Of Water and Spirit: Ritual Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman by Malidoma Patrice Some

Born in West Africa in the early 1950s, Somé was kidnapped at age four by a French Jesuit missionary to be trained as a priest, fior the next 15 years enduring the harsh indoctrination into European ways of thought and worship, and the abdonment and systematically suppreson of his native language and tribal traditions. At age 20 he escaped, but when he returned to his Dugara people in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) they rejected him as an outsider.

Walk with Somé as he tells the tale of his return to his people, his hard initiation back into those people, which lead to his desire to convey their knowledge to the world. "Of Water and the Spirit" is the result of that desire; it is a sharing of living African traditions, offered in compassion for those struggling with our contemporary crisis of the spirit. 

-Paperback version