page_title: Datura metel
section_title: Two linked African Datura metel rites: female initiation and witch-finding among the Tsonga
hierarchical_section_title: Datura metel / Entheogen / Two linked African Datura metel rites: female initiation and witch-finding among the Tsonga
caption_attribution_description: English: Philothamnus semivariegatus hatchlings - Natal, South Africa
context_page_description: Datura metel is a shrub-like annual or short-lived, shrubby perennial, commonly known in Europe as Indian Thornapple, Hindu Datura, or Metel and in the U.S.A as Devil's Trumpet. Datura metel is naturalised in all the warmer countries of the world - notably in India, where it is known by the ancient, Sanskrit-derived, Hindi name धतूरा -from which the genus name Datura is derived, and in Tamil as ஊமத்தை. The plant is cultivated worldwide, both as an ornamental and for its medicinal properties, the latter being due to its tropane alkaloid content. Like its hardier and smaller-flowered relative Datura stramonium, it is now of widespread occurrence, although showing a preference for warmer climates and of more attractive appearance. Datura metel was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753, but few botanically correct illustrations were made until after the New World was settled. The original home of the plant is now known to have been somewhere in the Americas, probably the Greater Antilles. As late as 1992 it was still being claimed that the plant was "...native probably to the mountainous regions of Pakistan or Afghanistan westward..."
context_section_description: Documentation of the traditional use of hallucinogens in Africa has lagged behind that of such use in the Americas, so the use of Datura metel 'Fastuosa' by the Tsonga people (Shangana-Tsonga) of Mozambique and the Northern Transvaal in their khomba puberty school initiation rite  - as recorded by Dr. Thomas F. Johnston - is of particular interest. (Johnston incorporated some of his material on the khomba initiation into a PhD dissertation submitted to the University of the Witwatersrand).
  According to Johnston, 'Datura fastuosa' (i.e. Datura metel 'Fastuosa') has the common name mondzo (alternative spelling mondjo, the name being shared also with the (unrelated) Combretum imberbe) in the Tsonga language and is a subspontaneous plant in the homeland of the Tsonga. Interestingly, in an (otherwise conventional) brief description of the plant he describes the seeds as being "blackish brown", rather than the pale, somewhat tawny shade of brown normal to those of Datura metel cultivars. The consumption by khomba neophytes of a potion prepared from the plant forms the culmination of three months of rituals which are timed to follow the May harvest and involve ritual bathing (immersion) and the performing of secret mimes, dances and songs.
  The climactic Datura rite goes by the evocative name of rendzo ra mianakanyo (trans. : "journey of fantasy") and involves 'hearing' the voice of the fertility god and experiencing a hallucinatory vision of bluish-green colour patterns having the Tsonga name mavala-vala. This 'journey in spirit' is reinforced with tactile stimuli and vocal cues from one of their "schoolmothers" (acting in the role of psychopomp), the girls being ritually beaten with a Datura switch through the blankets in which they are lying swaddled, while being told repeatedly that it is the mavala-vala which they are seeing. Johnston hypothesises that the mavala-vala visions may be symbolic representations of a local (blue-green) snake belonging to the genus Philothamnus (Tsonga: shihundje), individuals of which the Tsonga believe to be manifestations of the divine. According this theory, the mavala-vala would be a vision of the serpent form of the very fertility god whose voice is 'heard' by the initiates of the khomba in their Datura-induced trance. [Note: Johnston employs the obsolete name Dendrophis subcarinatus for the sacred snake of the Tsonga. This species is now known correctly as Philothamnus natalensis.]
  The rituals of the khomba puberty school are designed to prepare girls for child-bearing, playing out in highly-structured dramatic form the various aspects of female sexuality, with particular emphasis on fertility. A major symbolic theme in this transition from girlhood to womanhood is the crossing of a river, thoroughly in keeping with the sense in which initiation is always a symbolic death(compare the death symbolism traditionally associated with the crossing of the rivers Jordan and Styx).
  Further death symbolism is present in the Datura potion itself, which always contains a small amount either of human fat or powdered human bone - ingredients which traditionally feature in Tsonga witchcraft, but in this instance are intended to counter malign witchcraft aimed at blighting fertility i.e. 'fighting fire with fire'. Johnston points out that it is this endocannibalistic element in the ritual and not Datura that has witchcraft associations in Tsonga culture, but points out that Solanaceous hallucinogens had very definite associations with witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. To this, however, might be added a further comparison with Early Modern European witchcraft, in which practitioners were accused of employing the fat from the corpses of unbaptised babies in the preparation of flying ointments infused with tropane-containing, hallucinogenic Solanaceous plants (and other toxic herbs). Again, the Tsonga and European practices are curiously reminiscent of the Tantric ritual to cause insanity (quoted above) the recipe in which calls for an admixture of human flesh.
  Within a strictly Tsonga frame of reference, J
caption: Young individuals of a species of Philothamnus, the genus to which belongs the sacred snake shihundje revered by the Tsonga and conjectured by Johnston to be seen in the mavala-vala vision of the initiatory Datura trance.
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