Malidoma Patrice Somé didn't just write a book; he dropped a spiritual bomb on the Western psyche back in the nineties. If you’ve ever felt like your life is just a series of spreadsheets, morning commutes, and shallow small talk, you’ve probably stumbled upon Of Water and Spirit. It’s more than a memoir. It’s a jarring, often uncomfortable look at what happens when a person is caught between two worlds that absolutely refuse to understand each other.
He was kidnapped. That’s the part most people forget when they’re browsing the New Age section of a bookstore. At four years old, Somé was taken from his Dagara village in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) by French Jesuit missionaries. They wanted to turn him into a priest. They wanted to colonize his mind. But the Dagara elders had a different plan. When he finally escaped the seminary at age twenty, he didn't just go home to relax. He went home to undergo a literal life-or-death initiation that would bridge the gap between "civilized" logic and indigenous wisdom.
The Brutal Reality of the Dagara Initiation
Most Westerners hear the word "ritual" and think of candles or maybe a yoga class. In the world of Of Water and Spirit, ritual is a contact sport. Somé describes the Baur—the initiation process—as something that can actually kill you if you aren't ready. It isn't symbolic. To the Dagara, the spirit world is just as tangible as a rock or a tree.
Somé writes about being told to stare at a green fire until his eyes changed. He talks about seeing a woman materialize out of a tree. Now, if you’re a skeptic, your brain is already screaming "hallucination" or "dehydration." Somé addresses that head-on. He spent years in Western universities, earning multiple PhDs from the Sorbonne and Brandeis. He knew how the Western mind works. He knew we’d try to pathologize his experience.
But his point was simple: just because you can't measure it with a ruler doesn't mean it isn't real. The initiation wasn't about "finding himself." It was about losing the false self the Jesuits had built.
Why We Are Starving for Ancestors
One of the heaviest themes in Of Water and Spirit is the concept of ancestral connection. In the West, we’ve mostly relegated our ancestors to dusty photo albums or DNA test results from a lab. We think of them as dead people.
To Somé, the ancestors are the "living dead." They are active participants in our daily lives. When things go wrong—depression, chronic bad luck, a sense of aimlessness—the Dagara look at the relationship with the ancestors first. They ask: who have you forgotten?
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It’s a radical shift in perspective. Instead of seeing yourself as an isolated individual trying to "make it" in a vacuum, you see yourself as the tip of a spear. You are the physical manifestation of thousands of people who came before you. If that spearhead is disconnected from the shaft, it’s useless.
Honestly, it’s a bit scary. It implies responsibility. If your ancestors are watching, your choices matter more. You aren't just living for your own weekend plans anymore.
The Conflict of Two Worlds
The middle of the book is where the real friction happens. Somé’s return to his village wasn't a Hallmark movie. He had forgotten the language. He smelled like "the whites." His own people looked at him with a mix of pity and suspicion.
This is the "Water" and "Spirit" of the title. Water represents the indigenous, fluid, connected way of being. Spirit, in the Dagara cosmology (specifically in the way Somé interprets it for Westerners), is often associated with the mineral, the bone, and the ancestral memory. But the book also highlights the clash between the rigid, "Spirit-heavy" dogma of the colonial church and the elemental reality of African tradition.
He spent years trying to translate the untranslatable. How do you explain a world where the trees talk to a man who only sees lumber?
Misconceptions About Dagara Ritual
People often cherry-pick the "magical" parts of Somé’s writing. They want the levitation. They want the shapeshifting. But Malidoma was very clear that these things are byproduct of a disciplined, community-focused life. You don't get the "magic" without the community. In the Dagara tradition, there is no such thing as a "solitary practitioner." You belong to the village, or you belong to nothing.
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This is a massive critique of Western spirituality. We love our "self-help." We love our "personal growth." Somé basically says that’s a dead end. Growth happens in the context of others. Ritual is a communal technology used to keep the village sane.
The Technology of Ritual
Somé often used the word "technology" to describe ritual. It wasn't just "feeling good." It was a specific set of actions designed to produce a specific result in the human psyche and the environment.
- Intention: You don't just "do" a ritual. You enter it with a specific need.
- Sacred Space: Creating a boundary where the "normal" rules of physics and social hierarchy don't apply.
- The Elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Nature, and Mineral. These aren't metaphors; they are the ingredients of the universe.
In his later years, before he passed away in 2021, Malidoma spent a lot of time in the United States and Europe. He saw a culture that was "spiritually thirsty." He believed that many of the mental health crises in the West were actually "spiritual emergencies"—people having indigenous-style breakthroughs in a culture that only offered them pills.
Is It All Real?
This is the question everyone asks. Did he really see a man turn into a bird? Did he really travel through a portal?
Nuance is everything here. If you read Of Water and Spirit as a scientific journal, you’ll probably be disappointed. If you read it as a bridge between different ways of knowing, it’s transformative. Somé wasn't interested in proving his experiences to a lab. He was interested in the effect of those experiences.
He survived a world that tried to erase him. He came back from the brink of total cultural loss. That, in itself, is a miracle. Whether the "magic" was literal or a profound psychological projection doesn't change the fact that the Dagara system produces people who are deeply grounded, remarkably resilient, and connected to the earth in a way that most of us can't even imagine.
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Actionable Insights for a "Spirit-Thirsty" Life
You don't need to fly to Burkina Faso to start applying these concepts. In fact, Malidoma often said that Westerners need to find their own indigenous roots, rather than just consuming African culture.
Start with an Ancestor Altar
It sounds "woo-woo," but it’s actually quite practical. Find a small space. Put up photos of your grandparents or great-grandparents. Light a candle. Spend five minutes a day just acknowledging that you didn't pop out of thin air. You are the result of their survival. This builds a "rhythm of remembrance" that acts as an anchor when life gets chaotic.
Practice Radical Community
The Dagara don't have "lonely" people because the community won't allow it. In your own life, look at where you are isolated. Ritualize your gatherings. Don't just "hang out." Set an intention for your dinners. Ask deeper questions. Move away from the superficiality that Somé warned was the "slow death" of the West.
Engage with the Elements
Spend time with water. Not just drinking it, but being near it. Sit with a fire. Dig in the dirt. These aren't just hobbies; they are ways of recalibrating your nervous system to the "Water" frequency that Somé described. Our bodies are made of these things. When we ignore them, we feel "thin" and brittle.
Acknowledge Your "Gifts"
In the Dagara tradition, every child is born with a specific gift they owe to the community. If you don't share that gift, you get sick. Take an inventory of what you are naturally good at—the things that feel like "play" to you but "work" to others. That is your spiritual obligation.
Malidoma Somé left a legacy that challenges the very foundation of the modern world. He didn't want us to become Dagara. He wanted us to wake up. Of Water and Spirit remains a foundational text because it doesn't offer easy answers. It offers a mirror. And sometimes, the person looking back at us is a stranger who is desperate to come home.
To truly honor this work, stop looking for "information" and start looking for "transformation." Information is what the Jesuits wanted Somé to have. Transformation is what his elders gave him. One fills your head; the other saves your soul.