The Story of Kula and Woor

....Until I was three years old my mother would carry me tied onto her back whenever she went in search of wood or grain or simply to farm.  I loved to be knitted so closely to her, to watch her collect wood and carry it home on her head singing.  She loved music and perceived nature as a song.  While walking any great distance, she always sang to me.  The story was always chosen to match the length of the journey, and was usually about some unfortunate girl or woman, usually an orphan.

     One I remember in particular was about a girl named Kula, whose mother died and left her with a little sister Naab, to take to their aunt.  Kula asked Woor, her slave, to do the packing while she dressed herself as a queen, putting on gold necklaces, rings, and beads for
the journey.  Woor, who was more practical than her unmindful mistress, packed a lot of water along with her personal things.

     On the road Naab, the little sister that Kula carried on her back, felt thirsty and asked for water.  The only person who had brought any water was Woor, but she wasn't about to give it away for free.  In payment, she asked for a gold ring.

     The day was terribly hot and dusty, and a little while later, Naab cried again for water.  Kula again begged Woor, this time trading her gold earrings for the water.  This went on and on until the slave girl was dressed up like a queen, and Kula, stripped of her finery, looked like a slave.  The next time Naab cried out for water, her sister had nothing left to trade.  Woor suggested that she herself carry the child.  

     Thus, the three girls arrived at the house of the aunt, who welcomed them, mistaking the slave girl for her niece and the niece for the slave girl, and thus their identities were reversed.  The slave girl was treated well and kept in the warm comfort of home, while the niece was treated as a slave and sent out to the farm to guard the crops against wild creatures.

     As the days went on, the queen-become-slave sang the story of her life to scare the birds and animals away from the crops.  A singing human voice in the middle of a farm always keeps the intruder away.  As Kula cried out her plight, her tremulous melody touched the hearts of the winged and the four-legged creatures alike.  One day the Kontombili, the spirits who live in the underworld, were passing by and heard Kula's song.  They stopped and listened carefully as her mournful voice rose and fell amid the tall, end-of-rainy-season grass.  When she stopped to catch her breath the Kontombili approached her and asked her to sing her song again.

     After she had finished, they asked, "Is this story true?"

And she said, "I only sing what I know."  The Kontombili said, "Go home, little lady.  Your troubles are over.  Your aunt's eyes will be opened and she will know who you are."

     Kula went home and, as the Kontombili had promised, the aunt recognized her at once as her true niece.  She was given her beautiful clothes and jewels back and placed in the bedroom where Woor the usurper had been sleeping.  But Kula had learned true humility during her time as a slave, and she did not wish to switch from such hardship to immense luxury and comfort.  She asked if she could continue to stay in the slave girl's room and be given the leftovers from the rich folk's meals.  Dumbfounded, sorry, and confused, her aunt could only keep apologizing for having treated her so badly.

     Meanwhile the real slave girl was sent out to the farm to guard it against the creatures of the wild.  She could not sing, so she sat and made raucous noises when birds landed on the crops.  Along came a different group of Kontombili who had been told of the farm girl and her beautiful singing.

     They begged her for some music, saying, "We heard that your voice brings tears to the heart.  Please let us hear that song you sing everyday."

     Unaware who she was speaking to, Woor replied rudely, "What are you talking about?  I ain't got no song to sing to nobody."  Then she barked harshly, thinking that would scare these beings away.  To the sensitive ears of Kontombili this sound was like the smell of vomit.

     Disgusted and puzzled, the Kontombili asked Woor once more for a real song.  Answering their courtesy with rudeness, the girl rebuked them in the same way.  Believing they had been deceived by the girl, the Kontombili grew so angry that they turned her to stone.

     I never liked the ending to my mother's stories.  Someone always became something or someone else.  When a story threatened to end before our journey did, she expertly extended it.  I heard the story of Kula and Woor many times, but each time something different happened.  Sometimes my mother would depict Kula's life with greater misery, as if she guessed that I did not like the fact that the usurper was turned to stone and, therefore, waned to make a better case for her punishment.  One time she had the little queen eat not just crumbs from the table, but had her share her meals with the dog.

     "But Mom," I protested, "she didn't do that the other day.  She ate only the leftovers."

     "Yes," answered my mother, "but if she eats what the dog eats, then she can all the more enjoy returning to her queenhood, and you can enjoy watching the slave die."

Of Water and The Spirit

pgs. 15-16 

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REFLECTION:

     As the narrative ends, people have either seen themselves as the slave girl, the queen, or the little sister.  Some people may even have identified with the kontombli.  If someone identifies with the slave girl, the indigenous would say that such a person was in his past life a slave, and has returned to heal the wounds of slavery.  If someone feels attracted to the queen image, this is because that person's gifts are about to blossom, and it is time to give them greater attention.  Identifying with the beings from the other side is interpreted similarly to identification with the queen.  However, there is a touch of spiritual genius in such a person.  Therefore, the way to tell who could be open to a spiritual path is informed partly by this attraction.  It is almost impossible for a story to leave some people out.  As we enter a story, we are invited to join that which in the story is the closest extension of who we are and the process we are involved with.

     The healing dimension of this story is the revelation of where one is in the story.  To the indigenous, healing has a lot to do with knowing where you are in your life journey.  What the story heals is precisely the dark spots in people's lives that are pointed out to them by the story.  Thus, for someone who relates to the queen, the knowing that this means to await consciously the blossoming of one's gift will help one move in the right direction.

     To begin to appreciate stories as healing tools and not merely as entertainment or information, a simple first step is to begin asking of a story, "Where am I in it?  What or whom do I identify with?"  A little imagination will help discern the cosmological meaning of it.

     The reason fiction dealing with the supernatural is so attractive in the West is that it echoes in the bones the need to become more acquainted with the world of the spirit.  The Other World is precisely the world that in the West has been forgotten.  This attraction is memory itself arising, pulled out of its dormant state by imaginary forms.  The attraction that Halloween has for Americans, the popularity of horror films and stories, all point to a place within that is resisting total obliteration.  Behind these tales, wrestling for a place to live, are countless memories that have been frozen in the cells of people's bones.  These memories can be fully awakened only in the context of ritual.  As a result, every ritual performed in the West is a wake-up call to memories hidden in people.  Some of these memories deeply disturb their recipients who know no way to manage them.  Other images add a powerful new dimension to their recipients' lives.  This is why every mineral ritual must include a period of listening, for listening is the complement of storytelling.

The Healing Wisdom of Africa

pgs. 252-254 

". . . to further our kinship relationship with the instinctual nature, it assists greatly if we understand stories as though we are inside them, rather than as though they are outside of us.  We enter into a story through the door of inner hearing.  The spoken story touches the auditory nerve, which runs across the floor of the skull into brainstem just below the pons.  There, auditory impulses are relayed upward to consciousness or else, it is said, to the soul . . . depending on the attitude with which one listens.

     Ancient dissectionists spoke of the auditory nerve being divided into three or more pathways deep in the brain.  They surmised that the ear was meant, therefore, to hear at three different levels.  One pathway was said to hear the mundane conversations of the world.  A second pathway apprehended learning and art.  And the third pathway existed so the soul itself might hear guidance and gain knowledge while here on earth."

Listen then with soul-hearing . . . for that is the mission of story.

Why The Bat Sits Upside Down

     Grandfather knew every story ever told or even heard of in the tribe.  And at his age he looked as if storytelling was the only thing he could still do with success.  He utilized this talent very well since that was the only way he could gain attention.  Each time I sat in his lap, he took it as a request for a story, and he would always begin by asking a question.

     "Brother Malidoma, do you know why the bat sits upside down?"

     "No, Why?"

     "Long, long time ago, and I mean long when I say long because that was when animals used to speak to men and men to animals and both to God."

     "Then why don't animals speak to men anymore?"

     "They still do, only we have forgotten how to comprehend them!"

     "What happened?"

     "Never mind.  We're talking about bats, and why they all sit up-side down."

     "Yes.  I want to know why they do that."

     "Well, see, there was a time when Brother Bat died and no one knew who he was.  The town crier took his body to the crocodile, saying, 'The jaws of this damn thing look like they were borrowed from a crocodile.  I thought he might be your relative or something.'

     "The crocodile said, 'It's true that this guy's got a mouth like mine, but I ain't got no brother with fur, let alone wings.'

     "So next the town crier took the dead bat to the head of the birds tribe."

     "And who's that?"

     "It's Mother Sila, you know, the bird that flies high and shoots herself down like an arrow when she goes to catch her dinner.  Mother Sila said, 'This animal looks like it's got wings and reasonable claws, but I never saw anyone in my family with so few feathers.'

     "And so, finally the town crier gave up and threw the bat into a ditch.  But when Papa Bat found out about this, he was very angry.  He rebelled against God and ordered the whole tribe never to look up to God again.  Since then bats never turn their faces upward.

     "Grandfather, this is too sad.  Tell me another one."

     Grandfather never had to be begged.  He would tell you a story even without you asking.  And the times you asked, he would keep on talking until you "unasked" him.

Of Water and the Spirit

pgs. 21-22  

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REFLECTION:

Where are you in this story and why?

"A life without purpose is an unfulfilled life," Malidoma says.  Like Malidoma, Joseph Campbell (1904 - 1987), the world's most famous scholar on mythology and fondly remembered for his heartfelt encouragement to "follow your bliss," taught that all myths are birthed from the womb of inspiration and the imagination.  Campbell, like Malidoma, encourages Westerners to create new myths that life may be artistically rendered to be more fulfilling and purposeful. 

"Dancing Water Spirits"-- annie b.

     With a very specific and intended purpose to transcend the ordinary, myths have the power to expand our awareness into 'extra-ordinary' or 'otherworldly' realms which awaken us to the grand potential of the human psyche.  Myth has immense power to bring about radical paradigm shifts, Campbell taught, and is limited only by the degree of one's attachment to their literal interpretation.  Appreciating and constantly referring to the breakthrough work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, he used the immediacy of dreams as a gateway into mythology. By skillfully connecting the psychology of the dreamer to the reflective, informative and healing nature of dreams, Campbell opens the door to the vast realm of symbolism residing in one's dreamworld. "Myths," he said "are public dreams".  Dreams are "private myths." Toward the latter part of his life, Joseph Campbell recognized the need for the creation of new mythologies to empower and inspire new public dreams. Modernity, with its industrial prowess, speed, urbanization, and the resulting predominating emphasis of the rational intellect of pronounced individualism, has become disconnected from mystery and myth. Malidoma, during Indigenous African Spirit Technologies training, says that one's purpose is discovered, is nurtured, and matures in community, for community is the direct beneficiary of one's life purpose. Like Campbell, he underscores that we need myth to realize and expand our conditioned vision of our life purpose.

     After the miraculously peaceful revolution in 1994 in

South Africa, an unprecedented post-apartheid national healing event occurred.  Lead in part by Nelson Mandela

and Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, the nation found themselves within a giant Dagara-like ash circle - the

Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  The fire of truth and intention was cooled by the water of grief and reconciliation which then birthed into life a new nation.  I repeatedly asked myself... "What was the public dream - the myth - that inspired such a radical approach that successfully healed a once pained and shattered country?"  Soon the answer arrived...it was the African myth of 'UBUNTU.'

     In stark contrast to Ren� Descarte's "COGNITO ERGO SUM" (I think, therefore I am) which became a fundamental element in Western philosophy, Ubuntu translates as... "because you are a person I am a person", or "I owe my humanity to your humanity."  The spirit of Ubuntu bonds the individual to the community and the community to the individual.  It exists throughout Africa under different names and forms.  Each person is a gift of healing to the other and a profound reflection of the expansive totality of the individual.  Any harm done to the other is harming and limiting of one's relationship with oneself and to the entire universe.  It could be said that this African myth, or African public dream of Ubuntu, in the form of Dagara cosmology is brought by Malidoma to the West as a medicinal antidote to the imbalance caused by Descarte's "I think, therefore I am" and the resulting overemphasis on the individual who constantly races and competes to stand apart from community, only to find themselves isolated, depressed and feeling incomplete.

     I am reminded of a time during Elder Initiation while carrying the life of the village in our hands, when Malidoma directed the initiates to listen to the smell of the Other World.  Much later the smell came to me as a cacophony of jingling sounds that reminded me of an ancient African proverb that impressed my then 13 year old mind.  The proverb translates as "one bangle cannot jingle."  The mythology present in Dagara cosmology is full of poetry, art, healing and expression. It is a musical dream that invites us to dance into existence our full potential as human beings. Indeed, one bangle, alone, cannot jingle.  Alone, our gift of unique expression cannot be heard.  The living myth of Ubuntu as expressed through Dagara wisdom envelops each of us with a community from which, try as we may, we cannot escape.  Our connection to our ancestry, to our life force and emotional realm, to our sense of expression and self confidence, to our authenticity, is connected to this great Earth and her sacred elements.  They generously imbues each of us with all we need to perform our vital and essential role in life's constantly unfolding mythological drama. The stage is set. All we have to do is enter.

     After a session with Malidoma, I eagerly approached him and confidently stated ..."we are each a myth!"... to which he replied... "we are the creators of myth."  I walked away stunned!  It radically shifted my perspective and changed my life forever.

Glenn Leisching can be contacted at:

[email protected] 

Q:  Recently I have felt inspired by spirit to paint!  My pictures are of visions from my dreams and journeys with plant spirits. For some time now I have followed the shamanic path of healing but lately have felt that Art is a new pathway I should explore to use as a healing tool.  I feel this inspiration comes from the Ancestors.  I would appreciate your insight on this.

A:  The sensory reality of our world is apartness, a kind of division and isolation that makes it easy to classify and compartmentalize.  In this context, we people use questionable means to define other people; and sometimes we even prefer to distance ourselves from anything we do not understand out of the fear of losing our identity or having to reconsider our definition of it.  There is certainly a reason supporting these positions, as there is a reason why we usually can't see ourselves more at one with Nature and the Earth.  However, more often than not, this is what leads to isolationism, insensitivity to what is going on around us and, more importantly, refusal to relate because we do not know what we are relating to and why we should.

Igbo Medicine Man

     Is it possible to equate shamanism with art and the shaman with the artist?  My answer is:  we must.  Art is the pursuit of beauty.  The healing art, which is the backbone of shamanic practices, is rooted in the pursuit of aesthetic.  This is why healing is the rectification of the parameters of aesthetic gone wrong.  If the purity of the origin had remained untouched, undamaged and secure, we wouldn't need artists.  But none of us was born into a perfect world. Thank God, otherwise we would be bored out of our minds because we would not have very much to do!  The exciting thing is that perfection is hidden in the flaws we came to see as intrinsic to this world.

     Our ancestors sent us into this world to contribute laboriously to the extraction of beauty back into visibility. They expect us to remember and to trust our memories on this fundamental task.  How we do this matters less than the fact that we have to do it.  Let us not be distracted by mere details.

Artist Abdul Badi, Brooklyn NY

     The painter contributes to the healing of the human consciousness.  His/her work consists in pulling out from the hidden and into the visual, the transforming pieces of aesthetic nourishing to the human psyche and contributing to the beautification of this world.  The shaman is committed to facilitating the homecoming of all living things in the vast concert of the universe where oneness with all that exists heals permanently.  Let us admit that such a thing is beautiful.  It is this that we feel irresistibly compelled to pursue from the day we were born as if we come into this world already knowing that such a thing exists.

     This knowing later on translates into a heightened sense of awareness compelling enough to make us respond to sound and rhythm, as if it is a call to action.  It is also this awareness that makes others respond emotionally to human needs and human predicament.  In this state, the hidden language and sound of the world in need of unity is made loud and clear; and those who feel it and understand it well respond to it the only way they can or know how.  The painter shares with the shaman these very things: inner sight and outer sensitivity.  They see through the opacity of human limitations.  They smell the Other World and crave to instill more magic into this world.  They hear the voices of that which needs the touch of human hand to restore stolen sanctity, tarnished beauty and muted magic.  They are driven into the Other World to escort back into this world the magic that reawakens the heart rhythm to sacred emotion, the beat of love in response to the sound of beauty.  They labor hard to contribute to the monumental cleansing job the world needs for healing.  When they do this, the rest of us are reconnected with the Earth Mother, the magic of Mother Nature, the Trees, the Mountains, the Stones and Bones of memory, and with the Ancestors. What else elevates the human divinity more than this?

     It goes without saying then, that the artist and the shaman belong to the same tribe, the same family and the same fellowship.  They both respond to the same prime directive: seek out and heal.  They are both dancing to the magical throbs of a world that holds more than meets the eye because they know it.  They are aware. In the words of the poet elder William Stafford "It is important that awake people remain awake, for the darkness around us is deep."

Ashe!  

Artist Suzanne Ouedraogo, Burkina Faso

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    The Dagara Cultural Youth Festival February 2010

was a tremendous success!  The monetary support Malidoma received through donations for the festival--without a doubt--played a major role.

      Because of this achievement, Malidoma has indisputably become the leader in the safeguarding and promotion of Dagara ancestral traditions.  In the past, UNESCO, a division of the United Nations was co-sponsoring this government program.  Suddenly in
2009, both UNESCO and the government dropped any support and the Ministry of Culture told Dano that it was
on its own.  The High Commissioner of Dano, upon
learning through the grapevine of what Malidoma had
been doing in the West, asked him for help.  This was
the beginning of Malidoma's highly visible leadership
role in his own country (he was featured on T.V. several times in Burkina Faso--never before had this occurred).

      The Dagara Cultural Youth Festival is an attempt to interest youth in the values of the traditions of their ancestors so that they can preserve it in themselves amidst the sweeping changes of modernity.  UNESCO had shown interest in it for reasons of its own and then dropped out when these interests dried up.

     Again we need your help! 

Photo By Theresa Thomas

     If you have ever been moved by the values of the Dagara culture in the West, this is a wonderful opportunity and--we believe--an invitation from the ancestors to step up to the plate and show the extent of our appreciation of the wisdom that is now endangered in its place of birth.

The goal is to raise $15K or more for this week-long event.  Your tax-deductible contribution can be sent directly to Aviela Inc., c/o Robert Walker, P.O. 82, Cherry Plain, NY 12040.  Or go to our website to use PayPal to donate.  
     Once again this is a call to rise, for it is now time to shine!  We truly appreciate your support.

 ASHE!