There are some who are called to be live amongst us as more than just ordinary citizens. They are teachers, healers, custodians of custom, ritual and tradition. Unlike today, in historic times they were revered and their path was clearly laid out even before their birth. Known as shamans, sangomas, priestesses, wiccans they connect this world and that of spirit.

Growing up Seeing Spirits

Hildegarde Keene was no ordinary girl. From an early age she could see spirits. Today this white woman and mother of nine-year-old twin boys is a sangoma – a traditional healer – who lives in the Western Cape on a farm and shares a beneficial, sustainable relationship with nature while holding ‘a care for the environment’.

Born and raised in Cape Town, this worldly woman spent four years in Paris and another two in Ireland, but it was in South Africa her spirit belonged and it was in the tradition of healing that her spirit called. Despite the fact that she could see spirits at a young age, Hildegarde was not particularly open to the idea. In her teenage years, her contact with the other world switched off but when she turned 18 her visions returned.

‘I felt like I was going crazy, although I was interested in natural healing.’

Hildegarde Keene Becomes a Sangoma

After her children were born, she became ill and her only remedy was to spend time out in the open.

‘I only wanted to be in nature.’

Despite the fact that she had the calling to be a sangoma, she resisted for many years, ‘until eventually it [her illness] got so bad that I felt I had no choice but to thwasa and become a sangoma initiate.’

She spent one year as an initiate under the Xhosa tradition at a Transkei initiation school, but during this time she dreamed of another teacher in Gugulethu, Cape Town. She joined her new teacher and became an initiate under the Swati tradition for eight months. As an initiate, in addition to your learning you are also the servant of the house, sleeping on the floor, bathing only with cold water, waking up at the crack of dawn and paying respect to the ancestors as well as the household.

Hildegarde Keene

A Sangoma Uses the Bones

Hildegarde learned as a sangoma initiate the way of medicines as well as how to throw bones and do divination.

‘Bones represent the universe – it is a hologram and the bones are not separate from who I am. There are specific bones that we use from specific animals.’

When Hildegarde started her work, she had been a vegetarian for ten years, but her foray into the field of traditional healing would require her to eat meat once again. I ask, as a fellow vegetarian, how it is possible to give up a belief you have in order to incorporate the belief of tradition or culture.

Hildegarde is No Longer a Vegetarian

It was the day when she would be christened into the sacrosanct community of healing and she was required to slaughter a goat. During her work as an initiate, Hildegarde had maintained her living as a vegetarian.

‘So much of me was very resistant and so afraid,’ to slaughter the animal as well as delve once again into the realm of being a meat-eater, but as the goat stood in the enclosure once the elders had brought it in, ‘it looked directly at me for ten to 15 minutes – we held eye contact and I had the sense of it speaking to me saying “I am here for you”.’

Once the animal’s throat had been slit, Hildegarde says her sadness lifted and ‘I suddenly understood how the universe worked.’ Listening to her as goose bumps etch on my skin, she talks of how she felt connected to all of life and to the Creator. Even though she eats meat now from animals she slaughters herself, Hildegarde is critical of the meat industry which kills animals inhumanely.

Finding Fulfilment in the Calling

The idea of a white sangoma is an intriguing concept because it is rather rare, but Hildegarde is not the only one in South Africa. Her family has been supportive of her work and is open to the idea of spirits. Since she has started her work as a sangoma, Hildegarde has a sense of fulfillment that was not there previously. In fact, she dares to call herself happy, a state for which many people strive.

‘Most of my ancestors are my family’s lineage,’ Hildegarde explains, from her mother’s side of the family, although she has communication and interaction with an African spirit from Kenya.  As to the question of white people and traditional healing, she says, ‘White people used to do these things. They were involved in communing with the ancestors.’

Hildegarde Keene

The Ways of a Sangoma

Sangomas are healers, she goes on to explain, who are just people with faults like anyone else, but they are also helpers, aiding people in daily living in a holistic way. I am intrigued as to why people who are to become initiates are often called through illness.

An explanation I have often heard is that with illness people are forced to listen to spirit. Hildegarde explains that your calling, whatever it may be, is placed in you before your birth. Too often, we are so caught up in our daily lives that we neglect our life’s purpose and so when your life purpose clashes with your day-to-day living your spirit will be unhappy and this will often manifest as illness.

‘You are not connected in that your energy is not being utilised into healing and prayer as it should be, which is why illness will manifest.’

Anabela Carvalho Answers Her Calling

Anabela Carvalho is a woman also involved in the healing realm, but she engages the spirits of angels to assist her. At 39, she has been doing angel card readings, prayer and healing work for nine years. Though she does not see what she does specifically as a calling, she admits that working with the angels was a calling given by her spirit to fulfill her life’s purpose.

This eccentric, rather unique individual, with an overlay to intelligence and wit, grew up as a fat little girl with no self-confidence. She married young, just before she completed her law degree and soon started a family.

Bela Carvalho

Healing at 30

At age 30 she grew into herself. Even though her confidence and self-esteem had been growing slowly, it was at this age that she defined who she was. Invariably, as will happen sometimes, those around her were not comfortable with the changes she desired to see in her life, but the angels were calling as was her life’s purpose.

Even though she continues her work in the corporate field, she knew she had to be in the healing field and started out by doing angel card readings for herself and her friends. At first, she worked with tarot cards and angel cards, but a friend advised her at some point she would have to choose and so she chose angel cards and working closely with the angels.

The Laws of the Universe and the Number Three

Anabela is not one for rules and regulations, believing essentially that we all hold the key to our own path and she does not believe in religion, although her belief in God is profound and real.

‘There is no right or wrong, only what is happening,’ Bela explains, and added to this is her life’s validation through the number three. She has three children, she is the third of three children, she works as part of a sisterhood of three women known as the Trinity who do healing and prayer work for those in need. In the network of prayer they have been able to provide healing to people diagnosed with terminal illnesses to the point where the illness is no longer detected.

Living through Trauma and Finding Yourself

Even though she had already started defining herself and what she wanted, her life was a mosaic of emotional trauma as she lived through her own divorce, the death of a loved one, losing the love of her life and her family’s rejection. Despite this, she affirms it is because ‘I found myself and answered my calling to live true to myself’ that she asked for a divorce because her marriage no longer reflected her highest vision for herself.

Like Elizabeth Gilbert in the book Eat, Pray, Love, Bela went to India on a spiritual tour and it is there that who she was defining herself as was affirmed by the people she met, including a Sage in long robes who looked at her intriguingly and referred to her as ‘Ranni Lakshmi’ meaning Queen Lakshmi – the Hindu Goddess of fortune and abundance.

We All Have the Power to Answer the Calling

Anabela has a constant twinkle in her eye that looks as if she may or may not be playing a trick on you, and even when she speaks her mouth turns in a wry smile. Her beliefs in Hinduism and Buddhism encapsulate a soul whose wisdom and depth is belied through her warm playful nature and profound humanness.

Speaking of her work and the guidance and healing she provides she says, ‘We all have the ability to tap into it – some are forced to do so and some have answered the call.’