Death of a King – Extract from Linda Tucker’s book “Saving the White Lions”

Months of loss and mourning passed. My lion was dead and my heart was broken. Ancient Lion Shamanism teaches, “When you kill a lion, you kill the sun.” It also warns, “For every lion killed, a human soul will be lost.” There’s something eternally damning about this concept. It isn’t the rough justice of the human variety: tooth for a tooth, life for a life. The balance of scales is a soul for a life (human soul for a lion’s life), which signifies divine justice.

As for the coward who butchered my king, I knew his name. The wealthy American hunter paid $25,000 for the pleasure of killing Ingwavuma. I was in no state to track down this brute and gun him down in the streets of Chicago to die in a pool his own blood, but time and again this gruesome wish filled my mind. I felt mortally wounded by Ingwavuma’s futile slaying, incensed with anger and outrage. And I wondered what deep psychological problem had led this weak man to commit such a heinous act. His decision to obliterate the life of the king of beasts was a conscious decision, presumably, but made without consciousness, without conscience. I knew he would carry the blood of my lion on his soul, whether he was capable of knowing it or not.

With a burning, aching, weeping heart at Ingwavuma’s senseless murder, I submerged my sorrows in astrology books and sacred texts, trying to etch out meaning for my loss. It was then that I discovered the timing of this tragic event was profoundly poignant.

The particular day of his death—that day only, and at that very time—the setting sun was in perfect alignment with Regulus, the heartstar of the Leo constellation. I knew from my studies of Ancient Egypt that the moment when the sun passes through Regulus is the pinnacle of cosmic events. In old Africa, as in Ancient Egypt, this moment symbolizes the birth, or death, of a Lion King or kingdom on earth. The ancient mysteries of Egypt also indicate that this cosmic occurrence is the moment when the Pharaoh, or Lion King, becomes immortal and returns to the stars.

Astounded, I now realized that my Lion Guardian’s departure aligned with a stellar plan in the heavens, which gave me greater insight into Ingwavuma’s sacrificial death. Myth had become real, and reality mythical.

Realizing there was meaning behind the timing of Ingwavuma’s assassination, I now saw that while the preposterous trophy hunter, with his inflated ego and high-caliber weapon, may have slaughtered my Lion King for a stuffed trophy on his wall, he couldn’t undo Ingwavuma’s holy power.

As an attempt to divert my sorrow in the midst of mourning, I dragged myself to Johannesburg to see the newly released screening of the Disney’s Lion King, only to find the parallels played out in the cartoon version. I couldn’t help but identify with the orphaned lion cub, Simba, when he stares sadly at the stars reflected in a dark pool searching for his murdered father, Mafasa.

The omnipotent ancestral voice speaks from the heavens:

Look at the stars. The Lion Kings of the past look down on us from those stars. So, whenever you feel alone, remember those kings will always be there to guide you.

In the darkness of that crowded cinema, I sat and wept in isolation. The same was true of my own story. Only it was real.