"We Nations of Europe,... are here turning the blazing lights of our civilization into dark eyes, fitly set like the eyes of does by the rivers of waters (Song of Solomon 5:12), essentially different to ours.  If for a long enough time we continue in this way to dazzle and blind the Africans, we may in the end bring upon them a longing for darkness, which will drive them into the gorges of their own, unknown mountains and their own, unknown minds."                                      Isak Dinesen

Bushmen family, National Geographic

Before you start groaning, or worse yawning, the Bushmen and Maasai, indigenous people, typical New Age mumble-jumble, you must read Parts Three and Four of this report in their entirety.  Follow the signs and omens along the path as I did and discover the truth of the journey as it unfolds.  Prior to hearing the voice of Change, my life and work were firmly rooted in the very real and practical world of 21st century politics and business.  I connected to issues relevant to social activism, civil rights, public policy, electoral politics, economic opportunity, education, health care, environment... -- the issues that are at the very core of American political liberalism.  My call to South Africa would no doubt bring these same issues of equity, fairness and service into play. What would be more fitting than helping disadvantaged black South Africans come into their own and emerge into the light of economic, cultural and political power. The sites of this quiet storm would be the usual battle stations, the inner cities, schools, AIDS clinics, orphanages. That was my vision.

This vision did not include two ancient tribes of Africa; one indigenous to the country of South Africa.  Prior to my journey to the continent of Africa, the Bushmen and other indigenous people were little more than  faces staring back at me from the pages of National Geographic.  One-dimensional, mythical characters; talismans of New Age groups but, certainly, not part of my practical world.  In my awareness of the "real" post- apartheid South Africa, the Bushmen did not exist. That these people, this cause, this purpose could so unhinge me and dismantle my pre-existing notion of what I had come to discover in South Africa is nothing short of a miracle. With far more suitable emissaries of the plight of indigenous people, I would ask and continue to ask why was this message was so important for me to hear? 

When South Africans speak of the nine recognized, indigenous tribes living in the country today, the Bushmen are conspicuously absent from the roster of Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Ndebele, Swazi, Venda, Pedi, Tswana and Shangana.  In the eyes of many, they are extinct; cave dwellers of an ancient time; a people who simply do not exist.  Of those South Africans who do recognize their existence, the Bushmen are not afforded the exalted, romanticized, status bestowed upon them by western spritual groups.  Rather, they are the reviled, the exiled, the scourge, permanent outcasts of Africa; human refuse confined to reservations and plagued by poverty, illiteracy and alcoholism. 

In the words of a new friend that I would meet on the journey: 

"The Bushmen say that in the days gone by, they were very numerous, and roamed the whole of South Africa.  From the Cape to the Drakensberg, their forefathers were there, and the evidence remains in the numerous rock paintings that they left behind them.  By right of occupation, the land was theirs.  But because they put up no visible signs of settlement, their right was not recognised.  As their land was invaded by Black herdsman and White settler, they retreated further and further south and east, into the desert and mountain regions.  They were a peace-loving people who would rather flee from confrontation than resort to violence.  But finally there was nowhere left for them to retreat to.  They were forced to take a stand...  There were terrible massacres, atrocities on both sides.  The Bushmen were regarded as Vermin beasts, to be destroyed without mercy.  Even babies were murdered with the rest.  Those Bushmen who survived the carnage became a displaced people, no longer able to live the life of the old days.  With all their land taken they existed as squatters on the land of others, finding survival as best they could.  They intermarried with the local Blacks and Coloureds, hid their origins, forgot their language.  The songs died and the stories vanished.  To be a Bushman was such a stigma that it was better to hide it."

And again:

"The Bushmen have always been a people out of step with the rest of the world. All they ever wanted was to be left alone to live the life that suited them -- walking the dunes, hunting and gathering, singing, dancing, painting and telling stories. Ownership was a foreign concept to them. Belonging made the world theirs. They didn't need to possess anything, because they were connected in spirit to everything around them. That is partly the reason why they were so persecuted. The world has never been able to understand a people who strive for nothing, who don't need to own or possess anything, who live by different values. Because of their difference, the Bushmen have always been regarded as less than human."

There is something tragically familiar about the story of these people and their plight.  It is the story of indigenous people around the world, including this country's Native Americans.  As I made my way across South Africa, I would be strangely plagued and haunted by the story of the Bushmen whose "stone age ancestors were the first human beings to walk the earth." Their story and that of another displaced people, the Maasai of East Africa, would resonate in my heart and mind, conscious and otherwise with every step that I took across the continent. Throughout the journey, I relied on the images of the Yi to inform how I perceived the world around me. I immediately saw the connection between the indigenous people of Africa and Hexagram 38, Diverging/The Shadow Lands. 

The Bushmen are the human personification of "all things outside, wai:  isolation, danger, foreigners, wilderness, punishments, the Demon Country.  Described in Stephen's "The Shaman of the Shadows" as the people "excluded from the dwelling as wai, outside, foreign, barbarian and 'strange' - in a word, the repressed or excluded ghosts (Gui) that are haunting the dwelling... The warm light of the hearth fire is inner or within in 37; it is outside in 38, seen as the cold light of the stars shining in the autumn sky as omens of isolation, punishments and dire fates."

As I recall my journey to South Africa today, I am able to walk along the "Guide-ways (Jing) to the passages through the strange mountains (Shan) and seas (Hai) of the shamanic world."  As I travel through the lines of Hexagram 38, I discover the "Guide-ways (jing) or 'real directions to follow through a series of strange encounters in the Shadow Land outside our personal and cultural Dwelling... In the first three Encounters we are in the submerged world of Dui, the Joyous Dancer whose ability to 'express the spirit in the human community' is repressed, thwarted and deeply disturbed.  I feel these represent both what we first encounter on our journey and the work it takes us to ready ourselves for our task." 

While I connect my South Africa journey to all six Guide-ways of Hexagram 38 and traverse the divide between the images at the site of each encounter, I am particularly drawn to the Guide-way to Second Encounter, line 2: 

"Here we pass to the Inner Center of the Shadow World and encounter a very strange spirit called the Hidden Lord of the Crooked Path.  'In an unexpected way, in an unexpected place, you meet a spirit power of great importance.  This is the meaning of being outside the norms.  This influence enters your heart and makes everything clear.' ... Technically, this is not a ghost entangled in passion (gui) but something like a shen, a mountain spirit or Lord.  Shan Hai Jing offers an image of this spirit - Yuer, the god of climbing mountains.  He is small, about a foot tall with a human face, riding a horse with his right arm raised to point the way, telling us how to ford the rivers we have yet to encounter.  When we look back across the divide to the Dwelling, we see an image of the King approaching his Dwelling Altar to ask the blessings of his ancestors.  So Yuer is pointing the way to the excluded others, the hidden ancestors the King has left out."

Stephen writes further: "The deeper implication of Figure 38, however, is that if these ghosts can be somehow dealt with there is a chance that the culture itself can be freed from its "birth traumas" and enter into a higher level of what we can only call kinship and spiritual awareness.  Facilitating this is the job of the Wugui, the Shaman of the Shadows, who lurks in the mythic background to the hexagram." 

It does not escape me that this College of Diviners initiated at Vallecitos and other individuals and spiritual groups have also traveled the Guide-ways of Hexagram 38 to the passages through the strange mountains and seas of the shamanic world.  In multiple voices, they speak.

Stephen Karcher:

"I have been deeply interested in Figure 38 Gui Diverging/Journey to the Shadow Lands for a great part of my life.  Along with 50 Ding/Vessel it represents a theme and a task that both plagues and orients me.  At the moment, Change seems to be offering it again and again to a variety of people that I care for in what we might call a visionary context directly related to both personal feelings and cultural disorders." 

Helga Scow Stern:

"I am intrigued also by your mention of hexagram 38, the Shaman of the Shadows and in particular its connection with work at Deena's. I had mentioned it recently there in connection with seeing Deena's (Dare) like a "Well" for those who have been or are in the experience of 38."    

Sharon Simone: 

"Last meeting I had with Deena for our private consultation time, I had asked the YI for what it was that Deena and I should deal with during the session. My question was: What shall Deena and I focus on tomorrow? Response: 38, 9/1, 9/4 > 4.  It fit "terrifyingly well" as Deena said to me... It is amazing to note that weeks later, in conjunction with Deena's own process and the Dare community she received #38 as well and her own response was that it was "terrifyingly accurate." So, Helga, your assessment about the Dare community's service, one of them, at this time, is a Well for those traveling in the Shadow Lands."      

 Helga Scow Stern: 

"Another thing Dung Qui Lai said to me is how tired he is of "being between worlds." He meant between the living and the dead, and being with spirits who have not yet moved on, but I also thought of it in terms of being an exile from his native land and a recluse  here. He is a carrier of the Wugei, the medicine of  the Shadowlands."    

Stephen Karcher:

"What is Connie's position in the dream? Response: 58, 9/5, 6/6 > 38. Connie is the one who can bring the opening that strips away the old. She must not pause in this but extend the opening to all. Nuclear Figure is again 37, the Dwelling, but here paired with the Relating Figure 38, Divergence and the job of the Shaman of the Shadows, to try to heal a house divided against itself."   

Lastly and decisively, I hear Stephen's voice again:

"Finally, I feel Linda's experiences in South Africa ("she will bring the rain" - a bright omen if there  ever was one) will give us an important link in our gathering circle of meaning. I would also ask you to consider the image of hexagram 38 and the Shaman of the Shadows, the Wugui, as part of the nexus. It is coming in very powerfully for me, particularly through the link to Deena Metzger's community, as part of our mission as diviners."

And Again:

"That's when I started having dreams of a great stone mountain full of doors opening, and from each door came a stone animal to talk to me. Chief amongst them was an animal called the pangolan, very close to the turtle - both are a sign of silence towards the outer world that preserves the speech of the spirits... Now, when the Sangomas heard this, they said - Ohhh! we have to take you to the Mountain, which they did. It was there I learned to talk to the Mountain spirits and make my request. I asked for "peace in the soul." I think I told you that when I told the Sangomas my mountain dreams, they said they were coming from a very old time and place where "white peope and black people lived together in caves on that mountain."  I deeply feel that the Yi itself, through the sign of the Turtle, wants an active dialogue with the great African systems and that we must facilitate this, personally and culturally."

And what of the Numinous Turtle and Stephen's dreams of mountain doors, stone animals and black and white people living together in caves on that mountain?  I see the Bushmen, the cave dwellers, whose hunter-gatherer ancestors are the "oldest genetic stock of contemporary humanity and whose rock art paintings and engravings have been carbon-dated as far back as 77,000 years and survive in thousands of caves in a dozen countries over a vast area of southern Africa."  Their people have always been here. And it is here that the images and dreams and omens of the College of Diviners come together in a "gathering circle of meaning." We must listen to the Bushmen's voices and those of their ancestors if we are to understand the message that they wish to convey to us. 

It is telling that the ancient character for Hexagram 38 in Total I Ching "shows a sacrificial mat and the eyes of the Ancestor.  An offering mat for oblations and two eyes that indicate the presence of the Ancestor... the ancestor descending, his big eye upon the living." I carry this image of the "eyes of the ancestors" with me today; but it has not always been so.  I would awaken slowly during the first leg of the journey's ancestor walk under the stars at the Sister Sojourner Retreat.  Then the ancestors of my people and these ancient people, began to enter my heart and speak to me; at first inaudibly; then whispering softly in my dreams; and then calling loudly, shaking me awake, dogging my every step as I travelled across South Africa and back home to America.  They made their presence known to me.  And I heard them.

And, I heard the voice of the Yi as well:  "In an unexpected way, in an unexpected place, I met a spirit power of great importance.  I traveled outside the norms and this influence entered my heart and made everything clear."  And so in understanding the true purpose of my journey to South Africa, I undertake to explore the meaning of these words.  But first, I continue to tell the story of the second half of my journey. 

 Southern hearts to Northern heart

"...From Southern hearts to your Northern heart, I greet you.  Know that we had a lovely bonded time, however brief, at the end of Africa.   And take that Rainbow Bridge wherever you go!   I know we are meeting up again! Some where; North/South.  Global families are re-uniting.  You have a good rest and digestion of this Southern Oracle!  We let these days unfold.  Sacred Contracts to fulfill"        

                             Christmas message from Charlene Hollis to Linda Seagraves

Following the Sister Sojourner Retreat, I received an urgent message from Ntombekaya that Sharon Simone was trying to reach me while I was in Cape Town.

The e-mail from Sharon to Ntombekaya read:

"I am one of the women in the 'College of Diviners' who have sent Linda to South Africa as an emissary from our group. I would like to get a message to Linda. Before she left the States she sent me an email that had some correspondence from you about lodging plans. If you have a way to reach her would you give her a very important” message from Sharon Simone (me)? The message is that there are three people (Charlene, Belinda and Vetkat) who are Bushmen/women whom I believe it may be important for her to meet in SA. I did not know of them until today when I was meeting with Deena Metzger, a healer, peacemaker, visionary, poet/writer and medicine woman in Topanga, CA. She and Stephen Karcher, the translator of the I Ching that Linda worked with this summer in New Mexico, have done some very important work together following 9/11. Deena was just in SA with Charlene, Belinda and Vetkat on a sojourn to be with some very special elephants who are teaching many of us important truths about Spirit through their remarkable behavior in relationship to Deena and others.  All I have for contact information right now is an email address for Charlene and one for Belinda. Can you possibly help me?"

Ntombekaya passed along the e-mail addresses of Charlene Hollis and Belinda Kruiper. I e-mailed both women the following day and received a telephone call from Charlene almost immediately. Hoping to unravel the mystery of why we were intended to meet, we met for coffee the next morning and talked for many hours, well into the evening, comparing notes and reconnecting the dots that joined Deena Metzger to Sharon and the I Ching retreat at Vallecitos and finally to a divination that Stephen had done for Deena, "Gathering Them" before her sojourn with the elephants of Botswana. Charlene, Belinda and Belinda's husband Vetkat had accompanied Deena on this journey.

The e-mail from Deena to Charlene, Belinda and Vetkat read:

"With my love, I want to write, tell, ask the following.  A dear friend, colleague,  mentee, of mine, Sharon Simone, a remarkable woman has been working and studying also with Stephen Karcher,  who translated and transmitted the I Ching we were using. You remember, Gathering Them. This June he called together a "College of Diviners." One of the people who attended is a woman named Linda Seagraves, an African American woman from Atlanta Georgia. Her story, is like so many of our stories, full of great potential and possibility and tragedy. Recognizing her for who she truly is, Sharon arranged for Linda to come to Cape town for a gathering convened by Naomi Tutu. Linda is there now and is able to stay for two more weeks, in order to travel and explore to see why in fact she has been called to Africa. When I heard this story of a woman who has three advanced degrees and was very prominent and then was 'struck down' and then met Sharon, Stephen the others, and a door opened and the College of Diviners gathered the means and sent her to Africa, it occurred to me that one reason she may be in Africa is to meet you, Belinda and Vetkat, to see the art, to know the history that you carry. And why it will be good for you to meet Linda, we don't know yet but we hope it will be revealed. As our circle knows, we don't know always why we are called to each other, but when we follow our heart intuitions, often something wondrous happens. My prayer is that this meeting occurs and that it is a blessing for everyone." 

After our initial time together, I spent a considerable amount of my eight days in CapeTown with Charlene talking, exploring the city and receiving many acts of kindness as she drove me to appointments around the metropolitan area.  A white Afrikaner, Charlene at first glance appears sophisticated, affluent, worldly.  Upon closer examination, I would learn of the defining moment of her life that had marked her inalterably; an incident that occurred in the 1980s when as a young woman in her early twenties, she and three close friends sailing a luxury sailboat while on holiday, washed ashore in a storm off the coast of Somalia. In what became an international incident, Charlene was arrested as a spy along with her comrades, and languished in a Somalian jail for close to a year.  While incarcerated, the atrocities and torture that she witnessed and the subsequent deaths of many of the Moslem women whose lives she shared in an unusual, but intimate sisterhood had both scarred and shaped her life.  

When you talk to Charlene you wonder how is it possible for this very conventional looking white Afrikaner to move so easily in the world of Africa's indigenous people.  If it can be arranged before my departure, she suggests a meeting with her friend the legendary Credo Mutwa, the 80 year old Zulu sangoma, cultural historian and keeper of African indigenous knowledge, history, mythology and the African oral tradition.  The author of three books,  Indaba, My Children; Zulu Shaman: Dreams, Prophecies, and Mysteries; and Song of Stars: Lore of a Zulu Shaman, Credo Mutwa met with the Dalai Lama on his last visit to South Africa.  Speaking matter of factly of Mutwa, his clandestine life hiding in a cave somewhere in southern Africa and how we must travel there if possible because he will not live long, you wonder if Charlene is delusional.  As you silently watch the people she encounters and the unusual network of friends who cross her path, you soon learn that strangely, she is not.  Perhaps the best witness to this truth is Charlene's very conventional teenaged daughter Maya who speaks despairingly of the steady stream of indigenous and other "strange" people that beat a path to the front door of the family home.

And so in the sharing of our stories and lives, meeting Charlene's many unusual friends, picking up Maya from school, and walking her dog Iris, we became friends; finding interesting and sometimes surprising parallels in our lives.  One unexpected connection was our discovery of a common I Ching reading that we had each received at significant turning points in our lives.  This discovery was made when my "sister of the Southern Hemisphere" opened a cluttered and oversized journal full of notes, schedules and pictures to a page filled with one large Hexagram and notes on the relating hexagram and transforming lines. I instantly recognized that I had received the same hexagrams during a divination at Vallecitos.  Long before I understood the significance of this fact, the thought of this seeming coincidence lingered in my mind.

The Maasai Warrior

 "It easy to destroy a house but building a new one takes time, it takes a thousand years to construct a new life style, we both know this to be true, its nature’s law for both civilized and primitive alike." 

                                                                           Miyere Ole Miyandazi Selenguironeirei

On my third day in Cape Town, Charlene called to ask if I might want to see a film on Kenya's Masaai warriors at the World Cinema Festival being held in Cape Town that same week. She was particularly excited because her friend Miyere Ole Miyandazi Selenguironeirei, a Maasai warrior would be joining us at the theatre. Miyere had become a local legend, his story covered by the BBC and the South African press. He had walked 2,551 miles from Kenya to South Africa, across Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana to draw attention to the plight of the Masaai, an indigenous tribe engaged in a bitter land dispute with the Kenyan government over what many believe is the theft of their ancestral land.

In Miyere's words as expressed in the South African press: 

"I left Kenya in August, traveling through several African countries without a passport, to bring to the attention of the world the abuse of the word democracy in Kenya, and that the ancient Masaai people don't have a voice.  We have been ruthlessly exploited by tourists and corrupt government officials who view the Maasai as a backward, exotic group.  As Maasai we lacked nothing in the bush, our cattle mean everything. They [colonialists] take away the land, then buy our cattle at cheap prices.  We are nomads, but have a huge land problem. Without land, you can’t have cattle. Without cattle, we cannot survive.  I have come specifically to Cape Town, which is recognised throughout the continent as an international meeting place, to make it known that the Maasai are demanding that our culture be respected.  Something happened in this country under apartheid when the world was watching it. I would not have been heard in Kenya." 

The feet that walked 2,551 miles to Cape Town

The historical record shows that in 1904, the British entered into a contract with the Maasai to lease 2,000,000 hectares, (approx. 7,772 sq. miles), of their ancestral land on the Laikipia Plateau for 100 years. Wih the backdrop of snow capped Mount Kenya, the Laikipia Plateau in central Kenya is the last stronghold of romantic East Africa where vast open ranches have been transformed into game reserves and now contain some of the most exclusive tourist lodges in the remotest parts of Kenya.  The lease expired in 2004, but the Kenyan government, which took over the contract from the British after independence, now claim that the lease was for 999 years.  With a tourist industry heavily reliant on the world famous Maasai Mara and Serengeti game reserves, (formerly Maasai grazing land where 75% of Kenya’s wildlife can be found), it is small wonder that the Kenyan government covets the Masaai ancestral lands.

In response to their vocal objections, the Maasai  have been arrested, shot at and persecuted for allowing their cattle to graze on the disputed land. the Maasai respond, "In a hundred years we were never given an opportunity to voice our feelings. The lease has expired. We want our land back."  On his 6 month journey of protest, Miyere survived by eating roots and plants, and suffered a series of natural and human catastrophes, including narrowly escaping being trampled by a herd of elephants when he swam across a river between Zambia and Botswana. Interestingly, Miyere never carried a passport. Upon reaching border crossings, he simply said: "I am a Maasai. We are nomads. How can we have passports?" With these words, this simple man was permitted to enter three countries including South Africa.

Miyere Ole Miyandazi Selenguironeirei

On this late summer afternoon in Cape Town, Miyere approached the theatre. You could hear the excitement of his arrival, long before his form became visible. As he walked, a sea of people parted to allow him passage. With impossibly long strides, this 6 foot 5 inch tall, bone thin, ebony man wearing a warrior's traditional red shuka cloth garment and leather sandals made a dramatic entrance. Never have I witnessed such a majestic and graceful human being. Admittedly, I was struck dumb when I shook his hand, completely absorbed in the drama of the moment.  He, in turn, accustomed to the prolonged stares of the modern world, seemed oblivious and unaffected by gaping strangers.  As I sat in the cinema, I was conscious of his presence as he stood dignified at the back of the dark theatre watching the images of the Maasai flickering across the screen. I could only imagine that he felt tremendous longing for his homeland.

Following the film, Charlene, Miyere and I reassembled in the lobby of the theatre.  Our discussion turned not to the film, but to Miyere's health.  "Have you eaten today?" Charlene asked as she scurried to buy Miyere a carton of milk.  She later explained that when she had last seen Miyere he had collapsed on the street unable to stand due to hunger.  A college educated man of tremendous pride, he nonetheless survives through the kindness of strangers, who when he is not sleeping in the park, provide an occasional spare corner for him to rest, infrequent sustenance and periodic use of an office from which to promote his cause.  That afternoon, I was immediately struck with how seemingly insignificant his physical needs were compared to the exigency of his political and spiritual crusade.

Miyere wrote in a public letter: 

"The crooking of a frog never stops the cow from drinking…  Crow and continue crying, signaling different seasons, time for mating, the rain is here again says one member of our community, like all the rest the frog has its seasonal moods, it has its periods, good and bad days. You remember the story of David and Goliath which symbolized to a great extent the value of hope and, the strength of faith, which like you and I share, in the sense that we want every occupant of this universe, to have her/his culture and lifestyle given a chance, that is what The Maasai minority are asking for. They, like all of us don’t fancy extinction.

In the initial stages, of the first phase of this long and gruesome but, noble journey. I’ve learnt a lot and sure will value that from the deeper most part of my soul. One of the things I found interesting is the Maasai saying "It easy to destroy a house but building a new one takes time, it takes a thousand years to construct a new life style", we both know this to be true, its nature’s law for both civilized and primitive alike.  We all have the same life goals, and that´s life itself. Its the most important thing we all aspire to have, our next lung full. This gave me hope for another step on my Maasai soul journey, every breath that I took was precious, more than any quantity of gold, nothing material could match that."

New friend Miyere in Cape Town

The Bushman's Wife

"Before I came to the Kalahari, my rational self would have dismissed such stories.  But the desert teaches you to think differently, to be more open to what is less tangible, to the world of spirit.  Things happen here that have no logical explanation.  In these desolate open spaces, where technology does not impose, a different energy holds.  There is space for the Ancestors to walk, and their power remains strong."                                                                             Belinda Kruiper

Several days following the Maasai film and meeting Miyere, Belinda Kruiper arrived in Cape Town from her home in the Kalahari Desert. She had made a special effort to arrive before my departure the next afternoon.  At first glance, Belinda appears delicate and fragile; thin to the point of emaciation. You understand immediately, that hers has been a life of physical deprivation, sacrifice and at times, literal starvation.  Despite her physical stature, this woman is tough and a fierce protector of the Bushmen and their legacy. 

There was a collective sigh of relief that the meeting proposed by Deena Metzger would finally take place. Charlene, Belinda and I sat together at an outdoor cafe in Cape Town.  An hour into the conversation, we were joined by none other than Miyere, the majestic Maasai.  Belinda, an author and poet in her own right, brought with her a portfolio of reproductions of her husband Vetkat's art, called the Sacred Collection, a series of 23 pieces which tell the story of the struggles of the last decade. The original art of this collection considered by Vetkat to be sacred is under the custodianship of the ARA Foundation, organized around the South African concept of "Ubuntu,  which says that by belonging to a community, the individual becomes strengthened.  And with stronger individuals, the community is in turn fortified. Just as Vetkat became stronger through art, so too will the Bushmen community." Vetkat's Sacred Collection is not for sale but, held in trust for the people of the Kalahari. 

Belinda Kruiper on our afternoon in Cape Town

It has been said of Vetkat’s art:

"Vetkat never saw Bushman rock art before, yet those images are part of his consciousness.  His art is steeped in the desert spirit and the ancient tradition of his people. His dynamic drawings depict scenes that evoke both the spiritual and physical landscapes of the Kalihari and the people, plants and animals that inhabit it.  It is of the wind, and of the sand dunes. It is of the rain, the fauna and the flora; it is at one with his environment. It is spiritual, material, and speaks histories of the Bushmen and there interactions with all those with whom they have interacted over the millennia. Vetkat's art is the Bushmen speaking. This is also Vetkat speaking. This is the ancestors speaking in the wind, and the Bushmen speaking here and now, to and through the past, the present and the future."

Vetkat says of the Kalahari and his art:

"Yes, you go through thirsts and you go through hunger in that very hot dry country, but... you always return back to the land and to nature... and even if you don't have a book or a pen, you let out, you draw on the sand dunes... so in itself the Kalahari embodies the inspiration, the art that's within, and the more you let out, the better you feel, and that's when the flower opens up, so that you look at life differently even though you are hungry and you are going through hardships."

Vetkat Kruiper

Vetkat

For several hours, Charlene, Belinda, Miyere and I sat quietly looking at Vetkat's art and talking of the plight of the Bushmen. Reduced to a total population throughout southern Africa of less than 85,000, the Bushmen have been forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in three countries whose borders include the Kalahari Desert and relocated to squalid resettlement camps where they live dehumanized lives of poverty, alcoholism and discrimination. 

In the 1970s, the white South African government forced the Bushmen to leave their ancestral grounds, and for years the Bushmen way of life was thought lost. But a decade ago, the Bushmen reemerged, and Vetkat's community, the Khomani Bushmen began a tough and bitter battle with the South African government. They won their case and the right to return to their land. But political struggle and poverty continued to ravage the community. The Bushmen may have won their land back, but they lost their sense of self in the process.

"The Bushmen are not about title deeds and land ownership, it's a Western concept...  They had to get the land claim -- it didn't bring any joy...  There's probably a thousand more problems since the land has been given to the Khomani Bushmen than ever before. The true victory would come not only in reclaiming the land, but in reclaiming the Bushmen culture and preserving their way of life...  And that meant preserving the traditional art... So there have to be two journeys, this parallel stuff needs to happen, the visible stuff, the politics; but the heart needs the same material and attention, because it's through the art and through the living people that we are going to find the answers for humanity and to so-called "save the Bushmen."

Because their numbers have been so severely depleted, the Bushmen are conspicuously absent from the list of South Africa's recognized indigenous tribes.  Referred to as "a Stone Age embarrassment" by the neighboring government of Botswana, it is not surprising that many Africans regard the Bushmen as extinct, props in Hollywood films and exhibits in museums of natural history.

Belinda wrote quite eloquently about the dehumanization of the Bushmen.

"The Bushmen have never been allowed to be just people, like everyone else.  They're always a symbol, an exhibit, a display item on sombody else's agenda.  That's where the Bushmen spirit stays trapped, between the truth and the lie, the myth and the reality.  Frozen in the amber of the past.  Once Vetkat and I paid a visit to the National Museum in Cape Town, to see the Bushmen display before it was dismantled.  It upset us both.  We walked around the mammal section, looking at the glass tanks full of stuffed and glassy-eyed animals, standing five and six deep next to each other in the small caged spaces, frozen in terrible life, their spirits trapped forever.  And there, in a corner off to one side, were the Bushmen exhibits, just as real and alive.  They were the only human exhibits in that section.  There were no White Afrikaners in Voortrekker dress or Zulu warriors on display.  Just the Bushmen and the animals, preserved behind glass together.  The reason the figures looked as life-like as they did was because they were made from casts that had been moulded on the bodies of the living.  The oumas told how, as children, they were carted off from the Park area to Cape Town with their families and made to pose for the casts.  They lay on their backs while the cold clay was plastered on their naked bodies and smeared onto their faces.  They had been expected to be able to return home afterward.  But they weren't allowed back onto the land.  The good Christian farmers and other Whites wanted them removed from the area because of the disturbance that their 'unholy' singing and dancing caused."

It was at this Cafe in Cape Town that I really heard Miyere's voice for the first time.  Among friends and not a tourist attraction for passersby on Cape Town's city streets, Miyere spoke of his life, his cause, his tribe and his homeland.  Not surprisingly his story sounded remarkably similar to the one shared by Belinda.  He spoke with great passion and eloquence of the "wisdom of the trees" and the path of the Maasai across the generations and the centuries.  Despite economic hardship, land rights violations, environmental mismanagement and forced evictions from their ancestral lands in Kenya and northern Tanzania, the Maasai have managed to maintain their traditional culture, communal values and semi-nomadic way of life.

I felt privileged to witness the dialogue between the Bushman's wife and the Maasai warrior as they spoke of their common plight to survive with dignity in the face of poverty and the encroachment of modern civilization. There was an easy intimacy between them.  As if they were old friends.  Clearly, they knew of each other's struggle, but it was more than that.   A kindred, perhaps spiritual bond and a perfect understanding that cannot be explained, but must be lived and breathed.

As I sat across the table from these people, hearing first hand the tragic stories of two indigenous tribes of Africa, whose ancient culture, vast ecological and spiritual wisdom would soon be lost to the world, I had an odd sensation of the extraordinary nature of this experience. I also had a very strong sense that it was this moment, this conversation that I was meant to witness in South Africa. After three weeks of emotional numbness visiting orphanages and impoverished townships and conversing with young women infected with HIV, it was this particular experience that left my heart so strangely open. I wondered how much wider it could open.

And then I remembered that last reading at Vallecitos 5, 9/3, 6/6 > 61 and it all began to come together. The rainmaker of Hexagram 5, the Opened Heart of Hexagram 61 and the three coming toward me now. There was a simplicity and a prophetic truth to the reading.  

Hexagram 5 advises one to:   "Find out what is needed and carefully wait for the right moment to act. You aren't in control of things, but in time you can provide what is needed. Act this way with confidence. You are connected to the spirits and they will carry you through. One day you will bring rain. Look after things. Think about what is necessary. Illuminate the situation through repeated efforts. This is pleasing to the spirits. Through it they will give you success, effective power and the capacity to bring the situation to maturity... This is the right time to enter the stream of life with a goal or embark on a significant enterprise."

And I thought of the true beauty of Relating Hexagram 61, the Opened Heart, Centring and Connecting to the Spirits, a zone of radical transformation that connects inner and outer centers of experience. “Sign of the stilled and empty heart-mind that acts as a real conduit of the spirit as it seeks to manifest in the world.”

Hexagram 61,  "Centring and Connecting to the Spirits represents an access to the thought of the heart... (It) describes your situation in terms of the need to bring your life into accord with the spirits. The way to deal with it is to make connecting the inner and outer parts of your life your central concern... Make your inner vision and your outer circumstances coincide. Empty your heart so you can hear the inner voices. Act through these voices with sincerity and honesty in connecting with others. This will link you to the spirits and they will carry you through."

"Access to the thought of the heart..."  In the late afternoon sun on this my final day in Cape Town, I said goodbye to this odd assemblage of friends.  I had understood in our all too brief time together that I had seen some of what the Yi had intended, "There are three coming towards you now.  Respect them and bring this to completion.  Wise Words! The Way opens."  Finally, the reading from Vallecitos made sense.  For the first time, I understood the meaning of these prophetic words.  I will always remember the firm and compelling way that Miyere gripped my hand and looked directly into my eyes, making a deeply felt connection that I understood without another word spoken, before turning to make a dramatic exit and disappearing on the crowded Cape Town streets.  This simple man who had seemed so elusive, so remote, so proud, that day at the movie theater had unobtrusively crept into my empty heart; "a heart emptied and at peace."  In the silence, I could "hear the inner voices." 

I also said goodbye to Belinda Kruiper, a true warrior of the heart, whose strength, committment and tenacity of spirit would haunt me in the days ahead.  Described in Rupert Isaacson’s book, The Healing Land as “a woman who definitely runs with wolves.  Beautiful, golden and delicate like a Steenbokkie,“ Belinda Kruiper is at once the most fragile of women, while at the same time the fiercest of protectors.  In the warm embrace of farewell, she spoke simple words that I remember still, "Dearest sister, you are in my heart." As she is in mine.  This would be the beginning of a friendship that magically extends from the red sands of the Kalahari to the red clay of Georgia.  I seldom hear from Belinda; on occasion I open my e-mail and she is there, writing on a rare trip to Cape Town; but I have been told that I can reach her for exactly one hour a day when with cell phone in hand she stands atop one particular sand dune in the expanse of the great Kalahari Desert and through the miracle of technology is connected to the modern world.

Red sand dune of Kalahari "Great Thirst" desert

And finally, I said goodbye to dear Charlene, my friend, my guide, my compass in Cape Town, a pied piper of lost and forgotten souls. I have never met anyone quite like her. She is a woman whose primary purpose in life seems to be collecting outcasts, misfits, the undesirable and cramming this entire family of man into the open vessel that is her heart. I smile in amusement recalling one very ordinary moment, on one very ordinary afternoon, at one very ordinary shopping mall in Cape Town. It somehow captures Charlene.  Out of nowhere, running toward us came a heavily veiled moslem woman of Cape Malay descent, draped from head to toe in heavy black cloth with only her expressive eyes betraying that there was human life beneath the massive folds of fabric. Screeching with excitement, the woman embraced Charlene in a tearful reunion. This moslem woman met Charlene some years ago, when working fifteen hour days stitching garments for slave wages in a sweat shop beneath Charlene's then Cape Town apartment. They had become friends, this sophisticated white Afrikaner and this humble moslem woman; their lives could not have been more dramatically different.

Walking away on this my final day in Cape Town, I tearfully turned to look back at Charlene and Belinda as they tearfully waved goodbye. I felt such profound sorrow but, an emotional fullness that is hard to describe. How was this possible after one short week with Charlene and one short afternoon with Belinda?  A black American woman travels eight thousand miles to the homeland of her ancestors and meets two sisters of the heart, one white and one colored.  "From Southern hearts to your Northern heart, I greet you. Know that we had a lovely bonded time, however brief, at the end of Africa.  And take that Rainbow Bridge wherever you go!" 

More Tears and Readings From Change 

Days later, after journeying on to Johannesburg. I sat alone in the darkness of a small theatre in Soweto's Apartheid Museum, watching a brief documentary film on the history of South Africa; bracing myself, before beginning the long and torturous walk through the endless exhibits, images and artifacts of South Africa's racial hatred and oppression. In the opening gallery of the museum en-route to the ampitheatre, I encountered a traveling exhibit from the U.S. chronicling some of America's proudest moments; lifesize replicas of hooded KKKlansmen and the all too familiar photos of leering mobs, public lynchings, cross burnings, church bombings, attacking police dogs and fire hosings of peaceful protesters. Walking by this exhibit, refusing to go in, I noted that it is small wonder that my connection and identification with the people of South Africa runs so deep. How could this not be the case?

And so, I proceeded to the theatre and sat quietly in the dark, expecting the film to open with a holocaust of violence and death; but the first images to flicker across the screen were not of the violent razing of black shanty towns or dying children, or even the proud faces of the mighty Zulu or the Xhosa. The opening images were of the first people of the continent of Africa, the Bushmen. I was moved by the great honor and respect paid to these humble and persecuted people. As one who guards her emotions both publicly and privately, I found myself sobbing in the darkness; while those around me surely wondered how this woman would make it through the entire film, if this simple preamble had so unglued her. Though I had certainly spilled more than my share of tears on this journey, at this moment, I wasn't quite sure why I was crying. This spontaneous rise in emotion came from an unknown place deep inside me; that place that knew with absolute certainty that my fate was tied to these castout people.  Far from the Sister Sojourner Retreat, I had experienced, at least in part, what I had come to South Africa to witness. But why this? In this country of aching realism and heartache, why this cause, this purpose? and why me?  I had no doubt that the truth lay in my readings with Change.

My mind recalled a short paragraph in Total I Ching regarding Change as "our mirror" that made a lasting impression on me when I first read it. Oddly, enough in a recent e-mail Stephen had said something about "being who you are truly meant to be."

"The great depth psychologist C.C. Jung felt that this way of Change was our true mirror, describing the way our unconscious continually creates new meaning, challenging us to become the person we were meant to be. It puts us in contact with the mythic significance of a moment or situation, helping us to see deeper into its transformative potential, its power to help us realise ourselves and thus change the world we live in."

Within this context, Stephen spoke of the word Fu, Connect, the meaning of which relates to a number of my South Africa readings:

"The old character shows the claws of the bird or ancestor holding its young or its prey. With the root 'person' the term means to capture prisoners, take spoils, sacrifice to the ancestors and suggests the punishment and sacrifice of the Old King. With the root 'one, the One' it describes an accord between inner and outer: sincere, truthful, reliable, verified; have confidence; linked to and carried by the spirits; the sheen of jade; hatch, incubate, a sprout in the womb. A shaman would extend it to other members of the family: With the root 'heart' the term Fu means a return to the origin, the incessant return of life, renewal and rebirth. With the root 'celestial omen', Fu can also mean blessing: a ritual offering of food and wine and the blessings it calls down from heaven; protection and celestial favour, hidden safe place."

In my last reading with Stephen at Vallecitos with the "Three coming toward me now," there was Relating Hexagram 61, Zhong Fu, Centring and Connecting to the Spirits; a heart emptied and at peace; the Opened Heart.

"Centring and Connecting to the Spirits opens a centre where the vital forces are rooted in the self, the inner riches of 'pigs and fishes' hidden in the Stream of Life.  It is the space between Heaven and Earth where the Myriad Beings live, a mediating space that connects the inner and outer lives of all things.  Thus it signifies divination and a symbol given by the spirits that is realised, proved and manifested in life.  It is trust in the images that flow from the heart and the spirit that makes them true."

I love these additional words on the pair 61:62 in Total I Ching.

“When we consider Change and the hearts of those who made it, we might not be too far off if we see those old diviners, magicians and sages offering us their blessings, we who are helping to restore the magical world they lived in. The last symmetrical pair in Change, 61:62 The Opened Heart and the Flying Bird, describes a place where the events of life can be seen, moving back across the threshold of life and death to the source of all. This, I would suggest, is the imagined place from which they launched their vehicle of transformation. A final picture emerges here, the figure of Yu the Great, the limping shaman who strides across the gap between life and death, one foot in each world. He walks backwards and forwards through time, a flying bird that spreads the word of the Great Enterprise of transformation.”

The pair 41:42, The Offering and The Blessing were also critical to my understanding of the journey in the weeks prior to my departure for South Africa. The clustering and recurrence of the pair only emphasized their importance as a central theme of the trip. Stephen had advised "If the pair 41:42 is the image you are working in for the trip, know that this is a sacrifice to your highest ideals and that it will bring blessing from the Ancestors. You will not know how or where, and it will be heavy going at first, but have complete faith that the purpose and the blessing will reveal itself."

In an effort to define this purpose in September 2005, a month before my departure, I asked, "What will the trip to South Africa mean to me?" I received Hexagram 41 The Offering , 9/1, 9/2, 6/5, 9/6 > 8 Grouping/ Calling and Gathering the Spirits.

Hexagram 41: "It is a gift that costs much effort. Philosophically, it is the cultivation of power and virtue, what keeps harm away. It reduces things to the essential, eliminating the useless or outmoded, and thus reveals the Way. It is the waning moon, the victim, the old King, what is offered."

When I asked for "further clarification on the reading," I received Hexagram 42, The Blessing 9/5 > 27 The Tiger's Mouth.

Hexagram 42: "This is the feast in which all partake and the blessings (Fu) showered on us through the ancestors after they have received and accepted the sacrifice and presented our needs to the High Lord. It is a synonym of yi, change, as gift or blessing, a transformation affected by a crossing. Like a transforming line in the Change, it is a connection of Heaven and Earth brought about by ritual, sacrifice and inner work. Philosophically, it is what enriches power and virtue, rising and opening from the seeds. It is the waxing moon, the celebrant, the new King, the blessing."

As a student of Change, It bears noting that the Pair 41:42 “contains Zone of Radical Transformation that connects inner and outer centers of experience seen as the interchange between 27 the Tiger’s Mouth, where the tiger eats the corruption of the old images and the old life, and 61 the Opened Heart, sign of the stilled and empty heart-mind that acts as a real conduit for the spirit as it seeks to manifest in the world.”

Three of the transforming lines in my readings, at center lines 2 and 5, are Zones of Radical Transformation, showing the potential for connecting the inner and outer centers of my life.

• Line 2 in Hexagram 41:  Zone of Radical Transformation, 27: “Diminishing. The Offering... This is centering and activating the purpose. This is a very advantageous connection. Everyone will benefit… This connection won’t diminish things, it will augment them."
• Line 5 in Hexagram 41:  Zone of Radical Transformation , 61: "Dimininishing. The Offering. 'Someone" augments him. Ten Pairs of tortoise divinations cannot control or contradict this!.. This originates in protection from above. A blessing and a Mandate from Heaven… Nothing can interfere with your plans and your desires. You will be showered with blessings. Bring your inner and outer lives together.”
• Line 5 in Hexagram 42:  Zone of Radical Transformation, 27: “Augmenting. The Blessing. You have a connection to the spirits and a benevolent heart. No question, the Way to the Source is open. A connection to the spirits will carry you through. Wise Words! ’A benevolent heart is my power and virtue.' Do not question it. This is acquiring a Great purpose.”

A month before the voyage, I again asked the question, "What should I know about this trip?" and again received Hexagram 41. This time I received only one transforming line  41, 9/6 > 19 Releasing the Spirit. A follow up question resulted in 42, 9/1 >20 Watching the Omens.

• Line 6 in Hexagram 41:  “This is acquiring a Great purpose. You will not be diminished but augmented by this. It will bring good things to everyone involved. Have a plan. Be sure of yourself. You will get considerable help, and this will not be a sedentary affair.“
• Line 1 in Hexagram 42:  “The below is not a question of riches. You need a purpose a great idea around which you can organize yourself and your passion. Build the city, cast the vessel. The Way is fundamentally open. It is the right time to act. This is definitely not a mistake.”

"Pity Southern Africa's first people. Pity the people with no name. For when you are the only ones, you have no need to distinguish your kind from others. Pity those whose exclusive domain once stretched from the Zambezi to the Cape of Good Hope, from the Atlantic to the Indian Oceans. Their Tswana neighbors in the Kalahari, who arrived here 1,200 years ago, call them the Basarwa, the "people who have nothing." Their pastoralist cousins, the Khoi, call them San, outsiders or vagabonds. They are a people with an ancient past but almost no recorded history, save for one glorious exception, rock paintings of antelope and elephants, dancers and hunters, some of which remain strikingly vivid despite being lashed by wind and rain and baked by the sun for thousands of years. The most recent paintings show sailing ships and mounted horsemen. Then there were no more."

South Africa Bushmen rock art

This final sentence is not entirely correct. Vetkat Kruiper and other contemporary Bushmen artists are the glorious exception continuing the unbroken artistic tradition of their ancestors.  "Vetkat had never held a pencil or seen a Bushman painting. Yet the art that poured from him was the ancient art of his forefathers, the sacred gift of spirit."  I will be entrusted with a portfolio of reproductions of the Sacred Collection to carry across the Atlantic and use in some yet undetermined way. This call to assist is an unwritten chapter of my South Africa journey that continues, though I have come home.  

The last page in my South Africa travel journal of writings and Yi readings bears the simple words "Thank you."  The Yi's response was 5, Attending, 9/2, 6/4, 9/5 > 55, Abounding/Receiving the Mandate. Receiving at trip's end, the hexagram of the Spirit Visitors and the Rainmaker, the same hexagram of the prophetic last reading at Vallecitos, felt very synchronistic.  I had truly come full circle. 

"The water motif that runs through the lines evokes the master of the waters and the ways, the culture hero Yu the Great.  It shows the capacity of humans, through attending on the rituals and symbols, to follow the Way of Heaven.  Attending also evokes the moment of gathering forces and energy before King Wu received the Mandate to set the armies marching into Shang.  It means measuring a danger, confident it can be surmounted with the aid of the spirits.  Its shadow is timidity, fear or needless striving."

In this final reading in my travel journal, unlike the reading at Vallecitos, I received line 5, signifying "a fertile time is approaching," the sharing of the sacred meal with the spirits, the ancestors and noble people. 

Line 5 of Hexagram 5:  "The sacred meal...  You make the connection.  This is the meal shared with the spirits, the ancestors and noble people.  Let pleasure, harmony, peace and joy open the Way.  Share what you have.  Gather with others.  This comradeship brings you out of your isolation.  A fertile time is approaching.  If you let ourself be led, you will realize hidden potential.  The situation is already changing."

The Crossline Omen of this line (5.5 [11.5 : 12.2] 6.2) reads:

• Crossline Omen: "You are in the realm of the New King, a time when the Great Ancestor offers the maidens in marriage.  This is an omen of great future happiness. The Way to the Source is open, so lay out the offerings.  Retreat from conflict and return to where you feel secure, to your own people's doors.  If you let yourself be led, you can realize the hidden potential.  Co-operate with the on-going process of change."

With transforming lines 9/2, 6/4, 9/5, the Relating Hexagram is  55, Abounding/Receiving the Mandate.

"Abounding describes your situation in terms of abundance and fertile profusion to come.  There is a fundamental change preparing.  The way to deal with it is to be exuberant and expansive.  Overflow with good feeling, support and generosity.  Give with both hands.  This is pleasing to the spirits.  Through it they will give you success, effective power and the capacity to bring the situation to maturity.  Imagine yourself as the King whose power bestows wealth and happiness on all.  Rid yourself of sorrow, melancholy and care.  Be like the sun at midday.  Shed light on all and eliminate the shadows."

 

"The Hole That Reveals The Whole"

When pondering the significance of this final journal entry, 5, Attending, 9/2, 6/4, 9/5 > 55, Abounding/Receiving the Mandate, I recalled that in the summer of 2005 in preparation for the trip to South Africa, hexagram 55 recurred in a number of readings of several members of the College of Diviners. 

• I received Hexagram 34,Great Invigorating Strength, 9/2 > 55 Abounding/Receiving the Mandate, revealing the face of Wang Hai, as my "inner figure," when Stephen "opened the message" during the group divination at Vallecitos.
• Kitrina received the same reading 34, Great Invigorating Strength, 9/2 > 55 when she asked "What about my part in helping Linda to go to SA?"
• Connie received 55 Abounding/Receiving the Mandate, 6/6 > 30 Radiance/ Bright Omens to the question, "What is my way to help Linda get to the conference in SA?"
• Helga received 30 Radiance/Bright Omens, 9/6 > 55 when she asked the question "What about sending this Rainmaker image to Malidoma?"  And Abounding/Receiving the Mandate a second time, 55, 9/4, 6/5  > 63, Already Crossing to the question, "What about sending the above divination to my fellow diviners?"

Stephen explained the importance of the recurrence of Hexagram 55 to the College of Diviners:

"When a figure comes up like this in a group, it seems to both articulate something about the group's purpose or theme and point at ways each individual's concerns are connected to the overall image.  It is bringing individuals together in the great image of Abounding and spreading that Abundance.  This figure is connected with a great omen in the story of the Change of the Mandate of Heaven.  It is the precise time King Wu received the empowering omen, came out of mourning (breaking all the rules to do so) and launched the armies that would "renew the time," freeing people from an oppressive tyrant and inaugurating a social structure that spread the blessings to all, putting everything back in its real and proper place.  In the Matrix it is the great royal center of power and the center of the ritual year, the place from which the blessings flow.  So people are enjoined to shine on everything and spread the bright omen to all, freeing themselves from the melancholy that keeps them in the Mourning Hut, no matter how that melancholy might be justified.

It is also a specific HENG or fixing ritual. At the time of summer, when the yin forces begin to grow, leading on to harvest and death and winter, the King retreats into seclusion and "fixes the form" of the coming abundance through inner work. This Heng aspect is the great images and insights that are emerging from this "hidden" group.  And it points at the necessity to keep this work going, too…  Perhaps, we are all involved in just this Great Enterprise. Perhaps the Yi has chosen us to work through, to carry this message."

In locating my role throughout the journey in South Africa, I never lost sight of the fact that I am simply one member of the College of Diviners; sent as an emissary of this group.  Helga wrote of hexagram 55, "It made more sense intuitively that you had drawn 55, Receiving the Mandate... It also made sense as part of the process--not the least of which is that our first major project involves sending one of our sages on a journey!" In connection to the group, I was also reminded of the group discussion on fractals, the "hole that reveals the whole."  I hear the voices of Kitrina and Stephen speaking:

Kitrina:  “It seems to me that this is happening both individually and collectively....and this reflects what I know about ‘fractals.’ I believe a "fractal" is about a phenomenon where you can take a fragment of a picture and find that the entire picture is contained within that one fragment. And so I believe that what is happening in our individual lives contain the ‘entire picture’ of what is happening in our communities, our country, our world, and our universe. When any one of us has success in freeing ourselves from our inner tyrants it can perhaps help this to happen in larger contexts.  For me this is indeed a time of ‘coming out of the mourning hut.’”

Stephen:  “Fractals are a great image/metaphor. They first came up in the investigation of brain work, when people producing holograms found that both the image and the brain itself duplicates itself in every discrete unit. Chaos systems are made of fractals- each is the ‘hole that reveals the whole.’ That means that in both experience and in the divination system, every unit reflects and contains the whole, and the whole system can be accessed through any part in a ‘synchronistic fashion.’ It also means that, as in our case here, each individual reading in a field will have the same shape, the shape of the whole. This also points at why our individual readings as a group are sharing the same patterns. Our themes seem to be clustering around Abounding and coming out of the Mourning Hut, and the theme of facing and renovating the corruption of the ancestral images. This will be going on at all levels.”

"The ‘hole that reveals the whole.’ That means that in both experience and in the divination system, every unit reflects and contains the whole, and the whole system can be accessed through any part in a ‘synchronistic fashion.’" How my personal journey to South Africa 'reflects and contains the whole' will be a matter of discussion within the College of Diviners.  The report is now in the group's hands and the 'shape of the whole' will most certainly emerge.  

But, first witness a 'coming out of the mourning hut' of sorts in the shape of the artwork of Vetkat Kruiper; an example of the "abundance and fertile profusion to come." 

Vetkat Kruiper's Art Work*

*Quality of paintings has been compromised in their reproduction in this document.

The paintings below are a limited sampling of Vetkat’s work that have sold or are currently for sale.  They are not from the Sacred Collection, which is not for sale. 

Bowing To Nature

Heavenly Birds

Illusions

Life's Fragrance

Joy

Circle of Joy

Modern Man

Dreams of Yesteryear