| Description: The elephant in
Zimbabwe art, although not the most common animal painted, appears to play
the role of the Drakensburg eland. Elephants would have been difficult if
not impossible to kill with the weapons of the ancestral Bushmen. The elephant
hunt in Zimbabwe art is therefore a metaphor for the trance dance. Most
of the men in the picture above are unarmed and the tuffs on their buttocks
and their movements are indicative of a dance. An emblem is attached to
their penises where supernatural energy or potency is most active. The potency
in the elephant is released and absorbed into the trance dancers allowing
them to be transported into the spiritual world. |
