Ethnographic Evidence Relating to 'Trance' and 'Shamans' among Northern and Southern Bushmen

South African Archaeological Society

Ethnographic Evidence Relating to 'Trance' and 'Shamans' among Northern and SouthernBushmenAuthor(s): J. D. Lewis-WilliamsSource: The South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. 47, No. 155 (Jun., 1992), pp. 56-60Published by: South African Archaeological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3888993 .

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56 South African Archaeological Bulletin, 47: 56-60, 1992

ETHNOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE RELATING TO 'TRANCE' AND 'SHAMANS' AMONG NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN BUSHMEN*

J. D. LEWIS-WILLIAMS Rock Art Research Unit Department of Archaeology, University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg 2050

ABSTRACT

Some current debates about southern African Bushman (San) rock art have led to an interest in the activities of Bushman ritual practitioners. This paper presents nineteenth and twentieth century Bushman ethnography to show that these people entered an altered state of consciousness that most researchers call 'trance' to heal the sick, go on out-of-body journeys, make rain and transform themselves into animals. The combination of trance experience with these 'supernatural' activities suggests that, whatever social differences exist between these Bushman ritual practitioners and those in certain Asian and North American societies, it is appropriate to term them 'shamans'. The ethnographic material outlined in this paperforms part of the basis for thefurther argument, not developed here, that southern African rock art was at least in some measure associated with the work of Bushman shamans.

* Received November 1991, revised February 1992

Discussions of southern African rock art sometimes centre on Bushman (San) ritual practitioners, known variously as 'medicine people', 'sorcerers', 'magicians' and 'shamans', who heal the sick and perform other 'supernatural' tasks. Do they enter the altered state of consciousness commonly called 'trance'? Can they legit- imately be called 'shamans'? The first question is the easier to answer because we can still observe the rituals as they are performed by various Bushman groups in the Kalahari Desert today. The second, and perhaps more controversial, question is more difficult because it con- cerns the meanings we attach to words and, as we know, words mean different things to different people. Making no claim to comprehensiveness, I adduce ethnographic evidence relevant to both questions.

Do Bushman ritual practitioners enter trance? The most detailed study of Bushman healing rituals

was published by Richard Katz (1982). Although he spent only three months working with !Kung people in the Kalahari (Katz 1982:4), he was accompanied and assisted by Richard Lee, who speaks the !Kung language fluently and has worked in the Kalahari since the 1960s. Katz also works closely with other researchers, such as the Marshalls and Megan Biesele who has spent many years studying Bushman folklore and ritual, especially the healing dance.

Katz noted that the !Kung word used to describe the physical and mental experiences of ritual practitioners during this dance is !kia. He describes the physical effects of !kia thus:

Kinachau is sweating; his face is beginning to take on a pained appearance. He starts to tremble, his legs quivering ... He swoons and falls softly into the sand just outside the dance rut. He has entered kia [!kia], sharply and quickly. Kinachau sits up and remains sitting for several minutes. His look is glazed, his body trembles spasmodically. He ... begins to heal. As he pulls sickness from each person, Kinachau's whole body shakes roughly and his legs tremble violently, the tendons sticking out ... He shrieks out the characteristic deep howling sounds which express the pain involved in pulling out sickness ... After more healing, Kinachau dives for the dance fire ... Just as his head touches the flames, his hair smoking, he is dragged back by two women and held tightly (Katz 1982:65-66).

The mental experiences associated with !kia come out of what Katz (1982:8) explicitly indentifies as an "altered state of consciousness". Healers say that, during such an experience, they visit God, see the spirits of the dead, experience out-of-body journeys and turn into lions (Katz 1982:115-116, 100-101). In other words, they experience what many observers, both anthropologists and psychologists, call 'hallucinations'.

How should !kia be translated into English so that as much as possible of the concept is preserved? Katz sometimes gives !kia as 'transcendence' because he believes the state leads to enhanced perceptions and peak experiences. I have reservations about using 'transcendence', as do most other writers; for me, it implies a 'spirituality' and a positive attitude towards altered states of consciousness with which I find it difficult to associate myself.

In some publications, Katz retains !kia. He explains why he prefers to use a Bushman rather than an English word:

!Kia has been translated by other fieldworkers as 'trance'; hence the label 'trance dance' ... The term 'trance' has been used to describe a variety of altered states-of-consciousness, including possession states and meditation states. Its referents remain ambiguous; its use inconsistent. We prefer to keep the !Kung word !kia and to build an understanding of the phenomenon through examining the !Kung's discussion of it (Katz & Biesele 1986:221).

As Katz allows, many other researchers who have actually witnessed Bushman curing rituals use 'trance' to denote the altered state of consciousness in which the ritual practitioners experience hallucinations. The following quotations show how twelve writers, all of whom have lived with the Kalahari Bushmen, most for extended periods, and have been present at the rituals, use the word.

Lee (1984:103): "Specially trained healers are able to enter trance and heal the sick." Lee also entitled an article "Trance cure of the !Kung Bushmen" (1967). Howell (1979:51): "During a crisis of acute illness or serious injury, one of the responses of the group is to organize one or many sessions of trance curing." Shostak (1981:10): "The central ritual event in traditional !Kung life is the medicinal trance dance." Marshall (1969:349): "After an hour or two the medicine men begin to go into trance and



South African Archaeological Bulletin 57

to perform their curing rite." Guenther (1986:253): "The explicit purpose of the shamanistic trance dance ... is to heal." Marshall Thomas (1988:124): "Gai was in deep trance." Heinz (1975:28): "Thus while the women create the men's frenzy and trance, so also do they protect and keep them from harm." Silberbauer (1981:176): "He begins to go into a trance ... In some men the trance is cataleptic in character, with a low pulse rate and skin temperature, whereas other have very fast pulse rates (up to 204 beats per minute) and sweat profusely." Barnard (1979:75): "When in full and violent trance, immediately prior to the curing stage, medicine men walk towards the fire, and often into it." Biesele (1978:929, 933): "If a young man is being given the power to trance and cure, he might feel his n//au tingle ... Then he launched into a long story describing his trance-journey to the sky using the n/um of the supernatural giraffe." Wiessner & Larson (1979:25): "For years the Basarwa [Bushman] trance dance has intrigued many people in Botswana."

Katz's work and these quotations show that modern !Kung Bushman healing involves what Katz himself calls an altered state of consciousness. As for what this altered state should be called, the weight of opinion is heavily against Katz: most first-hand observers call it 'trance'.

Having examined information on the behaviour and psychological experiences of modern Kalahari Bushman ritual practitioners, we can move on to see if there is any evidence to show that the Bushmen who lived to the south during the nineteenth century and who made much of the rock art also practised trance performance.

To look up the English word 'trance' in the Bleek Bushman Dictionary and then, on not finding it, to argue that the southern groups did not experience what we understand by 'trance' would, of course, be naive. The matter is much more complex. The W. H. I. Bleek and L. C. Lloyd Collection includes, amongst other documents, a literal translation in English of nearly 12 000 pages of texts taken down verbatim in phonetic script from /Xam San informants, largely in the 1870s. The Dictionary, though started by W. H. I. Bleek at that time (Spohr 1962:61), was finalised by his daughter, D. F. Bleek, and published in 1956. Most of the /Xam entries compiled by D. F. Bleek came not from first-hand interviews with Bushmen, but from the manuscripts; /Xam words used in the manuscripts were entered together with their translation and some examples of their use. The Dictionary is therefore not a comprehensive, fully independent work.

No /Xam word is translated 'trance' in the Dictionary or in the texts. Indeed, it is doubtful if W. H. I. Bleek and Lloyd understood the full psychological significance of the accounts of ritual activities that they were taking down. The Bushman informants themselves did not distinguish explicitly between 'real' experiences and trance experiences, and this posed difficulties for the early ethnographers. We must remember that Bleek and Lloyd never lived with Bushmen and thus did not actually witness the rituals of which their informants spoke (Lewis- Williams 1981:25-37). Nevertheless, W. H. I. Bleek was aware that some of the things he was being told were not part of day-to-day experience. When he was transcribing a narrative about 'shamans of the rain' (!khwa-ka !gi:ten) capturing a 'rain-animal' (!khwa-ka xoro) (Lewis-Williams 1980, 1981:103-116), he noted that the statement did not appear to him to be "literal", but "the sense is apparently the reverse" (manuscript page B.XXVII.2540 rev.). Something of that "reverse" can be seen in three /Xam words and a metaphor that have to do with trance experience.

W.H.I. Bleek translated Itainma, one of the /Xam words used to mean 'to lead out' a rain-animal, as "work

magic" (B.XXVII.2545). Lloyd, who completed the translation of the passage in question, gave it as "conjure" (B.XXVI.2456). Later D.F. Bleek (1933b:376, 381) removed the supernatural connotations and gave the word as "fetch" (Bleek 1933b:376), probably because of a variety of more prosaic contexts. Indeed, the Dictionary gives only a 'realistic' meaning ("to fetch, seek") and examples such as "he fetches other eggs" (D.F. Bleek 1956:678). These different translations throw interesting light on the Bleek family's work. W.H.I. Bleek and Lloyd, who had the benefit of actually taking down the accounts and discussing them with the informants, brought in concepts of 'magic' to explain what they were hearing. D.F. Bleek, who was a very small child at the time and consequently did not have this enriching experience, tended to favour a more straightforward translation.

Lloyd translated the second word, //kai:, as "by magic lead out" (L.V.13.4990). In another narrative she gave //kai: as "invoked" and then added "called upon" as an alternative translation (L.V. 15.5103 rev.). When D.F. Bleek (1936:134-135) prepared this passage for publica- tion, she gave it as "called forth the Rain-bull". This is also one of the examples used in the Dictionary where it appears slightly differently: "the string it was which he used to hear when !Nuin-Ikuita led (by magic) making go the rain-bull" (D.F. Bleek 1956:550). The parenthesis is a translator's gloss. The Dictionary gives only a 'supernatural' definition: "to lead out by magic".

The third word does not seem to have allowed the Bleek family any room for doubt. Lloyd translated /xau as "go on a magical expedition" (e.g. D.F. Bleek 1935:22- 23, 29, 31; 1936:132). The Dictionary retains and enlarges on this meaning: "to go on a magical expedition, to shoot with magic arrows". The examples include the following: "he did this, when he went out on a magical expedition, he got a Boer's ox, while he was a lion"; "the dogs do not sleep, for they are barking there, they bark at those people who come to shoot on a magical expedition, then they shoot (with magic arrows) the man who is ill" (D.F. Bleek 1956:363-364; parenthesis in original).

Some of the translations of all three /Xam words thus raise the question of whether we should think of these narratives in terms of magic, as the Bleek family apparently did, rather than trance. Today most anthropologists use 'magic' to cover situations in which ritual practitioners consult spirits and use various physical aids to accomplish their supernatural ends. Although the distinction is by no means clear-cut, 'trance' differs in that it involves out-of-body journeys to spiritual realms or distant parts of the mundane world, changing into animals, and other hallucinations. As we have seen, the /Xam narratives clearly refer to a sense of dissociation from one's body and to transformations: ritual practitioners spoke of riding a 'rain-animal' to the top of a mountain and killing it so that its blood would fall as rain (D.F. Bleek 1933b:310); others described spiritual journeys in the form of an animal (e.g. D.F. Bleek 1935:15, 5). These accounts suggest that we are dealing not so much with instrumental magic but with hallucinations experienced during the altered state of consciousness which all first- hand observers of the Kalahari Bushman groups have recorded. Whatever role magic may have played in other areas of Bushman life, the Bleek family interpolated the notion to clarify what, for them, must have been very strange and puzzling narratives.

There is also evidence showing that the nineteenth century southern Bushmen used words in what we may see as a metaphorical way to mean 'to enter trance' but which they seem to have taken literally. One of these was their word for 'to die' (the notion of being underwater is



58 South African Archaeological Bulletin

another; Lewis-Williams 1980:472). The belief that pass- ing to the spirit world in an altered state of consciousness is the same as physical death is, of course, widespread. The modem !Kung, for instance, say that there is no difference between entering deep !kia and dying physically - except that ritual practitioners come back to life (Katz 1982:99, 116). Qing, a nineteenth century Bushman from the south-eastern mountains, used 'die' in this sense. He told Orpen (1874:10) that Cagn (the Mantis trickster- deity) had given the people the song of the healing dance and told them that they "would die from it, and he would give charms to raise them again". The circumstances of this 'death' experience are clearly similar to the healing dances performed today in the Kalahari:

It is a circular dance of men and women, following each other, and it is danced all night. Some fall down; some become as if mad and sick; blood runs from the noses of others whose charms are weak, and they eat charm medicine, in which there is burnt snake powder. When a man is sick, this dance is danced round him, and the dancers put both hands under their arm-pits, and press their hands on him, and when he coughs the initiated put out their hands and receive what has injured him - secret things (Orpen 1874:10).

In sum, we can say that there is no exact English equivalent for any of the words and metaphors Bushmen use to refer to the altered state of consciousness that all writers who have studied the rituals first-hand acknowledge they enter. The connotations of the English words and phrases never coincide exactly with those of the Bushman words. One response to this (in my view sometimes exaggerated) problem is to follow Katz and retain !kia and then 'build an understanding of the phenomenon through examining the !Kung's discussions of it" (Katz & Biesele 1986:221). This course, however, is practicable only when discussion is restricted to the northern Kalahari !Kung. Other Bushman groups, each with its own language, use other words: there is no universal Bushman word for what nearly all writers call trance.

As we have seen, Katz rejects 'trance' because the word covers a wide range of altered states of consciousness, yet this very generality is a reason for its retention. As Katz himself points out, the !Kung realise that there are levels of !kia, ranging from a light condition, in which a person can walk around and cure, to a deep level of unconsciousness: they "do not propose sharp boundaries" between these levels (Katz 1982:96). 'Trance', which similarly does not denote any sharp boundaries between levels of altered states of consciousness, therefore seems to be the best English word.

Can Bushman Ritual Practitioners be called 'Shamans'?

'Shaman' and 'shamanism' have become widely known words largely through the work of Mircea Eliade. He says that "Shamanism in the strict sense is pre-eminently a religious phenomenon of Siberia and Central Asia", but he adds that "similar magico-religious phenomena were observed in North America, Indonesia, Oceania, and elsewhere ... these latter phenomena are thoroughly shamanic" (Eliade 1972:4-5). Shamanism, he says, is a "technique of ecstasy" that involves "special relations with 'spirits', ecstatic capacities permitting of magical flight, ascents to the sky, descents to the underworld, mastery over fire, etc." (Eliade 1972:4, 6).

Dowson and I have commented briefly on the origin of 'shaman', what most anthropologists mean by the word, and its use in the southern African context:

'Shaman' is a Tungus word from central Asia. It has been accepted in the anthropological literature to mean someone in a hunter-gatherer society who enters a trance in order to heal people, foretell the future, control the weather, ensure good hunting, and so forth. Some societies have only a few shamans, whereas others, like the Bushmen, have many. Some - not all - shamans in North America and Asia seem to suffer from psychological disabilities and play little part in general life. By contrast, Bushman shamans are ordinary people who also perform the everyday tasks that those who do not have their supernatural abilities perform. Bushman shamans are not a privileged class (Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1989:30-3 1).

Other writers who use 'shaman' to mean Bushman healers include Winkelman (1989) and Noll (1983, 1985), both of whom undertook extensive cross-cultural studies of shamanism, Hewitt (1986), who wrote a detailed analysis of /Xam texts, and Guenther (1986), an anthropologist who has spent many years with the Nharo. Moreover, Winkelman & Dobkin de Rios (1989:57) write of 'the strong similarities of the !Kung Bushman medicine activities with shamanic activities in other parts of the world". In her book Shamanic Voices, Halifax (1980) places Biesele's transcription of a !Kung healer's account of trance experience alongside comparable accounts from Central Asia, Australia, North America, Mesoamerica and South America. In another of her publications on shamanism worldwide Halifax (1982:80) writes about the !Kung: "The trance-dancers' activation of n/um is associated with shamanic powers, including healing, clairvoyance, X-ray vision, prophecy, and soul travels."

To ascertain whether these writers are justified in using 'shaman' in the context of Bushman ritual, we must examine, first, the concept of supernatural potency to which Halifax refers and then the ways in which Bushman words for it are built into their words for ritual practitioners.

The 'magic power', or 'sorcery', as the Bleek family had it, harnessed by /Xam ritual practitioners was variously called !gi: (e.g. D.F. Bleek 1935:12, 29, 32, 35, 36), //ke:n (e.g. D.F. Bleek 1935: 13, 26, 28, 31, 33), and /ko:ode (e.g. D.F. Bleek 1935:11, 28, 35). Lloyd translated !gi:-ta didi as 'sorcery' (D.F. Bleek 1935:12); literally, it means 'the deeds (or activities) of supernatural power', what we, in an etic way, would call the hallucinations of trance.

A person who possessed this power was called a !gi:xa (pl. !gi:ten). The suffix -xa means '-ful' (D.F. Bleek 1956:255), as in the English word 'powerful'. W. H. I. Bleek and Lloyd translated !gi.xa 'sorcerer', and D.F. Bleek devoted four instalments of extracts from the manuscript collection to the activities of these people (D.F. Bleek 1933a, 1933b, 1935, 1936). A !gi:xa was thus a person who was 'full' of supernatural power. The /Xam recognized three, probably overlapping, categories of !gi:ten; the !khwa-ka !gi:ten who made rain by capturing and killing a 'rain-animal'; the kpwaaten-ka !gi:ten who controlled the movements of game so that the animals would run into the hunters' ambush; the //xi:-ka !gi:ten who sent sickness into people; and, lastly, the !gi:ten, without any further appellation, who drew sickness out of people, went on extracorporeal journeys and turned into animals (Lewis-Williams 1981:75-116). As those who have studied shamnsm cross-culturally



Soot/h African Archaeological Bulletin 59

realise, these are all tasks performed in various parts of the world by people known in the anthropological literature as 'shamans'.

The Kalahari !Kung also use a combination of words to mean 'ritual practitioner'. Their word for supernatural potency is n/um. As with the /Xam !gi:, this word denotes an essence that is in and controlled by ritual practitioners. It is said to 'boil' within them until it 'explodes' in their heads and they enter !kia (Marshall 1969; Katz 1982). Such people are called n/um kVausi (sing. n/um kVau). K'au means owner, possessor, or master. A !Kung ritual practitioner is thus an 'owner of potency', clearly a concept similar to the /Xam !gi:xa.

/Xam !gi:ten, like the !Kung n/um k"ausi, entered a frenzy in which they bit people (e.g. D.F. Bleek 1935:1, 23), trembled so violently that they had sometimes to be held down (ibid.:2, 13, 23), sniffed sickness out of people (ibid.:3), turned into animals (ibid.:7, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 43), bled from the nose (ibid.:12, 19; 1936:137), and in which their veins 'stood up' and became rigid (D.F. Bleek 1935:23). During this dangerous time other people danced and sang (L.V.3.4124 rev.).

The /Xam also believed that ritual practitioners worked in less dramatic circumstances; one of these states was dreaming, as is the case in numerous shamanistic societies. Dreaming is an altered state of consciousness in its own right that some shamans do not distinguish clearly from trance induced in more public circumstances. The /Xam, for instance, believed that a !gi.xa who trembled at night was combating dangerous !gi:ten in the spirit realm (D.F. Bleek 1935:13): "That is why we sometimes hear a sorcerer shivering at night; when other sorcerers come to him, then he shivers, because the others want to see whether his veins are still alive." In this account !khauken, the word translated 'shiver', means to beat or tremble; frequently it means to tremble in trance as, for example, in the following statement: "When he returning comes in from the place to which he had gone on a magic expedition [/xau], he trembles [!khauki]" (D.F. Bleek 1956:425). One of W.H.I. Bleek's informants put it like this: "He lies asleep by us, his magic [//ke:n] walks about while we sleep" (Bleek 1935:30). Moreover, the fXam word for dream, //kabbo, could be used in an active way in the sense of causing things to happen. One of Bleek and Lloyd's best informants (whose name was //Kabbo, 'Dream') said, "I dreamt that I told the rain to fall for me ... The rain assented to me, the rain would fall for me" (L.II.6.625). It is worth recalling that in REM sleep it is possible to induce and manipulate dream imagery (e.g. Knoll 1985:44; see also Lewis-Williams 1987). Indeed, it is not always easy to distinguish between shamans' accounts of dreams and trance visions (Eliade 1972:33- 66). Any assertion that /Xam dreams did not involve trance, is thus a misunderstanding of altered states of consciousness, shamanism, and the /Xam texts.

Conclusion The behaviour of, beliefs about and words for the

/Xam !gi:ten and !Kung n/um kVausi show that they were, to all intents and purposes, one and the same thing. Moreover, the nineteenth century southern ethnography and modern research conducted in the Kalahari show that the altered state of consciousness that most first-hand observers call 'trance' was and still is a key component of their activities. Some researchers may not like the Tungus word 'shaman' (that is their right), but it has become commonly used to mean ritual practitioners who, like Bushman !gi:ten and n/urn kwausi, enter trance to heal,

control the weather, go on out-of-body journeys and so forth. As long as the specific social role and functions of Bushman shamans are understood, the defined use of the word in southern Africa seems unproblematic. If we do not use the Tungus word, we shall have to resort to an equally 'foreign' English word, the connotations of which may be even more misleading. Either way, we should not confuse debates about words with debates about the nature of the people, rituals and experiences they denote. Whatever words we care to use, there can be little doubt that the Bushmen have ritual practitioners who enter an altered state of consciousness during which they experience hallucinations.

Whether Bushman trance and shamanism had anything to do with the production of rock art is another question altogether. Simply on a priori grounds, the cardinal importance of the rituals in Bushman society (e.g. D.F. Bleek 1933a, 1933b, 1935, 1936; Marshall 1969; Biesele 1978) suggests that at least some rock art was probably associated in some way with beliefs about those rituals: shamanism is a belief system that orders cosmology and informs attitudes and affective responses to many of life's situations. This 'minimalist' position is confirmed by depictions of rain-animals, trance dances and hallucinatory figures with features that link them to shamanistic beliefs and experiences (e.g. Vinnicombe 1976; Lewis-Williams 1981). Whether we can go beyond this and say that the art over most of southern Africa is 'largely', 'principally' or 'essentially' associated with shamanism (e.g. Lewis- Williams 1980, 1982; Yates et al. 1985; Garlake 1987; Deacon 1988; Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1989; Mazel 1989; Dowson 1991) has been much debated and cannot be addressed here. Answers to the question must be based on detailed analyses of Bushman ethnography and specific rock art images, not on broad generalizations deriving from what artists worldwide are believed to do and certainly not on a modern Westerner's intuitive response to the paintings and engravings. Artistic activity is always historically situated and socially informed.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Thomas A. Dowson, Lyn Wadley,

Anne Holliday and Thomas Huffman for discussions about this article. Various drafts were kindly typed by Anne Holliday, Val Meyer, Jennifer Kitto and Denise Voorvelt. Some of the material was published in Rock Art Research in 1991. The Rock Art Research Unit is funded by the Centre for Science Development and the University of the Witwatersrand. I am grateful to the Librarian, Jagger Library (University of Cape Town), for permission to quote from the Bleek and Lloyd Collection.

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Documents

Ethnographic Evidence Relating to 'Trance' and 'Shamans' among Northern and Southern Bushmen