African Shamans, Rock Painting

Rock art played an important role in ritual practice among southern African hunter-gatherer communities. Painting and engraving traditions developed over the last 20,000 years into a highly sophisticated way of expressing complex beliefs about the supernatural world. 

Rock art was the preserve of medicine people, or shamans, and had two functions: as a means to enter the supernatural world and record the shaman's experiences in that world.

Travel to the spirit world. The shaman prepared to enter the realm of the spirits by achieving a state of trance or altered consciousness. This could be done by dancing to rhythmic clapping or chanting or hyperventilation, dehydration, sensory deprivation or intense concentration.

There is no evidence that shamans used drugs or other artificial means to induce trance, although this is possible. The shaman carried out important tasks while in the natural realm, such as healing the sick, making rain and communicating with powerful spirit forces. 

The Image above is the famous 'dancing kudu' rock engraving at Twyfelfontein, which is surrounded by geometric patterns chipped into the surrounding rock, Geometric riddles.

The shaman’s vision became disturbed at the start of trance, and he would 'see' patterned flashes of light. Produced in the brain, these flashes are also known as entoptic images or images ‘in the eye’. They are depicted in the seemingly abstract geometric images in the rock art. Meanders, dots, lines, grids, spirals and whorls resemble entoptic or inner-eye images recorded in neurophysiological experiments. Although entoptic images are similar for all people in the world, the associations formed in a state of trance are contextual. 

The shaman fuses his hallucinatory visions with images of animals and other potent spiritual symbols.

It is likely that making the engravings helped to prepare the shaman for a state of trance. The repetitive chipping at the rock and the monotonous sound could have contributed to mental concentration. Perilous journey. 

Entering into the stare of trance, the shaman would experience a variety of physical sensations: he might feel as if his legs are growing unnaturally long, or that he is rising from the ground. He would shiver and struggle to control his movements, sometimes collapsing on the ground with a gushing nose-bleed. This second stage of trance was known as the ‘little death’, the moment of entering the spirit realm. 

Transformation. Following the death-like stage, the shaman would take on the form of a supernatural creature.   This ability to enter the supernatural world and return alive was a rare gift not possessed by everyone. Shamans were extraordinary men and women, who left an exceptional artistic legacy. About 35,000 years ago, some our ancestors who are well established in South and Central Africa began to express their artistic prowess.

This might be a familiar animal, such as a giraffe, elephant or lion, one that has special powers such as to heal or make rain.

The evidence is from the elegance of prehistoric African art unearthed in southern Africa, presently located in the Pretoria Museum, approximately 30,000 years old. Cut by flint stone tools by prehistoric indigenous Africans. In addition, was the reconstruction of a stone age African skull-cast, such African lived during the same period as the artist who made the original cast about 25,000 BCE. To

To view a Prophetic Sharman from South Africa please watch this video, Credo Mutwa - Visions of The Future and draw your own conclusions.