STRANGE DIVINATIONS

By

Sasha Fenton

It was suggested that I should write some articles about unusual forms of divination or “fortune-telling” for the Mercury and there is no shortage of them, as almost anything can be used a tool to focus a reader’s mind and intuition. Some tools obtain power because the reader meditates over them and pours cosmic energy onto them before using them for the first time, while others are powerful by nature. Tarot cards are no more than painted bits of paper until the reader “charges them” before their first use. Crystals carry their own energy because they are part of the earth itself, although a reader will also charge these before use. The same principle goes for African Witchdoctor’s bones. The bones come from what had once been a living animal, so the Africans consider them very powerful. Although some “bones” may actually be stones, crystals, seeds, shells and other natural objects.

If you want to become a proper Sangoma, you will need to go through an extensive period of training. Some of this is similar to sitting in a development circle, but with an emphasis on dowsing and finding hidden objects. Some training involves learning how to make powders that bring good or bad luck to bear on others, and in bad cases how to make or send a Tokolosh or bad spirit to someone. If the trainee wants to become an Inyanga (healer) there is a great deal of herbal and medical training to complete.

Other parts of the training involve wearing a goat’s gall bladder in one’s hair for six months. Yet others require the trainee to drink dreadful concoctions that make him vomit or become ill, rather like being in “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here”! The final part always involves killing an animal (either a goat or a cow) by stabbing it matador style. The animal then provides the bits of bone, horn and hoof that become the Sangoma’s own personal tools.

The Sangoma will carve, paint or decorate these bones to show the upright and reversed position. The upright side is the one that is visible, while the side that is lying on the ground as reversed. Various types and sizes of bone represent people such as father, mother, uncle, aunt, brother, sister, boss, enemy, friend, associate, teacher and so on. The various shells, stones and seeds each have a meaning. The interpretations that the Sangoma uses are a combination of “standard” ones passed down from one Sangoma to the next, along with some meanings that he picks up by experience.

If you want to try your hand at this kind of reading, you need to equip yourself with something that will pass for bones, that is unless you fancy killing your own cow or saving some bones from your roast dinner. I suggest that you buy some children’s bricks or some wooden beads, then use different size and colour objects to represent mature men and women, young men and women or children. You can use the colours and shapes to represent different types of person, such as a manual worker, a clerk, a financial wizard, earth mother and much more. You can also judge whether a person is angry, happy, in love, sick, short of money and more by designating meanings to the colours and shapes. Perhaps red for active, green for loving, blue for talkative, yellow for intelligent, brown for rich, cream for poor and so on to suit. In time, add shells, stones, seeds or anything else that takes your fancy.

You should delegate certain items to represent protection by the client’s ancestors. Some Africans use tiger’s eye stones for this. Africans view their ancestors in much the same way that we view spiritual guides, guardian angels and so on. Other pieces can represent good luck and abundance. For obvious reasons, seeds represent this as they are the basis of life and growth. Other items represent evil people or times of bad luck – some Africans use jasper for this. Other pieces can refer to love, marriage, money, work, health, children, neighbours, pastimes, pets and anything else you can think of. Wrap your bones in an attractive piece of cloth or keep them in a box and store them on a high shelf. Also, keep an attractive piece of cloth and a compass with your bones.

Now, sit on the ground opposite your client and put your cloth on the ground. Ask him to concentrate on his question while you hold the bones in your hands. Make a prayer for guidance and then, when you are ready, throw the bones onto the cloth. Now you can assess the client’s situation. The client’s significator bone will depend upon sex, age, colouring, star sign, nature, career or anything else that you have designated for your bones. The bones around the significator will show what is going on. Timing could be by the proximity of the bones or this may relate to physical distance - such as a distant bone representing a child who lives at a distance. You can use a compass to show whether those who have an effect on the client’s life live or work to the north, south, east or west of him. Africans always know where they are in relation to other places because they spend their lives out of doors and in sunlight. We need a compass to know where north is.

Other refinements that help are divisions of the area on which the bones fall. You can mark or embroider your cloth with concentric circles so that it looks a bit like a target. It could be divided into four squares, or different areas of the pattern on the cloth can be designated to mean good, bad, soon, distant in time, near, afar and so on. Some areas may relate to events that are close to home or within the family and others relate to work, the world at large, or things and people that are at a distance. A very African method is to have two parallel lines that run diagonally across the cloth. Then the Sangoma reads the items that fall within the lines as good and happening within a short period of time, those that fall above and to the right as good, although further away in time and finally, those that fall below and to the left as being no good at all.

As you can see, this is not a particularly easy method of divination but it is an extremely effective one. Any divination “works up” a person’s intuition and helps to develop psychism, and African Sangomas are extremely psychic. Many are powerful physical mediums who can bring good and bad luck to others in ways that we disapprove of, but their traditions are different from ours. I have real bones made from chicken’s legs and feet along with stones and seeds which I bought while I was in Africa. I discovered that they work very well indeed and they are easier to read than tea-leaves or sand, although the system is similar.

Summer 2005