isiZulu on our Galactic Stoep

isiZulu Greeting on Voyager 1: "Siyanibingelela maqhawe, sinifisela inkonzo ende...."  The message translated to English is "We greet you, great ones. We wish you longevity."

-http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/languages/nguni.html

The world in which we live is more miraculous than we know. There are things which go on in our world about which we know nothing.

-Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa

The two Voyager spacecraft were launched in August and September of 1977 and spent more than 11 years exploring Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune before officially heading off toward interstellar space in 1989. As of 2011 they are still operating and now leaving our Solar System. On board is a Golden Disk of data, recordings, and images. Greetings in several languages assumes there is intelligent life out there. Some examples:

Amoy (Min dialect)
"Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time."
Arabic
"Greetings to our friends in the stars. We wish that we will meet you someday."
English
"Hello from the children of planet Earth."
Gujarati
"Greetings from a human being of the Earth. Please contact."
Hebrew
Peace
Nguni (Zulu)
"We greet you, great ones. We wish you longevity."

For more see: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/greetings.html

The greetings may have been in jest but express a deep unconscious longing to connect with life out in so-called "Outer Space". They give voice to the hope that we are not alone in the incomprehensible vastness of  the Universe. These greetings sound almost like a heartfelt response to the message of the Hosts of Heaven themselves: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward everyone!" (Luke 2:14) The Zulu greeting is especially significant.

"We greet you, great ones. We wish you longevity."

I am fortunate to have been born and now retired in the Kingdom of the Zulu, KwaZulu-Natal living among a proud and beautiful people, the Zulu. In the Nguni languages, iZulu means "heaven, or sky". The Zulu are  Sky People.

Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa is one of the more colourful and controversial of the Zulu. He is a sangoma   or Zulu shaman. He has sought to preserve Zulu tradition and folklore in several books, notably Indaba, My Children and Song of the Stars, the Lore of a Zulu Shaman. See http://credomutwa.com/about/

In Song of the Stars, Credo Mutwa writes about extraterrestrial life. He says:

Life can take many forms. Look at the forms that life can take on this planet alone. Here in this bush, there are insects you could easily mistake for rocks or for pieces of bark  -- until one of them stings you, that is. Life does not have to consist of bipeds who move and breathe and smoke cigars as we do. I have said it before and I say it again -- the universe is a gigantic chamber of possibility where everything has the chance and the right to happen; and so we must not have cut-and-dry theories regarding just how life should look. Life could surprise us! (p.143)

He then describes the "many kinds of extraterrestrial creatures" he is aware of, the Muhondoruka, the Mutende-ya-ngenge, the  Mvonjina, and others.

In an astonishing interview with Andreas Müller (For Full Text see  http://www.kornkreise-forschung.de/textCredoMutwa.htm), Mutwa relates stories about Star Peoples and Crop Circles in Africa.

Art: Credo Mutwa

Sometimes large fields of corn and millet were planted. These were sacred to the goddess and were offered to the vast armies of birds to eat. No human being could enter the sacred cornfield. 

The sacred fields were ploughed far from the ordinary millet, maize and corn, as they were left unfenced. Over centuries, people had discovered that the star gods sometimes communicated with human beings through these sacred fields. Time and again, strange circular depressions were seen in the centre of these fields. These depressions were called Izishoze Zamatongo, the great circles of the gods. 

These circles were an amazing sight to see. The gods never cut the stalks of corn or millet when they form these depressions. It appears as though a great circular, disk-shaped force has descended on the field. It pressed the corn firmly into the ground, without breaking the stalks or damaging the plants. Then the force appears to spin, resulting in the strange spiral appearance of the fallen stalks. Words cannot describe such a phenomenon, which I have seen more than thirty times in the course of my life as a traditional healer. Whenever a circle appeared in the fields, the people rushed to erect a fence of poles around the circle. They would dance and perform other sacred rituals honouring the star gods and the Earth Mother.

-Credo Mutwa, Isilwane The Animal - Tales and Fables of Africa, Foreword

Ngiyabonga kakhulu Vusamazulu! You made us not to forget where we come from, to understand our myths, stories, and customs and to learn more about them.

Voyager Links:
Other Languages: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/languages/languages.html
More about Voyager: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/index.html
Voyager Timeline: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/timeline.html
Check where the Voyagers are now: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/index.html

For further reading: 
The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion (Collected Works of Joseph Campbell Series)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inner-Reaches-Outer-Space-Collected/dp/1577312090/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323156095&sr=1-1

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za