Ancestral & Elemental Divinations

The Dagara Tradition

An unbroken lineage of earth-based medicine

The Dagara people of Burkina Faso and northern Ghana, in the North West regions of the South Sahel, have tended an unbroken lineage of earth-based, community-centered spiritual practice for over 20,000 years.

Their cosmology was, at the request of the Spirits, brought to the Americas by four Medicine Elders who were chosen for this voyage out into the world of modernity. As a culture, their entire existence rests on a living truth — that all things are alive: the Earth, the Elements, our ancestors, and the unseen intelligences that animate creation.

A divination is a sacred conversation between you, your Spirit, your Ancestors, and the elemental forces that walk with you. Through an ancient technology of oracular communication — using sticks and stones, and shells, and bones — the benevolent Spirits offer clarity, healing, and ritual prescriptions to realign your life with harmony and purpose.

This work is not fortune-telling; it is energetic and ancestral diagnostics — a dialogue of revelation, guided entirely by Spirit.

The ancestors are not silent. The elements are not indifferent. They have been trying to reach you. A divination creates the conditions for that contact — and for receiving what they’ve been trying to say. — Adi Marie

The Five Elemental Forces

The Dagara worldview moves through five elemental forces, each a living realm of intelligence:

Each being and life passage holds a unique elemental balance. The divination reveals which forces are strong, which are calling for attention, and which ancestral presences wish to work with you at this time.

This lineage is an animist tradition — a way of life in which everything is spirit, and ritual is the language of relationship. The Dagara people view healing not as fixing what is broken but as restoring harmony among the human, ancestral, elemental, and communal worlds.

A Note on Lineage

My own training and initiation has come through oral tradition and initiation, as preserved by the elders of Burkina Faso, into the holding of The House of Bahki, through the Somé family, and thus delivered by my first mentor and initiating Elder: Mark Bockley. By this tradition and the tending of its many Guardian Spirits, I am now in service as a Wedemé Medicine Woman and Stick Diviner — a Priestess of the Wilds, and a Kontômblé Medicine Woman and Voice Diviner — a Priestess of the Waters.

These forms of Divination are an ancient, earth-rooted technology of the sacred — a lineage of practice spanning more than 8,000 years — through which the spirit realms are called upon to illuminate the path, offering insight, guidance and procedural ritual instruction to help bring healing, harmony, growth, and benevolent change.

It is my privilege and responsibility to offer this medicine with humility and respect for the Dagara elders, whose wisdom and rituals have been preserved through oral transmission for millennia; and with utmost reverential gratitude for the Spirits which called me forth and entrusted me as a Medicine Woman of this lineage and of this path.

About Your Session

Your 2-hour divination is a ceremony of listening and revelation. Before we begin, you’ll be invited to whisper your question into a quarter or .25 cent coin — privately, without telling me. Spirit hears through the metal and energetics of interchange in currency, and I read the answer as it arises through the field via my diviner’s kit.

During our time, you’ll receive messages, insights, and ritual guidance to help bring balance and movement into your life. Some rituals are simple, such as offering water to the Earth. Others are more intricate, depending on what is revealed. Each will be clearly explained and contextualized.

Because so much information flows through, I encourage you to record the session — this allows you to revisit and integrate what unfolds afterward.

Before Your Divination

• Reflect on two to three areas of life where you seek clarity or support.
• Bring a quarter or .25 cent coin, perhaps a journal, a recording device (we can also record on Zoom), and get comfortable.
• You’re welcome to have nearby any sacred items (stones, photos, heirlooms, etc.) you’d like to keep close.

Duration: 2 hours
Location: via Zoom or in person at The Haven (Topanga Canyon)

Proceeding with Your Rituals

Take the rituals slowly and progressively, think of them as climates moving into your life. Please give each prescription its own space and time to fully open and soak into the weave of your life. Be attentive to dreams that arise, especially around ritual time.

Additionally, as you experience significant shifts and healing through this work, it is important and customary to send a medicine piece, to become part of my diviner’s kit — a significant object representing and meant to hold the energy of the healing that has occurred for you from your divination. Your healing thus becomes part of the community’s medicine so that others may, in time, be guided by the light of your process.

When the time comes, please send your offering of your Medicine Piece to:

C/O Adi Marie
The Animist Apothecary
23268 Red Rock Rd
Topanga, CA 90290

Also, more imminently, if you would send your coin from your divination in the mail, this is an important closing and completing component to your divination. It is important to offer it to my medicine shrines as a token, and also as the energetic signature of your questions and the healing you’ve begun to welcome, a talismanic piece.

Learning Resources

If you are interested in learning more about this medicine and want to immerse yourself in the stories and cosmology of the Dagara, the best way is to live it, and fully immerse yourself in the process of walking the path. This medicine is the experiential medicine of homecoming; a return of elemental relationships with the thrumming, vibrant, living world all around and within us.

For a wonderful supplement and primer, these two books were written by Elder Malidoma Somé, one of four medicine people who came to the Americas as the Spirits were wanting to make their way out of Africa and to awaken the many Children of long dormant medicine lineages across the world:

This work reconnects us to the web of life — to our ancestors, our elements, and the animating forces that guide our becoming.

Connecting with the direct guidance of spirit and the powers of the Living World has brought great potency and coherence to every other aspect of my medicine walk. It is my honor to walk beside you in this conversation with Spirit and to open the way for what wishes to be revealed through you.

With reverence and warmth,

Adi Marie
Diviner | Medicine Woman | Somatic Practitioner
The Animist Apothecary
theanimistapothecary.com