Bushmen Healing and Rock Art

Bushmen Healing And Rock Art

In the culture of the Bushmen, the indigenous people of Southern Africa, healers learn trance-inducing dances that reportedly enable them to heal others.

According to Rupert Isaacson, who spent time among the Bushmen, and authored The Healing Land, the Bushmen have been seen healing a woman of stomach cancer, and causing children who have had chest complaints no longer coughing. Their system has evolved over thousands of years; they heal by using trances. Healing is a very important part of the Bushmen’s lives.

The Bushmen have healing rituals. According to Isaacson, they are all-night dances where healers go into a trance in order to cure ailment. These can be physical or psychological in individuals, or for the well being of the community as a whole. They sometimes will tie offerings to animal spirits to the trees, or will use drums in order to contact animal and ancestor spirits.

The Bushmen trance or healing dances are spectacular affairs. Richard Katz, an associate professor from Harvard University says they have these four times a month, on average. In her book The Harmless People, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas observes that the women sit in a circle around the fire with their babies on their backs and sing the medicine songs in several parts with falsetto voices and clap their hands in a sharp, staccato rhythm. Behind them the men dance one behind the other and circle around slowly taking very short, pounding steps in counterpoint to the rhythms of the singing and the clapping. This is accompanied by the sharp, high clatter of rattles—made from dry cocoons strung together with sinew cords—that are tied to their legs. The dance is a complicated pattern of voices and rhythms that make music that is infinitely varied and always precise. They take great care in these dances, they begin learning the songs and dances when they are children, and work for perfection in skill and timing all their lives.