"Do they have
witches in Germany?" asked Archana S., a 26-year old Nepalese
woman from Dharan at a Nepalese get-together in the Pochgasse
31 in Freiburg, a university-town in south-west Germany.
It was an
interesting question. I thought about the symbolic burning of
the witches during the fasting period of Fasnet in the
Allemanic areas, and also about the recent exorcist trials,
and said, "Yes, there are witches in Germany." European
history is replete with cases of witches being burned at the
stake in the name of Christianity during the Middle Ages. And
there are very often reports in the media about black magic
and secret ritual ceremonies being held with the effect that
the Pope has appointed certain priests to weed out the satan
from the souls of the afflicted people through ritual
purifying ceremonies.
"Ever since
I’ve come to Germany, I've been bitten by a boksi (witch).
And I also have nightmares when a boksi bites me." The
Nepalese word for it is "aithan paryo." When you are asleep
and you have a heavy feeling on your chest and this heaviness
increases, as though someone is placing heavy weights on your
rib-cage. Your breathing becomes heavy and difficult, you
sweat and gasp and suddenly wake up, and find yourself
drenched with perspiration. What you've had is an attack of "aithan".
And very often a black cat darts from your bedroom.
Archana said,
"When I've had an attack by a witch I have red patches where
the witch bit me. And after some hours it becomes blue".
I asked if
she had had such bites in Nepal.
"Oh yes," she
replied, "I had it often in Dharan and Kathmandu".
"What did it
precisely look like?" I asked. "Was it like an insect bite?" I
was thinking of Dharan's near sub-tropical climate, the air
infested with tropical insects like mosquitoes.
"It looks
like a bite", she answered sharply as if reading my thoughts,
then added, "but here in Germany you have to look for insects
because everything's so clean and sterile. It's difficult to
find insects here because of the wanton use of insecticides
and pesticides in urban areas".
She was right.
In Nepal you only have to go into the Terai or to Chitwan and
you'd see tigers, panthers, leopards, elephants, rhinos, wild
boars, monkeys, crocodiles and in the Narayani river the
Gangetic Dolphines, exotic birds and it's an entomologist's
paradise.
The other
guests at the Pochgasse 31 were a German-Nepali doctor couple.
I translated what Archana said because Werner's command of the
Nepali language wasn’t that good, and asked him what he
thought about it. He was of the opinion that it could be a
psycho-somatic phenomenon because of the fact that Archana was
new in Germany, didn't have friends, lived with her husband
alone in a strange environment, and was unhappy because she
didn't fluent German, and couldn't talk with ordinary Germans
in the town of Kulmbach (Bavaria), where she lived.
In Nepal
Archana's problem with the boksi-bites would be no news at
all, for every village has its own village-shaman who takes
care of psychosomatic and religious 'ailments,' and treats the
problems by mantras, seances, herbal medicine, or in modern
times, by the competent use of modern medicine.
It might be
mentioned that in the 80,000 mountainous hamlets of Nepal
there are at least 40,000 shamans and traditional healers who
have been, or are taught the basics of first aid. With the
influx of tourists since 1950, Nepal's shamans have marched
with modern times. The winds of change have swept Nepal, where
once the shaman wasn't supposed to get rich and make a profit
through his healing profession. Today, he blesses a
life-saving electrolyte solution for the treatment of
diarrhoea, and makes himself useful by selling ritualised
anti-birth pills for a commission, thereby helping the
government's family planning efforts. Moreover, the Nepalese
shamans have been given an official status while also bearing
the title "Practitioner of Traditional medicine", and being
trained in the application of modern drugs.
I told them
about an ethnologist from Freiburg who'd specialised on
Thakali-shamanism and had spent a few years in Nepal. She even
had a huge Jhakri drum (dhangro)with her, but wasn't concerned
with the healing aspect of shamanism. Her job had been to
record and document about shamanism and wasn't concerned with
the healing aspect and didn't possess the ability to heal a
patient. The thought of a German with a dhangro provoked
laughter, but in England there's a woman-Jane Purce-who uses
chanting influenced by Mongolian and Tibetan shamanistic
techniques for healing and transformation. A weekend course 59
Pounds Sterling.
And then
Archana went on to say, "Even my husband has bites on his
arms." Her husband, who's a food technologist, answered in the
affirmative. Since it was a Nepalese evening, the main
language was Nepali, but our conversation was studded with
German words so that our German guests wouldn't feel uneasy
and out of place.
Just as the
Germans have a grillfest with steaks, würst and beer, the
Nepalese buffet consists of: dal-bhat-shikar, rounded up with
momos and delicious achaar. And there was soft Nepalese
ethno-music (Sur Sudha)and songs sung by Narayan Gopal, Ambar
Gurung and Sambhu Rai accompanying the conversation and
delicacies.
"I had an
uncle in Nepal who first had dreams about shamans," said
Archana S. She said the old experienced shaman of his village
had died. Her uncle had begun to see the dead shaman in his
dreams and had spoken to him, but he had dismissed the dreams.
The dreams, however, became persistent. Whenever there was a
shamanic seance in the village, her uncle would start
shivering and shaking like a leaf, as if in a trance. The
drums of a shaman would incite his quiverings.
Sometime
later, he'd seen the shaman in his dreams again. He said that
the shaman had shown him where he'd hidden his shaman's
paraphernalia: the dhangro (drum), gajo (stick)were behind a
certain bush, the headgear of porcupine quills in another
place, and beside a big boulder by the rivulet were his
Rudraksha malas and belts with cauri mussels and bells. The
brass bumba (jug)and his thumri, a wooden ritual dagger, were
also hidden in the vicinity.
It was a call
to Archana's uncle to be a shaman, and the younger man after
the fashion of the layman's etiology, had asked his elders and
neighbours for advice, and they had concluded that he should
take up the mantle. So he went and collected the dead shaman's
ritual objects and became a jhakri.
I mentioned
that I'd read a book written by an American named Larry
Peter's, who'd done a stint of shamanism in Tin Chuli in the
outskirts of Kathmandu. Mr. Peters worked as an assistant
Jhakri (shaman), and beat his dhangro, but said he did not
believe in the spirit world to which the Jhakri, Bhirendra,
was introducing him. He refused to enter a de rigeur
initiation psychosis. Sadly enough, when he and his son were
seriously ill, they preferred the missionary hospital to the
shaman. The son, however, died in the hospital. And Bhirendra
the Jhakri was understandably not on speaking terms with Larry
because of the breach of confidence (Vertrauensverlust).
The question
is: would the boy have survived if the traditional healer had
treated him?
Perhaps the
modern doctor should also learn to send his patient to a
shaman when he gets baffled by certain symptoms. The shaman
will then banish the cause of the illness, namely an invisible
power that becomes active in the visible world, causing
suffering and illness. For the shaman establishes contact with
the invisible world and the earthly sphere, and forces the
evil power that takes residence in human hosts to reveal their
identities, ask them to what they desire, and eventually make
them promise to leave the somatic environment of their hosts.
And that is traditional healing through a ritual.
Asked about
life in a small German town, Archana S. said "Man-parey-na!"
which means she didn't like it. She longs for the mountains of
Dharan in Eastern Nepal, and worries about her children who
are still in the small Himalayan Kingdom. What will happen to
my children when there's a monsoon-flood? Or an earthquake in
Nepal? Or malaria? Or typhoid or dysentery and diarrhoea?
In the
meantime, Archana S. has been to a modern German doctor and
has had blood and allergy tests, but her boksi-bites will be
healed when she returns to Nepal forever this autumn--and
visits her local shaman.
