Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman (Arkana)

The book is essentially an autobiography. It tells of Malidoma's birth among the Dagara of Burkina Faso, his kidnap by Jesuit missionaries, their attempt to indoctrinate him with the Christian God, his escape and then initiaion back into the Dagara.

However, its main value for the West is in comprehensively destroying the rationalist materialsim which is in the process of destroyign nature. For Malidoma tells of so many extraordinary - and magical - events that anyone who is not a dyed-in-the-wool cynic will have their worldview permanently altered.

If you want to see how corpses can walk back to their own funeral ceremonies, how people can go into different dimensions and see their previous incarnations, and how they can understand themselves as they were before their birth and as they will be after death - if, in short, you want to enter an entirely different - and genuine - spiritual worldview, having got fed up of the bankrupt one we are force fed in the Wst - this is the book for you.

Please buy this book it will change your life, for the better.


Much to learn from Africa   July 31, 2002
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

This brilliant book not only puts religious colonialism firmly in its place without being over emotional about it but also tells many wonderful things about tribal west Africa. It was a revelation to me. I had imagined that most missions these days confined themselves to good works and hoped that some indiginous peoples might take up the baton. Far from it! Religious brainwashing and colonial thuggery seems to be either alive and well or has only stopped within the last 20 years. But Far more importantly. While elements of what is left from the native american culture abound and Maori, and Australian indiginous knowledge is there for the finding, I had heard or nothing comparable from tribal Africa except wonderfully told albeit second hand information from Laurence van der Post about the bushmen. Here Malidoma redresses the balance magnificently from West Africa. The writing is excellent, the experiences sometimes mind-boggling and the descriptions of village life really wonderful.