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How TikTok Is Healing Fractured Connections To Southern African Spirituality

Tik Tok has inherited a marketplace of online spiritualists. Tucked far within the recesses of the video sharing platform, a movement of Southern African folk healers (known natively as Sangomas) are transforming the look of spiritual consultancy itself and embracing modernity in the process. In this space, no individual is left behind; no body of knowledge forfeited. They are taking on the work of archiving a lost tradition. 

Increasingly, in a spiritual economy where the loss of physical spaces of worship is being felt and the desire for tools of introspection and personal development are much greater, the role of these healers can only become more vital. The burgeoning presence of online shamanism, which allows for new (or revisiting) audiences to enter into sacred, previously concealed worlds of wellness, also suggests the inadequacy of Western ways of knowing and the incompleteness of diasporic identities. Tik Tok, for many, has become a crucial vehicle for that re-connection – to the ancestors and perhaps even to heritage.