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The Heart of the Hunter, the Customs and Myths of the African Bushman
The author’s passionate concern for Africa and for the human spirit is evident in this portrait of the “First People” of southern Africa, the Bushmen. Van der Post describes his desert travels, the splendid landscape and wildlife, and his encounters with the Bushman, an elusive culture. Drawings by Maurice Wilson.
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First published January 1, 1961
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About the author
Laurens van der Post
78 books164 followersSir Laurens Jan van der Post was a 20th Century South African Afrikaner author of many books, farmer, war hero, political adviser to British heads of government, close friend of Prince Charles, godfather of Prince William, educator, journalist, humanitarian, philosopher, explorer, and conservationist.
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March 23, 2015
Laurens van der Post (1906-1996) was born in South Africa and grew up to be a reporter, dairy farmer, soldier, writer, and television personality. He was the godfather of Prince William, and was sometimes referred to as “Prince Charles’ guru,” because he was a mystical visionary with a wise old soul, quite skilled at thinking outside the box.
He took great pleasure in creating fascinating stories intended to wake up people whose thinkers had fallen asleep. The transformative power of his stories was far more important to him than 100% factual accuracy, and he sometimes “embellished” them to make them more forceful. This was the storyteller’s job: creating amazing stories — not rigidly accurate scientific discourses.
Laurens was not universally loved by white South Africans, because he had an annoying habit of criticizing segregation, racism, and oppression. He had special fondness for the Bushmen, who were sharply mistreated by everyone, both black and white. Bushmen once inhabited all of southern Africa, but black and white newcomers drove them off their best lands, forcing them into the Kalahari Desert, an extremely harsh place.
In 1955, Laurens did a documentary on the Bushmen for the BBC, and it was the second most popular program ever, only the queen’s coronation had a bigger audience. He went on to write several books on Bushmen themes, including The Heart of the Hunter. Passages from this book are often quoted by writers of the counterculture, because Laurens had profound respect for the ability of simpler societies to live lightly on the Earth, with great reverence. He also had a robust contempt for modern industrial society, and he did not hesitate to express this. He had a front row seat for World War II, and this adventure in industrial warfare took much of the shine off of civilization’s reputation.
Laurens introduced us to his beloved wild Bushmen, people of “irrepressible gaiety.” One elder was “utterly at one with all the life that was and could ever be.” Bushmen were incredibly in tune with nature, and could feel the presence of unseen animals. They could sense danger from far away. They could communicate telepathically. They didn’t work hard, they didn’t have jobs, they didn’t have leaders, and they were free. Free! They had a culture that worked. John Reader once wrote that the Bushmen were able to live in their ordinary manner during the third year of extreme drought that killed 180,000 people and 250,000 cattle.
Unfortunately, the Bantu and European newcomers were farmers, herders, and assorted moneymakers — property freaks — and the way they treated Bushmen was similar to the relationship between Montana ranchers and prairie dogs. Consequently, the Bushmen avoided all contact with the outside world, because the dominant culture treated them like sub-human vermin, or no-cost slaves, or future tax-paying peasants or diamond miners.
Laurens lamented modern society, with its vast hordes of property freaks, the tragic innocent victims of arrested development. Because of our estrangement from nature, our minds had lost contact with core human instincts, we had lost our souls, we were starved for meaning, and we were mindlessly destroying system after system. He decreed: “One look at the identical towns we are building all over the world ought to be enough to show us that this kind of progress is like the proliferation of a single cell at the expense of the rest, which produces the cancer that kills the whole body.”
In 1961, Laurens did not think like the herd. He celebrated wild freedom, and denounced the destructive insanity of industrial civilization. Yet he was a popular and respected celebrity in Britain, and he sipped champagne with the richest and most powerful. He was knighted in 1981, becoming Sir Laurens van der Post, an extraordinary achievement for someone who was so at odds with mainstream thinking.
The power of this book lies in its rebellious and unconventional attitude. It’s OK to think. It’s OK to question. It’s OK to shout “Wolf!” when there are wolves as far as the eye can see. It’s OK to be different, to prefer integrity over trendiness, to seek truth instead of mindless conformity. If your heart is screaming about the senseless destruction of life on Earth, you aren’t crazy, you’re awake. What’s crazy is our way of life, our culture. This is an important concept to understand.
Creative people have a primary role to play in influencing the path of our society, because society permits them to think outside the box. Popes, politicians, tycoons, and educators aren’t allowed to do this, because they have an obligation to protect and preserve the pathological belief system that is laying waste to the world. Everything we need for healing can only be found outside the box, and creative people can help us find these things, with luck.
The weakness of the book is that it doesn’t teach us a great deal about the Bushmen way of life. Laurens knew few Bushmen, spent little time with them, and didn’t know their language. The BBC documentary was almost aborted because Laurens and his team had a very hard time finding any Bushmen to film. Finally they found one band, who allowed themselves to be seen, because they were close to dying from dehydration. You could learn much more about the Bushmen by reading Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.
The Bushmen finally got their own official home when the Central Kalahari Game Reserve was created in 1961. This Denmark-sized park was located in the middle of what is now Botswana. But diamonds were discovered on the reserve in the early ‘80s, and this inspired the government to remove the Bushmen from their land. In 2006, they won the right to return, but were forbidden to hunt or drink water. In 2011, they won the right to drink water.
Botswana promotes safari tours at the reserve, and this generates a lot of income for an extremely poor country. Rich tourists want to enjoy a pure wilderness experience, gazing at giraffes from their hot tubs, and wild, naked, blood-spattered savages would simply spoil this demented fantasy. Laurens would have a different opinion, of course.
He took great pleasure in creating fascinating stories intended to wake up people whose thinkers had fallen asleep. The transformative power of his stories was far more important to him than 100% factual accuracy, and he sometimes “embellished” them to make them more forceful. This was the storyteller’s job: creating amazing stories — not rigidly accurate scientific discourses.
Laurens was not universally loved by white South Africans, because he had an annoying habit of criticizing segregation, racism, and oppression. He had special fondness for the Bushmen, who were sharply mistreated by everyone, both black and white. Bushmen once inhabited all of southern Africa, but black and white newcomers drove them off their best lands, forcing them into the Kalahari Desert, an extremely harsh place.
In 1955, Laurens did a documentary on the Bushmen for the BBC, and it was the second most popular program ever, only the queen’s coronation had a bigger audience. He went on to write several books on Bushmen themes, including The Heart of the Hunter. Passages from this book are often quoted by writers of the counterculture, because Laurens had profound respect for the ability of simpler societies to live lightly on the Earth, with great reverence. He also had a robust contempt for modern industrial society, and he did not hesitate to express this. He had a front row seat for World War II, and this adventure in industrial warfare took much of the shine off of civilization’s reputation.
Laurens introduced us to his beloved wild Bushmen, people of “irrepressible gaiety.” One elder was “utterly at one with all the life that was and could ever be.” Bushmen were incredibly in tune with nature, and could feel the presence of unseen animals. They could sense danger from far away. They could communicate telepathically. They didn’t work hard, they didn’t have jobs, they didn’t have leaders, and they were free. Free! They had a culture that worked. John Reader once wrote that the Bushmen were able to live in their ordinary manner during the third year of extreme drought that killed 180,000 people and 250,000 cattle.
Unfortunately, the Bantu and European newcomers were farmers, herders, and assorted moneymakers — property freaks — and the way they treated Bushmen was similar to the relationship between Montana ranchers and prairie dogs. Consequently, the Bushmen avoided all contact with the outside world, because the dominant culture treated them like sub-human vermin, or no-cost slaves, or future tax-paying peasants or diamond miners.
Laurens lamented modern society, with its vast hordes of property freaks, the tragic innocent victims of arrested development. Because of our estrangement from nature, our minds had lost contact with core human instincts, we had lost our souls, we were starved for meaning, and we were mindlessly destroying system after system. He decreed: “One look at the identical towns we are building all over the world ought to be enough to show us that this kind of progress is like the proliferation of a single cell at the expense of the rest, which produces the cancer that kills the whole body.”
In 1961, Laurens did not think like the herd. He celebrated wild freedom, and denounced the destructive insanity of industrial civilization. Yet he was a popular and respected celebrity in Britain, and he sipped champagne with the richest and most powerful. He was knighted in 1981, becoming Sir Laurens van der Post, an extraordinary achievement for someone who was so at odds with mainstream thinking.
The power of this book lies in its rebellious and unconventional attitude. It’s OK to think. It’s OK to question. It’s OK to shout “Wolf!” when there are wolves as far as the eye can see. It’s OK to be different, to prefer integrity over trendiness, to seek truth instead of mindless conformity. If your heart is screaming about the senseless destruction of life on Earth, you aren’t crazy, you’re awake. What’s crazy is our way of life, our culture. This is an important concept to understand.
Creative people have a primary role to play in influencing the path of our society, because society permits them to think outside the box. Popes, politicians, tycoons, and educators aren’t allowed to do this, because they have an obligation to protect and preserve the pathological belief system that is laying waste to the world. Everything we need for healing can only be found outside the box, and creative people can help us find these things, with luck.
The weakness of the book is that it doesn’t teach us a great deal about the Bushmen way of life. Laurens knew few Bushmen, spent little time with them, and didn’t know their language. The BBC documentary was almost aborted because Laurens and his team had a very hard time finding any Bushmen to film. Finally they found one band, who allowed themselves to be seen, because they were close to dying from dehydration. You could learn much more about the Bushmen by reading Elizabeth Marshall Thomas.
The Bushmen finally got their own official home when the Central Kalahari Game Reserve was created in 1961. This Denmark-sized park was located in the middle of what is now Botswana. But diamonds were discovered on the reserve in the early ‘80s, and this inspired the government to remove the Bushmen from their land. In 2006, they won the right to return, but were forbidden to hunt or drink water. In 2011, they won the right to drink water.
Botswana promotes safari tours at the reserve, and this generates a lot of income for an extremely poor country. Rich tourists want to enjoy a pure wilderness experience, gazing at giraffes from their hot tubs, and wild, naked, blood-spattered savages would simply spoil this demented fantasy. Laurens would have a different opinion, of course.
December 4, 2018
I liked the subject because it was just a lot of biblical folktales from an interesting people group. it was written more than 50 years ago so there are some parts of it that would definitely be considered offensive , but you can tell that for its time, the author was approaching it from the perspective of like.... genuinely admiring the culture so it was still cool.
January 19, 2015
Addressing a very sensitive topic, van der Post makes reading about the plight of the Bushman very heart wrenching to the reader. Initially writing about his travels, the small incidents that the author mentions are sure to make a profound influence on the reader. The author’s collected folklore and mythology of the Bushmen and his own interpretations of the same in the light of Biblical and (to an extent) Hindu scriptures are very amusing and extremely interesting.
How does the Mantis play a major role in the Bushman’s life? Why does a young mother ask the stars to give their heart her infant son? Why does a hare have a split lip? Why do ostriches leave an egg out of their elliptical pile of eggs? Why does a hyena have a limping gait? How do the honey diviner and the ratel live a harmonious life? The author makes an attempt to answer questions such as these and many more.
The Bushmen are largely ignored and mostly spoken of as pests in the very same land they have been freely roaming all through their history. Ignorance and inability to adapt to the new ways of life, overwhelming population expansions of the other human populations of Africa, restrictive policies of the Governments and several other factors have contributed to the threat of extinction to the Bushmen. The author speaks of his own efforts and the necessary steps for others to alleviate the plight of the Bushmen.
Being a man of many languages, the author is sure to captivate the readers with his poetic style of writing which is going extinct in current literature. Despite the time of writing and publication, the book has major relevance in the current world and is a recommended book for anyone interested in Man’s glorious past and His deplorable future.
How does the Mantis play a major role in the Bushman’s life? Why does a young mother ask the stars to give their heart her infant son? Why does a hare have a split lip? Why do ostriches leave an egg out of their elliptical pile of eggs? Why does a hyena have a limping gait? How do the honey diviner and the ratel live a harmonious life? The author makes an attempt to answer questions such as these and many more.
The Bushmen are largely ignored and mostly spoken of as pests in the very same land they have been freely roaming all through their history. Ignorance and inability to adapt to the new ways of life, overwhelming population expansions of the other human populations of Africa, restrictive policies of the Governments and several other factors have contributed to the threat of extinction to the Bushmen. The author speaks of his own efforts and the necessary steps for others to alleviate the plight of the Bushmen.
Being a man of many languages, the author is sure to captivate the readers with his poetic style of writing which is going extinct in current literature. Despite the time of writing and publication, the book has major relevance in the current world and is a recommended book for anyone interested in Man’s glorious past and His deplorable future.
August 2, 2014
Follows on from his 'Lost World of the Kalahari' in that the first third of this book is the return voyage from the Kalahari to the south. A chance meeting with a small group of bushmen generates a number of stories. The other two thirds of the book tells the bushmen stories of creation and early mythology. There is also a bit of LVDP philosophy and some urging for the saving of the bushmen from being overtaken by civilisation.
There is obviously come controversy about how authentic LVDP's writing is, and an accusation of plagiarism, but regardless of whether that stacks up, you can't fault the guys passion and compassion for these people who were clearly heading to a terrible end at the hands of modern civilisation.
There is obviously come controversy about how authentic LVDP's writing is, and an accusation of plagiarism, but regardless of whether that stacks up, you can't fault the guys passion and compassion for these people who were clearly heading to a terrible end at the hands of modern civilisation.
April 18, 2016
This is one of my favorite books and follows on wonderfully from "Lost world of the Kalahari". The sense of the bushmen's life being in total harmony with their natural surroundings is incredibly moving and gives a glimpse of our lost but not forgotten "garden of Eden".
September 20, 2015
Feels like two books stuck together - one on his time in the desert, and the second on Bushman mythology. Both were interesting though. Some outdated and obviously biased language, but also an evident love for Southern Africa and respect for the people he encountered.
November 4, 2018
Many beautiful and evocative descriptions of the African landscape and flora and fauna. A deep understanding and appreciation of Bushmen culture, though Van der Post is an enthusiastic amateur, not a professional ethnographer or achaeologist. The influence of Jung is clear, particular in his explanations of Bushmen (and other African) myths and their relevance to us today.
A quote from near the beginning: "the formidable thunder clouds which came storming over the horizon in the early afternoons seemed powerless to break through the iron ring of drought around us. We would watch them grow until they stood over us like atomic explosions in the South Pacific. Their shadows would tumble from a far silver crest in folds of purple over our smarting senses, the darkened distances glitter with the flashes of their lightning, the earth shake with thunder and the wide desert suddenly shrink small into a posture of submission at their feet."
And later: "‘Love is the aboriginal tracker, the Bushman on the faded desert spoor of our lost selves.’ There was a great lost world to be rediscovered and rebuilt, not in the Kalahari but in the wasteland of our spirit where we had driven the first things of life, as we had driven the little Bushman into the desert of southern Africa. There was indeed a cruelly denied and neglected first child of life, a Bushman in each of us."
A quote from near the beginning: "the formidable thunder clouds which came storming over the horizon in the early afternoons seemed powerless to break through the iron ring of drought around us. We would watch them grow until they stood over us like atomic explosions in the South Pacific. Their shadows would tumble from a far silver crest in folds of purple over our smarting senses, the darkened distances glitter with the flashes of their lightning, the earth shake with thunder and the wide desert suddenly shrink small into a posture of submission at their feet."
And later: "‘Love is the aboriginal tracker, the Bushman on the faded desert spoor of our lost selves.’ There was a great lost world to be rediscovered and rebuilt, not in the Kalahari but in the wasteland of our spirit where we had driven the first things of life, as we had driven the little Bushman into the desert of southern Africa. There was indeed a cruelly denied and neglected first child of life, a Bushman in each of us."
February 28, 2019
Theo introduced me to this man as well as some other older people. He is a fine writer and it was amazing that he could wander round Africa and have all theses adventures. He stands out as someone who although thinks that the blacks are incapable of being the same as him, wants the best for them and has some insight into their plight and the value of the culture. He writes with affection about the bushmen and women and their myths their everyday lives. He also takes a fairly scandalous view of western religion and talks about universal mythology.
August 31, 2018
Van der Post as author is better, I find, when he recounts his own experiences; the story of his Kalahari expedition is intoxicating. However, I was disappointed that the Bushman mythology, their beliefs and customs etc, as the professed reason of the book, had only a small part in it and that it was akwardly interpreted by Van der Post with his fondness for obscure psychologising.
January 5, 2022
This was a chore for me to get through. Oh yes, it was beautifully and thoughtfully written. It was just a bit detailed for me. It started out (the previous book) as a sort of travel diary, but really ended up being more of an anthropological textbook. Still, he is such a gifted writer and thinker, I took away several ideas and concepts that are very new to me.
January 21, 2024
If you have a desire to know the history and customs and lives of the bush people of Africa.
October 13, 2025
This book holds a very special place in my heart, I remember reading it first as a young boy and how it made me feel like I was following all the animals and birds along with the bushmen. Every time to this day I see a small bird, I wonder if I follow it, it will lead me to honey.
February 3, 2021
I loved this book. There are two parts to this book ...one describes the authors journey in search of the Bushmen and the second part involves recounting their creation myths and how they view the world. It was interesting for me to read how these natural people view the world, their concept of the individual, comfort, honor, etc which gave me some perspective on the subjectivity of our my views.
Van der Post is a superb writer.
Van der Post is a superb writer.
December 22, 2014
I really enjoyed this book - yes, it's part travelogue, part history, part myth, but if you are connected to the bigger universe, have open mind and heart, then you will get some wonderful insight from this book. The Bushmen of Africa are a fascinating group of people and we, in this day and age especially, could learn a lot from them. I am touched by so many of the stories, the sacredness of their stories, and how they are passed on from generation to generation. Makes me wish I had stories from my elders that we all held dear and that I could pass on. Some things have been lost over time, continents, and in history, but this was a wonderful humanistic grounding - and makes me wish I could sit and be still and listen to the wind and the stars.
May 29, 2007
i borrowed this book from a friend who'd borrowed it from another friend. the 1970s cover just caught my eye. the bushmen's myths are so elegant and dynamic. van der post's love and respect for his native africa is clear.
April 13, 2013
Contains some of Van der Posts beautifully incisive prose but ultimately loses pace as a story, since it includes part travelogue, part retelling of Bushmen lore on the origin of spirit and part historic reality of raising awareness of their plight. Will definitely be seeking out more LVdeP
March 28, 2008
i'd read anything by van der post.
Want to read
November 18, 2010note:
biblio here: http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/Lv...
biblio here: http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/Lv...
May 15, 2014
The Bushmen, or San people, of the Kalahari desert. Amazon reviews say book is controversial.
February 24, 2023
Still respectful falls into a colonial mentality trope. Discovered key insights into the mind, body, and heart of the hunter.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews