Qwanciqutshaa
Depictions of Southern African Rock Art
AWAKENING LANDSCAPES OF BUSHMEN ROCK ART, the Memory of the ancient Soul of Time. The subconscious Dream of Creation is continually birthing our awareness to higher levels of understanding, Bushmen Ancient Memory imagined the past, present and future story of Creation! Abstractly fused together this painting depicts Sacredly inspired Depictions of the Dream of the Bushmen Rock Art paintings of Southern Africa. 10% of the sale of this painting will go to the Khomani Bushmen community, to Lydia and Izak Kruiper and their people’s at Witdaai – https://m.facebook.com/KalahariBushmen/
Creation Stories
Ancient Mythological Creation stories of the magical world of the Bushmen of the Drakensberg, a simple yet deeply spiritual awareness of life. Our ancient imagination dreamed THE HUMAN SOUL TO EVOLVE & GROW THE HIGHEST AWARENESS OF THE TREE OF LIFE to be, from this a primordial LIGHT shines in our modern world today, sacredly bridging the polarities of the TIME WAVES of Creations growth. Acknowledging the rising subconscious fields, calling back the forgotten SOUL and honouring the memory of ancient Bushmen mythological inspiration and the Bushmen Rock Art paintings depicted sacredly, reflecting their Creation Story.
QWANCIQUTSHAA, Dancing the Dream Awake.
Creation stories. Told by Qing in 1873, these are the CREATION STORIES OF THE BUSHMEN OF THE DRAKENSBERG, DEEPLY ANCIENT METAPHOR’S FOR OUR TIMES IN 2018/19.
Cagn, QWANCIQUTSHAA, the Water Snake & Dancing the Song of life.
[Cagn the Creator]
Cagn was the first Being; he gave orders and caused all things to appear, and to be made, the sun, the moon, stars, wind, mountains, and animals. His wife’s name was Coti. He had two sons, and the eldest was chief, and his name was Cogaz; the name of the second son was Gcwi. There were three great chiefs, Cagn, Cogaz, and Qwanciqutshaa (of all three legends are here given), who had great power, but it was Cagn who gave orders through the other two.
[Qwanciqutshaa]
Qwanciqutshaa, the chief, used to live alone. He had no wife, for the women would not have him. A man sent a number of little boys to get sticks for the women to dig ants’ eggs. One of the women grumbled, saying the stick she received was crooked and those of the others were straight.
That night she dreamt that a baboon came to take for his wife a young girl who had refused Qwanciqutshaa. Next day, as she was digging alone, the baboon came to her in a rage (it had been present and heard her observation about the stick, and thought she was mocking at the crookedness of its tail), and it said, “Why did you curse me?”
And it threw stones at her, and she ran home and told the girl of her dream and that it was coming true, and told her to escape to Qwanciqutshaa. The girl sunk into the ground, and came up at another place, and sunk again. She sank three times and then came up and went to Qwanciqutshaa’s place.
Qwanciqutshaa had killed a red rhebok and was skinning it when he saw his elands running about, and wondered what had startled them. He left the meat and took the skin and went home, and found the young girl there, and asked why she came. She said she was frightened of the baboon. He told her to fetch water to wash the blood off his hand, and she went, and came running back in a fright, and spilt some on Qwanciqutshaa.
He said, “What is the reason of this?”
She said, “It is fright at the baboon.”
He said, “Why are you frightened; he is your husband, and comes from your place?”
She said, “No, I have run to you for fear of him.”
Then he put her up on his head and hid her in his hair. The baboon had in the meantime come to the people she had left, and asked for her, and they said they did not know where she was; but he smelt where she had gone down into the ground, and he pursued, scenting her at each place, and when he came towards Qwanciqutshaa the elands started and ran about and gazed at him.
He came up to Qwanciqutshaa with his keeries, saying, “Where is my wife?”
Qwanciqutshaa said, “I have no wife of yours!”
It flew at Qwanciqutshaa, and fought him, but Qwanciqutshaa got it down and stuck it through with his own keerie, and Qwanciqutshaa banished it to the mountains, saying, “Go, eat scorpions and roots as a baboon should,” and it went screaming away; and the screams were heard by the women at the place it came from, and all the baboons were banished.
And Qwanciqutshaa killed an eland, purified himself as the baboon had defiled him, and he told the girl to go home and tell the people he was alive. But the young men wanted to marry this girl, and she said, “No, I love none but Qwanciqutshaa, who saved me from the baboon.”
[Qwanciqutshaa kills a rhebuck]
So they hated Qwanciqutshaa; and when he had killed a red rhebok and put meat on the fire to roast, those young men took fat from a snake they had killed and dropped it on the meat, and when he cut a piece and put it in his mouth, it fell out; and he cut another, and it fell out; and the third time it fell out, and the blood gushed from his nose.
So he took all his things, his weapons, and clothes, and threw them into the sky, and he threw himself into the river. And there were villages down there and young women, and they wanted to catch Qwanciqutshaa. But he turned into a snake, and he said, “No, it is through women I was killed,” and he eluded and threatened them, and they all ran away.
The only girl that remained was the girl he had saved, and she made a hut and went and picked things and made cannā, and put pieces in a row from the river bank to the hut. And the snake came out and ate up the charms, and went back into the water, and the next day she did the same; and that night he came and went to the hut and took a mat and went up to the sky and got his kaross and came down and slept on the mat.
And when the girl saw he had been there she placed charms again, and lay in wait; and the snake came out of the water and raised his head, and looked warily and suspiciously round, and then he glided out of the snake’s skin and walked, picking up the charm food, to the hut, and when he was asleep she went in and seized him and quickly forced more charms in his mouth, and he struggled to escape, but she held him fast, And he was exhausted and trembled, and said, “Why do you hold me, you who caused my death?”
And she said, “Though I was the cause, it was not my fault, for I loved you, and none but you!” And she smothered him in the kaross, and ran to the skin and sprinkled it with cannā and burnt it, and they remained there three days.
And Qwanciqutshaa killed an eland and purified himself and his wife, and told her to grind cannā, and she did so, and he sprinkled it on the ground, and all the elands that had died became alive again, and some came in with assegais(spear) sticking in them, which had been struck by those people who had wanted to kill him. And he took out the assegais, a whole bundle, and they remained in his place; and it was a place enclosed with hills and precipices, and there was one pass, and it was constantly filled with a freezingly cold mist, so that none could pass through it, and those men all remained outside, and they ate sticks at last, and died of hunger. But his brother (or her brother), in chasing an eland he had wounded, pursued it closely through that mist, and Qwanciqutshaa saw the elands running about, frightened at that wounded eland and the assegaai that was sticking in it.
And he came out and saw his brother, and he said, “Oh! my brother, I have been injured; you see now where I am.” And the next morning he killed an eland for his brother, and he told him to go back and call his mother and his friends, and he did so, and when they came they told him how the other people had died of hunger outside; and they stayed with him, and the place smelt of meat.
[The dance]
Cagn gave us the song of this dance, and told us to dance it, and people would die from it, and he would give charms to raise them again. It is a circular dance of men and women, following each other, and it is danced all night. Some fall down; some become as if mad and sick; blood runs from the of noses of others whose charms are weak, and they eat charm medicine, in which there is burnt snake powder. When a man is sick, this dance is danced round him, and the dancers put both hands under their arm-pits, and press their hands on him, and when he coughs the initiated put out their hands and receive what has injured him—secret things. The initiated who know secret things are Qognqé; the sick person is hang cäi.
Qing was asked what caused the milky way, and he said Cagn placed it there to support the snow.
The stories are told by Qing, a Bushmen man from the Drakensberg, translated in 1873 by Joseph Orpen – source of the information of the stories is from www.sahumanities.org