At the Spiritual Politics Conference in Germany in May 2010, one of the highlights was a film about the Andinna, an all-female community of trance healers and seers among the Kunama. This matrilineal, matrilocal people lives in the borderlands of Ertitrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Below is information from my scribbled notes from the film (necessarily incomplete since I understand little German):
Gudrun Frank-Wissmann presented her film-in-progress with commentary, “The Kunama of Eritrea: the Ancestors Speak.” She showed stunning footage of trance rituals of a group of women called Andinas. The Andina (trance-priestesses) dance for the dead at burial in communal graves, to the same song that is sung for the grain harvest. This priestess lineage connects with the Kunama ancestors, whose souls come from the spirit-country Arka. In their society, lands are communal, and so if a husband leaves there are no severe consequences. Nevertheless, women are tempted to marry patriarchal men from the wealthier highlands.
Frank-Wissman said that the ritual has remained unchanged for 2000 years. The ancestors call women by making them faint at graves. They dance with sword and spear to greet ancestors, to the east and and to the west. (The weapons are considered symbols of power, defensive only, and – the filmmaker says, are related to the Meroitic queens of Sudan.) During initiation, the woman falls to the ground, and her hair must touch the spear to connect with the ancestral spirits. The Andina should not be open to all spirits. They call names of the ancestors; a woman touching her hair is a sign that she’s connecting with them. The women not always comfortable as they anticipate what ancestor will come.
The Andina take a different name, Lugus, when in ecstasy. They put on a beautiful, hornlike crown of fat, over an unnamed sacred substance, and wear it during the weeks of the annual rite. The women display entranced speech and gestures, often asking for chewing tobacco, and perform other acts of the spirits. They are forbidden to use water the morning after their initiation; the young Andina clean with sesame and chew it. During several weeks of ritual, they walking over the land, many miles in special iron shoes used only for this occasion. Walking through villages they’re given coffee, tea, sesame. When greeting an older Andina, they kiss her and grab her vulva.
At end of the ritual period, the women dance for hours. They sacrifice a chicken, whose blood they drink, then they roast it and eat with sesame and honey, no other spices. After this finale, the Andina spirits return to their world. A reversed ritual of entranced women takes place over the sword and spear. They symbolically die and are carried back to the village by men, and are said to be able to jump over the huts in their potentized state. One spirit of a very old Andina initially refused to leave a young woman’s body. The initiates stay together on a mat for one night in this return passage.
They awaken in a deep trance, with no memory of the past weeks. Their skin is cut with little stones and herbs and ashes rubbed in, to make a sign so that Andinas can recognize each other. The ritual is repeated every year when the sun and moon appear together on the horizon.
Coming right up, I’ll post more information about the Andinnas from the Italian scholar Gianni Dore.