The Xhosa Healers of Southern Africa: 2. The songs sung in a healing ceremony

In The First paper in this series the intlombe, seen as a healing dance, was discussed and its structure and function as a dancing mandala was explored (BÜHRMANN 2). An earlier paper had demonstrated the use of the intlombe in the case of an igqira (traditional healer) who was in poor health, emphasising the whole of the verbal communication (BÜHRMANN I). We now propose to concentrate on the songs sung at a particular intlombe and to indicate their association with the life events of the principal participant, her memories, moods and feelings. Some of the themes touched on now will be enlarged upon in a subsequent paper, which will describe the rest of the proceedings. Our present aim is to make a contribution to a problem which Jung considered to be central not only to psychotherapy but also to individual development (JUNG 6). After defining the archetypes of the unconscious, he writes about the ‘entirely new task’ facing the ego, ‘the question of how the ego is to come to terms with this psychological non-ego’. The songs of this healing ceremony will give some indication of how the Xhosa people do this. This paper will concern itself with the initial stage only of a much longer ceremony.

Some of the material was collected during a weekend when the authors were doing field work in the Ciskei, but much of the background information had been acquired over a period of five years' research. The Ciskei is inhabited by Xhosa people and is situated in the North-eastern coastal area of Southern Africa. One of the authors (J.N.G.) is Xhosa-speaking, and it was therefore possible to get the words of the songs and the translations as accurate as possible. We attended the proceedings as participant observers. The main participants were well known to both of us. To understand the material it is necessary to have some knowledge of the cosmology of the Xhosa people.

As far as sickness and healing are concerned, the concepts of the ancestors and of witchcraft are most important. The