment get in the way of our accessing the Field, our guides and the Divine.

 

God’s voice is heard in quietness and stillness. Beware the noises of ego which drown out the Divine Spirit.

"Blessed are the meek..." Jesus

 

The indigenous mind was schooled by their experiences in nature. They have and had an almost "Quantum" like ability to access Non-Local information in the Field.

In the case of the San wilderness was their Yoga and their Zen until civilization’s temptations intruded. Before that they were mindful mainly of needs, not wants. They enjoyed the magic of polarity balance and entrainment in the natural meditation offered by the wildness around them. Nature is a room with many doors and windows to spirit. Nature's power enabled them to find the middle way of the Buddha. They learned to coexist with the difficult, the life threatening, the dark, the negative and the profane with acceptance, realizing it was part of the necessary tension required for the magical to occur.

 

Balance is achieved by harmonizing polarities. Dualities come into harmony by negotiating a third or middle path, a path not of assimilation but a path of coexistence.

 

The San Bushmen hunter-gatherers naturally adopted a profound connection to Gaia - their Earth Mother. Their spiritual practice of being immersed in nature gave them the purity and the vibration required to travel out of body during their healing trance dance and obtain non-local information, critical for the protection and healing of the clan. 

Magical Powers. The San Out of Body Spirit Trance Dance.

 

With their trance dance and mastery of Num, the San Bushmen describe similar energetic phenomena mostly seen in advanced spiritual practitioners such as; heat rising up the spine, creeping sensations, tingling, vibrating, shaking, light experiences, inner sounds and smells, an empty mind (“my thoughts were nothing in my head”), connection with Self (“I feel my-Self again”), out of body experiences and astral travel, paranormal powers, spontaneous movements including adopting yoga-like postures, paralysis, falling and mastery of fire.

Rock art left by them showed some of the visions they experienced in trance 

Beyond the veil they connected with their ancestors and some, even saw an anthropomorphic representation of the Great Spirit; "when I make myself very small," (San healers to Richard Katz in his book Boiling Energy.)

 

The Medicine Person or "Shaman"(The Seer") and Healing

 

“With our potions and charms we arouse in the sick one’s brain the will to be healthy. Without the strong will to be alive a human can be carried into the valleys of death by even the mildest sickness.” Credo Mutwa

 

 Credo Mutwa a Bantu, Zulu sangoma, or more accurately a sanusi or prophet, was profound in his spiritual teachings. He is talking here about increasing the power of placebo rather than discounting it, for instance as we do in our double blind controlled studies.

 

The soul is like an orb inside which are two worms, one blue, the other red that move constantly. The blue represents good and the red, evil.  These components balance the soul. A balance of the two is essential for all souls to exist. If there is only blue or good, the soul cannot long survive. If there is only red or evil the person deserves not to survive.” Credo Mutwa

 

There is similar Native American teaching about a grandfather explaining these two inclinations to his grandson. “Within all of us there are two wolves fighting for domination – the one good and the other evil.” His grandson asks, “which wolf wins?” - the elder answers, the one you feed. 

Those with only an evil inclination, a "Red Worm" or a dark wolf often become witches or sorcerers. 

 

How does one integrate the intuitive - how does one learn it?
The thing about a shaman is that s/he is able to integrate left brain - right brain and have whole brain function and this comes out of initiation.
You cannot just "think" it for it to happen – it is a process that comes from the training.

"Only love can generate the healing fire,” Agnes Sanford

 

The San healers teach that in order to heal we must love everyone no matter what we think of them. All medicine men and women, shamans or similar, inspire hope through their charm, charisma, compassion and competence. In doing their magical divinations or rituals they  enhance the power of placebo. Allopathic medicine, often unknowingly, does the opposite by invoking nocebo with prognoses and describing every detail of all the mishaps that could occur when obtaining the legally required informed consent.

Obtaining information from spirit guides.

 

Spirit guides are not subject to time and space. They are always around but not always to be known, always within call but not always to be heard, always present but not always to be sensed, always holding us, but not always to be felt.

Both the San and the Bantu tribes obtain non-local information through three methods:

1. Directly through trance and astral travel in the San, or spirit possession in the Bantu tribes.

2. Indirectly through Divination - a form of telekineses where the spirit guide manipulates the Bones so that they fall in a distinctly readable non-random fashion which depends not only on the objects orientation to itself but also to other objects and also to their orientation on the mat on which the fall.

3. Dreams are frequently scripted to convey a message and can be "official" rather than unofficial.

 The psychological orientation that explains dreams as scripted only by the subconscious makes dream interpretation quite limited.

A purely psychological interpretation of dreams discounts a guiding, Non-Local spirit source  
that can be nurtured and is personal.

 

Southern African indigenous peoples are connected to their ancestors and guides in the dream state and often in real time. Some of the most expert San hunters did not need to follow the spoor of their prey, they just "knew" where to go. Their guides were telling them in one way or another. The San Bushmen and women travelled out of body - astral travel - in the trance state to get information that told them where to find water and where to hunt the next day, who might be sick or how to find a lost child... Their out of body state was enhanced by dancing rhythmically around the fire with rattles around their ankles. The women with their incredible chants and hand clapping, facilitated the trance state. The women also tranced but usually separately from the men.

The Bantu healers of Southern Africa get "possessed" during trance. The healer's ego would step aside and the spirit of an ancestor or guide would take over and impart information not confined to the space-time continuum. The voice of the channel would change as would the facial appearance. This phenomenon was induced with drumming and dancing.

Both the San healers and the Bantu sangomas use divination “Bones” and dreams for diagnosing and healing. The bones are not all strictly bones but comprise various animal bones but also other objects that assign a specific meaning. 

The San told me that they were the ones that introduced the Bantu to the bones. In central Africa many of the tribes tend to use shells instead for divination. 

We in the West, on the other hand, use different methods such as; tarot card, Runes, a pendulum, a divining stick to find water... Telekinesis from an outside spirit source is often part and parcel of the mechanism here as well.

Possession differs from trance channeling in the West where the spirit is giving the channel the information without totally taking over the body. There are two forms of spirit possession, involuntary and voluntary. Involuntary possession is a serious condition requiring an exorcism. Voluntary possession, where the ego steps aside and a spirit takes over completely, is part of sangoma tradition. Trance-channeling in the West where the spirit giving information is remote from the channel is less intense.

Kabbalah has its own expression as to how this information is provided - mostly in dreams.

 

“The sages who have died are present in this world to a greater extent than when they were alive.” The Zohar

 

“When a word is spoken in the name of its speaker his lips move in the grave. And the lips of him who utters the word move like those of the master who is dead. A sage cannot speak words of teaching unless he first links his soul to the soul of his dead teacher or to that of his teacher’s teacher.” Talmud

  

What  Southern African and other Indigenous Wisdoms 

have to Offer the West # 2

“The consciousness of the seer is a greater power of knowledge than the consciousness of the thinker. The perceptual power of inner sight is greater and more direct than the perceptual power of thought.”

Sri Aurobindo

 

The primal mind was able to commune intimately with nature as well as obtain non-local information from the Field of spirit. These primal medicine men and women and their shamans were the original seers. Genomic studies have shown that the San Bushmen were the first people. Humans first arose out of Africa. There is rock art in the Apollo cave in Namibia going back 25,000 years showing evidence of shape shifting (therianthropes, human figures - part animal part human) which occurred during trance dancing. We were able to attain advanced states of consciousness millennia ago not easily achieved today. 

"It was only when the white man came that wilderness existed."  

Luther Standing Bear

 

When we go out into wild places we make preparations and use technology for our comfort as well as to make up for our lack of wilderness skills. When we return we are thankful to come back to the comforts of civilization.

The San Bushmen could walk out into the wilderness with all the things in a small skin bag that they needed for survival; a digging stick, a bow, poisoned arrows, a quiver, a fire stick, and a sipping straw to suck water out of the desert sand. Their purity in nature enabled their spiritual expertise. They could not have survived easily without access to non-local information.

 

"Wilderness is an area where earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man; where man himself  is a visitor who does not remain.”

 

Our approach, at best, is well defined by the Wilderness Act of North America which intention was to protect certain wild areas that should remain wild. At the same time the act confirmed the power of this Sacred Space where as "civilized" people - few could or would want to remain. For indigenous peoples it was their home.

The Israelites were also once a nature bound people as were we all.

 

"Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness…” Isaiah

 

”Ask of the wild animals and they shall teach you and the birds of the sky shall tell it to you or speak to the earth for she shall guide you and the fishes of the sea will declare it to you.” Job the Shuhite (related to Esau)

“The Kundalini in the form of latency is coiled like a serpent. One who impels this Shakti to move will attain liberation.” 

Hatha Yoga Pradipika

 

Manipulating this life force which facilitated energy shifts  and advanced stages of consciousness was easy for primal peoples.  We all have this universal, feminine force - Shakti, Kundalini in Yoga - although few of us nurture it. The San Bushmen call it Num, the Zulus, Umbilini. Most tribes in Southern Africa recognize it as feminine and some snake like (Credo Mutwa) and resting dormant in the lower belly as is the Kundalini serpent energy until it is moved by some form of spiritual endeavor. 

For the San who are distinctly different from the Bantu peoples, it is mobilized by clapping, chanting and dancing often with rattles around their ankles around the primal fire. This enables an out of body spirit flight where they glean information from the "Field" - mainly the Ancestors. They call it the Little Death (Richard Katz) since they fall prostate on the earth while their spirit travels into the Astral plane.

For the Bantu it was dancing to the sound of the drum sometimes with rattles around their ankles. When Bantu sangomas go into trance the ego steps aside and the spirit of an ancestor takes over completely. They become voluntarily possessed to access the non-local information required to help the client or the patient. This process is much more dramatic than the trance-channelling we see in the west. 

The sangomas' body language and facial expressions change, they often shake as the spirit enters the body rather than falling like their San neighbors do with Num. They may speak in "tongues or in a Bantu language different to the one they know and even in English. The word sangoma come from the Zulu ngoma which is a drum. It is the sound of the drum that brings forth the spirit possession.

The way the Bantu use the Umbilini  and the San, Num manifests differently as it would in anyone of us. How it manifests in us is all highly individual. It can be subtle or more dramatic as it is in the San and Bantu. Both can access information not localized in time in space through their trance states. 

"Somewhere beyond the walls of our awareness, the Esau side, the hunter side, the seeking side of ourselves is waiting to return." 

L. Van der Post

I wasted a lot of time in earlier years trying to emulate what I had read from yoga texts. When I initiated as a sangoma it manifested in other ways for me as well compared to my mentors and their African initiates. 

When we immerse in nature with as little as possible between us and the Earth Mother we are able to experience some of their profoundness. With the right intention of going inward rather than outward we can attain equanimity, an alfa, relaxed state of consciousness and a feeling of oneness with nature and each other. Moreover, our dreams and our connection with the Field intensify. The longer we are out, the deeper the effect. Nature has multiple polarities to help us find the middle way of the Buddha. It is a room with many doors and windows to spirit.

It is vital that we adopt more of an indigenous consciousness for ourselves. The demise of the primal self in the West has resulted from our upbringing, education, religion, culture, and the allure of materialism, technology and the innumerable commodities that tempt us. We have lost our indigenous, root, core or primeval self and our inherent wholeness because of “civilization.”  Our children are even more at risk as the hypnosis of technology and social media becomes more pervasive. We have paid a huge price for the benefits accrued. For the San it was one for all and all for one - for us not so much. Self-absorption and narcissism seem to be running rampant.

 

 

 

THE FORCE OF THE PRIMAL

“Wilderness holds the answers to questions we do not yet know how to ask.” David Brower

What  Southern African and other Indigenous Wisdoms have to Offer the West # 1

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” A. Einstein

 

Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” A. Einstein

 

How much have we lost on the altar of our amazing technology?

My personal experiences are derived mostly from the San Bushmen hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari and the Bantu peoples of Southern Africa as well as the teachings of the Ancestors and others. I have enlarged my understandings with the help of the Ancestors from three genres of spirit; African, Celtic/Druid and Hebrew all of who are or were at one time nature bound.

 

“We cannot today recreate the original wilderness man in shape form or habitat. But we can recover him because s/he exists in us. He is the foundation in spirit or psyche on which we build and we are not complete until we have recovered him ..."

 

“Those of us who have spent time in wilderness are aware of the fact that there is something more to wilderness than we ourselves can express. ...” 

L. Van der Post

 

Western technology has given us tremendous gifts but we should never forget the huge price we have paid for losing contact with our primal selves. The indigenous mind is closer to the real Self. There is less "stuff" and cognition in the way. The primal Self is closer to its Creator. Re-encountering our original, indigenous or primal self apart from our religion, culture, education, and conditioning - this “self” can be closer to the real Self, the Higher Self, the Soul. 

 

The force of the primal-Self manifested as love is the glory of God. 
Those who awaken it in others and nurture the nurturers glorify Him.

 

“Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe. She is always right and the errors and faults are those of man. The human incapable of appreciating her, she despises and only to apt, the pure, the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.” Goethe

 

The primal model embraces intuition, rites of passage and initiations, accessing Nature's secrets and learning Her language. Their scripture was nature and the Four Beings of nature; The Talking Beings (our-Selves as in Higher Selves,) the Still, Growing and Wild Beings. The Gaia hypothesis was from the outset seminal to their being.

They and their Bantu neighbors understand, and can cure spiritual diseases unknown to allopathic medicine but just as real and devastating. They heal with forgiveness, ask to receive with gratitude and depend on faith, belief and humility for their power. They believe in the power resident in tricksters or dark forces, the play of light and dark and how this can affect their (and our) lives. Hopefully we are going or will go back to what we once knew without trying to change or pollute it.

“Nature hides her secrets with consummate modesty and speaks usually in an unintelligible tongue”
Charles Huggins

 

“The reality we can apprehend with the senses is only one percent of the universe.” The Zohar

 

Today’s astronomers agree that this is so, explaining how nature has hidden most of the matter in the universe and hidden it in a form that cannot be readily detected such as Black Holes and Dark Matter. Most of the "Field" is unknowable.

We on the other hand rely on intellect, data, science. We have been evicted and have separated ourselves from the power of the natural world. We often discount many indigenous wisdoms, labelling it ignorant and superstitious. We can regain some of this knowledge that we once had.

The primal mind could speak the language of nature and access some of the other 99% of the Unknowable resident in the "Field" beyond the veil between the worlds. 

The San Bushmen especially could access "non-local information" in their out of body, spirit flight, trance dance as well and in dreams and with divination. They could connect not only with the cosmic, but also the terrestrial and water spirits. Some were able to shape shift and many were animal whisperers which was essential for skillful hunting. They loved the Wild Beings and had gratitude for what they gave that enabled them to survive. They relied on plants for sustenance and for healing. They had abilities beyond the five senses otherwise it would have been difficult for them to hunt successfully with primitive weapons. They could see what seeing eyes could not and hear what hearing ears could not.

 

The times I spent with the San Bushmen felt like I had dropped into an advanced spiritual community. They had an unconditional positive regard for each other, and an unconditional love for the children. They seemed to lack judgmental attitudes and were extremely humble in the light of their amazing wilderness and spiritual skills. It was all for one and one for all among their small clans.

Many other indigenous tribes, also fit this description especially the few that  have remained hunter-gatherers. This purity arising out of nature enabled their high levels of spiritual sophistication.Their magical abilities were gleaned from the wild and the power resident in their unique habitats. Their god – the Great Spirit – not the bottom line. They were nature bound, living in the archetype of the Garden of Eden before we arrived and made them eat of the fruit of ego and acquisitiveness. They too now will have to eventually find their way back to a new type of Eden, as many of us are doing. 

The saddest and most impoverishing notion human beings cling to is that we are limited by laws of the natural world.
There is a crucial difference between being subject to, and being constrained by.

 

“Miracles happen not in opposition to nature but in opposition to what we know of nature.” Augustine of Hippo

Miracles do occur within the natural world but are outside our meagre understanding of its workings and so we discount, trivialize, rationalize or forget them. We are not restricted to the laws of nature, only to those laws we ourselves have contrived as to how nature works. Our laws are limited. The hunter-gatherer mind was not subject to information and knowledge acquired through education or captivated by technological wonders. Hence, they could access information not confined to the space-time continuum which escapes most of us Western beings. During sleep they received vital information in scripted dreams which assisted them.

When we observe the intuitive abilities of primal peoples we see magic. When they look at our technology they see magic. The Bantu peoples of Southern Africa have similar abilities as do other indigenous tribes. This blog is about their magic.