Chronicle Editor
NOW and then, I have to constantly check that my articles are on course. There is a strong tendency to drift towards the mundane, the pedestrian and cultural practices, without reference to the underlying, underpinning and informing cosmology, worldview, thought, philosophy and beliefs.
The main thrust of these articles is not rendering examples of application of principles, rules and laws. The latter three, constitute the thrust and essence of the articles. Admittedly, readers enjoy reading about the results of applied science, an example of which is when infidels get into some sexual lock from which they cannot escape.
Indeed, for the curious, these are fun-filled and hilarious stories. However, what I sought to achieve from the outset , was not to entertain readers with weird and bizarre stories. It had always been my intention to unravel and unpack the science and craft behind the exhilarating observations.
Critically important, is to provide knowledge behind a practice. It is easy to practice skills and implement these with little by way of underlying knowledge.
I was reading one community newspaper, Indonsakusa that carried a story about the curriculum that has been approved by the Cabinet of Zimbabwe. In fact, all other community newspapers run by the Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust (ZMMT), carried the same story.
Professor Amon Murwira, who is Minister for Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology Development, chairs the Cabinet Committee on Human Capital Development. He was quoted as having said, “Cabinet has approved the Heritage-Based curriculum (2024-2030), which is expected to transform the education system to produce citizens with relevant skills, applied knowledge, values, and dispositions that are key for national development. “
For me, the knowledge is not confined to that which has been acquired through Western epistemologies. The AAS that I am dealing with, has its own forms of theoretical knowledge, skills and applied knowledge. I refer to this, so that we are not content with one form of knowledge.
There is more to it out there among Africans who peddle in AAS. It is important to go beyond the skills acquisition and seek the knowledge behind the practice. Quite often, most of us acquire skills and applied technology and techniques to the total exclusion of the knowledge that is being applied.
This is certainly the case with AAS. Its peddlers are despised and even hated by society. The practitioners are no more than mere crafters, who possess the skills and the expertise, but not the underpinning knowledge. This I am trying to avoid. I seek to figure out that which forms the basis and knowledge behind the fun-filled experiences and cultural practices that are socially repugnant and run counter to positive social values.
In the few coming weeks I will seek to isolate principles, laws and rules that form the basis of cultural practices as applied within the context of witchcraft and healing. We argued, from the outset, that the underlying science for both fields is the same. The difference comes when the purposes are considered. The harvesting, concentration and unleashing of energy towards an identified target is the same.
One is destructive while the other is constructive and of some positive value. It is the common science that we seek to isolate and unpack. In this article, we begin with the cultural practice that we alluded to last week-where couples engage in anti-social sexual escapades. In the end, they end up locked together as was reported from Jinja in Uganda.
Many sexual locking instances have been reported amongst numerous African communities. Fencing is practiced in all cases and locking takes place where there is fencing, what a wedding ring is supposed to do and depict, has been arranged. Symbolism is applied and we seek to explain and interpret the phenomenon within the context of African knowledge and its applied technology in terms of both locking and unlocking.
It is important to appreciate that this practice should not be viewed as witchcraft. In fact, the couples who do it are not witches and wizards. Witchcraft in the true sense of the concept embraces spirituality and associated science and technology. A man may approach a traditional doctor to get the ritual formula for sexual locking.
The traditional healer himself or herself is not a wizard or witch. The individual who resorts to fencing his partner from scavenging individuals is not a witch or wizard. We need clarity regarding what is and what is not witchcraft or sorcery.
Some will remember last week’s statement regarding prisons in African communities. “Africa had no prisons. Africa had prisons.” Individuals who engage in infidelity learn the painful and embarrassing way. Their relatives are embarrassed and there is no prison worse than that.
Fencing is a case of censuring sexually marauding individuals. We are not here being judgemental. Our business is to seek explanation and interpretation of what we have termed symbolism and its power of manipulation and the purposes it serves within communities and societies.
For many years, I have cited examples of symbolism. The one example referred to more recently, pertained to iron smelting. Sexual symbolization applied. Let us begin there and see whether through it we may decipher the concept of symbolism. What starts is sexuality within the human context. There are two sides to the biological act, male and female. Sexuality lies behind continuity, eternity perpetuity and endlessness of the human race. Concisely, it guarantees and underwrites sustainability if we choose to use business language. Ritual killing is in this context a fulfilment of ideas and understanding of sexuality and its power and potency in reinvention, procreation and rebirth.
This provides the primary observable phenomenon that translates to eternity. The phenomenon so happens to be positive, but its replication and application in another situation may be antisocial. Ritual killing acknowledges the power of eternity behind sexuality. The sexual organs and/or the fluids from the sexual act capacity for replication. These are therefore sought after, for the purposes of manipulation of the same, with the intention of replicating the same condition in a different situation. It is about producing like.
The power and result of sex is replicated. For that, an individual’s sex organs are identified as possessing the power and capacity to replicate a secondary situation out of use of the same organs considered primary in a natural situation. The secondary situation may be of a business nature or even within a crop field, where bountiful harvests are promised or replicated with the power and potency of sexuality as manipulated and used in a different situation.
Before referring to another example, let us point out that symbolic manipulation is replicating like in a difference situation. This may not make sense in a human knowledge system, where such beliefs are not entertained, largely because they are not understood. A different knowledge system may be applicable.
For Africans, treating an illness is not always about applying some isolatable active chemical ingredient. Far from it!. Symbolic manipulation may be applied, of course within a broader field, where some pharmacological ingredient may be used. The field of symbolic manipulation in the African world is broad and complex but makes use of readily identifiable principles and rules.
Desired situations and conditions may be replicated by producing the same situations and or conditions in another context, different in terms of locality and nature or both.
Let us now turn to the more recent case of sexual locking and work as meticulously as possible to unpack the process, with a view to interpreting it. As already indicated, application in this case does not translate to witchcraft. It is just a science that may be applied in the manner of Western scientific application.
Energy and spirit need not be invoked. Nor does one have to carry out the act in the nude at night. It is just science in the same principle as lifting a 50-ton rock slab to construct pyramids. It was not witchcraft that did that. A principle such as telekinesis may have been applied and invoked.
It is not the same as witchcraft that makes use of applied science that we refer to as technology. Now let us turn to the dog-locking observation and application. On the basis of African knowledge terms, the fluids from the sexual act are imbued with the power of locking. The primary and observable phenomenon is dogs that are engaged in a lock up after sex. Remember we did refer in an earlier article to the fluids that witches extract after their permissive sexual acts at their known GP. King is real and not a myth. Many of us have watched the spectacle. The two sexually naturally locked dogs, pull in opposite directions and for quite some time they fail to separate. Good, that is what Africans saw and sought to ritually manipulate, so as to cause the same or like spectacle in human sexual relations. Man learns, copies and pastes.
There is something in that locked up situation that may be isolated and obtained for inducement of a like situation elsewhere beyond the two dogs. What is replicated is no longer a natural phenomenon as was the case with the two dogs. The one by-product of the sexual lock-up, are the fluids. We did refer to illicit and sex orgies that witches and wizards engage in at their GP at night. Those seeking to fence their partner or collect. The ritual formulae for those keen to purchase, kill a male dog or even both. The two sex organs are severed. Their proximity and/or agency is resident in the fluids that are an integral part of the sexual organs that were used during copulation. The condition for their production, during the lock, is replicated in the couple that is engaging is anti-social sex.
The next step is to replicate the locked up status with regard to one of the individuals within a couple. Once the trap has been set, any infringement results in activation of the potentially replicable situation or condition. Indeed, the result is locking up. Essentially, symbolic manipulation produces like in a different situation. For the condition to be replicated there must be some material that is imbued with a condition from the primary state. That which is the essence in the production of the primary situation or condition has to be applied in a secondary situation, where a similar or like condition is desired. Khexe! Like is manipulated symbolically to produce like.
In the same vein, to terminate, end, and untighten a locked condition , it is imperative to make use of a ritual formula that symbolically works to produce opposite results. Unlike may be used to induce the production of unlike. That translates to a reversal, or unlocking.
Those who read last week’s article may remember the grass that was thrown over locked individuals at Jinja in Uganda. The principles of locking were the same as happens in southern Africa. In terms of unlocking, the principles were, once again, the same.
This is what I term Ancient African Science (AAS), from which Africans and indeed other races emigrating out of the cradle of humanity, derived their knowledge, skills and technologies.
Online Reporter