"What did you learn?
About people, about attending to something internal, tracking a particular thread of attention when doing the work. About how to be kind and still tell the truth, as far as one can know it. About entering the place of "the spirits"
"Each sangoma had their own bones. They were bones and stones and little artifacts found along the way, collected over time. In the highly charged state of post-initiation, certain things glowed with meaning. So, they would gather these things, and when a patient came, they would throw the bones, on a mat or on the ground. Then, looking at the patterns made by the throw, they would begin to speak."
"In the 16th century, we began to realise that we were not the centre of the cosmos, that the only celestial body going round us was the Moon, that we were just another planet - like Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn - all going around the Sun. It was such a shock! We just about got used to that, and then two-thirds of the way through the 20th century, we were standing on the Moon sending back pictures of Earth from outer space. We began to see Earth as our home planet, and that image is growing in us and changing our perceptions - of ourselves, the sky, and the universe. We're getting used to that picture now.
I've been curious to see if our poetic vision of the Moon has changed and how it has changed. So, I've started investigating 16th- and 20th-century poetry, to see if the changes in perception show up there."
"You feel the Jupiter restlessness in Pisces, the adventure calling through their Jupiter. And then, the sweep of Neptune, the diffusion, loss of self, the call to something beyond that evades articulation.
... There is a notion I like in chaos theory about all life being "on the edge of chaos". I think of Saturn and Uranus when I read that. If you go too deep into Saturn's realm, it is all rules and laws: This is right and that is wrong, and there's no freedom, life slows down, darkens, and freezes. But if you move too far away from that, anarchy breaks everything apart, and things cannot bind enough for life to happen. Life is change, but if nothing stays stable for any length of time, then there is no container in which life can change.
... creating a space in which desire was put to rest for a moment."
"the 12th house seems to contain the ancestral ghosts that come to you through myth, story, and dream. Another way of saying it might be that they have slipped into the ancestral pool which becomes Jung's 'collective unconscious'. With planets in the 12th we are connected to one or another of our ancestors in some mysterious way.With planets there, we are pushed or pulled to live something out that was perhaps unfinished - to resolve or dissolve something."
"The client would walk out, and I'd still be swimming with the images, and I didn't know how to get rid of them. ... Again, hanging out with the witch doctors helped me with this. They were so sensible and practical: "Well, Da, wash your hands and brush your hair after you see a patient."
"You can't tell the sangomas that, because they won't respect you. You were given that gift to serve the spirits and to live on the Earth. Because if you're not earning your money by the gifts God gives you, God takes those gifts away." It may not be true in other cultures, in other times, but it was true for them, at that time, and I took it on board."
