Gays: Guardians of the Gates
An Interview with Malidoma Somé
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 (west 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.

During one of the Conflict Hours at the Mendocino Men¹s Conference
Malidoma spoke eloquently on indigenous people¹s 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 don¹t 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 I¹m 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 they¹re 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 if it does not exist in my own country? When
I asked one of them, who hd 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.

To 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, it¹s 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 peoples¹ 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. It¹s 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 don¹t 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 there¹s 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! That¹s 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.

So you start with the gatekeepers. You take the gatekeeper and you
confuse their mind. You threaten them and you throw them 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, we¹re playing with our lives.

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

Malidoma: That¹s 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. They¹re a tribe that
understands this so well, it¹s 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, I¹m not
just trying to make gay people look fine. This is the truth, man! I¹m
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. That¹s
pretty much what¹s 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 we¹ve got. So maybe that means that sooner or later
we¹re going to wake up to the horror of our own errors, and we¹re going
to reconsecrate our chosen people so that they can do their priestly
work as they should. Otherwise, I just don¹t understand. I just don¹t
understand. My position about it is not so much that gays be just
forgiven. That¹s 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, there¹s that veil of confusion that¹s going to continue to prevail,
and as a result it¹s going to prevent great things from happening.
That¹s all I can say about that.