San Rock Art by Lewis-Williams J.D.;

San Rock Art by Lewis-Williams J.D.;

Author:Lewis-Williams, J.D.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2013-01-31T16:00:00+00:00


I need to emphasise that the trance dance and its experiences are not peripheral optional extras for the San; dances and the experiences they induce are not rare, esoteric occurrences. On the contrary, medicine dances are central to daily life and are frequently performed: the dance and its experiences suffuse San thinking. The San medicine dance is the conceptual context that makes Lebzelter’s report comprehensible.

Threads of light

When San shamans enter the spirit realm, a particular kind of vision closely parallels the painted line. They report seeing bright and iridescent sinuous lines along which they can walk or simply glide. They also treat these lines as ropes that they can grasp and climb as they ascend to the spirit realm in the sky. The lines they see can thus be both paths and cords. Researchers call them ‘threads of light’. Before going up to the sky, some San shamans say they enter a hole in the ground, travel underground for some distance and then emerge in another part of the country before they climb up to God’s house in the sky. There they plead for the sick and entreat God to assist them in their hunts.

Old K’xau , a Ju|’hoan shaman, gave Megan Biesele a detailed account of how he had learned to climb these lines. His ‘helper’ the giraffe (a source of great potency) came and took him and showed him the way. He followed a line that led him underground, through a subterranean river and up towards the sky. ‘I take them and climb them. I climb one and leave it, then I go climb another one.’ Biesele comments: ‘Great attention is given to trancers’ accounts of what they have experienced, and no one’s account of a genuinely altered state is belittled … His listeners regarded it as an important piece of the truth and … I also regard it that way.’26

Some shamans speak of engaging with the threads of light in dreams. Sometimes a thread breaks, and a climber falls to earth: ‘His body at home will just sleep.’ Meanwhile the marooned shaman has to wait until it is dark again. He then makes his way back to his camp. But usually the threads hold. A Ju|’hoan shaman exclaimed: ‘Isn’t the thread a thing of n|om, so it just has its own strength? You learn to work with it.’27

We can now see that the painted line that passes through the Linton panel is a depiction of ‘threads of light’. It links shamans to the spirit world. In the next chapter we consider some more features of the line and try to answer the question why belief in it is so widespread.



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