The Sunday News
Phathisa Nyathi
THE link between the moon and the African traditional doctor and healer appears at more levels, one of which is the word used when a new moon appears. “Inyanga isithwasile!”, a new moon has appeared. This is in reference to the sighting of a new moon in the western sky. The chant that we alluded to earlier is made at this time when the moon becomes visible. It is a crescent moon, “uzipho”, a fingernail as the Ndebele call it. Its appearance is important in that dating of birth is based on the appearance of a new moon.
For now, let’s pursue the link between the new moon, the term used to describe it and the traditional healer. In most instances one becomes a healer after suffering some incurable health condition. Western diagnostic measures fail to pin down the health problem. When African traditional diagnosis is resorted to, only then is the condition of ill-health understood and appropriately diagnosed. This is the initial stage towards becoming a healer, for one who is endowed with spirituality. He/ she is in actual fact a spirit medium who would not hitherto have known of his/ her spirituality.
After this initial diagnosis, spiritual healing ensues. Recourse to western healing never meets with success. It is a spiritual condition that is alleviated through spiritual rituals which demand that the ailing person is attached to a traditional doctor who will supervise his/ her spiritual growth which culminates in spiritual healing of one who was afflicted with an incurable condition. The apprenticed individual stays at the home of one responsible for conducting spiritual rituals. It is a complex process that we cannot go into, suffice to say it is an elaborate spiritual process which ultimately enhances the spiritual content of the afflicted individual who in due course gets healed and is endowed with spiritual prowess to see the present, past and future. He/ she receives information from the spirit world regarding diagnosis of various conditions and associated remedies. He/ she has become an inyanga, a healer, isanuse or isangoma. The latter two are endowed with diagnostic powers. Some prefer to refer to them as diviners.
When apprenticeship comes to an end, the apprentice is said usethwasile. During attachment such an individual is said uyathwasa, he/ she is undergoing apprenticeship. The person is an ithwasa, and usenkundleni. The appearance of the new moon is known as ukuthwasa. When an apprentice graduates, the completion of the course is also referred to as ukuthwasa. The word ukuthwasa suggests attainment of a higher and more enlightened condition or state. When a Mathematics student finally grasps how simultaneous or quadratic equations are solved, we can rightfully say usethwasile. Attainment of knowledge and skills are at the centre of the process of ukuthwasa. A wizard or witch equally undergoes initiation at the end of which he/she is said usethwasile.
For our purposes the link has been established. A new moon is linked to the graduation of an apprenticed spiritualist, be it a herbalist or diviner. The common denominator is capacity to heal, hence the common name for both — inyanga, inyanga the moon in the sky and inyanga the traditional healer. Both are associated with healing, a condition or status that they attain after graduating to a new status that is different from an earlier one. For the moon, it is after transition from the “dark day,” “usuku olumnyama” and for an individual, it is after completing a course in spiritual apprenticeship.
We find yet another similarity between the two. The other name for the moon is “unyezi,” a term that denotes brightness. “When the moon is ‘dead’” it has lost its brightness. We cannot see it in the sky. Lunar potency is thus linked to, and associated with light, or bright light. When the moon is “dead,” “inyanga ifile,” traditional healers are likewise “dead.” Due to loss of their moon-related and moon-derived potency the, like the moon, are without spiritual power. When a new moon appears they wash or bath in the potency of the moon by collecting its power and potency, and then mixing it with certain water-based herbal formulations. The two, moon and the traditional doctor orbit the same circle and cycle during which they share common traits and attributes. It is a cycle of incremental acquisition of power and potency, regeneration/ waxing and its gradual loss, waxing. Within the cycle, healing potency and its loss are shared in temporally.
The link demands that the traditional healer closely monitors the advance and state of the moon. This is to avoid the dependant traditional healer acting in contradiction to the source of power, the moon. When a new moon appeared in the western sky, its configuration was closely observed and monitored. When the crescent moon is not facing up, or rather when it is facing sideways, it is welcomed with joy. The moon is said “ichithile”, it is emptying. What it is emptying are diseases. At other times, the crescent moon will be facing directly upwards. It is like a clay pot or some other container for either liquids or solids. Such a moon is described as “ibuthile”. It is collecting diseases. The moon thus communicates with its human counterparts on planet earth. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. The moon is foretelling difficult times that lie ahead.
Messages from the new moon are communicated to traditional doctors and other persons when the moon is not concealed by clouds. The chant “Kholiwe!” is made when the moon finally appears when clouds so permit, by allowing the moon to take centre stage in the heavenly theatre. Otherwise clouds come between the sender of messages, the moon, and the receivers or interceptors of the same messages, human beings, in particular spirit mediums. Pre-empting the foreteller or fortune teller is never a wise move.
It is Senator Watson Khupe again who points out that the chant, “Kholiwe!” or “Hhowa mwedzi wagala!” was shouted on the midden, esilotheni outside the homestead every time a new moon appeared on the western sky. Ash was symbolically significant to Africans. Ash is the final product of a raging fire which is the metaphor for conflict or war. As the end state of a conflict, ash represents and expresses peace. At this juncture, it is important to appreciate that disease is not always pathological. Conflict may thus be taken as a diseased state which requires symbolic healing or resolution.
The moon, in particular the new moon, is a healer. In order to reinforce the theme of healing the chant is made while one is standing on the midden, esilotheni. Once again, the same theme of healing is observed on the celestial front and on earth at the cultural level. The midden was taken as the site where monthly, twins were “bathed” in ash. Twins sometimes are given to quarrelling and fighting. That translates to war, a state comparable to a raging fire. The end of that debilitating state is ash, which symbolises peace at the end of a conflict. Similarly, an individual with a haughty character was advised to “bath” in ash at the appearance of a new moon. The thinking behind that is that the man’s condition is a disease, some kind of war within himself. Some dose of peace is what he desperately needs. The appearance of a new moon, in conjunction with bathing in ash, is a veritable formula at pacifying the man; and ushering peace to the troubled man. Once again, the moon is seen as a healer but this time working in conjunction with ash which is culturally understood to symbolise peace, a healed conflict situation.
All this points to the fact that peace building and its maintenance, will take root and become sustainable when understood culturally and cosmologically. Borrowing peace paradigms developed under different socio-political and cosmologically different conditions is a sure formula for disastrous failure.
