Malidoma Patrice Somé: Nature, Ritual and Community

Malidoma Patrice Somé is an author, teacher and shaman from the Dagara tribe in West Africa. Somé holds three Master's degrees and two Doctorates from the Sorbonne and Brandeis University. Representing his village in Burkina Faso, West Africa, Somé has come to the West to share the ancient wisdom and practices which have supported his people for thousands of years. He travels throughout the world bringing a message of hope, healing and reconciliation through the powerful tools of ritual and community building. Versed in the languages of psychology, comparative literature, as well as ancient mythology, healing, and divination, Somé bridges paths between the ancient tribal world of the West African Dagara culture and modern Western society. Over the years, he has come to understand that, despite their differences, Indigenous and Western peoples are actually children of the same Spirit, living in the same house they call Earth. 

 

Born in a Dagara community in 1956, he was abducted from his people at the age of four by a Jesuit priest and imprisoned in a seminary built for training a new generation of black Catholic priests. In spite of his isolation from his tribe and his village, Somé stubbornly refused to forget where he had come from and who he was. Finally, some 16 years later, Somé fled the seminary and walked 125 miles through the dense jungle back to his own people, the Dagara. Once he was home, however, many there regarded him as a "white black," to be looked on with suspicion because he had been contaminated by the "sickness" of the colonial world. Somé was a man of two worlds, at home in neither.
 

His only hope of reconnection with his people was to undergo the harrowing Dagara month-long initiation in the wilderness. Elders from the village believed that Somé's ancestral spirit had withdrawn from his body and that he had already undergone a type of rite of passage into manhood in the white world. Despite this, they agreed to let him undergo a belated manhood rite with a younger group in the tribe. Having been raised outside of the culture and not speaking the language made the initiation process, believed to unite soul and body, more dangerous for him than for the youths also undergoing the rite. Somé emerged from this ancient ritual a newly integrated individual, rejoined to his ancestral past and his cultural present. Even after initiation, however, Somé remains a man of two worlds, charged by his elders to bridge his culture and the Western world.
 

I had the opportunity to take one of Somé's workshops years ago. In his workshops, Somé tells participants that the Dagara believe each person is born with a destiny, and he or she is given a name that reflects that destiny. "My name is Malidoma," he says. "It means he who makes friends with the stranger. As my name implies, I am here in the West to tell the world about my people in any way I can, and to take back to my people the knowledge I gain about this world. My elders are convinced that the West is as endangered as the Indigenous cultures it has decimated in the name of colonialism. Western civilization is suffering from a great sickness of the soul. The West's progressive turning away from functioning spiritual values; its total disregard for the environment and natural resources; the violence of inner cities with their problems of poverty, drugs and crime; spiraling unemployment and economic disarray; and growing intolerance toward people of color and the values of other cultures—all of these trends, if unchecked, will eventually bring about terrible self-destruction. In the face of all this global chaos, the only possible hope is self-transformation through ritual."
 

Somé leads workshop participants in ritual drumming and singing. He shares ways to create community as well as ritual ways that activate the healing powers of nature. He says that in Dagara society, all healing is accomplished in ritual through nature, and the participation of the village community. Nature is the landscape in which all healing takes place and it's the environment in which we renew ourselves and become whole, experiencing a sense of well-being. From an Indigenous perspective, the individual psyche can only be healed by addressing one's relationships with the visible worlds of nature and community and one's relationship with the invisible forces of the ancestors and spirit allies. That is why the art of ritual is so important, for it's in ritual that nature, community and the spirit world come together in healing.   
 

In modern times, we've lost our natural tendency to function communally by embracing such thinking as "pull one's self up by one's bootstraps" and "every man for himself." Yet only with community is a person's life purpose discovered, nurtured, and most importantly, required to sustain community. Healing through ritual nourishes our spirits and our psyches. It heals the deep wounds in us that are unseen and unspoken. Ritual offers us a deeper healing solution to complex dilemmas that plague modern life, those problems that lie beneath the surface, waiting to erupt. Somé focuses on the need for grief ritual and ways of working with emotion in Western culture. The ritual of grieving, the sacred shedding of tears to heal the wounds of human losses, is a cleansing practice that purifies the psyche. Somé likened the danger of unexpressed grief to a social time bomb.
 

Somé emphasizes that, "for the Dagara, ritual is, above all else, the yardstick by which people measure their state of connection with the hidden ancestral realm, with which the entire community is genetically bound. In a way, the Dagara think of themselves as a projection of the spirit world. The abandonment of ritual can be devastating. From the spiritual viewpoint, ritual is inevitable and necessary if one is to live. Where ritual is absent, the young ones are restless or violent, there are no real elders, and the grownups are bewildered. The future is dim."
 

Somé is optimistic when he says, "At this critical time in history, the Earth's people are awakening to a deep need for global healing. African wisdom, so long held secret, is being called on to provide tools to enable us to move into a more peaceful and empowered way of being, both within ourselves, and within our communities. The Indigenous spirit in each of us is calling for cleansing and reconciliation. The ancestors are responding."

Music and its Role in Ritual

Shamanism and music combined thousands of years ago. By observing nature, shamans perceived that the power of sound could be used to help and heal others. The first drums and musical instruments were put to shamanic use, as were many of the early singing traditions. According to folklorist Kira Van Deusen, "In a shaman's world music operates in several ways. It helps the shaman and other participants in a ceremony to locate and enter the inner world, opening the inner, spiritual ear and eye. Musical sound calls helping spirits and transports the shaman on the journey. Both the rhythm and the timbre of musical sound help heal the patient through the effects of specific frequencies and musical styles on the human body."

Music is an essential tool in shamanic ritual and healing work. Music is the carrier of the specific intention or desired outcome of the ritual. Music is used to contain the energetic or spiritual aspect of the sacred space, which is defined physically by the assembled people who participate. Dance and song propel the ritual process forward by providing a vehicle for self-expression within the sacred space. Together the musicians create the necessary container that channels the energy generated by the performance in ways that the shaman can guide toward the ritual's intended outcome.

Three elements are constantly interacting in communal healing rites: the shaman who guides the flow and pattern of the ritual, the musicians who contain the sacred space, and the gathered people who participate. Interaction between all three elements is necessary to maintain the energy, flow and intention of the ritual.

Music is also used to crack open the part of the self that holds emotions in check. For example, in funeral rites among the Dagara people of West Africa, drumming and singing are used to open the mourners to grief. Grief is then channeled in such a way that it will convey the newly deceased soul to the afterlife. Without the help of the drummers, musicians and singers, the powerful emotional energy cannot be unleashed. If not channeled properly, grief is useless to the dead and dangerous to the living. According to Christina Pratt, author of An Encyclopedia of Shamanism, "This musical container of the ritual space must be maintained continuously. The musicians do not rest as long as the ritual continues, though the ritual may last one to four full days."

A Shamanic Perspective on Schizophrenia

What does a father do when hope is gone that his only son can ever lead anything close to a "normal" life? That's the question that haunted Dick Russell in the fall of 2011, when his son, Franklin, was thirty-two. At the age of seventeen, Franklin had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. For years he spent time in and out of various hospitals, and even went through periods of adamantly denying that Dick was actually his father. Desperately seeking an alternative to the medical model's medication regimen, Dick introduces Franklin to West African Dagara shaman and writer Malidoma Patrice Somé, Phd. Somé helps Franklin in a way Western medicine couldn't, bringing to light the psychic capabilities behind the seemingly delusional thought patterns, as well as his artistic talents.

The Dagara people of West Africa have an entirely different view of what is actually happening to someone who has been diagnosed as "mentally ill." In the shamanic view, mental illness signals "the birth of a healer," explains Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born. What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as "good news from the other world." The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm.

A different perspective opens up very different possibilities. The Dagara people use ritual to relieve the suffering at the core of "mental illness." According to Somé, ritual can open the way for the individual's healing relationship with helping spirits that supports a cure or definitive movement out of the "mentally ill" state of being and back into the world as an individual better equipped than most to give their gifts to the world. To learn more, look inside Dick Russell's memoir, "My Mysterious Son: A Life-Changing Passage Between Schizophrenia and Shamanism."

A Shamanic View of Mental Illness

The Dagara people of West Africa have an entirely different view of what is actually happening to someone who has been diagnosed as "mentally ill." In the shamanic view, mental illness signals "the birth of a healer," explains Dagara shaman and writer, Malidoma Patrice Somé, Phd. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born. What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as "good news from the other world." The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm.

A different perspective opens up very different possibilities. The Dagara people use ritual to relieve the suffering at the core of "mental illness." According to Somé, ritual can open the way for the individual's healing relationship with helping spirits that supports a cure or definitive movement out of the "mentally ill" state of being and back into the world as an individual better equipped than most to give their gifts to the world. To learn more, read "The Shamanic View of Mental Illness," featuring Malidoma Patrice Some´ (excerpted from The Natural Medicine Guide to Schizophrenia).

"Drumming for the Orisa"

Colin Townsend is a cultural anthropologist and drummer who published a study on the ways identity is constructed among a group of drummers at Oyotunji Village, South Carolina. Oyotunji Village was founded by Oba Oseijeman I, born Walter King of Detroit, in 1970 with the purpose of providing African-Americans in the United States with a geographical, political, and cultural space to experience African culture. Modeled after Yoruba culture of southwest Nigeria, members of the community practice a religion known as orisa-voodoo.

Throughout the year, festivals are held dedicated to various orisa, "deities," in which the drummers play a crucial role in the religious experience of the orisa-voodoo adherents. An essential part of Yoruba culture, drumming acts as a musical bridge between humans and orisa, enabling orisa-voodoo practitioners to petition the orisa for guidance and intervention in their daily lives. Drumming traditions at Oyotunji Village provide drummers with a repository of cultural knowledge and practices from which to draw, while at the same time offering them a creative outlet capable of reshaping and redefining those very same traditions.

Townsend examines various processes of identity formation among the drummers as part of their musical apprenticeship, during which they learn not only how to play the instrument but also about Yoruba culture in general. He employs an analytical framework involving a "subject-centered musical ethnography" within a three-dimensional space of musical experience including time, location, and metaphor. Read "Drumming for the Orisa: (Re)inventing Yoruba Identity in Oyotunji Village."

To learn more about African drumming, I highly recommend Sule Greg Wilson's informative book, The Drummer's Path: Moving the Spirit with Ritual and Traditional Drumming. Wilson provides a useful introduction to the many different styles of traditional African drumming. This is an intriguing work that shows the relationship between drumming, spirit and health. His writing offers an interesting insight into the physical, metaphysical and spiritual aspects of drumming.

Solar Eclipse Alignment 2011

Solar Eclipse Alignment 2011
by Jade Wah'oo Grigori

While Solar Eclipses are not a rare phenomenon, the timing of this January 4th's Solar Eclipse is very significant. To understand the import of this eclipse requires a brief review of the just-past Lunar Eclipse of December 20-21. At the time of the Lunar Eclipse the features of our sky that were aligned were:

1. Center of our Galaxy

2. Winter Solstice, the place where our Solar System's ecliptic crosses the Galactic plane

3. Sun-Earth-Moon

4. Summer Solstice, the point of intersection of our Solar System's ecliptic with the Galactic plane. (NOTE: Winter/Summer Solstice points are relative to the Northern Hemisphere. The designation of these Solstices are reversed for the Southern Hemisphere)

This alignment was powerful and unique as the eclipse happened precisely upon the Winter Solstice crossing point, and that Solstice is aligned with the Center of our Galaxy. The statistical chance of this precise alignment ever occurring were, shall I say, astronomical!

During the alignment of the Lunar Eclipse (with the Moon being outward from the Sun/Solstice/Galactic Core alignment, as seen from the Earth) the mythic nature of that lineup brought about a direct access into the deepest realms of the Underworld - and therefore made it the most opportune moment for a Soul Retrieval. In the classic assessment of cultures from all about the Earth Souls return from the Summer Triangle of the stars Vega, Deneb and Altair -  where the Summer Solstice point is now to be found - along the Milky Way to the Great Cauldron of the Galactic Core, which is itself now aligned by the Winter Solstice point. It is out of this Great Cauldron from which Souls are reborn into incarnation anew. The newly born Souls traverse the Milky Way, on their way to Sirius, and are incarnated upon the Earth midway upon their journey.

All the significances of alignment of the previous Lunar Eclipse are in play - with, of course, the Moon being between the Earth and the Sun, rather than the Earth being between the Sun and the Moon - in this upcoming Solar Eclipse, with the addition of Sirius in the lineup.

The alignments that are present during the upcoming Solar Eclipse are no less astounding.

1. Center of our Galaxy

2. Winter Solstice, the place where our Solar Systems ecliptic crosses the Galactic plane

3. Sun-Moon-Earth

4. Summer Solstice, the point of intersection of our Solar System's ecliptic with the Galactic plane.

5. Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky.

 

The significance of this particular, and equally unique, Solar Eclipse is that there is a direct line-of-sight (within a matter of degrees) from the vantage point of the Earth, through the Moon and the Sun, extending out through the Winter Solstice point and into the very heart of our Galaxy, with the bright star Sirius directly 'overhead', that is, the other direction from this alignment, from the Earth's point-of-view. It is the introduction of Sirius that I want to address more fully, below.

Mythically - Myth being the reality of the Soul, just as History is the reality of the mundane - this unique and amazing alignment of these celestial elements brings with it poignant import.

 

1. Galactic Center is held to be the place from which new Souls are born into the world. It is also the location of a Black Hole, rimmed with a holographic generator (see Jaguar's Shadow) that beams the code of creation into our known universe.

2. Winter Solstice point: the exit portal of Souls from this world. Also, the portal through which the gifts of Spirit are given and made known to us.

3. Solar Eclipse: The Sun is a lens that receives the incoming code of creation being generated by the Galactic Core, modulating that code by virtue of which Cosmic Age (as prescribed by the Precession of the Equinoxes) the Sun is aligned with, as determined by the starry backdrop behind the Sun. When the Sun is eclipsed it is considered to be in a 'flat-line' state, radiating no particular qualities, but being a powerful magnifying lens of whatever is residing in the starry background. In this unique case, it is the Central Sun, the Center of the Galaxy, that lies directly behind the Sun!

4. Moon: As the Moon is covering the Sun, the Moon is a Super New Moon. All the qualities of a New Moon apply, but to an exponentially magnified degree. new beginnings that arise from, are made possible by, the 'flat-lining' of the Moon, that is, there are no obstructions present, no qualities being reflected, as the Moon is dark.

5. Earth: The receiving vessel. Our experience of creation is receiving, at this momentous time, a new activation.

6. Summer Solstice point, outward from the Earth/Moon/Sun alignment. The place of origin of the just-past Lunar Eclipse, the subsequent journey of the Moon has been sweeping up the detritus and debris of our 'karma', releasing it, at this time, back into the Cauldron (Center of Galaxy) where it is all burned in the Great Central Sun. The catalyst for this immense release is Appreciation, as this is the inherent nature of the Summer Solstice point, as Forgiveness is of the Winter Solstice point (see On Forgiveness).

7. Sirius: Recognized by many cultures as being an Activator of culture, knowledge and prosperity.

Sirius is the star with perhaps the most mythic accolade throughout the cultures of the earth and the span of time. In ancient Egypt Sirius was known as Sopdet, or Sothis,  Hathor and later as Isis. Known as the Year Star, its heliacal rising on July 4th signaled the beginning of the Egyptian year. We, in today's world, still acknowledge Sirius as the Year Star, on the same date as did those who worshipped at the Temple of Ceres at Eleusis. That date is right now, on December 31/January 1, when Sirius is directly overhead at midnight. The dropping of the glittering ball at Times Square is in recognition of this celestial moment, and by it we begin our own new year.

The Dogon people, of Mali, West Africa, have carried the knowledge of Sirius - for 5,000 years! - being a triple star: the bright star we see with the unaided eye (Sirius A) and a small but dense and heavy companion star that circles Sirius A every 50 years, a white dwarf, referred to as Sirius B. Sirius B was not even known to exist until viewed through a telescope in 1862. It is only in recent years that astronomers have noted perturbations in the orbits of Sirius A and B that have led them to conclude that their is a third star in the orbital scene, Sirius C. It seems that the Dogon have known of the structural makeup of the Sirius as a trinary star system 5,000 years before it was evidenced by our contemporary scientists!

Many cultures in varied places have referred to Sirius as the Dog Star or the Wolf Star, each with their own reason and story, but few of them the same story. In the Lodge of Purification that is in my caretakership we refer to the White Wolf (Sirius) who is the companion of the Red Wolf (Aldebaran, Antares or Mars - all visibly red - depending on the season).

The one thing that is common to all these mythologies throughout the world is that Sirius, by whatever name, is held to be the Initiator of Culture, the Giver of Knowledge and the Bringer of Civilization.  It's presence in the mid-heaven (where it sits during the Solar Eclipse of January 4th) was considered a portent of abundance, wealth and good fortune.

Each of these characteristics presents an image of something being sparked, initiated, made manifest here in the worldly domain. Sirius is, in this regard, like a cue ball sent speeding along the available path of celestial billiard balls. Those billiards it strikes, Sirius sends into a state of high activity. When we have such a series of celestial bodies and points of reference in alignment, Sirius' activation of one transmits its spark of lightning (or enlightening!) along the lineup. As the spark of Sirius activates each point along its path, each element is triggered into a state of heightened activation.

All of these elements are, of course, experienced within us. It is not that something is done to us, rather it is an activation of our own archetypal aspects to which we are responding with a commensurate degree of awakening.

The time of this configuration in our skies occurs January 4th, beginning 6:40 GMT, peaking at 8:50 GMT and concluding at 11:00 GMT. Whether you are on the eclipse-visible side of the planet (Europe, North Africa, Western Asia) or on the night-side of the planet, where Sirius will be visible overhead, or even in areas where neither is visible to you, know that the whole planet - and all of humanity - will be immensely activated by this event. Take a bit of time, enter into peace, join in the conscious activation of our planet. Please.

With Peace and Ease,

Jade Wah'oo Grigori