of the Ancient Kemites and subsequently created clusters of similar conceptions
all over Africa. What, in fact, is recognized as African culture and civilization is
the combined social conventions and inventions emerging from a common African
meaning of the person and well-being, which I believe to be best represented by
Bantu-Kongo thought.
The Bantu-Kongo believe that diverse forces and waves of energy that govern
life surround humans. The Bantu-Kongo believe that the heated force of Kalunga blew
up and down as a huge storm of projectiles, Kimbwandende, producing a huge mass in
fusion. In the process of cooling, the mass in fusion, solidification occurs giving birth
to the Earth. In effect, the Bantu believe that all of reality (Kalunga) is fundamentally
a process of perpetual and mutual sending and receiving of spirit (energy) in the form
of waves and radiations. Kalunga or reality is the totality, the completeness of all
life. It is an ocean of energy, a force in motion. Kalunga is everything, sharing life
and becoming life continually after life itself. As the totality or the complete living,
Kalunga is comprised of both a visible realm (Ku Nseke) and an invisible realm
(Ku Mpemba). The visible physical world has spirit (energy) as its most important
element. Referred to as Nkisi (medicine) the spirit element of the physical (visible)
world has the power to care, cure, heal and guide. The invisible (spiritual) world (Ku
Mpemba) is comprised of human experience, ancestor experience and the soul-mind
experience. The Ku Mpemba has spirit (energy) as its most important element (Fu-
kiau, 1991). In effect, if reality (visible and invisible) is, it is spirit.
A human being is, in fact, a divine spirit housed in a physical body having
a human experience. The human being is a three-fold unfolding experience of yet-
to-live, living and after-living spirit. Being human is to be a living sun, possessing a
“knowing and knowable” spirit (energy or power) through which one has an enduring
relationship with the total perceptible and ponderable universe. It is to be inseparable
from and live and move within an ocean of waves/radiations of spirit (energy or
power). Consistent with this notion of being human as vibrating radiating energy, the
fundamental core or essence of all African traditional healing systems is righting the
disequilibrium (chaotic and arrhythmic vibrations) generated by spiritual, natural,
14 Imhotep Journal
psychological and socio-political factors which are expressed as human discord and
disease (cf. Adogame, 2009)
Well-being in traditional African thought is being love-filled, happy, healthy,
joyful, prosperous and efficacious. African traditional thought teaches us that “well-
being” is achieved when spirit (human) beings (spirit) affirm their own humanity by
recognizing the humanity of others and on that basis establish humane relations with
them. A human being is “spirit” whose unfolding is a constant and continual inquiry
into its own being, experience, knowledge and truth. To be human is to be a spirit
in motion (unfolding). Being human is to be a phenomenon of perpetual, constant
and continual unfolding (vibration- sharing and exchanging) of life spirit. Humans
are containers and instruments of Divine spirit and relationships. This alone has
profound implications for healing all of humanity.
African traditional healing should not be seen or treated as exotica or some
long lost and irrelevant primitive set of practices of interest to only a select few. This,
for the most part unexamined and disrespected, aspect of human genius has real value
for all of humanity. Consider for instance, that the tri-fold (yet-to-live, living and
after-living) unfolding vibrating radiating spirits (humans) can be thought of as the
“essentiality-of-being” and that well-being is at the level of the whole or collective.
The “essentiality-of-being” for all of humanity would, therefore, include beings
yet-to-live, the living, and those dwelling in the after life. What kinds of choices
would people make about how they live, relate to each other, what they eat, and how
they treat sacred Mother Earth, if those choices were rooted in a sense of well-being
that required the recognition of the inextricable link between all living beings on
this planet? When confronted with personal illness, impending social disaster or
international conflict, the world’s peoples, driven by an intrinsic traditional African
sense of well-being, would meet these challenges in humane ways because their own
sense of humanity depended on that reflection. How better would humanity be if,
without selfishness, hatred, envy, jealousy, or fear, each one of us, from individuals to
nation states, saw it as our nature and/or vested interest to support and recognize the
full possibility and unlimited potentiality of everyone else. The healing of humanity
African Well-being 15
may very well be found in understanding African Traditional healing and adopting
the African sense of well-being.
Works Cited
Adogame, A. (2009). Healing. In Molefi K. Asante & Ama Mazama (eds.),
Encyclopedia of African Religion, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication.
Bunseki, F.. (1991). Self healing power and therapy-old teachings from Africa.
New York, NY: Vantage Press.
Ngubane, J. K. (1979).
Conflict of minds: Changing power depositions in South
Africa. New York, NY: Books in Focus.
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Imhotep Journal, Volume 7, May 2010