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We Are Greatly indebted to Dr Vera Bührmann and her co-author, J. Nqaba Gqomfa, for a description based on personal participation and an insightful analysis of the intlombe, an impressive healing ceremony often performed by the Xhosa people of eastern South Africa. The purpose of the intlombe is to bring the person (or persons) for whom it is performed into social, psychological and physical harmony with himself and his society through intense interaction with the ancestors—those who gave him birth and who precede him into death. Harmony with these spiritual beings brings health and success; disharmony brings disease and misfortune. During the intlombe the Xhosa healer (igqira) falls into a trance or altered state of consciousness and communicates with the ancestors to determine the reasons for their displeasure and what must be done to correct it. This ritual is called vumisa.
This is done by means of a round dance which, as Dr Bührmann describes it, has four circles or layers. The first circle is the central fireplace; the second is the ring of dancers who actually perform the ecstatic dancing; the third is the ring of spectator-participants who do not dance but spur the dancers on with singing and clapping; and, finally, the fourth circle is the wall of the ceremonial hut forming an enclosure (temenos) for the ritual.
Dr Buhrmann's remark that she had not been able to find another illustration of a mandala with a fire or hearth at the centre reminded me of just such a mandala in a Navaho sand painting from the Mountain Chant, a healing rite used by the Navaho to cure urinary difficulties, gall bladder sickness and mental illness. The sand paintings are pictures, often mandalic in form, made in coloured sand on the floor of the hogan, the small lodge where Navaho healing ceremonies take place. Healing power is said to be focused into them by the medicine man and then transferred to the patient who sits or stands on the sand painting. Each sand painting belongs to th