Sangoma

Josephine is a traditional South African healer known as a sangoma.  Sangomas summon the power of the ancestors to provide guidance for the living.  Note the aluminum cans and drums to awaken the ancestors and the use of candles to light the path for the spirits.  She has also prepared the bones she will throw to channel ancestral guidance. Photograph: ©Steven Wade Adams, South Africa, 2024

Sangomas in South Africa

In September 2024 over the course of two weeks in South Africa, I met five practicing sangomas. A sangoma is an African traditional healer, sometimes referred to outside of Africa as a shaman. They are diviners, counselors, and intermediaries between the living and the ancestors. Every sangoma I met had a different personality and a different style of working. What they shared was absolute faith in the importance and their sense of calling to this traditional practice.

A Sunday Service of the Zion Apostolic Independent Church in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.   Photograph: ©Steven Wade Adams, South Africa, 2024

The African Zion Church combines Christian beliefs with traditional African spiritual practice. Photograph: ©Steven Wade Adams, South Africa, 2024

The African Zion Church

Before meeting the sangomas I attended a Sunday service of the Zion Apostolic Independent Church in KwaZulu-Natal. Important to note that African Zionism is distinct from the American Zionist church. When Christian missionaries arrived in South Africa, the local populations received the structure of Christianity but also held onto their traditional beliefs. This resulted in a faith where music, dance, and the invocation of ancestral spirits sit along side and often merge into scripture and prayer. So traditional shamanism runs through the Zion church. Understanding this context made it easier to appreciate what I later witnessed with the sangomas. That is that the line between Christian and traditional practice in South Africa is far less defined than a westerner might expect.

Throwing "bones" is the ancient practice of divination practiced by the shaman of South Africa known as Sangomas.  Note the hanging robe with Christian motifs. Photograph: ©Steven Wade Adams, South Africa, 2024

The ancestors of the sangoma dwell within these gourds. White cords denote female ancestors while colored cords indicate male ancestors. Photograph: ©Steven Wade Adams, South Africa, 2024

Throwing the Bones

Sangomas access ancestral guidance through divination, most famously through the “throwing of bones”. These bones are not always bones. Each set included shells, dice, dominos, and other small objects I couldn’t clearly identify. They cast them across the floor and read the patterns they made. The patterns are messages from the ancestors, and a skilled practitioner reads them utilizing training and experience built over many years. Because the practice is an amalgam of religions,sangomas don Christian robes and read biblical scripture as part of their work.

The Calling

Each of the sangomas I sat with told me something about their path to this work and these stories had common elements. Most described years of feeling out of place, difficulty in keeping work, confusion about where they belonged, a sense of being different that they could not quite explain. Every one of them described it as a calling, something that found them, rather than something that they sought out.

One sangoma had been born female and had struggled for years with gender identity. Through practice, through deepening the ancestral relationship, this sangoma came to understand that the ancestors who dwelled closest, who spoke most often, who guided them most directly were predominantly male. This sangoma now identifies as more male than female. Standing in this sangoma’s space, surrounded by gourds in which the ancestors are believed to dwell, they described the critical messages they constantly received. The ancestors were present and active.

Something quite interesting is that these practitioners occupy a real and respected stabilizing role in their communities that extends beyond their role as traditional healers. People go to them for advice on not only health problems, but other human troubles including relationship issues and family conflict. They are often consulted when making a range of important decisions. They are asked to explain the past and to divine the future. References to their support of mental health also came up frequently.

Sangomas are especially skilled at placing themselves in a trance to communicate directly with the ancestors. In addition to trance and divination, they use rattles, drums, candles, fly whisks made from the tail of a wildebeest, prayer, and sometimes animal sacrifice. They address physical ailments and social issues alike. The role is rooted in an understanding of health, spirituality, and community as interconnected. Sangoma healing draws on all of these.

A Spiritual Cleansing Ritual

The sangoma summons the ancestral spirits during a consultation. The fly whip made from wildebeest tail is a common spiritual tool.  Photograph: ©Steven Wade Adams, South Africa, 2024

Another ritual of traditional healing commonly practiced in South Africa is traditional spiritual cleansing. This can be performed to address a variety of ailments, but the basis of the practice is to appease one’s ancestors and allow removal of whatever blockage may be holding you back in various ways. My companion on this trip, the photographer Nevada Wier, had consulted a sangoma on a previous visit in 2018. That sangoma had warned her that she was neglecting her deceased grandmother, and that this needed to be corrected — her grandmother was the ancestor responsible for managing her luck, and as Nevada grew older, this protection was becoming more important. The sangoma advised her to throw specific herbs into her fireplace when she returned home. She did.

Six years later, in 2024, as we sat with sangoma after sangoma, similar references started immediately. Multiple sangomas, unprompted, spoke of a relationship between a grandmother and a granddaughter involving luck that required urgent attention. Nevada knew they were speaking directly to her. One sangoma prescribed a white bracelet. She put it on. The next sangoma, Josephine, was unconvinced this went far enough. A full spiritual cleansing ritual was necessary and Nevada agreed. Arrangements were made for her to return that evening with only a towel. The only other details provided: there would be a chicken and a to Josephine’s space alone that evening. Photography or witnesses were not permitted at the ritual, so what follows is Nevada’s account.

She was seated in the hut with Josephine and the chicken. The sangoma asked her to disrobe and sit on the floor wrapped in the towel. Incantations and summoning of spirits followed. Josephine took the chicken and stroked it gently until it fell into a deep torpid state. With a quick twist and a blade, the chicken was killed, and the sangoma collected its blood into a bowl.

Barefoot and wrapped in only the towel, Nevada followed Josephine outside across an open field and into the forest. Josephine carried the bowl of blood, the chicken, and a large metal pan of water. She diluted the blood with the water. Nevada was instructed to straddle a hole that had been dug in the ground and to splash the diluted blood across the front of her body. Josephine poured what remained over her back and then brushed the chicken carcass against her entire body while continuing her incantations.

Back inside, Nevada was instructed to sit with her feet toward the burning candles. Josephine put on latex gloves and used a razor blade to make shallow symmetrical cuts, two on the top of each foot, two on each forearm, three on each side of her back near the shoulders. She then rubbed a mixture of herbs into the open wounds. Nevada was given additional mixtures to eat from her right hand and sniff from her left, and was then struck briskly with the wildebeest-tail whisk.

Chickens play an important role in spiritual cleansing rituals.  Photograph: ©Steven Wade Adams, South Africa, 2024

Payment was placed in a special tray and prayed over. Nevada was then given a bracelet of white and yellow beads with instructions not to remove it, or at minimum to keep it near where she sleeps. She was also told not to shower or remove the materials from her body until the following day. Finally, Josephine gave her an herb with the scent of anise to chew and spit out after returning home. If the instructions were followed completely, her grandmother would have what she needed, and Nevada’s luck and protection would continue unimpeded.

What happened to the chicken is not entirely clear. Others who have undergone cleansing rituals say the chicken is buried in the hole and must never be returned to. It now holds the bad energy that was removed from the body.

After two weeks I left South Africa with a respect for these practitioners and an understanding that the sangoma tradition is serious, deeply personal, and genuinely important to the communities it serves. When we left South Africa, Nevada was still wearing the bracelet.