PEUL INITIATORY TALE

Before tackling the tale itself, a few words on the Peul cosmogony:

Before the creation of the world, before the beginning of all things, there was nothing, except a Being. This Being was a void without name and without limit, but it was a living void, potentially incubating within itself the sum of all possible existences.

Infinite, timeless Time was the home of this Being-One: GUENO, the Eternal, who is, for the Peuls, the supreme creator God. He wanted to have an interlocutor; he created the cosmic egg that contained all the forces, the knowledge of the visible and invisible universe.

Guéno mixed them, then blowing into this mixture a spark of his own fiery breath, he created a new being: NEDDO, the Primordial Man.

Synthesis of all the elements of the universe, the superior as well as the inferior, receptacle par excellence of the Supreme Force at the same time as confluence of all existing forces, good or bad, Neddo received as an inheritance a part of the divine creative power, the gift of the Spirit and the Word.

Guéno taught Neddo, his interlocutor, the laws according to which all the elements of the cosmos were formed and continue to exist. He established him as Guardian and Manager of his universe and charged him with ensuring the maintenance of universal harmony.

The notion of « living void » or « emptiness without beginning » which appears in the Peul myth is not without evoking notions existing elsewhere like the Tao, the « non-being », in the Far East.

Guéno is an uncreated being, without any corporeality or materiality (hence the idea of ​​emptiness), but he is at the same time the source and principle of all life. The Peul tradition distinguishes 2 kinds of life: eternal, principled life, specific to Guéno alone; then contingent life, specific to all created beings (and even the superior beings of the subtle worlds, what we call the reflective sphere). The life that comes out of the primordial Egg is a contingent life. As such, it follows the law of cause and effect, the law of Karma. Note that in Bambara, another African people, the word « fan », which means egg, also means forge. The blacksmith, considered the first son of the earth, transforms matter to create objects. He is therefore the first imitator of the Original Man who works the primordial matter to manifest it in the sense desired by God. His workshop is the reflection of the great cosmic forge.

All the objects there are symbolic and all the gestures he performs there are ritual.

Here we find the elements of the Holy Trinity, God who manifests himself

in the Holy Spirit through his son Jesus Christ, or the body of the Buddha which is triple: Essence, Potentiality and Manifestation.

Neddo, the Primordial Man, engendered Kîkala, the first earthly man (Adam), whose wife was Nâgara. Kîkala engendered Habana-Koel: « Every Man for Himself ». This name alone is enough to make us understand the reason for the fall: egocentrism, the use of divine forces for one’s own satisfaction and no longer in the sense intended by God, that is to say for the general good of humanity and the entire universe. « Every Man for Himself » gave birth to Tcheli:

« Fork in the Road ». This name again evokes very clearly the appearance of duality: Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.

Tcheli had 2 children: .Gorko-mawdo, the « Old Man », represented the way of Good; and Dewel-nayewel, the « Little Old Hoary Woman », represented the way of Evil. Njeddo Dewal is an incarnation of the latter.

As can be seen in the genealogy that descends from Neddo, the Primordial Man, at a certain moment the unity is broken. Two paths appear: that of Good with the « Old Man », and that of Evil, disorder, anarchy, with the « Little Old Hoary Woman ». The struggle between Good and Evil is commonplace in the stories of African tradition as in all tales and legends.

Man being the meeting point of all influences (as a summary of all the forces of the universe and receptacle of the divine spark), Good and Evil (the two orders of nature) are in him.

It is his behavior that will make one or the other appear. Initiation will consist, precisely, in going back within oneself to each degree of this mythical genealogy in order to reintegrate the state of the primordial Neddo, interlocutor of Guéno the One God and manager of creation, who remains latent in each of us.

Neddo is the pure, ideal man. This notion covers both man and woman, because it is said that Neddo contains within him both the masculine and the feminine, respectively associated with the sky and the earth. To achieve the union of the sky and the earth is therefore to reach the state of Neddakou, the state of perfect humanity, both masculine and feminine.

Among the Peuls, initiation can be understood in two ways which, in fact, complement each other: there is the initiation received from the outside and that which is accomplished within oneself.

External initiation is « the opening of the eyes », that is to say all the teaching which is given during traditional ceremonies or periods of retreat which follow them. But this teaching will then have to be lived, assimilated, and made fruitful by adding one’s personal observations, understanding, and experience.

In fact, initiation continues throughout life. A Peul text says: « Initiation begins by entering the park, it ends in the grave ».

The teaching is given through initiatory tales such as Njeddo Dewal, which means the « Seven-year-old Woman ». It is a story presenting an abundance of crazy adventures, fantastic battles, perilous journeys, and constantly renewed adventures until the happy final outcome. This tale is the very image of life:

the struggle between Good and Evil is always to be resumed, around us as well as within ourselves.

Like all Peul initiatory tales, Njeddo Dewal can be read (or heard) on several levels. It is first of all a great fantastic and magical story capable of charming and entertaining young and old. It is then an educational tale on the moral, social and traditional levels where we teach, through typical characters and events, what ideal human behavior should be.

Finally, it is a great initiatory text insofar as it illustrates the attitudes to imitate or reject, the traps to discern and the steps to take when one is engaged in the difficult path of conquest and self-fulfillment.

Faced with an almost all-powerful Njeddo Dewal agent of evil, relying solely on his own powers and the mastery of certain magical forces, characters appear who embody the noblest human qualities and whose true strength, ultimately, will be to trust Providence each time at the risk of their lives.

Let us not forget that myths, tales, legends or children’s games have often constituted, for the wise men of ancient times, a means of transmitting through the centuries, in a more or less veiled manner, through the language of images, knowledge that, received from childhood, will remain engraved in the deep memory of the individual to resurface at the appropriate moment, enlightened by a new meaning.

« If you want to save knowledge and make it travel through time, entrust it to children », said the old Bambara initiates.

Finally, entering inside a tale is a bit like entering inside oneself. A tale is a mirror where each person can discover their own image and which can therefore help each researcher to respond to the injunction made to them: know thyself.

Njeddo dewal is a story comprising two cycles:

The first retraces the quest of Bâ-Wâm’ndé, grandfather of Bâgoumâwel.

Bâ-Wâm’ndé is the man Jean. He is the simple and good man, charitable and benevolent towards all that lives. With his wife Welôré, he embodies all human virtues. To prepare for the arrival of his future grandson (that is to say Jesus, the New Soul) who alone will be able to face the formidable Njeddo Dewal, he does not hesitate to launch himself in a dangerous quest that will take him to the heart of the territory of the Great Witch, who represents the life principle of this nature, the world of dialectics as opposed to Guéno, the world of statics.

Innocent and trusting soul, Bâ-Wâm’ndé does not care about himself. Also Guéno, the Supreme God, will help him at each of his steps and all of nature will put itself at his service.

Accompanied by a miraculous sheep, symbol of the divine force manifested in our world, Bâ-Wâm’ndé will first go to deliver Siré, a man of great power held prisoner by Njeddo Dewal, that is to say the human being chained to the wheel of incarnations, the image bearer who has in him, in his heart, the sleeping divine spark.

Then, both of them and their sheep will succeed at the end of a particularly eventful expedition, in freeing a God enslaved by Njeddo Dewal.

This feat will undo the first knots of the evil power of the « calamitous » and prepare the future action of Bâgoumâwel.

The second cycle is that of Bâgoumâwel himself, Jesus, the child predestined to miraculous birth, sent by Guéno to triumph over Njeddo Dewal. He embodies nobility, goodness and generosity, but served by a malicious intelligence and accompanied by the powers of the predestined; he is the prototype of the initiate. His ways of acting escape human understanding (The wisdom of God is foolishness with men).

He incarnates in the form of a child to come to the aid of the Peul people (the chosen people, i.e. all of humanity) and deliver them from the evil spell that keeps them under the thumb of Njeddo Dewal. Everything he does, he does not by personal will, but in the name of the power and mission received from Guéno, while Njeddo Dewal, she, always acts to satisfy her personal desires, basing her powers on the capture and enslavement of intermediary forces (Gods or Spirits), forces of this nature, without referring to Guéno, the Supreme Creator.

The story begins with a description of the lost paradise, the Wâlo, which means floodable, fertile area, in the mythical land of Heli and Yoyo. Everything was found there in abundance, death was rare, illness unknown, « learned » people numerous (in the sense of Gnosis, wisdom).

It was a septenary country because 7 large rivers meandered through 7 high mountains while there were 7 large sandy plains:

Image of the cosmic septenary from which we were rejected in the seventh domain. Neither scorpion venom nor snake venom ever killed there, nothing could cause harm.

This tale was created to instruct the Fulani, so that they would not forget the distant events that caused the ruin of their ancestors, their emigration (involution in matter) and their dispersion across the lands. So that they would know their country of origin in this world, even if they cannot locate it in space (because our country of origin is located outside of space-time). For a time so long that one could not count the days, the Fulani lived happily in the land of Heli and Yoyo. But in the long run they were so satisfied with this happiness that they became proud and lost themselves. Guéno, to punish them, created Njeddo Dewal, the great seven-year-old shrew, mother of calamity. Through her action, misfortune befell Heli and Yoyo, in particular:

« Man will no longer work except for himself, he will always give himself reason, accusing his neighbor of his own faults. Each one will boast by denigrating others, praising his own work, criticizing that of others ».

We can clearly see here that this initiatory tale is not only addressed to the Fulani but to everyone. We understand the importance that is given in universal teaching to group work and to the fight within each one against criticism.

Njeddo Dewal undertook to build an invisible city:

Wéli-Wéli, which means « All sweet ». There was nothing, in terms of material enjoyment or spiritual lure, that was not present in Wéli-Wéli.

Because man can lose himself in the satisfaction of his desires but also, dazzled by a spiritual phenomenon or by his own realization, he loses sight of what was the real goal of his quest. In Hinduism, Wéli-Wéli would be called the country of Maya, of illusion, whose veil we must tear.

Njeddo dewal had 7 daughters (the 7 chakras) and attracted candidates for marriage to drink their blood. His daughters knew how to intoxicate them to the point of no longer knowing where they were. With their minds weakened, they stopped reasoning, became slaves to their passion, temporarily reduced to the rank of an animal. The chakras only allow forces of this nature to penetrate man, he loses his humanity, abdicates his will, his faculty of free choice, and agrees to give his blood to Njeddo Dewal; he gives his soul to the devil by a blood signature.

The natural soul, whose vehicle is blood, is under the control of Njeddo Dewal, the whole of the aeons of nature.

In the village of Hayyô, located at the foot of one of the 7 mountains of Heli and Yoyo, lived a very good man called Bâ-wâm’ndé, « Father of Happiness ». Most of the inhabitants of Hayyô had not sinned but without a doubt the wisest and most virtuous of all was Bâ-Wâm’ndé. These inhabitants represent the group of souls who have not fallen and who work for the liberation of fallen souls (Shamballa).

His wife Welôré, « Lucky Sweet Head », has a dream that announces the arrival of a predestined boy, son of his daughter.

Before his conception, this mysterious being will first incarnate in a large star, symbol of the reborn soul. Then this star will disappear.

She will be in the womb of Welôré’s daughter where she will incarnate in a boy whose mission will be to defeat Njeddo Dewal.

Bâ-Wâm’ndé is Jean, the one who must make the paths straight for his lord, prepare the coming of Jesus, he is the seeker of truth who must prepare the birth of the soul in its microcosm. To do this, he must bring a white sheep, Kobbou Nollou, the strength of the spirit, to a one-eyed deaf-mute named Siré, prisoner of Njeddo Dewal. This is the man who, in his fall, lost consciousness of his divine state and no longer has the use of his original senses.

Njeddo Dewal keeps him chained because he knows a secret that could cause his downfall: the divine origin of man. He holds the secret that will remove all effectiveness from the witch’s powers and deprive her of the means that allowed her to ravage Heli and Yoyo: the rosebud, the spark of Spirit that lies latent in the heart of man.

Bâ-Wâm’ndé arrives at Weli-Weli in front of a door guarded by a triple being: a human head surmounting a tree trunk carried by two ostrich legs; the door of our heart guarded by the three living kingdoms, human, plant and animal, which are under the thumb of Njeddo Dewal.

Kobbou Nollou, the sheep, opens this door that no natural force could have broken. A roar of thunder so violent that it made the earth tremble made

Bâ-Wâm’ndé faint. It is the sheep who wakes him up, thus signifying a change of consciousness: the direct connection that is established between the candidate for the mysteries and the Kingdom of the Origin, the awakening of the rose of the heart.

Njeddo Dewal has not succeeded in removing the deadly secret for her that lies in Siré (the divine spark in the heart of each man), nor in making Siré agree to become her ally to destroy the Divine Kingdom. The only power she has is to imprison Siré, to imprison the divine aspect in matter.

Siré is saved and freed from his bonds by the sacrifice of the sheep devoured by the termites guarding the prison: sacrifice of the light that plunges into the darkness in order to rescue fallen souls.

Siré is cured of his infirmities and regains the use of his senses. The possibility of a conscious connection with the Divine is possible again. He forgives the termites who are forces of this nature and have therefore acted according to this nature.

Then Bâ-Wâm’ndé flies away on a boa, a flight that indicates a new change of consciousness, the force of the snake is mastered (riding), the force of the Kundalini of the spinal column.

Siré advises him not to be frightened by the noises he will hear, and especially not to turn around: one cannot serve two masters, one must orient oneself on the goal to be reached with complete confidence and without clinging to what one leaves behind.

At that moment, Njeddo Dewal feels uneasy, she feels this first attack on her power: the light has manifested itself in the microcosm. She launches all her forces against Siré and Bâ-wâm’ndé, Siré annihilates the seven spirits launched against him by the force of his word (the divine word) then resurrects the sheep Kobbou Nollou: it is now much larger, the size of a thoroughbred. The rose of the heart has awakened and the divine force in man develops.

Njeddo Dewal tries by all means to destroy Bâ-Wâm’ndé but Siré protects him: the man on the path to rebirth benefits from divine protection. The snake is destroyed and Bâ-Wâm’ndé finds himself riding Kobbou Nollou: a new change of consciousness, he now relies on the strength of the heart.

The trio heads towards a mountain, the sacred mountain of initiation, the border between the visible world of men and the hidden world of the divine. It also represents an obstacle to overcome, a test (symbol of verticality, a direct path to God, which allows one to communicate with him). Finally, it symbolizes in the seeker the sanctuary of the head, the seat of the mind; the irruption of divine force in the center of thought will allow a new understanding.

Njeddo Dewal then charges one of her spirits to go and destroy Siré and the sheep, the soul and the spirit. She tells him:

« If they escape, a great misfortune awaits me and, consequently, also awaits you and all my servants ».

Indeed, the liberation of all souls imprisoned by the nature of death means the disappearance of the latter and of all the forces that underlie it, as well as of all the spirits that populate the invisible sphere of the earth, the reflective sphere.

Bâ-Wâm’ndé and Siré escape again thanks to Kobbou Nollou who reveals the entrance to a passage in the mountain. Only the miraculous gaze of the predestined sheep can reveal the secret opening of the mountain. One of its eyes is white, a symbol of purity: it can therefore see the spiritual or hidden pole of things. The other is brown, the color of the earth: it can therefore see the material pole. The gaze of Kobbou Nollou, like that of the accomplished initiate, makes the illusion vanish and the secret reality hidden behind appearances appear.

The irruption of the light of the heart into the sanctuary of the head allows a new understanding, the reality of our world is revealed before the seeker. This new knowledge will allow him to perform new acts. The divine force will descend along the spinal column to the sanctuary of the basin, seat of karmic forces.

In the middle of this mountain is a huge lake and in the middle of this lake an island where Njeddo Dewal has hidden his fetish that allows him to command the three mineral, plant and animal kingdoms.

The trio will confront the elements of this nature in their journey to recover this fetish hidden underground, the descent towards the sanctuary of the basin: the fire launched by Njeddo Dewal, water, wind, earth. They cross the raging waves of passions and emotions that agitate our inner world and that we must learn to know and master.

They make this crossing on the back of a turtle whose shell is a symbol of protection, it is an animal halfway between two worlds, water and earth. Finally, its caution, its slowness, evoke the maturation time of initiation.

Our three heroes arrive on the island which is the domain of the Scorpion Queen (the scorpion is related to Pluto and the pelvis). They are swallowed by a giant worm and carried underground (descent into hell). We find in the worm the symbol of Kundalini action, he must only worry about his salvation and everything will be given to him in addition. There they find the gourd containing the spirit Koumbasâra who represents the powerful forces of this nature that lie within us, in the Sacrum, and that are slaves of Njeddo Dewal.

The Scorpion Queen gives them the gourd and thanks to the divine gaze of the sheep, Koumbasâra is freed from the hold of the « calamitous » and puts himself at their service.

The forces of this world are not bad in themselves, they must be used according to the divine plan. Koumbasâra transforms himself into a majestic eagle, symbol of Spirit, and carries them on his back. The force contained in the sanctuary of the basin has been purified by the descent of the light and puts itself at the service of the candidate for the mysteries to help him continue his quest.

The force will rise up the spine towards the heart where the Divine Soul will be born;

The second part of the tale begins with the birth of Bâgoumawel, Jesus, the Divine Soul.

He must fight to save his seven uncles (the seven brain cavities) that Njeddo Dewal is trying to trap through his seven daughters (the seven heart cavities). The triple seven-branched candlestick is lit in the man.

He must protect the king’s son kidnapped by Njeddo Dewal, the new personality. Then he saves the children of Heli, the young souls, like a Bodhisattva who brings his help to humanity.

Finally, he is directly confronted by Njeddo Dewal, the auraI being, who appears in the form of a monster with three eyes and seven ears. He wins thanks to the saltpeter prepared by Bâ-Wâm’ndé (Salniter).

Njeddo Dewal’s belly is torn open and the insides spill out. At the same time, the deep darkness that had submerged the country dissipates.

At sunset, we see the multitude of stars forming a crown around the twelve signs of the zodiac. The whole country is reviving because the bad spell that Njeddo Dewal had struck it with has vanished. The Spirit, like a new sun, shines again in the liberated microcosm and floods the resurrected Soul and Body with light.

Then appeared a new Heaven and a new Earth.

Amadou Hampâté Bâ said: « When, in Africa, a storyteller dies, it is a library that burns ». In order to preserve this knowledge, he decided to publish these Peul initiatory tales.

Amadou Hampâté Bâ was born in Mali in 1900, he died in 1991. A Muslim, he is said to have been a Sufi Master.

The Peuls constitute a population of six million individuals scattered from Senegal to Chad. Their origin is said to be Saharan and white. They undergo an initiation into the pastorate that includes 33 degrees, from birth to the grave. They do not constitute a race but a very homogeneous cultural group of nomadic shepherds, attached to their flocks.

Léopold S. Senghor said: « The black is monotheistic. However far back one goes in his history and Geniuses and ancestors are only emanations of him ».

The Cosmos is the property of the Creator of all things, the one in whom everything finds its origin, in heaven and on earth (Yoruba of Nigeria).

God appears as the uncreated act, that is to say simultaneously Supreme Force, Creator of all forces, principle of conservation, cohesion and renewal of forces (Diola of Senegal).

Religion, among the Wolof of Senegal, is Yon, the path. Initiation means death and rebirth.

Among the Kikuyu of Kenya, a woman from the initiate’s family, preferably his mother, simulates a new childbirth. To be initiated is to have learned, painfully, that passing through death is the very condition of a fertile life. The initiate receives a new name.

More than knowledge, initiation is an act involving the totality of man. He who would have communication of knowledge alone and who would want to be satisfied with it, would be deeply mistaken about the scope of what is at stake. It would remain foreign to the dynamism that requires all the energy, all the will of the initiate.

In total, knowledge is knowledge of an experience. To withdraw from experience is to no longer know.

Animism is a religion based on the existence of a vital force that underlies all things and is not contradictory with monotheism. It simply expresses the fact that God is present in everyone and in all things.

Zen expresses it by saying that the Nature of Buddha is present as much in each man, even if he is not aware of it, as in the dead branch abandoned at the side of the road.

Initiation is a rite of passage, sometimes very long and very hard, where the child (girl or boy), dies in childhood and is reborn in adulthood.

The dances are symbolic and allude to a particular moment in this death-rebirth process, which is itself integrated into the history of the creation of the world. The system of correspondences that associates the two events constitutes an esoteric knowledge, to which initiation gives access.

In Africa, a central character of initiation is the blacksmith, the one who works iron and fire.

Iron is related to Mars, blood, the dynamic aspect, the individualization of man. Fire is the Spirit (stolen by men in African tradition as in the myth of Prometheus and others).

In his forge, the man of art achieves the union of iron and fire, the union of body and Spirit through the intermediary of the Soul, the breath of air.

Among the Bambara of Mali, the blacksmith’s wife is a potter and midwife. She participates in the first birth, the blacksmith in the second birth by the practice of circumcision, the entry into the world of adults. This couple with mysterious powers, after having kneaded the child like clay, breathes the Spirit into it.

Work on the material: without speech, technique remains ineffective. It is the verb that comes in the form of songs, incantations, rhythmic words, secret formulas, specifying an object, giving iteverywhere, there is only one God, who created everything. All the powers, all the wills of the its meaning. Because only the verb can act on the network of forces that constitutes the world.

Verbal technique and manual technique are closely linked. One can be surprised to see Africans get rid of certain objects quite easily, such as masks and statuettes, after their liturgical use.

But outside of dance, a sort of rhythmic language, the mask is only a dead thing. Deprived of the meaning given to it by the verb, it becomes a simple object of wood or bronze, inert, without a life of its own.

In the Yoruba myth, Shango is the God of blacksmiths. When he was king, he seized lightning with a charm and, having wanted to try it, he destroyed his palace and his family.

To designate the sun, certain peoples such as the Ashanti of Ghana use the same term as for God, the sun being considered a manifestation of God himself. The moon is the wife of the Supreme Being.

Lissa, the sun, and Mawu, the moon, are the divine couple among the Fon of Benin.

Amadou Hampaté Bâ

Peul Initiatory Tales

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