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."
The reason why I’m saying there are no such people is because the gay person is very well integrated
into the community, with the functions that delete this whole sexual differentiation of him or her. The
gay person is looked at primarily as a "gatekeeper." The Earth is looked at, from my tribal perspective, as
a very, very delicate machine or consciousness, with high vibrational points, which certain people must
be guardians of in order for the tribe to keep its continuity with the gods 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.
Now, gay people have children. Because they’re fertile, just like normal people. How I got to know
that they were gay was because on arriving in this country and seeing the serious issues surrounding gay
people, I began to wonder it does not exist in my own country. When I asked one of them, who tad taken
me to the threshold of the Otherworld, whether he feels sexual attraction towards another man, he jumped
back and 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 see.
So to then limit gay people to simple sexual orientation is really the worst harm that can be done to a
person. That all he or she is is a sexual person. And, personally, because of the fact that my knowledge of
indigenous medicine, ritual, comes from gatekeepers, it’s hard for me to 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.
