Chronicle Editor
Pathisa Nyathi
After a close look at concepts of sacredness and holiness, it seems there is yet a related one which has a bearing on the perception and understanding of the first two. It would seem that concept pervades the realm of sacredness and holiness and defines and delimits it. That concept is spirituality.
After dealing with Stonehenge for over a year the three concepts seem to interact, overlap and mutually interrelate.
Stonehenge, to some people, essentially is a cemetery, a burial place for the dead. To others, it was a sacred place because of it being the burial place of ancestors. Its stone architecture bequeathed it with the capacity to track the movements of celestial bodies and the resulting seasons. It told time to conduct rituals and even predicted solar and lunar eclipses and thus the varying ritual potencies in relation to corresponding movements and positions of cosmic bodies.
In some cultures, institutions known as churches or faiths deal with issues to do with sacredness and holiness.
Various faiths concern themselves with these ideas. What is sometimes referred to as African Traditional Religion (ATR), equally concerns itself with similar concepts. Where there is God and gods, ideas of sacredness and holiness always exist. Where people concern themselves with God and the gods, they are enmeshed in matters of spirituality or religiosity.
The vital question is whether religiosity and spirituality are the same concept or they are poles apart. Are the conventional churches, as we know and understand them today spiritual or religious institutions? What is a church?
What is spirituality? Answers to these questions will have some bearing on the operations, tenets, beliefs, doctrines and canons of such institutions. Is ATR more to do with religion or spirituality? Are we here dealing with matters esoteric or not? In days gone by, would we not be inviting the dreaded phenomenon of excommunication with its associated pariah state?
Going round and round as if following the contour lines allows one to get to the top without running out of breath or one’s knees holding instead of buckling. Having got to the summit with body, soul and spirit intact, what do we, when we look behind, derive and perceive from a bird’s eye view? It seems to have been a circuitous and tortuous journey to mundane questions that we are hazarding to delve into. It is like walking a tight rope, which angels fear to tread.
What does seem to loom large is the question of fractious religious or spiritual institutions. In Zimbabwe, the issue of schisms or fission within godly institutions is manifestly a reality.
Guns have blazed. Fists have feasted on flesh. The courts of law try hard to douse the consuming flames whose nature and intent may not be very clear to profane institutions that seek to dispense fairness and justice as they understand it.
Why is there so much acrimony, rancour, hostility and enmity within a sacred realm? Are the issues still about God or they have deviated from the sacred realm to the desires of flesh and whims of individuals?
This is a vexatious question, which at times generates more heat than light. When real motives are hidden, the bitter war is relegated to one of chasing shadows. The fracas degenerates to dog-eat-dog sort of feud. The casualties are the truth, honesty, verity, decency, morality, integrity and probity.
When we have gone full circle, we shall enquire whether it is right or possible for spiritual people to form and lead religious institutions. Where this happens, what are the implications and the social costs? Which institutions are associated with fractious tendencies and why?
It will be quite a while before we get to a point where we are in a position to answer these questions. What we shall seek to unpack and understand is the concept of spirit and spirituality from an Afrocentric standpoint. We do this quite cognisant of conceptual challenges and limitations relating to the use of the English language. Use of the
English language shrouds, clouds and complicates the concepts as we move from one language to another. The English language faces conceptual barriers when it has to traverse a tortuous and intricate African spiritual landscape.
To spirit we now turn and see what the African understands by it. After all, when we deal with fission and fractious tendencies we are here dealing with Africans rather than other ethnicities, at least within our Zimbabwean context.
The idea we are seeking to deal with is very much intangible, emotive and thoroughly tenuous.
In the absence of spirit, there would be no spirituality to talk about. Africans posit a Duality of Being, that is, body (material) and the spirit and soul coexisting. The material component is ephemeral and transient whereas the spirit is eternal and immortal.
The vital question that we have to deal with at the very outset is at what point does one become imbued with spirit? Some people view sex as a spiritio-biological process. The spirit, an ancestral spirit, is infused at the very time of conception.
A question begs an answer here. Is every person therefore born spiritual? Some differentiation is called for. In terms of the Duality of Being, we can say every human being is characterised by the presence of this spiritual dimension.
However, this is not the phenomenon that we refer to when we describe one as being spiritual. In the functional and conceptual sense, we are dealing with a related but different phenomenon.
In addition to the innate spiritual endowment, there is another different but similar kind of spirit which defines and sets apart the host or medium. Let us try to relate to a near practical situation. Once upon a time, there was a historical figure known as Thobela/Tovera/Tobela. He lived in Naphta, a district of Ethiopia. When he died, he, as spirit, later inhabited a medium, a spirit medium with that happening at conception.
It is important to differentiate between the soul as an integral part of every human being and the spirit of a preexisting historical figure, which is infused at conception. In the African spiritual world, the more important spirit is that of the historical figure which however has to be housed by the soul.
There are thus two related concepts, so to say. In fact, the additional spirits, over and above the soul, may be many. These are either male or female ancestral spirits.
For argument’s sake, let us take one well-known historical figure by the name of Thobela/Tobela/Tovera. He is known to have lived in the district of Naphta in Ethiopia. He was a ruler who believed in the Sun God. One of his descendants was Tjaminuka. Thobela’s spirit them inhabited Tjaminuka at conception of the latter.
That spirit of Thobela made Tjaminuka a great soothsayer/prophet whose spiritual services were sought by King Lobengula. In the initial stages, the spirit is more a potential than anything else is. Biological maturity has to take place before the spirit manifests itself.
Let us take a break here so that we move with extreme care and caution if we are to understand the concept of spirit and hence spirituality which has a bearing on the subject at hand. The spirit has to be elevated to a level where it is active and functional. That comes after the spirit has manifested itself. These two stages are critically important: manifestation and ritual activation.
To be continued…
Online Reporter