The idea and function of rainmakers have been parodied into everyday English usage thanks to pop culture.
But from where the idea of rainmakers originate, in Africa and some Pacific cultures, rainmakers are expected to cause literal rainfalls.
Sometimes, they are expected to postpone rains or, if possible, relocate where the showers may come down. Their job is not scientific. But these spiritualists are believed to possess tricks and skills to force rainfall from the skies after they have interacted with the “other side”.
African rainmakers are quite common in agrarian and pastoralist cultures. They have been part of the African mystical narrative for as long as there have been sedentary life on the continent. But even in these days of open-mindedness towards learning about cultures different from ours, African mysticism is a subject of scorn or contempt for many outside and sadly, within the continent
.
It is how come the phenomenon of magic in Euro-American culture is thought harmless, well-meaning entertainment or just simply fanciful hobbyism. African magic does not get the kid-gloves treatment. For most people, African magic is morally vicious even if you do not trust in the existence of spirits and a spirit-world.
Amid the dust of this European propaganda, we lose the importance of understanding African peoples – their psyche, their ethics and how they experience this world. If we understand how a traditional African believer connects with the environment, we may sympathize with why there is a huge belief in rainmakers from western to southern Af
rica.
Among the Zulu, for instance, there is a saying: “He who brings rain, brings life”. For the Zulu and even other African peoples, the guarantor (and bringer) of life is ultimately a supreme deity – you may call it God. What we have come to learn from many anthropologists who have diligently studied African peoples is that traditional African believers do not make a conscious differentiation between what is physical and what is spiritual.
For these traditional believers, what happens in the physical is necessarily connected to the spiritual. Indeed, according to some interpretations, the physical is caused by the spiritual. See the video below.
