INCULTURATION ON THE VAYA

On the cusp of Louis Botha Avenue, not far from where one of the major Rea Vaya stops will be located, an unusual form of cultural assimilation is occurring.   
 

Charles Nyathi, a security guard for a block of flats, has transformed the very basic hut used by the security personnel by nailing an ornate, brass, embossed cabinet to one of the prefabricated walls.  He uses it to store food. 

The flat owner who gave the cabinet to the security guards apparently once used it to store religious texts.

RECALIBRATING THE GROVE

“…Sound is heard not only through our ears but through every cell in our bodies. (It) can redress imbalances on every level of physiologic functioning and can play a positive role in the treatment of virtually any medical disorder.” Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, director of Medical Oncology and Integrative Medicine, the Cornell Cancer Prevention Center in New York

Well-being and goodwill have surfaced in extraordinary ways in the inter-religious, multi-cultural melting pot of Orange Grove.  Picture a barefoot, ex-King-David boy in a white kurta, playing  Tibetan singing bowls in the Masonic Lodge in 13^th Street.  Jason Katz’s twice-monthly sound journeys, sometimes with support from his 15-year-old son, Gabriel have become an imperative for many looking for healing, relaxation, meditation and revitalisation for an hour and a half on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

For those who stay for tea, delicious cakes made by his wife, Robyn, and his mother-in-law are on offer. 

Jason’s personal odyssey as a healer and mystic (my attribution) began in childhood when his mother told him he had “healing hands”.  His understanding of his purpose and his gifts have been shaped by teachers and by life experiences, including a painful couple of years when he accompanied his older brother through an agonising process of illness and death from Lou Gehrig's (motor neuron) disease.

He grew up in Fairmont and has happy memories of traveling to town on a tram with his mother, stopping at the OK Bazaars on the corner of 10^th Street, where his father, who had a particular gift for selecting clothes and sweets that would sell, worked as a buyer.

After being told about the Oneness University by the transpersonal psychologist Pam Roux, Jason went to India to deepen his meditation practice https://youtu.be/tFGtl55LvGQ .While there, he realised that although he does not consider himself dogmatically religious, his Jewish education as a child is rooted deeply in his psyche. 

To receive the deeksha (Oneness blessing) an initiate is expected to kneel down before the person imparting the blessing. 

Jason was told he could sit rather than kneel because Jewish Law forbids a man to kneel down before any person or idol. There is only one ritual in the year during Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) when a man kneels before the Torah and says the words of the Shema.

Originally trained as a hairdresser, Jason is qualified to offer shiatsu, reflexology, sound journeys, and his own particular brand of D-Stress massage. He was mentored by Alice Hoehler for two years before facilitating his first sound journey and the collaborative relationship has continued. Some of the bowels Jason uses belong to Alice.

In September this year, a brutal armed robbery forced Jason to reconsider what was most important and where he needed to focus his energies.  He was working for a company in Buccleuch, selling hair extensions when four armed robbers attacked him and others in the shop before tying them up and escaping with a fortune of hair pieces.  Jason was left with physical scars, including a pistol mark on his forehead that somebody subsequently mistook for a bindi (the red dot worn by Hindu men and women), possibly because of the spiritual ambiance that seems to hover around him. 

The incident has left Jason remarkably free of anger or animosity. He beams with gratitude now that the path ahead is clearer than ever before.

Jason offers sound journeys in Orange Grove and in others Johannesburg suburbs. He takes bookings from individuals and small or large groups. He also gives one-on-one sound journey sessions and D-stress massage at his rooms in Senderwood.  Hourly individual sessions are R 600. Payment for sound journeys at the Masonic Lodge are by donation (recommended contribution is R 100 per person).  All Jason’s services are portable and fees are negotiable depending on travel costs and the number of people involved.

You can contact Jason at: Email: dstressjk@gmail.com or cell: 084 378-7377, or find him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000999543557.  It is a good idea to get onto his mailing list to receive a monthly newsletter giving the dates of sound journeys and other inspirational information. 

Sound Journeys are held twice a month at 

75 13th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues Orange Grove.  Parking is available next to the hall.  Bring a yoga mat or something to lie on, a pillow or cushion and a light blanket to pull over yourself.

FROM HILLBROW TO TWEELING: A GALACTIC ODYSSEY

I meet Mano Christelis in his office in the Orange Grove house where the Galaxy Muzeum factory is based.  Every surface is overflowing with an exotic array of strangely shaped, multi-coloured beads and jewellery in the making. The lyrics of the 1960s Beatles song come to mind: “The Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away…”

Mano has been commissioned to create the headdresses and earrings for George’s Bizos’s grandson’s wedding. He shows me a picture on his cell phone of models wearing red, crystal dresses and red, crystal crowns.  While we speak, he is putting together ear-to-shoulder length red crystal earrings, each pair with a different Greek Orthodox saint in the middle, for the 17 bridesmaids.  “He’s marrying a beautiful Lebanese girl,” he tells me.  Now she wants huge red tassels hanging off them as well”, he chuckles.  “It’s going to be spectacular!”

Son of the pioneering, ‘Lucky Packet King”, Lefty Christelis, Mano began making his “galactic jewellery” from lucky packet charms as a boy of eight.  “My father had mountains of lucky packets in the sweet factory in Germiston. There were corridors of all these Hong Kong toys…little charms…” He describes the scene with child-like excitement, fuelling my own reminiscences of lucky packet exuberance. 

“My dad had the machine that made all those little pink sweets and he had lollipop machines and he used to make marshmallow fish and rocket sherbet. His sherbet lines were the biggest success.  And my dad’s twin brother used to sit at the machines and every 20 to 30 lucky packets he used to put in a 50 cent coin.  So sometimes a kid would get a lucky packet with an extra 50 cent piece. It was like a big thing. He supplied the whole of Southern Africa, right up to Zambia and Zimbabwe and Mozambique. All the kids of that generation went for lucky packets.”

When his father got a consignment of beads after the Richelieu factory closed down, Mano incorporated the beads into his designs and started to cultivate an exclusive customer base.

In the eighties he set up a shop in the basement flea market in Pretorius Street in Hillbrow: “It was the time of the Café de Paris and the Three Sisters…and all the trendy shops were there…” 

The performing artist, Steven Cohen used to visit the stall with his mother:  “He used to come, dressed like a nice Jewish boy, with his mom.  And he used to like my stuff. He loved all the plastic toys.  And his mother used to say: ‘Oh come on Steven, this stuff isn’t for you!  Let’s move on!’ Meanwhile, he has become so way out and eccentric that this is like, mild, you know…“ We laugh.

Prominent designers like Peter Soldatos and Chris Levin used the Galaxy jewellery in their fashion shows and his customers included people like Linda Goodman, Winnie Mandela, Marianne Fassler and Brenda Fassie . 

Together with the ceramicist Tina van der Walt, Mano was one of the first to set up a stall at the flea market opposite the Market Theatre.  “Every week we had a different theme. One week would be Egyptian, the next week it would be ancient ruins, and we would do a hellova production…That’s how I started. Then I got contracts with boutiques and started supplying Stuttafords and others.”

Mano’s interest in extra-terrestrial life; good and bad aliens; baroque architecture emanating from Venus; lizard people; giant snails on Neptune; parallel governments on Mars; teleportation and jump rooms, like lifts, has grown alongside his career as a trend-setter in the jewellery business,  “I’ve always been interested in extra-terrestrial life, and I’ve had experiences of different galaxies on the astral plane,” he tells me, showing me pictures of new developments on Neptune, stored on his cell phone.  

His fascination was the inspiration behind the Galaxy Muzeum in the small northern Free State town of Tweeling, where he owns several properties, including the old post office.    “Tweeling is an energy point in the Free State,” he says. “People living there have seen triangular craft and all different craft moving across the area…”

I visited Tweeling with friend and photographer, Stan Sher. 

The display in the Galaxy Muzeum , consists of a series of vitrines depicting a variety of galaxies, dimensions, portals and life forms, including instructions on how to get there from Planet Earth. The first vitrine depicts a secret location in Mozambique where transport through history is conducted.  “Civilization: humans in military operations using time door to change history”, the caption reads.  The second, named ‘Planet Blueploy’ depicts “humabian aquatic people living in structures above oceans” accessed through a time hole in a magnetic field in the Free State area 86. Cement blocks and circles and brick-like structures, similar to the beads used in some of the jewellery appear in the various planetary constellations.

The exhibition includes the planet Jupiter, which is “three years by earth ship from planet earth’ ; Planet Oberroi, in the Zacacia Penticula Galaxy, which is 14 light years away from earth on the electronic transport field on Easter Island, inhabited by a hunter-gatherer community that is “peaceful in nature.”  Another planet is reached by means of eighty light years through wormhole and the civilization here is "of human origin through intelligent manipulation.”

“Just like there are all different kinds of birds, there all different kinds of people,” Mano explains.  “There are bird people, with feathers like birds, and there are half animal, half human people like the Egyptian hieroglyphs. “

Back in the Orange Grove factory, I ask Mano about the pictures of Greek Orthodox saints on the walls. “I’m Greek Orthodox. I was born in the realm of Jesus and that’s what I’m sticking to. I pray to God and Jesus and all the saints because that is my realm…The Greek Orthodox Church is quite open. I don’t think they would mind about reincarnation and different galaxies and things.”

I had a lot of laughs with Mano Christelis, and with Stan Sher on the trip to Tweeling. The vast array of images, resonant of the magic realism of a Marquez story, have been spinning around in my head and turning up in weird and wonderful ways in my dreams ever since.