The Sunday News
STARS have always had some influence on the cultural and spiritual activities of humans’ resident on Planet Earth. Apparently, this has remained so to this day, although the so-called less-developed communities attach more significance to the roles of celestial bodies, their movements in the firmament and resulting relative positions with regard to Planet Earth.
Not so long ago I found myself participating in some inaugural festival named after the Morning Star, Nyamatsatse as it is called in ChiShona. The festival, which brought on board the arts and spirituality, was the brainchild of Klara Ane Rosa, a Fulbright scholar of Polish descent.
The festival ran from the 14th to the 20th of July 2022. A festival that promoted cultural identity Nyamatsatse took on the name of the Morning Star that happens to be the brightest star, actually a planet, at dawn. I was invited to take part in the festival. I presented the keynote address on African Cultural Astronomy. I have always argued that Africans have had their knowledge of astronomy decline considerably.
On two different occasions, Klara visited me in Bulawayo in order that I would share with her what I knew concerning the stars. It was at the time when I was about to begin the series of articles in the Sunday News under the banner, “Journey to the Stars.” There was quite a lot that I shared with her, in particular the Zulu saying, “Singabantwana bezinkanyezi zezulu.” We are the children of the heavenly stars. The Zulu and other related ethnic groups posit some link between the stars and the origins of the human beings.
The festival of a rare kind linked the arts and spirituality. For example, Klara teamed with some theatrical performance to produce an electric mood when she played the violin. For quite some time I had observed the link between art and spirituality. During Nyamatsatse Festival spirituality, itself linked to the stars, was closely associated with the arts. The hand piano, mbira, was played against the background of billowing smoke from burning incense. Victor from South Africa was clad in spirit-related attire and had, in fact, undergone some spiritual initiation.
Milk Way
Victor has been to Adam’s Calendar, some megalithic stone circle believed to have been created and built over 200 000 years ago to monitor movement of stars in the firmament. This is comparable to Stonehenge where the megalithic stone circles kept track of movement of celestial bodies, the sun in particular. Not far from Lake Turkana in Kenya, there was also a circle of nine stone pillars that monitored the movement of stars in order to initiate rituals at the time of maximum energy and potency. The stone calendar was known as Naboratunga.
At the time when I was writing “Journey to Stonehenge” I did refer to yet another stone calendar that some people referred to as the Stonehenge of Africa. That was Nabta Playa in Egypt close to the border with Sudan. Among its functions was announcement of the arrival of monsoon rains. In a desert landscape, rains were an important resource for the livestock, the central pillar in the economy of the community that made use of the calendar to monitor changing weather condition on earth in response to celestial movements. As in the other similar megalithic sites, Nabta Playa embraced astronomy, economy and spirituality.
As pointed out earlier, names and naming in Africa were forms of documentation for the orally literate communities. In a name, there certainly was some relevant meaning. Contrary to what English writer William Shakespeare said, there is a lot that a name implies, designates and carries. A careful excavation of the name Nyamatsatse should reveal the first or literal meaning of the all-important Morning Star.
I did try on the morning of my presentation to consult what I thought were old people who would know better. I approached a man who looked the oldest in the hotel where I was booked. The man was miserably blank. Instead of admitting his ignorance, he advised me that the name had no meaning at all. He did not even know that the name referred to a Morning Star.
The man’s wife, not to be outdone in proffering ignorance, asked me where I came from.
“From Kezi,” I responded looking her in her eyes.”
“I come from Nyamatsatse,” she responded with absolute confidence.
“The word means nothing!”
I then proceeded to the staff at the reception. These were young persons who I did not think would know about Nyamatsatse. Well, to my utter surprise, a young man knew that it was the Morning Star. That was what I would term the second meaning, the figurative meaning. Though I did not know the first meaning, I knew well that the name has a meaning that may refer to the circumstances relating to the appearance of the star in the eastern sky.
The Kalanga refer to the star as Masasi. With the two languages being closely related, the naming of the star must have been inspired by the same attributes or circumstances, probably the brightness of the star at dawn and the fact that the emerging dawn with accompanying brightness of the soon-to-appear sun, brings hope and promise of continuing life.
Nyamatsatse is the brightest star at dawn. By dawn is meant the time when the sun is about to break the darkness that is associated with evil. Morning was welcomed with elaborate chants among Africans. The chants or incantations reveal why the night or absence of the sun was hated and feared. In a forthcoming article, we shall furnish a Kalanga chant bequeathed on me by Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu.
Njelele Mountain
What is important for the current series of articles is the fact that the chants are related to the movement of celestial bodies. The rhythm of day and night, of light and darkness, is created by movements of stellar bodies that emit light in addition to other forms of energy in the electromagnetic spectrum. Relative positions result in solar and lunar eclipses, and in day and night. Planets do not emit light of their own. Instead, they reflect light from hot stars. In the case of our Solar System, tucked in one of the four arms of the Milky Way, the sun is the dominant source of light and heat and is sometimes associated with drought conditions on earth.
It was thus appropriate for the organizers of the festival to name it after the brightest star at dawn. Beyond Nyamatsatse, other stars, constellations and galaxies were celebrated. The Milky Way, Orion, Isis, and Sirius were some of the celebrated celestial bodies with each name of the festival deriving from a star or constellation or galaxy.
During the festival of stars, there was the highlighting of film, art, theatre, literary reviews and workshops. Sadly, soon after my presentation I had to leave and travel back to Bulawayo.
The Njelele Fertility Shrine’s rituals were beckoning and they too were, in terms of their timing, informed by the movement of celestial bodies, in particular the sun and the moon.
