The Sunday News
INYANGA ifile. Inyanga ithwasile. The moon is dead; the moon is raised (arisen). Rendering this piece of concept and philosophy in English may not accurately hit the nail on the head. A language swims in its own pool, the cultural and historical context of its speakers. It is like a fish to water. Language swims in the waters of its speakers, within the historical and cultural context of its people. Expressions find meaning and relevance within that context.
Moon
I still remember going through a copy of some old Rhodesian newspaper that targeted the African readership, which bore the loud and emphatic screams, “The King is dead. Long live the King.” I consider the two cited statements as fundamentally expressing the same idea.
What dies is that which hitherto had life. This is a philosophical expression for the Ndebele people who posit that in everything there is life-whether the thing being referred to is animate or inanimate. The moon has a life of its own, and sometimes the life referred to is in the figurative sense. However, life is life regardless of whether it is figurative or literal. At some point in time, life has to end. Eternity, as once pointed out in this column, is a relative term.
Life has a cycle. In fact, there are varying cycles of life with some lasting a few days and others lasting several decades. The presence of cycles is what matters the most rather than the length of it. In this particular case the moon, the only moon that Mother Earth has, has a lunar cycle of about 28 days. That cycle tells time in terms of months that apparently were thirteen in the African year.
To die is to terminate life as known and understood. That death may be the end, with no hope at all for its resuscitation. Sometimes this is not that desperate as there is always hope for renewal, regeneration and rebirth. This happens to be the case with the moon. Its death is understood within the context of its movement, (waning), or orbit around its Planet Earth. It takes roughly 28 days to complete its orbit, its lunar travel around the earth.
For our purposes, what is of interest is that the movement of a cosmic body impacts on human cultural activities on the terrestrial plane. Not only is its impact confined within the cultural sphere, but it also extends to the natural domain. Tidal waves at sea respond (rise and fall) to the phases of the moon. The pull, that is expressive of heightened energy of the moon, varies according to its distance from Earth. Further, women’s menstrual cycles seem to correspond to lunar phases, the movements of the moon.
This was observed to be so by the various communities of the world. The component ‘mens’ in the word menstruation is Latin for moon. Indeed, in our various African languages the same biological condition is referred to as being “on the moon,” “arikumwedzi, usenyangeni, etc.” There will be several attendant cultural practices all resulting from lunar movements and positions in the firmament.
Humans on the terrestrial plane are not entirely independent of cosmic influences. Let us return to the royal adulation, and try to see some common thread that runs through the lunar statement and its royal counterpart. I argue that there are some fundamental underpinnings.
When a king dies, that is not the end of the world. It is the end of the material component of royalty. The indestructible spirit lives on. Therefore, it was the perception with regard to the ancients. However, more importantly the royal line did not end with the death of an incumbent king.
Instead, another individual was chosen, through recourse to established succession rules, to replace the late king. The incumbent king had completed his cycle/term as it were. Another one, in the same lineage, took over to renew and regenerate the ruling dynasty. Among the Shona wearing of a cyclical ndoro (conus shell) during royal installation symbolised the continuing succession. The two concepts are thus underpinned by the same concepts — that of renewal, rebirth and regeneration.
This was a cosmic observation that human beings in their cultural behaviour sought to copy or emulate. It was part of enduring efforts to replicate the admirable heavenly traits on the terrestrial plane. In some cases, lunar movement informed the copied aspect of behaviour. Let us consider the timing for the holding of Inxwala ceremony among the Ndebele people before the demise of their state. The position of the moon, resulting from its movement in the firmament, played an important role in deciding when the Inxwala Ceremony presided over by the king and king alone, would be held.
The one ubiquitous phenomenon in the universe is energy, perhaps to a greater extent than matter. All material substances have energy in one form or another. That energy is indestructible and may be transformed from one form to another but never completely eliminated. Perhaps this is the instance where we may genuinely refer to eternity as understood in terms of indestructibility, continuity, perpetuity, and endlessness.
Amounts of energy vary according to the movements and positions of cosmic and the geological makeup of different places on the terrestrial body. It has been recognised that the position of the moon, for example, translates to changing energy levels. In turn, these varying energy levels translate to varying potencies in relation to the successful or otherwise of performed rituals and ceremonies of a spiritual, social, cultural and economic nature. Inevitably, the position of the moon is monitored in order to take advantage of its maximum potency, which gives promise to successful performance of rituals and ceremonies.
Cultural astronomy was studied not for its mere academic fulfillment and egotistic aggrandisement, but in recognition of practical considerations and benefits. Cultural devices such as the monumental standing circular megaliths were erected solely to serve as astronomical calendars to keep track of the changing positions of some identified cosmic bodies. Those changing positons simultaneously tracked the changing potencies or energy levels with a bearing on the timing and thus wellbeing and welfare of practicing communities.
When we get deeper and deeper into the cultural astronomy of some African communities, we shall be developing some sort of template to use in unpacking the major components within the broad field of cultural astronomy. In the first place, we shall identify the community in question. Is it the Ndebele, Kalanga, Sotho, Shona, Nama (the San in Namibia) or the Zulu and Xhosa in South Africa?
Then we shall identify the cosmic body in question. Is it the moon, the constellation Pleiades, the Milky Way galaxy or the North Pole? Communities always sought to render narratives relating to the origin myths of a given celestial body. Even their own origins as human beings were not exempted. Are we some kind of biological hybrid between a natural animal species on earth and the cosmic Annunaki from some outer planet Nibiru?) We shall seek to unravel the underlying beliefs with regard to how identified cosmic bodies came into being. There are fascinating and sometimes hilarious accounts of how cosmic bodies are said to have come into being.
However, not all this knowledge and information is relevant to functionality. A community will also want to deal with and identify related traits and characteristics of a particular body and how these influence the lives of a given community. This is where functionality or utility come into and justify the work and effort that go into tracking and preserving relevant cosmic heritage relating to the heavens. Knowledge and information were never sought for their intrinsic value, but for their practical benefits.
Therefore, the product or condition mattered the most. The earlier stages in the search and preservation of knowledge and information relating to astronomy, facilitated a better understanding of the unified universal reality while the end condition was the most sought after-where benefits were realised. That happened to have been the case with a people who led a precarious life where their sustenance, welfare and wellbeing were neither taken for granted nor guaranteed.
The template that we seek to apply serves as a guide to facilitate a better and organised understanding of cultural astronomy and enables meaningful comparisons among the various communities. We shall be in a better position to draw comparisons even among communities that were wide apart in both physical and cognitive terms. As already gleaned from the moon, there were indeed commonalities among the ancients regardless of where they lived on the planet. The African heritage was still engaged in and applied before new forms of knowledge and information were developed independently of accumulated African heritage.
