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The Trance Dance
In this dance certain individuals will go into trance and in this state heal the sick by 'pulling out ' the illness , transform themselves into animals, and enter, either through a waterhole or by climbing into the sky, the world of the spirits and the dead. The central belief underlying this ritual is that the dead ancestors of the San wish at certain times to call their kin to death and the spirit world, and it is the role of the trance-healer to fight against these forces and keep the sick person in life. These trance dancers are therefore shamans who, have access to other nonmaterial worlds in this state of altered consciousness.
During the dance, 'num' is heated up in the body of the dancer. The experience is of the body and 'num' coming to boiling point. The 'num' vaporises and rises up the spinal column, leaving the body at the back of the neck . In this moment the individual enters a trance state. It is these descriptions that lead Lewis-Williams to conclude that lines emerging from the head of certain rock art figures are symbols of this trance experience. Finally, anthropological research amongst modern day Kung San, helps us understand one other image of rock art, the image of death or dying (often a dying antelope, especially eland). The Kung San describe this experience of entering trance as dying. For them it is however not used as a metaphor but rather a literal experience of dying (entering the world of the dead) but eventually being able to return. Part of what makes this experience of trance so frightening is because it is experienced as death. Images of the dying eland, (typically hair standing on end, apparently what happens in the death throes of the eland) are therefore understood as images of trance.
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From dusk to dawn, to the sound of rhythmic clapping and singing, dancers engrave their circular route through the sand around the fire. In the midst of the clapping and singing certain dancers keel over, shouting, some attempt to rush into the fire and are prevented by others. Some dancers bleed from the noses and experience sharp physical pain which prompts them to go into characteristic physical postures. Then some dancers shout out insults at the spirits of the dead who lurk in the darkness of the surrounding night. This is a trance or healing dance, a central ritual of all San groupings, probably going back thousands of years. And it is this ritual which is so central to one of the understandings of Southern African rock art.
San groupings traditionally disperse in the wet season
and congregate around waterholes in the dry season. In this period of smaller groupings coming together, at least a few nights a month an all night healing dance will be held.
Amongst the Kalahari Kung it is believed that certain
people have 'num,' a healing energy or potency which is used in healing when the shaman is in trance. This potency can manifest in other beings or contexts, for instance in bees, or the eland, or even in songs. This potency can then be harnessed to assist in healing or going into trance. It is this concept which leads proponents of the shamanistic hypothesis of rock art to conclude that images of eland, or bees ( amongst many others ), indicate a harnessing of potency by the San healer, especially when they are linked to other images by a thin red line.