Chronicle Editor
Pathisa Nyathi
IT is easy to make pronouncements about the presence of spirits where none exists.
To some people, it sounds fashionable to appear to play host to some spirits of sorts.
This is not without a valid claim or reason.
Where a spirit has manifested itself after more lying more or less dormant since conception and birth, there is unfounded expectation regarding what a spirit is able to achieve.
Beyond manifestation and ritual initiation, a functional spirit has certain attributes, characteristics or capabilities that may bring honour and fame to an individual playing host or medium to the spirit(s).
Spirits bring with them certain gifts which society may consider of value.
As a result, wealth is sometimes contingent upon a successful spirit.
Admittedly, spirits have positive and negative aspects, which is a phenomenon in line with the universal Natural Law of Opposites.
Negative or malevolent spirits are driven by unbridled jealousy, sometimes hatred and will, without the slightest sense of guilt, visit harm to individuals who they may, for some reason or other, they may not like.
The nature and methodologies applied in the visitation process are vast and difficult to understand.
For example, there may be nocturnal visits in the company of like-spirited members who may desecrate graves in search of recently interred corpses.
Consuming these seems to give witches and wizards certain manifest powers to access the spiritual realm where they derive occult knowledge of their trade.
They acquire knowledge that is more advanced and skills of their trade.
This should not be seen or understood as pertaining to the negative side of spirituality.
The positive one is equally subjected to some gruesome orgies and seemingly anti-social rituals all aimed at facilitating communication with the spiritual realm.
Consuming rancid human flesh is certainly not driven by the desire to nourish the body in the usual manner known to us normal humans.
Nourishment yes it is, but of a different dimension and expected results.
It is a pity that the profession of witchcraft, maligned as it is, is not sufficiently and empathically studied.
I am more convinced now than ever before, that the feared craft carries the secrets of the origins of humanity and other phenomena that Western science is only beginning to grapple with.
Ritual killing and associated cloning resulting in the creation of beings of a different kind and nature is a case in point.
New beings so created are employed by certain people to undertake certain tasks and, in the process, lighten the burdens on humans.
Tasks that are said to be performed include herding large herds of cattle, undertaking crop production and being sent on long errands.
It seems a thinly veiled recital or replay of the original creation myth where people tell us about the gods (the Annunaki) that arrived on out planet from the world of aliens ( a different planet).
Then there were two classes of gods, the ruling gods and the worker gods whose task was mining gold for shipment to the world of the ruling gods(the aliens).
Let us not stray too far for now, beyond appreciating that spirits bring to their hosts or mediums, certain gifts that may bring wealth, power and influence. One of these is the power of healing.
Humans all over the world seek good health, necessary for continued existence.
They will go to the end of the world in order to ensure they have good health when afflicted by all manner of diseases and ailments.
Some of the conditions are of a spiritual nature and are known to defy treatment through Western medical intervention.
It is not always the case that biomedicines come to the rescue of humans to restore them to good health.
On the contrary, spiritual intervention may do the trick.
This is the essence in the Guta Ra Mwari (GRM) religion, which is understood or perceived as the hospital for the spiritually sick.
In the end, this is precisely what we shall be dealing with. Should a host who is endowed with such rare and unique gifts of the spirit then proceed to form and lead an organisation such as the Salvation Army, the Anglican Church, and the Roman Catholic Church that I shall argue, are not driven by or seek to centre spirituality.
These are religious organisations.
This theme will be taken further when we deal with training for service within the religious and spiritual organisations.
For now, we recognise the important quality of healing imbued in the spiritual host but not necessarily in his followers who have been constituted into some kind of congregation.
Self-preservation demands that humans be forewarned and thus forearmed where perilous situations may be looming beyond the horizon. Prevention is better than cure.
There are men and women of spirit who possess the power to see impending events, both good and bad.
The bad are the more important as these must be obviated.
This ability may be termed prophesy and among the Ndebele and other Nguni tribes such people are known as izanuse, with the best known having been Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa (1921-2020).
Spirit has the power to scan the past, the present and the future. In fact, there are people who posit that the present, the past and the future play out at the same time, in the same space-time dimension as posited by Albert Einstein but known to the Nguni people long, long ago before Einstein was born.
Credo Mutwa, advancing the knowledge of language, claims umkhathi (space) and isikhathi (time) are fused into one.
Beyond healing and prophesy (ukuhlahlula, ukuvumisa, ukukhanyisa et cetera) what is really sought is preservation of a full life.
Healing does precisely that.
Prophesy too aims at that although dealing with catastrophic events and activities that lie in the future and are obviated well in advance, in the present.
This is spirituality for the good of the human race, its survival and continuity.
Man, applying and appealing to spiritual powers, places his interest at the centre.
After all, the departing spirits at the time of death were summoned back, say after 12 months, for a very clear purpose — to take care of their own living progeny.
The ritual is known as umbuyiso, which now has had its essence and thrust converted to some kind of remembrance of our dear departed.
We conduct memorial services, which do not pretend to summon back the departed immortal spirits to take care of the mortals who continue with their lives on the material plane, as living beings who look upon their ancestral spirits to underwrite their welfare on the sometimes-harsh environments.
We have, without doubt, jumped the gun by not dealing with first things first.
It is pertinent to deal first with the development of a spirit prior to its operational activities going at full throttle.
Manifestations are important together with accompanying vulnerability.
Premature manifestations may sometimes be suppressed to allow for biological and psychological maturity.
Knowing that spiritual functionality is about keeping communication channels open between the worlds of the mortals and immortals open at all times, initiation rituals are conducted to make sure maximum interaction between the mortals, and immortals within different existential realms is facilitated and sustained.
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