From: Blunderov (squooker@mweb.co.za)
Date: Tue Mar 30 2004 - 22:28:58 MST
Michelle Anderson
Sent: 31 March 2004 02:50 AM
I thought I would poke around and see what's the oldest right
at the time I do it (prob in about 18 mos), and see if the whole or a
section of it made me respond. I usually take about a year to plan it
(and save up for it), and I just got one in October 2003 (the ancient
coin of Athens c. 350 BCE with the owl of Athena, surrounded by a
pleasing vine shape).
[Blunderov]I love tattoos - on other people!
While not as old as Neolithic rock art, Bushman rock art is also quite
interesting.
<q>
Metaphors of trance
Death
The experience of trance is so overwhelming and so difficult to describe
that people have to use metaphors - that is they have to compare their
experience with some more familiar experience that others can
understand.
In Western society, people use such expressions such as 'a trip' to
describe altered states of consciousness. The commonest Bushman metaphor
for trance is 'death'. They say that shamans 'die when they cross over
into the spirit world, and trance itself is sometimes called half death.
One of the ways in which the artists depicted this metaphor was through
animal behaviour. They noticed a striking similarity between a 'dying'
shaman and an antelope, especially an eland, dying from the effects of a
poison arrow. Both the shaman and the eland tremble violently, stagger,
lower their heads, bleed from the nose, sweat excessively and finally
collapse unconscious. Moreover, an elands hair stands on end, and /Xam
Bushmen spoke of hair growing on the back of a man in trance.
Images of Power: Understanding Bushman Rock Art.
David Lewis Williams and Thomas Dawson.
</q>
Best Regards
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