MAGIC TIME

by Eugenie Grobler

“And what about time; has anyone seen it recently?” James Hillman

All stories have a beginning, marked in space and in time. We might also argue that all stories have multiple beginnings, depending on who the storyteller is. If I get to tell the story of how the Ansisters- constellation was born, one beginning I could choose, is to take you back in time to November last year , when my creative collaborator and friend Anni, and I set out one morning on a four-day trip to the Limpopo-region to go and visit the home of Mujadji. She is also known as the rain queen. Part of her job is to make sure that the rain arrives when and where it is needed in her region. The current rain queen is very young, twenty five years old. Both her mother and grandmother died recently, within a short space of time of each other. When we went there in November, we also heard rumours that Mujadji herself is very ill. But why should we care about a lineage of rain queens in Africa? What difference does their existence or demise make in our lives?

As we will discover, being able to call the rain is about much more than water. Rainmakers know how to call the rain. They do not make the rain; they allow it though a specific type of consciousness to express itself. This consciousness operates within magical time in which what needs to be, happens when it should. Rainmakers are magicians. They are also healers. The following story about another rainmaker illustrates this beautifully:

There was a drought in a village in China. They sent for a rainmaker who was known to live in the farthest corner of the country, far away. Of course that would be so, because we never trust a prophet who lives in our region; he has to come from far away. So he arrived, and he found the village in a miserable state. The cattle were dying, the vegetation was dying, the people were affected. The people crowded around him and were very curious what he would do. He said, ‘Well, just give me a little hut and leave me alone for a few days.’ So he went into this little hut and people were wondering and wondering, the first day, the second day. On the third day it started pouring rain and he came out. They asked him, ‘What did you do?’ “Oh”, he said, ‘that is very simple, I didn’t do anything’. ‘But look;’ they said, ‘now it rains. What happened?’ And he explained, ‘I come from an area that is in Tao, in balance. We have rain, we have sunshine. Nothing is out of order. I come into your area and find that it is chaotic. The rhythm of life is disturbed, so when I come into it I, too, am disturbed. The whole thing affects me and I am immediately out of order. So what can I do? I want a little hut to be by myself, to meditate, to set myself straight. And then, when I am able to get myself in order, everything around is set right. We are now in Tao, and since the rain was missing, now it rains”.

As I was writing this, my friend Anni wrote to let me know that Mujadji passed away. And the part of me who believes in magic, gets very upset. Who will make the rain now that she is gone? She hasn’t had time to bring a child into the world-someone who could have picked up where she has left off. The line in broken, and in the world of magic, this is a very bad thing... Her death reminds me of how fragile and precious her role and what she embodies in the world is to me. Another magician gone. We do not have many of her kind and what she represents left. As the world speeds up and we loose more and more traditions that understand and embody the time of the magician, we are left feeling as if time is running out. The rhythm of life is disturbed.

The four days I spent in the region of the rain queen reminded me of how fragile magic time is in today’s world, where the mainstream world operates within the time of the warrior. The warrior’s time is linear, goal oriented, and fixed. Warriors wear watches. It is part of their attire. Most people today operate according to the Greenwich clock on their wrist, while few of us manage to conjure up the magic power to follow the pulse in the heart of the moment

I draw strength from the tradition of rainmaker-magicians and the hope that their story offers me. Maybe, if I can get myself in order, I can do my bit to set the world straight?

But where can I find a little hut to be by myself in the middle of a sprawling urban landscape? And I am no trained rainmaker- I am an ordinary person. Where can I find guidance on the journey of setting myself straight?

Ansisters has given me, for one, an opportunity to do my bit to slow my world down. Ansisters is the result of a creative collaborative process where we wanted to create the type of space-time environment which has the necessary qualities to invoke and support those who wanted to collaborate in the search for balance as individuals, communities, society and humanity as a whole, so that we can do our bit to set ourselves straight, and through that, contribute to set the world around us straight.

We all have to find our balance- between doing and being, yin and yang, grace and greed, space and speed. May the wisdom and magic of the rainmakers guide you on your journey to balance.

Posted 17 June 2005, www.face.org.za, author: Eugenie Grobler.