The Sunday News
I have in the past lamented the decline of knowledge and information relating to the stars and other cosmic bodies. Astronomy has always been very important in the lives of Africans. This is particularly so for an African people who posited some definitive link and connectedness between themselves and the movement of the stars and other cosmic bodies. From time immemorial, the stars shone from the heavens. Various ethnic groups in Africa and elsewhere gazed the stars to discern the messages imbued in cosmic circumstances.
From a practical perspective, the heavens have been in the firmament and signifying eternity, continuity, perpetuity and endlessness. This was something that human beings cherished and desired. The adage, “As above, so below,” was coined out of that realisation. People will go to the ends of the world to attain eternity and endlessness. Despite all the concerted efforts, this has not been possible at individual level.
Not so long ago I coined an adage, “Individuals perish, but humanity is forever.” There comes a time when the two, body and soul, have to part ways, with one of the two destined for irreversible permanent death, with no prospect for resurrection any time soon, now or in the future. It was my own observation and acknowledgement that despite man’s spirited attempts at living forever, the result has always been failure.
Nevertheless, the soul or spirit, upon irrevocable divorce, heads for eternal life, albeit in a different realm, the spiritual realm that is a dimension diametrically opposed but complementary to that on the material plane. The soul, so believe the Africans, goes through various stages in its destiny. It manifests itself in various forms, constituting incarnation through the stages such as grass, trees, reptiles, snakes and ultimately the bird stage. The bird stage is unique in that, unlike other stages, a bird is gifted with flight, lightness and the ability not to be always grounded to the earth.
A bird, because of its unique traits, is able to navigate the spaces between Heaven and earth, between the material earthly world and the cosmic heavenly world.
This is viewed as the final stage in the unending cycle of life where there are numerous transformations and incarnations associated with the soul or spirit residing in various forms of nature. The bird stage symbolises and concretises the final journey to the stars.
The transition places the critical link between Heaven and earth, with the latter being influenced by the former. The ancestral stage is linked to African Spirituality. It is for this reason that African Spirituality has been perceived and labelled as astral religion. African Spirituality, symbolised by the stars, has led to the perception that we are the children of the stars, “abantwana bezinkanyezi zeZulu.” Our fate is intricately bound with that of the heavenly bodies.
As a result, gazing the heavens is a keenly followed occupation as the future of humanity is bound with that of stars and their world — the heavens or cosmos. This is where astronomy comes in. It is the basis for our keen interest to give accounts of the origins and attended meanings of stars as found in the various stories, legends and mythologies of African ethnic groups. The present, “Journey to the Stars,” is an attempt at collecting African ideas about their presumed links with the stars and efforts to study and document the connectedness.
It is not about whether their beliefs are true or not true. It is about their behaviour as informed and underpinned by those beliefs. Those behaviours are real and their consequences are real. After all, the perspectives that matter are those of the believers, the practitioners and not uninvited commentators who are incapable of getting into the minds of Africans but are more than keen to seek validation and authentication of African knowledge and epistemologies. We do not need such intervention.
This takes me to the African people whose astronomical advances intrigued and charmed me. I am here referring to the Dogon of Mali who today occupy the hilly country having been hounded there by the colonising French. These people have, over a long period, fired my imagination and keen interest in the connectedness between heaven and earth by an African group. Examination of their motifs and the rendered meanings reveal their unrelenting efforts in seeking meaning and the complex relationships between the two realms of life-the heavens and the earth.
When I sought to broaden the horizons of knowledge ancient people and their times, I found the Dogon to be the bearers of African wisdom and beliefs. Through African Spirituality, they advanced their knowledge of stars, in particular the star known as Sirius or the Dog Star that they understood and knew about ahead of NASA. However, it was their symbolic links with the very oldest of the world’s monuments such as Gobekle Tepe that opened in me new vistas to the ancient world.
I got to know about Dogon motifs at the Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. These compared favourably. Was it a connection of ideas through movement of people or ideas moving independently of human agency?
Could it have been ideas moving through advanced communication means that we cannot imagine were possible then? Similar “padlocks” have been identified in a cave, uBhalu lwaMaxaba within the Matobo Hills, not far from Halale Primary School.
The Dogon and the residents of Gobekli Tepe shared common birds, common snakes, common “padlocks” and a lot more. The question that arises is, “Was there some connection between the African group and the residents at the world-famous Gobekli Tepe? We certainly cannot pretend we know much about the past and its connectedness — from Matobo Hills to the Dogon in Mali and onwards to the Paleolithic monument in Turkey.
It would have been amiss if the Dogon did not possess ideas about the moon that is nearer than the Dog Star, Sirius. As already pointed out, the Dogon possessed intimate knowledge about astronomy. Indeed, included in their knowledge were ideas about the moon, the moon nearest to us. Among the Dogon, the moon served to break down time into small manageable units — the lunar months.
Passage of the moon informs religion, the opening of markets and other social activities not tied to environmental change. Different conceptualisations of the month was highlighted in the field of work.
Africans were dragged into the field of employment with wages pegged at the end of each month.
However, the months were different. For the African worker the month etched in his mind was the lunar month, and yet the employer had in his mind the Gregorian month.
The resolution of the idea, as expected then, went in the direction of the employer. His month held sway and the lunar month that Africa had always known was de-emphasised. It was symbolic de-emphasis not just relating to the month but everything African where a choice had to be made between African and European conceptualisations.
For the Dogon and indeed other African ethnic groups the emergence of the crescent moon marked the beginning of a month, a lunar month. The new moon began complete with its new tasks. It marked the process of rebirth and a new beginning. It marked not just the assumption of new tasks but also the revitalisation of continuing tasks.
Among many African people, lunar phases mark transitions and understandings of fortune and misfortunes, good and evil, and predictability and change. Where social life processes were conducted, a new moon marked the beginnings of every new stage. A newly born baby remained in confinement until the emergence of a new moon.
That became a way of registering its birth, tying down a birth to the moon and lunar month when a baby was born.
The critical elements in the birth record were links with the moon and thus the link with the spiritual dimension. At the same time, it was a material record of time of birth.
From the outset, the idea of Duality of Being was taken on board as a reflection of African conceptualisation of the nature of being and the connectedness to the spiritual realm. What was recorded on earth was recorded in heaven. “Okulotshwe emhlabeni kulotshiwe laseZulwini!”
As was pointed out in some earlier article the year was the next to be recorded in terms of memorable events of whatever nature that took place at the time of birth. The preservation of the year of birth was through preservation of oral narratives. Another way was to do so through the naming process. The children born in a particular year were given names that captured, documented and preserved the record. Our names were our archives.
Certainly, Africans had good reason to keep track of the advances of celestial bodies. Their fate on earth, their names and their birth records were tied to cosmic movements and their relative positions in the firmament.
