Easter Evangelism- Good friday with the dynamic preachers of healing

Easter Friday was our last sunny Autumn day here in the cape, before the onset of pre-winter blues, and i was ready for adventure.  My mission: to find and witness the miracle healings of an evangelist bringing the word and the spirit to residents and devotees in Khayelitsha.  Nobuhle had told me of his miracle healings, how he had raised a girl from her death bed of coma, and how he healed the sick, the drunk and the lost.  Calling strangers by name noggal.

So off i went in the audi leaving hubby curled up on the couch watching rugby- ‘ do it for art baby’.    I pulled into the Site C stadium, following a dusty sand road through fields of soccer players and township holiday makers, until i saw the lines of shiny vehicles on the crisp green sunshine lawns.  Was i at a wedding?  Everybody was looking fabulous and glamorous, everything was shiny and bright.  I went into a giant white circus tent and there were maybe ten thousand people, singing, praising, raising the spirit.  The energy was so electric, i burst into tears and felt myself pulled into the awesomeness of Easter worship.

This phenomenal female preacher was leading the congregation, raising the crowd up, on the gold velvet lined stage.    The organist accompanied her every breath on his amplified synthesizer.  I was greeted by a beautiful young woman in a gold silk shirt and tight black skirt and heels and she ushered me through the crowd to the front of the stage.  I was suddenly shy, the only umlungu in the crowd, and I did not want to be called up by the miracle makers.

so i watched and participated in the glorious love that was being passed around.  And the crowd was mostly women, young, old, frail, healthy women women women.  Dancing and praising.  What spiritual presence there is in the feminine.

La selva subterranea- poetry from the underground forest

An experience of mental illness

or entering the underworld

by the Paper Body Collective: original words by Marty, Andrea, Taluks, Mandiselli, Nobuhle, Noxi and Aja

I die

the world of blue

rivers

energy flow

into energy falls

infinity

so dark

i die

there is no beginning and end

to this potential monster

World, people, people, people.
The surface, people, people, people
All super
Super dreaming
in their dreamworld
superhuman

PLOT 99: LIVE FROM THE ASYLUM

The Prophecy begins

7-11 June 2011

Oude Molen Eco Village

STOP STRESSING AND SUFFERING

Dr Pascharama’s 21st Century Prophecy Show- helping people solving problems instantly-

100% Guarantee

including:

• Financial problems
• troubled spirits
• 2012 revelations
• prophets, saints and mystics
• history and culture problems
• love and marriage problems
• sexual problems
• we remove bad luck/.sore throat.
• mental problems and to be liked
• win lotto
• madness and preganancy
• interpretation of dreams

tickets: R65 public R40 students:    booking essential

call  and book before you come: contact Lesche on

021 480 7129

Performances start 7pm

secure parking available

wear comfortable shoes and warm clothing

visit http://www.paperbody.co.za for more info!

puppetry rehearsal 19 April

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For videos of the Plot 99 rehearsals go to http://vimeo.com/22642137

Who is making it happen!?

Plot 99 is made possible with the great support of the arts and business industries, working with us to make creative freedom and individual artistic expression possible in South Africa today

Official Sponsors of the Plot 99 R-Evolution

In Kind sponsorshop: technical

Trust me I’m a doctor

Alchemy and finding the third

The process of alchemy-

Tertium non data- or finding the third:  transmutation of common metals into gold, or the meeting point of two elements whereby a third unknown element is produced.

‘After separation, drying out, moistening, dissolving, coagulating, fermenting, comes purification, recombination: the creation of substances the world until now has never beheld. This is the opus contra naturem, this is the spagyric art, this is the Alchymical Wedding’ (Hilary Mantel 1989: 79)

 

Feminist novelist and academic Jeanette Winterson writes:

 

‘The alchemists have a saying: ‘Tertium non data’: the third is not given.  That is, the transformation from one element to another, from waste matter into best gold, is a process that cannot be documented.  It is fully mysterious.  No one really knows what affects change.  And so it is with the mind that moves from its prison to a vast plain without any movement at all’ (Winterson 1996: 131).

 

The ancient art of Alchemy, from the original Greek khemia (Χημία) which means ‘the art of transmuting metals’ (Wikipedia 2010), is a philosophical and spiritual practice that has been seen to occur in many countries around the world.  The basic analogy of the alchemical transformation of the base metal into precious metal, became through time a metaphor for the transformation of man’s lowest aspects: death, disease, suffering, violence and imperfection into a state of infinite perfection and everlasting bliss.  This evolution from two disparate modes of being, through a transformation into union and the ultimate goal of enlightenment, characterised the philosophical implications of alchemy on the human condition.  It is the Tertium non data, the ungiven state of the third, that captures the mystery of the moment of transformation between the disparate and separate aspects of life and identity.    Alchemy terms this ‘third’ state as the indefinable and unknown and it is this ungiven state that could be the point of greatest re-imagining and manifestation for artistic practice today.

The Dark Night

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The Dark Night is the only way to grow.

When you set off along the path of magic,

the first thing you do is surrender yourself to a higher power,

for you will encounter things that you will never understand.

Nothing will behave in the logical way

you have come to expect.

You will understand things only with your heart,

and that can be a little frightening.

For a long time, the journey will seem like a Dark Night,

but then any search is an act of faith”-Brida, Paulo Coelho

 

 

Plot 99: Nontetha Nkwenkwe

PLOT 99:

This title comes from the number on Nontetha’s unmarked pauper’s grave, where her body was buried wrapped in a blanket at the Newclare  Cemetry in Pretoria.  She died ( suspisciously) of liver and stomach cancer in the Weskoppies mental asylum where she lived amongst thousands of other unknown and unnamed patients in 1935.   Almost 60 years later  her body was carefully located, exhumed  and transported for reburial in her homeland of Khulile.

The Invisible People: The Big Issue 18 March 2011

“A 2007 study by the Medical research Council revealed that one in six South Africans struggle with a mental disorder.  many of us have experienced bouts of mild depression and anxiety in our own lives, but living with severe mental illness requires great courage and the road to recovery is often long and hard”- Jamie Elkon

Extract from the BIG ISSUES latest piece on Mental Illness:

‘The department of healths 2010 health plan saw psychiatric care being decentralised, resulting in outpatient facilities being moved from hospitals such as Valkenberg into community day hospitals seldom equipped to deal with patients with mental illnesses.  Many of the psychiatrically ill have since slipped through the cracks in the system and now walk the streets as the invisible people.  You see some walking the verge of highways, muttering and gesticulating to themselves, while others crouch on the pavements outside busy eateries, unseen by the well heeled patrons.

 

The invisible are not ghosts of souls passed over, they are people who live among us, with beating hearts and blood flowing through their veins, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, each with a unique deep story to be told’- Jamie Elkon