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.