Excerpts from Chapter 13 - ANIMISM
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| ANIMISM “God animated the dust” Animism: ‘The belief that natural objects, natural phenomena and the Universe itself possesses soul’ (Webster’s Dictionary) |
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Some thirty years ago, I spent several months documenting a number of Shaman spiritual mediums practicing
witchcraft in Soweto, the great black township near Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city. I was interested
in both the spiritual calling of apprentice shamans as well as their training, and tried to capture in a television
program, the subtle nuances of the psychic energies that motivated neophytes to seek out accomplished ‘babas’
who would then help them to develop their psychic gifts.
At that time, South Africa was still deeply locked into the racially discriminatory apartheid (literally
“separateness”), policies. The white population, and to some extent the detribalized urban blacks as well, generally
viewed shamanism as a ‘sham’, a primitive superstitious practice that had no spiritual validity. Others viewed and
feared it as “tagati”, an occult form of black magic based on the negative dare of devil worship.
My documentary was the first national television broadcast that tried to reveal shaman mediumship as an ancient
universal call of the spirit towards The Good, that most shamans were beneficial psychic healers, with only a
few taking the left-hand path that led to the black arts of ill intentions. After completing the documentary, and not
feeling fully satisfied with my initial attempt at grasping the underlying cultural significance of this Bronze Age
practice, I realized that in order to gain and share with my audience a clearer insight into the validity of spiritual
impulses in general, I needed a deeper understanding of the prehistoric origins of our base of spirituality.
I did not know much more about the Stone Age form of spiritism that we know as Animism, than the
information supplied in a modern dictionary definition. I decided to go on a safari into the Kalahari Desert, where I
hoped, I would be able to make contact with one of the last surviving uncontaminated hunter/gatherer family
groups, reputed to be still living a Stone Age existence in the vast waterless wastes of the Kalahari Bushman
Reserve. I wanted to see if I could get some inner sense from them about the spiritual impulse that defined
Animism.
How several hundred Bushman families managed to sustain a Stone Age existence in the Central Kalahari desert
up until the present time, is a controversial case study in itself. I do not believe, as conventional wisdom has
it, that they retreated into the desert after being driven off their traditional hunting grounds by the arrival of Bantu
and European colonists in Southern Africa a couple of hundred years ago. I think that they have lived there for
thousands of generations – perhaps since the dawn of human time. The unique physiological mutation, which
allows Bushmen to store moisture in the fatty tissues of their buttocks (steatopygia), in the same way that camels
do in their humps, would have taken thousands of generations to genetically imprint. It marks them as true desert
survivors, not simply new arrivals. Their ability to survive in a waterless desert, plus the protection of the tsetse
fl y, has kept people and cattle out of their ancient hunting ground. I also believe that a similar case of
environmental adaptation via genetic mutation, reveals why the Pygmies of the Ituri Forest in the Congo Basin
also sustained a Stone Age existence into modern times. I suggest that the lack of sunlight in the dense shade of
the rain forest canopy, after thousands of generations of genetic mutation, stunted the growth of the Pygmy
humans, elephants, hippos and rhinos who live there. That shade will also not allow grass to grow on the forest
floor and has kept domestic livestock at bay.
Though the conditions in Botswana have vastly changed now - with international hotels, airports, plush safari
lodges and tarred roads - thirty years ago, organizing a private expedition into the middle of the Central Desert, in
an effort to make contact with a surviving Stone Age family, and then getting back out of its sandy clutches
alive, was no simple matter. Unlike the eastern and western edges of the Kalahari. At that time there were no
roads, or government boreholes to assist the traveler, wishing to enter the Central Desert. Some of the sand
ridges are sixty feet deep; churning along across those natural barriers in the extreme heat in a four-wheel drive
vehicle for hours on end, with only a compass for a guide, chews up precious gas, water, and nerves. Back then,
and even today, very few people had ever penetrated the Central Desert. It takes some daring, plenty of
motivation and a lot of organization. The information able to assist me before setting out was sparse at best.
In the mid 1950’s, the British-ruled Bechuanaland Government, had engaged a local colonial who was born and
raised in the Kalahari, to make a survey of the San family groups still living out in the Central Desert. I managed
to get hold of an obscure copy of the Silberman report ten years later. The information it contained was primarily
concerned with a population count of the surviving families and a list of the types of food the Bushmen hunted
and gathered. It said very little about their cultural behavior. Laurens van der Post’s book: “The Lost World of
the Kalahari” recording the impressions of his own brief expedition into the Central Desert, was the only other
information available at that time. It provided a sympathetic portrait of the innocent Bushman psyche, but it too
had very little in it about Animism.
Since my own expedition, I have subsequently heard rumors of two anthropologists, one a female Soviet and the
other a male Japanese, who had each gone into the desert alone during the 1960’s, but I have never been able to
substantiate it. If they ever published any thesis on their studies, it is not to be found in the English language. As
far as I know, my sojourn with a San family group in the Central Reserve was one of the few expeditions to
witness and document an uncontaminated Stone Age existence. It is too late now for further studies. In the
intervening decades, the Botswana Government has insisted on pulling the San out of the Bushman Reserve and
integrating them with modern cultures.
I began my expedition into the Kalahari by first making contact with an elderly Afrikaner safari guide who had
grown up as a boy on the cattle ranches in the remote Ghansi settlement, of Northern Botswana, where Bushmen
were hired to tend the herds. He had learned to speak the difficult tongue-click of the Xung. He said that we
stood a reasonable chance of finding an isolated hunter/gatherer group if we could make it to the Southern edge
of the Reserve. Smoke signals would eventually attract them to us if we did not cut their sign. Since gas and
water took up most of the load, I only had enough provisions for a two-week stay. There was no hope of getting
any financial assistance from anyone so I had to foot the bill myself. Setting out to measure the depth, quality and
spirit of an extinct culture that I may or may not find, was not exactly a scientific or commercial inducement for
backing. Once we made contact, I could only hope that I had developed my own extra-sensory perceptions
enough, to perhaps interpret the essence of Animism. The change of spiritual attitude that helped to meld the two
halves of my psyche and make me a more insightful observer had not come easily.
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