Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 413
the individual. This was explained to us by our friends from Kwalika (1995) and also by
Katiwa ga Ghuda (1996), a Ɗagha diviner and healer from Dzga, but now we return to
bulama Ngatha (1995).
Bulama Ngatha too said that if safa was taken away one would die, and mentioned in this
context the Dghweɗe word ghaluwa, which we translate as 'the cosmological world above'.
We will discuss this in greater detail in the next chapter, but need to introduce it here as the
celestial world which was thought of as a place above the firmament of this world, and which
the Christian Dghweɗe like to translate as heaven. It is important to note that John pointed out
that Traditionalists had no concept of heaven, at least not as a paradise or place of spiritual
salvation, but that they saw the celestial world rather as a place where sorcerers took the
abducted spirits of humans. This is what bulama Ngatha presumably meant by saying that the
spirit (sɗukwa) could be taken away from the body (vagha) and taken to ghaluwa, the world
above. Our Ɗagha diviner friend Katiwa ga Ghuda claimed that he could bring such a
kidnapped spirit back to the body without safa (the life force) suffering any harm, and in
Chapter 3.21 we will show photographs how this was demonstrated to us. He added that safa
was the Dghweɗe word for a healthy human soul, which suggests that sɗukwe was the more
vulnerable aspect of the mind. We therefore wonder how to best translate safa and sɗukwe as
structural elements of the Dghweɗe concept of existential personhood.
Before discussing the above, we want to briefly introduce the reader to the opposing concepts
of shatane and gwazgafte as synonyms for a more supernatural dimension of the human spirit.
While observing one of Katiwa ga Ghuda's demonstrative healing sessions, I asked which part
of his mind he was using to bring back a lost spirit, and he said was using his shatane. Since I
knew that the word shatane was not of Dghweɗe but of Arabic origin, I asked again, but now
asked what a fellow Traditionalist would think he was using. He answered that he would
think he was using his gwazgafte, which we interpret below as an integrated part of the
Dghweɗe system of existential personhood. We will discuss the Dghweɗe concept of divinity
(gwazgafte) in much greater detail in the next chapter, but as before with the concept of
ghaluwa, we need to summarise aspects of it in this chapter so we can describe gwazgafte as a
concept that was believed to be potentially dangerous and needed spiritual counteraction by
specialist healers.
We have already pointed out that the Dghweɗe celestial world above was not a harmonious
place, but more an area of conflict where sorcerers and healers fought over the wellbeing of
the human spirit (sɗukwe) after it had been kidnapped from the body (vagha) by vicious
means. This happened during the night when a person was asleep, and we remember, from the
chapter about the house as place of worship, the three-legged spirit or personal god pot that
bulama Ngatha positioned above his bed. While sorcerers and healers were seen only as
visitors from the celestial world, God (gwazgafte) was the overseer and maker of it all, and
God also had a family and his children were seen as personal gods with an attached gender
aspect. These were the personal gods of fathers and their children, and were represented by
spirit pots, while mothers did not need such spirit pots. We interpret the concept of personal
gods as mirror images of mortals, who kept guard over them in the divine dimension while
they were sleeping. A traditional house was a protected area against supernatural attacks, and
the father of the house was the custodian of that protection. This was the underlying reason
why a father and husband had ritual access to his personal god while his wife did not. In the
cosmological mirror image, God was the 'father' of the celestial world and as such he was the
overseer and creator of this world, and sent his 'children' to protect humans. Particularly
powerful healers could use their gwazgafte or shatane as talents to fight the sorcerers in the
celestial world above, and were seen as ritual experts in bringing those kidnapped spirits back
into the bodies of their fellow tribesmen.
We infer from this that soul, spirit, the body and divinity were not separate concepts, but were
rather fluid and overlapping in meaning. One historical reason perhaps was that they came
about as oral concepts in an egalitarian society, rather than as written religious dogmas as is
often the case in hierarchical societies. They were not linked to a ruling class of kings or
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