San spirituality [Bushfolk of southern Africa]
p. xvii orthography
symbol |
/ |
! |
=/ |
// |
O. |
click |
dental |
palatal |
alveolar |
lateral |
labial |
sound |
reproof |
hooves on pavement |
encourage steeds |
kiss |
(the labial click occurreth only in southern San languages)
aequivalent orthographies
p. |
San |
Bantu |
106 |
/ |
c |
218 |
! |
q |
219 |
x |
r |
pp. 13-14 quartz among non-African tribes
p. |
tribe |
quartz |
13 |
Wiradjeri Australian aborigines |
"The water spread all over the postulant and was completely absorbed. Then feathers emerged from the latter’s arms, which grew into wings in the course of two days." {cf. the feathered apotheosis of Daoist hsien} |
14 |
The deity Baime "sings a piece of quartz crystal into their foreheads so that they will have X-ray vision." Baiame was similar to human doctors, "except for the light which radiated from his eyes." {this is also said of the deity in the Qabbalah} |
|
17 |
Desana South American Indians |
"hexagonal crystals provide a model of the cosmos ... . ... A Desana shaman can throw lightning in the form of a quartz crystal". |
18 |
Divine visions witnessed by persons under the influence of the hallucinogenic vine yaje` : "an arc of multiple, colored lines is said to be "the Sun Father’s penis"; parallel wavy lines are "the thought of the Sun Father." Some of these ... visual percepts are, like crystals, ... hexagonal, and they glisten and ... shine with their own light." |
p. 17 "when rubbed together or hammered, quartz rocks "generate a bright ... flash of light" known as triboluminescence. ... certain crystals, including quartz, produce electrical voltage known as piezoelectricity ("pressure electricity")."
San shamanism
p. |
shaman |
54 |
"an old Ju/’hoan shaman ... described how he entered the spirit world : "I dance. I enter the earth. I go in at a place like a place where people drink water." The southern /Xam also describe how shamans entered "water pits" to travel to the spirit world, often to capture a "rain-animal"". |
56 |
!Kun initiation of novice by shaman : "when he was putting n/om (supernatural potency) into an apprentice, one of the things he did was to make him eat locusts." |
91 |
"Most shamans ... speak of entering the ground through a small hole or a waterhole; they travel underground, sometimes through subterranean rivers ... . They then emerge to climb "threads of light" that take them up to the sky to meet the great God. There they plead with him to spare the lives of the sick." {in dreams} "the shamans ... move about laying their trembling hands on each man, woman, and child in turn. They draw sickness out of people and take it into their own bodies. Then, with a piercing shriek, they expel it through a "hole" in the back of the neck, and it returns to the spirit world whence it came." |
96 |
[!Kun] "in teaching a novice to enter trance, an experienced shaman may snap his fingers at the student’s stomach ... . During a particularly intense episode of a dance, a shaman stopped, turned, and pointed his finger at another dancer across the fire." |
98 |
Ju/’hoan praeternatural seeing : "You see num [n/om] rising in other healers. You see the singing and the num, and you pick it up." |
103 |
/Xam !giten (‘shamans’) : O.pwaiten-ka (‘game animals’’); !khwa (‘rain’s’) |
119 |
"the Ju/’hoansi use the word for "pawed creature (jum) to mean "to go on out-of-body travel in the form of a lion."" [self-description by Ju/’hoan werelion :] "When I turn into a lion, I can feel my lion-hair growing and my lion-teeth forming. I’m inside that lion, no longer a person." |
122 |
/Xam shaman surveiling distant kinsfolk : "He turns into a little bird, he comes to see us where we live and ... sits on our heads, he sits peeping at us to see ... that we are not ill". "The place at which //Kabbo lives ... Its sorcerers turn themselves into little birds. ... shamans could turn themselves into swallows." {projection of the aitheric double} |
148 |
[Ju/’hoan] "Only curers are able to see sickness leaving the //nao ["area of the upper back at the base of the neck"]. A young man who is learning how to enter a trance may feel his //nao tingling if his mentor, an experienced shaman, is sitting beside him." |
149 |
"the Ju/’hoan word jum means to go on out-of-body travel in the form of a lion." |
179 |
[!Kun] "When shamans on extracorporeal travel go up into the sky to God’s place, they climb on what they describe as iridescent threads or ropes." |
190 |
/Xam rain-shaman : "he caused rain to fall by "dreaming." In this state, ... he spoke to the rain, asking it to fall, ... and it "assented." He also ..., in a dream, ... went on an extracorporeal journey to his distant, semi-desert home where he spoke with his wife and son." " "//kabbo" is the /Xam world for "dream"" |
219 |
"!gixa is one who is full of !gi, supernatural potency, that is, a shaman." |
pp. 113-114 divine family of god /Kaggen, in /Xam mythology
p. |
relation : his __ |
name |
meaning of name |
113 |
self |
/Kaggen |
mantis |
wife |
/Huntu!katt!katten |
dassie ("rock rabbit", hyrax) |
|
adopted daughter |
!Xo |
porcupine |
|
114 |
adopted daughter’s husband |
/Kwammang-a |
? |
pp. 120-121 "/Kaggen was said to possess certain hares ... so that if he were killed by a hunter who had wounded a gemsbock, the gemsbock would recover from the poison and escape."
/Xam myths & legends
p. |
tale |
||
123 |
"In /Xam myths, /Kaggen goes into the sky and then into the water ... [in order to enter into the netherworld] for it was through a waterhole that the great god climbed from that world when he first came here." |
||
portion placed into water by /Kaggen, in order to reconstitute the whole |
portion |
of __ |
|
eye |
his own son "after the child had been dismembered by baboons." |
||
breastbone {wishbone} |
Blue Crane |
||
feather |
Ostrich |
||
160-1 |
[/Xam] "a menstruating girl was isolated in a hut, as is San custom. She knew that she should remain there and not look out at all. But she heard a young man playing a goura, a stringed instrument that is held so that the string resonates in the player’s mouth. She ... peeped out and looked at the young man. He was immediately turned into a tree." |
||
164-5 |
"a man named !Khwe //na ssho !kui, said to be the first /Xam man, ... brought home a lion cub ... . When the lion grew up, it killed the hunter, though his family managed to escape." |
ghosts of the dead
p. |
ghosts |
173 |
[/Xam] "dead people ... do not possess their thinking strings [//khu//khuken, with which they understood]. Therefore they are wanting to come to harm us, if we utter their name by night". |
192 |
[/Xam] "in awesome circumstances, [the ghost of the recently dead shaman] himself was seen in his place among the spirits of dead "sorcerers," ... The spirits of [that dead shaman] and his fellow sorcerers were gathered around a pot, but what it contained was ... mystical". |
p. 55 [/Xam] "All dead people ... walk out along this path; they reach the great hole, and they live there."
pp. 218-219 shamanism among the Nuni (a Bantu tribe)
p. |
Nuni |
218 |
tikolos^e : "thikoloshe, a witch familiar ... as a grotesque mannikin, ... has ... much in common with the San trickster /Kaggen ... . As parallels between the two figures, ... lisping ...". "unlike other Nguni witch familiars, thikoloshe can act independently of a witch." |
219 |
twasa : "This condition is believed to result from a form of possession, the calling by the ancestral spirits of a person to become a diviner." [behavior during twasa] "And he tells them that he has dreamt that he was being carried away by a river." |
AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY SERIES, 6 = J. D. Lewis-Williams & D. G. Pearce : San Spirituality. AltaMira Pr, Walnut Creek (CA), 2004.