To Seeing With New Eyes
Growing up with culture is different than being initiated into that culture. It’s one thing to be exposed to a living, breathing knowledge, but it’s a whole other thing to understand it. This dichotomy always frustrated me growing up as an immigrant from India in the US, because the fight to preserve my culture had me, at the same time, asking questions to make sure I understood it. Even though my family celebrated various South Indian holy days throughout the year, made our pilgrimages back home to the temples, and practiced age-old traditions regularly, when I would ask my parents and elders of the meaning behind the technical processes of a ceremony or the significance of its components, they often drew a blank. They had seen their elders practice these traditions but understanding the meaning behind them had slowly begun to fade. When I studied more about Hinduism and the history of South Asia, it was clear that through a combination of colonization and shifts in education, a deeply spiritual system rooted in Nature had become more about religious ideologies. Spiritual education systems became replaced with colonial schools, and people began to lose the understanding behind their way of life, or even seeing the value in it.
Through my own experiences seeking stability and spiritual understanding, I began my Dogon initiation simply intrigued by the time-tested wisdom preserved by the indigenous tribes of West Africa. What I didn’t expect to find was that this initiation would take me all the way back home to my own culture with a deeper understanding of my roots.
What they’ll never teach you in the history books is that the Kemetic Civilization once spanned the entire world, and its nature-based principles united humanity. The remnants of this global civilization can be found at the roots of many cultures around the world- if you know how to recognize it!
From the overlaps between the Kemetic Cosmogony and the stories of the Hindu divinities I grew up with, to the similarities between the temple cultures of West Africa and South India, and even the day to day principles of Ancestral worship, ceremonies, and the importance of family- it was easy to see that I was not only being initiated into the Dogon culture, but my own at the same time. I was finally getting the answers I had sought my whole life about myself, my history, and where I came from. It took going to the roots in Meritah (indigenous Africa) to get it.
I experienced the proof of the connections between these cultures over the years of balancing initiation while living with my family, and traveling to both Meritah and South India. For example, in the Kemetic Sidereal Calendar, several of the holy days connected to the Kemetic Cosmogony perfectly coincide with certain South Indian Hindu holy days that my family celebrates. The aspect of timing is very important in both cultures, as the ceremonies for certain holy days occur in hours that are astronomically favorable for the offerings and wishes to be received.
On the day of the resurrection of the Ancestral god WSR and the return of his energies on Earth (Tepia 7), we celebrate a harvest festival called Pongal, which is meant to ring in a new period where the energies of rebirth, renewal, and abundance are open. This is done through ceremonies using different components of Nature such as grains, to symbolize abundance and growth. WSR is a god who signifies all of these energies and is considered a vegetal God, as Nature itself is governed by his cyclical principle. The period that starts with his return coincides with springtime in the U.S. and return of life all around the world. In both cultures, these are the periods when auspicious events and new beginnings are celebrated.
The Charm of Aishat (6 Penipt) is another holy day celebrated in the Kemetic Sidereal Calendar. This is a day that marks the powers of the Goddess Aishat used in the protection of her son Heru and in defending the legacy of her husband WSR- a day that is most favorable for the invocation of cosmic powers and a day when people celebrate the spiritual gifts they possess in their bloodlines. The powers of the Goddess Aishat are recognized and her actions serve as a model for women to reclaim the divine feminine within them. This is the same period when the festival Navarathri is celebrated around India, which is a 9 day festival where women gather to celebrate the power of the Goddess Durga in the Hindu pantheon and the triumph of good over evil, asking for protection and good things for their families and communities.
These connections between the holy days and time-keeping were brought to life during my travels to my Ancestral villages and temples in India, where I discovered that the structure of the temples I visited in Kerala were following the exact logic and structure of temples I’ve visited in West Africa. Certain nature based symbolism I observed in the temples in Kerala, such as turtles, catfish, and snakes indicated that these were purely Kemetic temples honoring the principles of the Earth and the God WSR. Every temple has a flag that denotes the powers of Nature presiding within. The concept of bloodline ancestral divinities, village deities, sacred trees and sites in nature have all been preserved, and people still understand that there’s a way to approach Nature and appeal to its powers to shift the energies in their lives. I was able to visit the lands my Ancestors lived and walked on with new eyes thanks to my initiation, as I began to actually understand and recognize the ancient logic behind the details. To the uninitiated what may be seen as arbitrary structures built for beauty or superstitious practices encompass perfectly technical details that connect physical places and people to the invisible realities that surround them.
To discover this wealth in my own home and family heritage all along has been one of the biggest gifts of my initiatic journey. As immigrants, we face the eradication of our culture in the name of assimilation, and now even back home, western ideologies and the culture of no culture are seducing the youth to label traditional culture as backwards and outdated. To have the eyes to understand the culture I was raised in is to know its value and to fight for its preservation.