Gays: Guardians of the Gates

An Interview with Malidoma Somé

Copyright © 1993 by Bert H. Hoff

This article appeared in the September, 1993 issue of M.E.N. Magazine.

Malidoma Somé recognizes that he learned more through his initiation as a Dagara tribesman
than from his PhDs from the Sorbonne and Brandeis University. His name means "be friendly
to strangers," and he is charged by his elders of the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso (east of
Nigeria and north of Ghana) with bringing the wisdom of his tribe to the West. His
book Ritual: Power, Healing and Community (reviewed in this issue) is highly praised by
Michael Meade, Robert Bly and Robert Moore. If you were not fortunate enough to catch his
reading at the Elliott Bay Bookstore last August, you can find out more about him through the
book and tape reviews in this issue.

During one of the Conflict Hours at the Mendocino Men’s Conference Malidoma spoke
eloquently on indigenous people’s views of gay men. He kindly agreed to elaborate on his
views as he sat with me among the redwoods of Mendocino.

Bert: At Conflict Hour you told us that your culture honors gays as
having a higher vibrational level that enabled them to be guardians of
the gateways to the spirit world. You suggested that our Western view
limits itself by focusing only on their sexual role. Can you elaborate for
  our readers?

Malidoma: I don’t know how to put it in terms that are clear enough for
an audience that, I think needs as much understanding of this gender
issue as people in this country do. But at least among the Dagara
people, gender has very little to do with anatomy. It is purely energetic.
In that context, a male who is physically male can vibrate female
energy, and vice versa. That is where the real gender is. Anatomic
differences are simply there to determine who contributes what for the
continuity of the tribe. It does not mean, necessarily, that there is a kind
of line that divides people on that basis. And this is something that also
touches on what has become known here as the "gay" or "homosexual"
issue. Again, in the culture that I come from, this is not the issue. These
people are looked on, essentially, as people. The whole notion of "gay"
does not exist in the indigenous world. That does not mean that there
are not people there who feel the way that certain people feel in this
culture, that has led to them being referred to as "gay."
Of Water and the
Spirit : Ritual, The reason why I’m saying there are no such people is because the gay
Magic, and person is very well integrated into the community, with the functions
Initiation in the Life that delete this whole sexual differentiation of him or her. The gay
of an African person is looked at primarily as a "gatekeeper." The Earth is looked at,
Shaman from my tribal perspective, as a very, very delicate machine or
by Malidoma Somé consciousness, with high vibrational points, which certain people must be
Order on-line guardians of in order for the tribe to keep its continuity with the gods
Audio Cassette and with the spirits that dwell there. Spirits of this world and spirits of
the other worlds. Any person who is at this link between this world and
the other world experiences a state of vibrational consciousness which is
 far higher, and far different, from the one that a normal person would
experience. This is what makes a gay person gay. This kind of function is
not one that society votes for certain people to fulfill. It is one that
people are said to decide on prior to being born. You decide that you will
be a gatekeeper before you are born. And it is that decision that
provides you with the equipment (Malidoma gestures by circling waist
area with hands) that you bring into this world. So when you arrive here
you begin to vibrate in a way that Elders can detect as meaning that you
are connected with a gateway somewhere. Then they watch you grow,
and they watch you act and react, and sooner or later they will follow
you to the gateway that you are connected with.
Malidoma and
Sobonfu Somé, We
Now, gay people have children. Because they’re fertile, just like normal
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people. How I got to know that they were gay was because on arriving in
Sex: An
this country and seeing the serious issues surrounding gay people, I
Indigenous View
began to wonder it does not exist in my own country. When I asked one
of Intimacy. Tape:
of them, who tad taken me to the threshold of the Otherworld, whether
fascinating and
he feels sexual attraction towards another man, he jumped back and
insightful. Review
said, "How do you know that?!" He said, "This is our business as
gatekeepers." And, yet he had a wife and children -- no problem, you
2 tapes, 120 see.
minutes,
$17.95 Not at
So to then limit gay people to simple sexual orientation is really the
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worst harm that can be done to a person. That all he or she is is a sexual
1-800-779-1116 (m
person. And, personally, because of the fact that my knowledge of
ention MenWeb for
indigenous medicine, ritual, comes from gatekeepers, it’s hard for me to
a 5% discount)
take this position that gay people are the negative breed of a society.
No! In a society that is profoundly dysfunctional, what happens is that
peoples’ life purposes are taken away, and what is left is this kind of
sexual orientation which, in turn, is disturbing to the very society that
created it.

I think this is again victimization by a Christian establishment that is

looking at a gay person as a disempowered person, a person who has
lost his job from birth onward, and now society just wants to fire him out
of life. This is not justice. It’s not justice. It is a terrible harm done to an
energy that could save the world, that could save us. If, today, we are
suffering from a gradual ecological waste, this is simply because the
gatekeepers have been fired from their job. They have been fired! They
have nothing to do! And because they have been fired, we accuse them
for not doing anything. This is not fair!

Let us look at the earth differently, and we will find out gradually that
these people that are bothering us today are going to start taking their
posts. They know what their job is. You just have to get near them, to
feel that they don’t vibrate the same way. They are not of this world.
They come from the Otherworld, and they were sent here to keep the
gates open to the Otherworld, because if the gates are shut, this is when
the earth, Mother Earth, will shake -- because it has no more reason to
be alive, it will shake itself, and we will be in deep trouble.

Bert: Christianity has separated spirit from body and spirit from Earth.
And earlier you talked to us about Christianity suppressing your culture.
So there’s a suggestion here that suppression of homosexuality would be
the way for the Christians to shut down the gateways, shut down the
spirit, and shut down our connection with the Earth.

Malidoma: Yes! That’s right! Christianity stresses postponing living on

earth, as of we are only here to pack up our baggage and prepare for a
life somewhere else "out there." Jesus Christ is right here, man! And of
course anyone else who knows more, who knows better, will be
suppressed.

And you start with the gatekeepers. You take the gatekeeper and you
confuse his mind. You threaten him and you throw him in the middle of
nowhere. Then nobody knows where the gate is. As soon as you lose the
whereabouts of the gate, then you have a culture going downhill. What
keeps a village together is a handful of "gays and lesbians," as they call
them in the modern world. In my village, lesbians are called witches, and
gay men are known as the gatekeepers. These are the two only known
secret societies. These are the only groups that will get together as a
separate group and go out into the woods secretly to do whatever they
do. And if they find you during their yearly symposium, they have the
right to kill you.

Unless they go out on their yearly symposium, the village cannot be

granted another year of life. They have to go out to do what they do, in
order for the village to feel safe enough to live the way it has lived
before. This is why, to me, we’re playing with our lives.

Bert: So our culture may not be granted another year of life.

Malidoma: That’s right! Every year it feels like the number of years that
this culture is entitled to live is getting smaller. So God only knows how
close to the chasm this culture is. This constantly- reiterated discomfort
and hatred for the gay person is again another indication that every year
we might as well be prepared for the apocalyptic moment when the stars
start to fall to the earth.

You see, unless there is somebody who constantly monitors the

mechanism that opens the door from this world to the Otherworld, what
happens is that something can happen to one of the doors and it closes
up. When all the doors are closed, this earth runs out of its own orbit
and the solar system collapses into itself. And because this system is
linked to other systems, they too start to fall into a whirlpool. And the
cataclysm would be amazing!

Ask the Dogon, they will tell you that. The Dogon. They’re a tribe that
understands this so well, it’s amazing, mind-boggling. And it is a tribe
that knows astrology like no other tribe that I have encountered. And the
great astrologers of the Dogon are gay. They are gay. There is a dull
planet that, in its orbit, is directly above the Dogon village every 58
years. Who knows that, but the gay people.

I mean, I’m not just trying to make gay people look fine. This is the
truth, man! I’m trying to save my ass!

Why is it that, everywhere else in the world, gay people are a blessing,
and in the modern world they are a curse? It is self-evident. The modern
world was built by Christianity. They have taken the gods out of the
earth sent them to heaven, wherever that is. And everyone who aspires
to the gods must then negotiate with Christianity, so that the real priests
and priestesses are out of a job. This is the worst thing that can happen
to a culture that calls itself modern.

Bert: That theme came up earlier with you and Martín, the Mayan
shaman here, that if a modern society wants to shut down another
culture they will go out and kill the keepers of the ritual.

Malidoma: Oh, yes! Because they know that this is where the life-pulse
of the culture is. This is where the engine room of the tribe is. So if you
go and bomb that place, then the whole mechanism shuts down. That’s
pretty much what’s at work in the third world, and what has happened
here with the Native American culture. And the thing about it is that
humans are going to be begetting gatekeepers, no matter what. This is
the chance that we’ve got. So maybe that means that sooner or later
we’re going to wake up to the horror of our own errors, and we’re going
to reconsecrate our chosen people so that they can do their priestly work
as they should. Otherwise, I just don’t understand. I just don’t
understand. My position about it is not so much that gays be just
forgiven. That’s just tokenism. But that they serve as an example of the
wrong, or the illness, that modernity has brought to us, and that we use
that to begin working at healing ourselves and our society from the
bottom up. That way, by the time we reach a certain level, all the
gatekeepers are going to find their positions again. We cannot tell them
where the gates are. They know. If we start to heal ourselves, they will
remember. It will kick in. But as long as we continue in arrogance, in
egotism, in God-knows-what form of violence on ourselves, no, there’s
that veil of confusion that’s going to continue to prevail, and as a result
it’s going to prevent great things from happening. That’s all I can say
about that.