Dwelling in the Realm of the Sacred

"In the culture of my people, the Dagara, we have no word for the supernatural. The closest we come to this concept is Yielbongura, 'the thing that knowledge can't eat.' This word suggests that the life and power of certain things depend upon their resistance to the kind of categorizing knowledge that human beings apply to everything. In Western reality, there is a clear split between the spiritual and the material, between religious life and secular life. This concept is alien to the Dagara. For us, as for many indigenous cultures, the supernatural is part of our everyday lives. To a Dagara man or woman, the material is just the spiritual taking on form. The secular is religion in a lower key — a rest area from the tension of religious and spiritual practice. Dwelling in the realm of the sacred is both exciting and terrifying."
— Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman

Darkness Is Sacred

"Among the Dagara, darkness is sacred. It is forbidden to illuminate it, for light scares the Spirit away. Our night is the day of the Spirit and of the ancestors, who come to tell us what lies on our life paths. To have light around you is like saying that you would rather ignore this wonderful opportunity to be shown the way. To the Dagara, such an attitude is inconceivable. The one exception to this rule is a bonfire. Though they emit a powerful glow, they are not prohibited because there is always drumming around them, and the beat of the drum cancels out the light."
— Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman

Seeing Further

"My experience of 'seeing' the lady in the tree had worked a major change in the way I perceived things as well as my ability to respond to the diverse experiences that constituted my education in the open-air classroom of the bush. This change in perspective did not affect the logical, common-sense part of my mind. Rather, it operated as an alternative way of being in the world that competed with my previous mind-set — mostly acquired in the Jesuit seminary.

"My visual horizons had grown disproportionately. I was discovering that the eye is a machine that, even at its best, can still be improved, and that there is more to sight than just physical seeing. I began to understand that human sight creates its own obstacles, stops seeing when the general consensus says it should. But since my experience with the tree, I began to perceive that we are often watched at a close distance by beings we ourselves cannot see, and that when we do see these otherworldly beings, it is only after they have given us permission to see further — and only after they have made some adjustment in themselves to preserve their integrity. And isn't it true that there is something secret about everything and everybody?"
— Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman

The Indigenous Person Within

"The two worlds of the traditional and the industrial are diametrically opposed. The indigenous world, in trying to emulate Nature, espouses a walk with life, a slow, quiet day-to-day kind of existence. The modern world, on the other hand, steams through life like a locomotive, controlled by a certain sense of careless waste and destruction. Such life eats at the psyche and moves its victims faster and faster along, as they are progressively emptied out of their spiritual and psychic fuel. It is here, consequently, where one's spirit is in crisis, that speed is the yardstick by which the crisis itself is expressed.

"Any person in modern culture who is aware of this destruction from the machine world upon the spiritual world of the individual realizes that there is a starvation of the soul. And realizing that, he or she starts to wonder what to do about it. In places that I have been to speak to people about the beliefs and realities of the indigenous world, there has been a consistent number of people who have been so touched, even profoundly shaken by what I was telling them that I have to believe that I was not so much appealing to their minds as I was awakening something within their souls — something that has always been there. This tells me that there must be an indigenous person within each of us."
— Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community

Spirit Police

"In my village, houses do not have doors that can be locked. They have entrances. The absence of doors is not a sign of technological deprivation but an indication of the state of mind the community is in. The open door symbolizes the open mind and open heart. Thus a doorless home is home to anybody in the community. It translates the level at which the community operates. In addition, this community does not have a police force because it does not assume that the other person is dishonest or potentially evil. The trust factor must be high. Elders say that the real police in the village is Spirit that sees everybody."
— Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community

Ritual, Community, and Healing

"Ritual, community, and healing — these three are so intertwined in the indigenous world that to speak of one of them is to speak of them all.Ritual, communally designed, helps the individual remember his or her purpose, and such remembering brings healing both to the individual and the community. The communityexists, in part, to safeguard the purpose of each person within it and to awaken the memory of that purpose by recognizing the unique gifts each individual brings to this world. Healingcomes when the individual remembers his or her identity — the purpose chosen in the world of ancestral wisdom — and reconnects with that world of Spirit. Human beings long for connection, and our sense of usefulness derives from the feeling of connectedness. When we are connected — to our own purpose, to the community around us, and to our spiritual wisdom — we are able to live and act with authentic effectiveness."
— The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community

The Place Where You Were Born

"Being born into this world in a particular place is like having the signature of that place stamped upon you. The essence of your place of birth cloaks and protects your walk through this life, and whatever you do becomes registered in the ledger of that geography. You can end up thousands of miles away from your birthplace, and if you are involved in a healing ritual that is meant to work, you have to invoke the spirits that are at the place where you were born in addition to those who are natives of the place you are in. The spirits that witnessed your birth at that place are still there, and your calling them will awaken their attention to your direction. If you embrace this concept, you will find that human mobility does not remove a person's original connection to the birthplace. Your footprints still lead back to the place where you began."
— The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community

The Artist

"The blessed nature of the artist commands respect and reverence from everyone. The art that results from such a blessed hand is in turn approached with fear, reverence, and respect because it is accepted as a shipment straight from the Other World. The artist through whom the delivery is made is regarded with awe and approached as the carrier of a gateway. It is as if he or she is a doorway to the other side. More often than not, the artist is not observed while at work. When busy, he or she is occupied by Spirit. No one should disturb a person who is consulting with Spirit, or he may attract the Spirit's wrath."
— The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community