MY KIND OF SHAMANISM

My kind of shamanism is very, very much aligned to what I find in Marechera’s Black Sunlight.   There IS an element of Christianity in this, I think, because one cannot be in Southern Africa and not be influenced by the psychology.  But Marechera’s is a syncretism of pagan attitudes and beliefs and a self-sacrificial emotionalism (in the good sense).   His writing is also designed to be both deeply offensive to Christians and to dogmatic Marxists. (Zimbabwe is a dogmatic Marxist state).   I do think that the fundamental difference between shamanism and conventional religiosity is the former’s irreverence.

FROM THE BOOK:

“I closed the huge doors behind me and walked softly towards the altar. I was in the opium of the people. The huge cross dangled form chains fixed to the roof. I stood looking at the crucified Christ. He looked like He needed a stiff drink. He looked as if He had just had a woman from behind. He looked as if He had not been to the toilet for two thousand years. He looked like I felt. That was the connection. That was what made Him big, this mirroring quality that made your right hand a left hand and your sins the path out of themselves. He hung there like on in dire need of a cigarette. Not just passive, but alively so, like a picture out of a men's magazine, explicitly showing all His wounds and orifices with an air of spirited invitation. In these terms Nick had described Him to me, described Him as one describes a thorn in one's flesh, or the spreading disease between one's thighs.

“It was so quiet in there I could hear my thoughts arranging themselves all over His body. Why had I come? I always came to watch Him whenever the soulessness was too much for me. It always ended with the same humiliated ridiculousness of becoming aware that I was staring at a man-made statue expecting a miracle to take place. I had once brought Marie here but she had taken only a few steps towards the altar when she shivered violently and vomited. [...]

“There was a sharp crack. With a cry I stepped back. The heavy cross crashed almost at my feet, the flying chain nicking my cheek. The broken thing smoked with plaster and dust. I stared.”