Observations placeholder
Xam bushmen - Hollow mountain
Identifier
004532
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The /Xam Bushmen – a people who had no contact with other civilisations until relatively recently recognise the existence of a place where the dead assemble before going elsewhere.
And this place is not a meadow.
As the Bushmen of South Africa describe it, everyone and everything - young old; man woman; animal or human; Boer or Bushman; murderer, murdered, diseased or starved; - goes to this one place when they die – described allegorically as a ‘great hole’.
They also describe the one path to get there, in effect in analogy terms one Internet route to get to this hole. And it is a spiritual path – a First Bushman’s path.
The hole is ‘net soos ‘n huis’, which means approximately like a club house, a sort of gathering place, a house for all. And it is “as large as from Table Bay to Kalk Bay to Mowbray” which in allegorical terms means enormous. And by living here in this place they become “regte mooi” or ‘really nice’
And it “maak soos ‘n jong kerel” makes them young again, makes the old man into a young man again.
So in effect, although the process is exactly the same as that for the asphodel fields, the place itself is not a field or a meadow but a rather nice ‘hole’!
A description of the experience
The First Bushman’s Path: stories, Songs and testimonies of the /Xam of the Northern Cape
The young man who dies, the old woman who dies
The small child who dies, the old man who dies
They die, they die and they go to this place
The body of the old woman dries up and it shrinks
And she starves and dies and goes to this place
And the head of an old man turns white from age
And he starves and dies and goes to this place
They starve, they die and they go to this place
And a man shoots down another man with his poison
And the other man dies and he goes to this place
And a man slashes at another man with a dagger
And the other man dies and he goes to this place
They fight they die and they go to this place
And a man is stabbed with a knife and he dies
And a man is beaten with a stick and he dies
And a man is shot with an arrow and he dies
And a woman is shot with an arrow and she dies
They die, they die and they go to this place [//Kabbo told Lucy Lloyd]
And all dead people and animals walk one path
They walk along the same path to the one great hole
The animals that have been shot by the Bushmen
And the Bushmen that have been shot by other men
As well as the people that have died of illness
Dead gemsbok, dead ostriches, dead Korannas
Dead Boers and dead Bushmen all walk that path
The dead walk a path that is a Bushman’s path
It is a path that is the First Bushman’s path
And after they have been buried in the ground
They get up and walk out along the path
To a hole that is ‘net soos ‘n huis’, a hole as
Large as from Table Bay to Kalk Bay to Mowbray
And they get to the great hole and go into it
And they live in it and they walk about in it
The Bushmen go into it, the Korannas go into it
The Boers go into it, all the people go into it
The dead go into the hole and they live in it
And there the very old man whose head is white
Becomes ‘regte mooi’ and ‘maak soos ‘n jong kerel’