Stories that Float from Afar – Dianne Hofmeyr

Slipstreaming Celia’s wonderful blog Shadows in the Cave, I’ve kept to the realm of the cave with Stories that Float from Afar. 

An entrance into a coastal cave in the Robberg Peninsula in South Africa 

a cave entrance into the Pyrenees evokes a passage in another world

The concept of the rock face as a veil separating man from the spiritual world is evidenced in the paintings often being found in the deepest, darkest, almost inaccessible places, with animals often painted disappearing or reappearing from a crack in the rock surface. The artist seems suspended between two worlds and the animals are embodiments of power. They bring rain, they transform, they bring ill fortune, also luck and are often seen walking along a thread of light, probably a symbol of energy, that in modern times might be seen as a current of energy.

The paintings have been linked to ritual moments that induce an almost hypnotic state of trance. One can imagine as Celia mentions in her blog the flickering shadows cast on the rocks from burning tallow, creating atmospheric affects. The animals must have appeared to come alive. The lighting, together with the music, drumming and dancing that accompanied the ritual, must have created what can now be seen almost as the first audio-visual representation of storytelling. In fact it has all the essentials of modern film… all very real.

Quoting from The Shaman of Prehistory –Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves by David Lewis-Williams retired Professor of Cognitive Archaeology and Jean Clottes, the renowned French expert on Rock Art:

Shamans from many parts of the world, acquire an association with a spirit-animal and the supernatural potency that it bestows. It is this potency that empowers them to heal the sick, control the movements of animals, change the weather and preform other shamanic tasks. 

The eland - a southern African antelope has long been associated with potency

sketch of above shows clearly shaman with same crossed-leg posture - his head transformed an eland

I tried to capture a moment of transformation in my novel, Fish Notes and Star Songs where two teenagers are given shamanic powers:

The rock was starting to gleam. Layer upon layer of men and animals came floating up towards us. Surrounding us. Dancing and chanting. The cave wall had grown vaporous. I reached out to touch it. There was nothing there… only music filling the space.

Music… and the feeling of my body changing. Out of the darkness a cheetah stared back at me. Eyes reflecting amber. Sleek shoulders spotted with black and gold. High, honeyed cheekbones ridged with black. 
‘Come!’ The word was more a pant than a word. 
I stepped forward. Felt the strange weight of my flanks. Felt the heaviness of horns on my head. I flicked my head from side to side. Snorted the dust from my nostrils. The earth seemed to reel. 

Much of what we know of rock art and shamanistic belief has come from discovering the stories of the San through the voice of a man called //Kabbo in the Lloyd and Bleek manuscripts. In the 1860’s – 1870’s //Kabbo was truly suspended between two worlds… captured for so-called sheep stealing from his home deep in the interior of Southern Africa, he was brought to Cape Town and committed to hard-labour building the new Victoria breakwater. His name //Kabbo means ‘dream’ and through him and the painstaking work of William Bleek and his sister-in-law, Lucy Lloyd, the first people to find a way of transposing the San spoken word into written English, he was able to tell of the beliefs of the early rock artists.

And in the words of //Kabbo explaining our place on earth:
‘Therefore we are stars –we must walk the sky because we are heaven’s things.’
And explaining the concept of story, or kukummi, as his people called it:
‘Story is like the wind, it floats from afar’. 

tools of the trade - oyster shells and ochre, quills and feathers