“here shall not be found among you anyone … who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens…” (Deut. 18:10, NKJV)
We are currently examining the different ways in which the spirit of divination (also referred to as “the spirit of the python”) can gain access to people. From the previous teaching it became clear that Afrikaners specifically grew up with this type of divination as part of an integrated culture – from the black community they became comfortable with the witch doctor or sangoma; from the Indian community they accepted the “slams” and would visit him if someone had cursed them; from the English community they learnt how to hold seances and call spirits from the realm of the dead.
In his excellent research, Agter die somber gordyn (Behind the sombre curtain), the author Johannes de Villiers reaches this conclusion on the matter: “When the ancestors of the Afrikaners came from Europe and South-east Asia, they were not an uniform group of prim proto-Dutch Reformed people. They carried with them a host of occult beliefs and divination practices. These beliefs were cherished, carried over from generation to generation, and adapted so that 300 years later they were still alive and well among Afrikaners from the Cape to the Lowveld. Church reports from the 19th century do not confirm the idea that the old Afrikaners were good, honest Christians, but instead we see that the church had their hands full with a churchless people who (even if they did for once attend a service) kept themselves busy with all kinds of superstitious or divination beliefs. And in the 20th century when the Afrikaner moved to the city and modernised, they merely adapted their pastoral occult traditions to the modern world by subjecting it to an almost scientific method of precision. Thus the Afrikaans spiritism was born.” (p 318).
How acceptable something like the throwing of bones has become, can be seen in aspects of both high and low culture. The fact that the great Afrikaans poet DJ Opperman titled one of his anthologies Dolosse (Knuckle bones), granted a high class legitimacy to this primitive form of divination. (And clearly Opperman had had exposure to the throwing of bones through his father, from whom he had gotten his name, and who was a well-known and widely practising proponent of spiritism.) But in the lower culture Glenyss Lynn’s song Ramaja from the seventies rendered the thrower of bones into a household entity. Leon’s Schuster’s films Mr Bones and Mr Bones II showcased a white sangoma who throws bones and who won over the nation while establishing a positive, good assocation with this practice.
Even General Mzwandile Petros, police chief in Gauteng, has a personal sangoma who throws bones and has seizures when her “own Tokoloshe” (her boss) might be in danger!
The practice is thus legitimised even on the level of government. On the rugby field, where sangomas do rituals and throw bones so that the ancestors will help the Amabokkabokka, this is collective made acceptable “in the spirit of nation building”.
What can so easily be established in the Afrikaner psyche as an acceptable practice, has deep roots in shamanism. I’m quoting from a website about demonic witchcraft: “Throwing the bones is the ancient art of divination through the use of old bones. A specific collection of bones is used, each with a specific meaning. Those bones are then tossed on the ground or on an animal skin, each part having a specific meaning. The bones are then interrupted by a spirit worker or diviner. // Shamanism is a method where an individual (a shaman) attempts to solve problems through manipulation and contact with the spirit world. In shamanism everything has a spirit (animism) and is alive, including rocks, clouds, trees, rivers, as well as animals and people. This means that all things that have spirits are equal with us. These spirits are everywhere, permeate our world, and can affect our lives. Shamans use altered states of consciousness to contact spirits which can be either good or bad in order to learn the future, make decisions, or attempt healings of people who might be oppressed by bad spirits. Shamanism uses spirit guides, contacting these guides in order to have them direct your life. Shamans use astral projection, where the spirit of a person leaves the body and travels into the spirit world, and various means of predicting the future such as throwing bones.”
Ingo Lambrecht’s research has found that 84% of the South African population visit a thrower of the bones more than three times a year. They calculate that there are more than 200000 practising sangomas, or, as they are commonly referred to in South Africa – traditional healers. This is very scary!
It is also important to note that not only bones are necessarily used in this practice – it can also be shells, seeds, rocks, etcetera. Yet the bones do carry a specific authority. Throughout the Bible bones are regarded with great respect. There is for instance an extensive trajectory of Joseph’s bones that is followed in Scripture:
- 50:24-25: “And Joseph said to his brethren, ‘I am dying; but God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land to the land of which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.’ Then Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, ‘God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.’”
- 13:19: “And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had placed the children of Israel under solemn oath, saying, ‘God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here with you.’”
- Joshua 24:32: “The bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel had brought up out of Egypt, they buried at Shechem, in the plot of ground which Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for one hundred pieces of silver, and which had become an inheritance of the children of Joseph.” The fact that it is referred to in the Old Testament, could perhaps seem as if one is arguing for its significance in the old dispensation, but then the following is explicitly spelled out in the New Covenant:
- 11:22: “By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones.”
- In 2 Sam. 21:12-14 we find the very interesting story of how “David went and took the bones of Saul, and the bones of Jonathan his son, from the men of Jabesh Gilead who had stolen them from the street of Beth Shan, where the Philistines had hung them up, after the Philistines had struck down Saul in Gilboa.So he brought up the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from there; and they gathered the bones of those who had been hanged. They buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son in the country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the tomb of Kish his father. So they performed all that the king commanded. And after that God heeded the prayer for the land.” There is a particular mystery surrounding bones, but it has no links to divination.
- In the New Covenant the Bride is indeed “members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones” (Eph. 5:30); we have a “Counselor” (Isa. 9:6), and we have the Spirit, who “guides us into all truth” (John 16:13). We do not need any bone thrower to predict the future. Thus we are ending the greater overarching teaching about divination.
- Selha: It has been suggested that bedwetting can be the result of the ancestors having been guilty
of throwing bones.
- Read: Job 24-31
- Memorise: Job 29:14
