More thoughts on ‘thinking strings’: a comparative approach to concepts of soul and the notion of ‘thinking strings’ in southern African San cosmology

Abstract

I previously demonstrated the congruence of ‘blood’ and ‘thought’ in /Xam cosmology, and that the equivalence of blood and thought expressed by the notion of ‘thinking strings’ underpins their role in beliefs about the powers and work of !gi:ten. In this paper, I contend that thinking strings are equivalent to Naro and Ju/'hoan concepts of soul/heart. Naro ethnography situates [??] (thought/soul) within the cardiovascular system. This explains the physiological equivalence of blood vessels and thinking strings in the /Xam worldview and the conceptual unity of 'soul/heart' with thought and feelings in Naro, Ju/'hoan and /Xam worldviews. I also determine here that Naro and Ju/'hoan beliefs about healers' hearts/souls/thought travelling away from their bodies during trance are conveyed by a /Xam idiom: !gi:ten’s hearts 'fall down'. I observe that /Xam !gi:ten's falling hearts 'resound' and 'rumble' like the 'low, rumbling groans' of Ju/'hoan healers' n//hara sounds during trance. I establish that for both Ju/'hoan and /Xam people, shooting stars, which also 'resound' and 'rumble' as they fall, embody the hearts/souls of !gi:ten or healers during extracorporeal travel and upon 'death'. I conclude that whether thin red painted lines in the rock art of the Maloti-Drakensberg and the Cederberg of the Western Cape express the notion of 'threads of light' inspired by shooting stars, or alternatively thinking strings representing blood vessels, both of these metaphors allude to embodiment of thought or soul within the cardiovascular system.