The flow of information across human-spirit networks: relational complexity in the contemporary teachings of South African traditional healers

This paper maps the ways in which contemporary South African traditional healers describe the spirit dynamics that shape their praxis. Drawing on a thematic analysis of a selection of healer-produced online video teachings, and interviews with the healers who created them, I illustrate how both knowledge and health are expressed in terms of the flows of information across vital, relational human-spirit networks. This relational emphasis, which integrates ontological, epistemological, and axiological considerations, informs an emergent vernacular expressive strategy that challenges dominant western knowledge traditions and thus aligns with broader efforts of epistemological decolonisation. Accordingly, I suggest that by revealing, in their own words, the relational complexities of their worldview, healers are publicly reclaiming their image from lingering reductive narratives.