Below a Rock painting of a line of dancing shamans, from the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Some bleed from the nose; some carry dancing sticks. The figures of the leading figure extend onto the roof of the rock shelter. The lines radiating from his fingers probably represent sickness being cast back to the world of the spirits. The eland head probably symbolises the eland n/om, or power, that shamans are harnessing.
Sometimes the painted dancers are shown with their bodies bent forwards so that they are almost at right angles to their legs. In this posture, they support the weight of their torsos on one or two dancing sticks. The San explain that, as the dance increases in intensity, the n/om in the shamans' stomachs starts to 'boil', their muscles contract painfully, and they bend forward in the way depicted above.
The dancers wear rattles on their legs. Scattered amongst them are a number of white flecks. Like arrows-of-sickness, these flecks probably depict something that is not seen by ordinary people. Perhaps they depict the n/om that infuses the place of the dance and that shamans can see.
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In San rock paintings throughout South Africa human figures dominate numerically over animal subjects. In this painting from the Western Cape many human figures are painted in the bending forward position, a common trance posture. Note that the second black figure from the left has an animal head.
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