Sangomas or inyangas are shamans, healers, priests, and prophets that have been the backbone of Bantu communities, especially in the rural areas of Southern Africa for eons. In this article, we will explore the definition of the African shaman, their role as healers, priests, and prophets in Bantu communities, and the erosion of these traditions due to Westernization.
The term shamanism today sounds abstract and exotic, primitive and/or tempting. It is certain that shamanism is one of the oldest spiritual traditions of the world and oldest surviving system of healing. In its simplest definition, it is a way of understanding life and the man at all levels.
Shaman of the Evenks
The Term "Shaman"
The word "shaman" probably originates from the Tungusic Evenki language of North Asia. The term "shamanism" was first applied by Western anthropologists as outside observers of the ancient religion of the Turks and Mongols, as well as those of the neighbouring Tungusic- and Samoyedic-speaking peoples.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a shaman is someone who is regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits, who typically enters into a trance state during a ritual, and practices divination and healing.
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As its etymology implies, the term applies in the strictest sense only to the religious systems and phenomena of the peoples of northern Asia and the Ural-Altaic, such as the Khanty and Mansi, Samoyed, Tungus, Yukaghir, Chukchi, and Koryak. However, shamanism is also used more generally to describe indigenous groups in which roles such as healer, religious leader, and counselor are combined.
In this sense, shamans are particularly common among other Arctic peoples, American Indians, Australian Aborigines, and those African groups, such as the San, that retained their traditional cultures well into the 20th century.
Classic Shamanism
Shamanism as practiced in northern Asia is distinguished by its special clothing, accessories, and rites as well as by the specific worldview connected with them. North Asiatic shamanism in the 19th century, which is generally taken as the classical form, was characterized by the following traits:
- A society accepts that there are specialists who are able to communicate directly with the transcendent world and who are thereby also possessed of the ability to heal and to divine; such individuals, or shamans, are held to be of great use to society in dealing with the spirit world.
- A given shaman is usually known for certain mental characteristics, such as an intuitive, sensitive, mercurial, or eccentric personality, which may be accompanied by some physical defect, such as lameness, an extra finger or toe, or more than the normal complement of teeth.
- Shamans are believed to be assisted by an active spirit-being or group thereof; they may also have a passive guardian spirit present in the form of an animal or a person of another sex-possibly as a sexual partner.
- The exceptional abilities and the consequent social role of the shaman are believed to result from a choice made by one or more supernatural beings.
- The one who is chosen-often an adolescent-may resist this calling, sometimes for years. Torture by the spirits, appearing in the form of physical or mental illness, breaks the resistance of the shaman candidate and he (or she) has to accept the vocation.
- The initiation of the shaman, depending on the belief system, may happen on a transcendent level or on a realistic level-or sometimes on both, one after the other. While the candidate lies as if dead, in a trance state, the body is cut into pieces by the spirits of the Yonder World or is submitted to a similar trial. The spirits’ reason for cutting up the shaman’s body is to see whether it has more bones than the average person. After awakening, a rite of symbolic initiation, such as climbing the World Tree, is occasionally performed.
- By attaining a trance state at will, the shaman is believed to be able to communicate directly with the spirits. This is accomplished by allowing the soul to leave the body to enter the spirit realm or by acting as a mouthpiece for the spirit-being, somewhat like a medium.
- One of the distinguishing traits of shamanism is the combat of two shamans in the form of animals, often reindeer or horned cattle. The combat rarely has a stated purpose but is a deed the shaman is compelled to do. The outcome of the combat means well-being for the victor and destruction for the loser.
- In going into trance, as well as in mystical combat and healing ceremonies, the shaman uses certain objects such as a drum, drumstick, headgear, gown, metal rattler, mirror, and staff. The specific materials and shapes of these instruments are useful for identifying the types and species of shamanism and following their development.
- Characteristic folklore (oral and textual) and shaman songs have come into being as improvisations on traditional formulas used to lure or imitate animals.
The Sangoma: A Bantu Shaman
In an interview, Ullrich Relebogilwe Kleinhempel outlines the place of indigenous healers and spiritual mediators in Bantu societies by focusing on the South African traditional practitioner, called a sangoma. Kleinhempel defines a sangoma as a ‘Bantu shaman’. For Kleinhempel, this serves as an umbrella term to classify a variety of practitioners who are specialists in esoteric methods through which they diagnose the causes of misfortune, provide treatments to alleviate problems and offer prognoses aimed at ensuring long-term well-being.
Some sangomas primarily are herbalists, who frequently use mystical means to determine the causes of illness, such as being led in a dream to the appropriate herb to prescribe the remedy for a particular affliction. Others act as diviners, who, in southern Africa, use specially engraved bones or sticks (hakata in Shona) to diagnose the cause of individual or group afflictions and prescribe remedies.
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Perhaps the most revered traditional practitioner is one who becomes possessed by a spirit, often an ancestor spirit, who has adopted a descendant as his or her host. The adopted host becomes the ancestor’s voice and, in rituals of possession, the ancestor communicates directly with kinsfolk about causes and solutions to communal misfortune.
In many cases that I have recorded in Zimbabwe, the ancestor, during the possession ceremony, claims to have been neglected ritually and, as a result, has permitted a series of misfortunes to occur, such as the failure of crops, a cluster of illnesses and deaths in the community or even social conflict. Only after the ancestor has been remembered and honoured in rituals of respect is the ancestral protection restored bringing a halt to the misfortunes.
After the possession ritual is concluded, the spirit’s medium does not remember what occurred.
The Role of Shamans
Shamanism encompasses the premise that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments and illnesses by mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul or spirit are believed to restore the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness.
Shamans also say that they enter supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community, or visit other worlds or dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements.
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Shamans operate primarily within the spiritual world, which, they believe, in turn affects the human world.
Shamans act as mediators in their cultures. Shamans say that they communicate with the spirits on behalf of the community, including the spirits of the deceased. There are distinct types of shamans who perform more specialized functions.
As the primary teacher of tribal symbolism, the shaman may have a leading role in this ecological management, actively restricting hunting and fishing.
San shaman in trance dance
Criticism of the Term "Shamanism"
The anthropologist Alice Kehoe criticizes the term "shaman" in her book Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking. Part of this criticism involves the notion of cultural appropriation. This includes criticism of New Age and modern Western forms of shamanism, which, according to Kehoe, misrepresent or dilute Indigenous practices.
Kehoe is highly critical of Mircea Eliade's work on shamanism as an invention synthesized from various sources unsupported by more direct research. To Kehoe, citing practices such as drumming, trance, chanting, entheogen and hallucinogen use, spirit communication, and healing as definitive of shamanism ignores the fact that they exist outside of what is defined as shamanism and even play similar roles in nonshamanic cultures, for example chanting in the Abrahamic religions.
She argues that these expression are unique to each culture that uses them and that such practices cannot be generalized easily, accurately, or usefully into a global religion of shamanism.
By Western scholars, the term "shamanism" is used to refer to a variety of different cultures and practices around the world, which can vary dramatically and may not be accurately represented by a single concept.
Anthropologist Mihály Hoppál also discusses whether the term "shamanism" is appropriate. He notes that for many readers, "-ism" implies a particular dogma, like Buddhism, Catholicism or Judaism. He recommends using the term "shamanhood" or "shamanship" for stressing the diversity and the specific features of the discussed cultures.
He believes that this places more stress on the local variations and emphasizes that shamanism is not a religion of sacred dogmas, but linked to the everyday life in a practical way.
Shamanism and Healing
Although the causes of disease lie in the spiritual realm, inspired by malicious spirits, both spiritual and physical methods are used to heal. Many shamans have expert knowledge of medicinal plants native to their area, and an herbal treatment is often prescribed.
In many places shamans learn directly from the plants, harnessing their effects and healing properties, after obtaining permission from the indwelling or patron spirits.
The Erosion of Traditional Ways
However, with rapid Westernization and the increasing allure of the commodity market, the old ways are rapidly eroding. Indigenous knowledge has always been transmitted orally, and there is little written down about the secret traditions of initiation.
Since sangoma wisdom is an oral tradition the individual's initiation will depend on the mentor and the spirit guides involved. That particular sangoma's healing repertoire will be somewhat different to another though the principles remain the same. The ancestors find the most efficient way to impart the information so that the healer can do the work. The way in which they transmit the knowledge will be unique to that person's receptivity and talents.
The Shamanic Path
Unlike Western spirituality, in which the prevailing idea is that of martyrdom, in African philosophy the celebration of life is omnipresent. Life is not suffering and not a punishment, it brings us challenges inviting us to grow and evolve. As in a well-organized school, these challenges are appropriate for our life period and age, prompting us to adopt new knowledge and to activate additional powers.
All of us should to repeatedly ask ourselves: what can I develop better, what are my challenges? This way we can all grow, without distinction.
The shaman has one leg in a parallel world, a second in this, the real world. I believe that we are by innate birth already to some extent shamans, because we have come as an essence, as the soul, from the spiritual world into this world where we received our body.
Shamanism is a deep reflection about life. How to be aware? How to be more alive? In this visible world we bring our abstract pieces, we come with certain talents and a certain missions. If we do not know our talents, if we do not remember our own mission, let alone live it - then what is the value of our life?
