Eland – The Animal of Myths

The eland was viewed by Africans as an animal closely associated with the sun. The creature’s colour suggested sunlight to Africans of all tribes and all races. And, in the language of many tribes, the eland is called by a name with two meanings – in the language of the Zulu people the name for the eland is Impofu, a name which means both ‘the light-skinned one,’ ‘the golden-skinned one’ and ‘the humble one.’ In ancient times, during sacred games in honour of the sun, brave African youths used to summersault over the back of a tamed or half-tamed male eland. In fact there is a painting showing such a sport in one of the caves in the Cape Province. 

The eland is a gentle animal, which is very easy to tame. It has a love for human beings and will allow them to touch it. In olden days, even right up to the coming of white people to South Africa, our kings used to keep one or two tame elands – a male and a female. They did this for the sport that I had mentioned before, and also for the important fact that the milk of an eland is very, very rich – much richer than the milk of a cow – and it was used to give strength to sickly children. Many a princess or a prince with a delicate constitution, as a baby was brought to full strength by being given the milk of an eland and not that of a cow. Eland milk is very creamy and is gladly tolerated by African babies. And it was the milk that we used in the days when I was a young shaman in helping children with malnutrition. 

When the milk of an eland had been used to save the life of a human child, that female eland would afterwards be trussed up and gently taken back, usually on a sled drawn by warriors, to the bush were it had come from, and released unharmed – as a sign of gratitude towards the entire eland race and to the sun god to whom all elands are sacred. If you are lying sick in an African village and you dream of an eland, it is a good sign. We are told it means that a great healer will arrive from far away, who will heal you from your illness, bringing you complete recovery. 

An eland is a symbol of freedom, also of enlightenment and courage. If one is undergoing initiation and one dreams of an eland, one must thank the ancestral spirits for this, by depicting the animal either in clay or in wood or as a drawing or a painting, inside the initiation hut. Dreaming of an eland was taken to mean that one’s period of initiation has ended, or was about to end, and that the gods and the ancestral spirits had accepted one as an initiate. If an initiate has difficulty in dreaming or seeing visions, the teacher of that initiate must, once each month, burn a bundle of eland tail hairs, the smoke of which the initiate must inhale together with a mildly hallucinogenic herb. This will bring back the dreams of the initiate, because dreams are very, very important when one is a shaman, a diviner or a sangoma.

A story by Credo Mutwa