The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community [Hardcover]

Malidoma Patrice Some (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 1998

"His journey is a shimmering 'missing piece' in the story of the earth," Alice Walker proclaimed of Malidoma Some's Of Water and the Spirit. In that book Som* took readers on a tour of two worlds as he related the story of his youth in an African village and of his Western and traditional African educations. Now, in The Healing Wisdom of Africa, Some writes of the generations-old traditions and knowledge of his people, the Dagara, a group known throughout West Africa for their healing abilities and spiritual practice. Explaining how the Dagara accumulate firsthand knowledge of deep spiritualist and healing powers, Some also shows how the most important aspects of their village life revolve around ritual, community, and ceremony. Some teaches ceremony and rituals that enable Western readers to begin the healing and initiation process, discovering genius within themselves and finding life's true purpose. In the larger scheme of creating community, the author details the power of gathering and of engaging in traditional rituals of fire, water, earth, and nature. Through The Healing Wisdom of Africa, readers come to understand that the life of indigenous and traditional people is a paradigm for an intimate relationship with the natural world that both surrounds us and is within us.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

A gifted medicine man of the Dagara tribe, Malidoma Patrice Some divides his time between his home in Oakland, California, Europe, and the nations of Africa. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam (October 26, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874779391
• ISBN-13: 978-0874779394
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #881,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ruminations/rituals to get in touch with African cosmos, July 14, 2003

By 

Phil Rogers (Ann Arbor, Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Healing Wisdom of Africa (Paperback)

To be truthful, this book needs to be read through more than once - it needs to be lived with, and at least a few of the exercises and ceremonies or variants of them must be worked through by the reader.

Malidoma's two earlier books, both obvious 5-star efforts, were more at expository essay and autobiography respectively. Both were jammed full of insights and plentiful quotable passages. And both were sumptuous with detail and inspiration.

Part One of this new volume is not an exception to this - though maybe a little drier in overall tone - still, I found myself leaving little quotes from it on my friend Cynthia's answering machine, for which she later thanked me profusely.

But the purpose of Part Two is to illustrate these illuminations/insights by things to actually do in order to begin feeling your connection with nature and the other elements of the Dagara cosmos. And throughout, Malidoma continues his critique of Western cultural and religious milieu in contradistinction to African ways and means.

There have been other terrific hands-on tutelages allowing a Euro-American to shed parts of his/her dualistic/rationalistic skin in exchange for an animistic one (Starhawk's 'The Spiral Dance', Harner's 'Way of the Shaman', Teich's 'Jambalaya', Ingerman's 'Soul Retrieval', Villoldo's 'Shaman Healer Sage', and Malidoma's wife Sobonfu Some's books). This is the latest "next best thing", and it's really a good one.

One thing about Malidona is that he warns the neophyte to at times exercise some degree of caution - diving headfirst into a new cultural scenario is not always the wisest or safest path. One's ability to tread lightly can bring dividends and rewards.

I am also reminded of some advise from another Dagara whom I know, who says that not all of Malidoma's writings are agreed upon by Dagara people in general - which makes me think that Malidoma's admitted adaptations are sometimes less than authentic, and more at distillations meant for those somewhat plagued by their Western minds. This may end up being a blessing in disguise - I don't know for sure.

I do know that the Malidomas have been on the workshop circuit in the U.S. and elsewhere for well over 10 years, and that there is a lot of cross-fertilization occurring amongst workshop presenters of far-flung cultural modalities. It's quite difficult to distinguish the chicken from the egg, and even sometimes the egg white from its yolk. There are many 'resonances' I have noticed between Alberto Villoldo's teaching (both oral and written) and Malidoma's. But if this is an effect of the collective unconscious, and/or of universal consciousness, or it's at least partly conscious borrowing, I have no easy way of knowing or finding out. Sometimes if it works, you just practice it, and/or if it feels right, you just do it.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal!!!, March 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community (Hardcover)

I have read this book along with all of Malidoma's works. I believe Malidoma has one of the best skills at articulating the problem that Western/European reality has posed on the rest of us. I personally do not use the specific rituals that he recommends because I have rituals that my own culture prescribes; however, I think any person that is ready to take a spiritual advance need to read this book and put his suggestions to practice. I have met Malidoma and found him to have a beautiful spirit filled with wisdom and the innocence of a child. I believe that anyone can trust what this teacher has to say. I also recommend this book for all priests and healers in the world because Malidoma has touched something that need not be ignored if we are to heal ourselves and others. Thank you Malidoma.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Malidoma Some addresses himself to spiritual healing, February 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community (Hardcover)

In his latest book, Malidoma Some talks about how the wisdom developed over millenia by indigenous people in Africa can be used to deal with the very real psychological and spiritual impoverishment of the West. He says that while the West has an abundance of material goods (taken in large part from the natural resources that belong to all living creatures), Africans possess the capacity of enriching their own lives by communicating through rituals on a continuous basis with what he calls the "other world", the world beyond the material senses, or what Carlos Castaneda would call the "human inventory". Some recommends getting in touch with our ancestors and keeping them in our lives by devoting shrines to them and opening a dialogue with them. This makes particular sense to someone who has lost someone close and feels a great lack between the material message that the person is dead and therefore gone, and the feeling that somehow one has not really disconnected. Some also recommends frequent grief rituals (not just when suffering a loss but all the time) to keep the spirit in tune, and purged of the daily wear and tear of living. It is a wonderful book: humane, wise, well-thought out and very well written. A real joy for someone looking for a new way of dealing with life.