Naba Iritah: [00:00:00] My name is Naba Iritah. This is the Life Stylist podcast.

Luke Storey: [00:00:05] Man, this is a treat. I'm so happy we get to sit down and have a chat today.

Naba Iritah: [00:00:09] Thank you very much, Luke.

Luke Storey: [00:00:10] The last two days, we've done a lot of deep work. We had our session here in the loft where we sit now. Welcome back.

Naba Iritah: [00:00:22] Thank you.

Luke Storey: [00:00:22] And then yesterday, an all-day ceremonial event at our friend Callen Peyton's land. And, man, I got to say, when I woke up today, I'm like, I don't know if I can record a podcast today. It's like the energy over the past few days has been incredible. So it's an honor to have you here in Austin, honor to have you in our home. And I'm really looking forward to learning more about you and your life.

Naba Iritah: [00:00:52] Thank you very much. Thank you.

Luke Storey: [00:00:53] Yeah. So what's it been like to be here in Texas?

Naba Iritah: [00:00:59] Texas. Yeah. First of all, let me say thank you for receiving me twice now in your humble space. Very powerful. I have to say thanks to the land of Texas. Uh, I'm a naturalist, so anytime I'm traveling, I observe nature. I listen to nature. First time I traveled through Texas, I said, I think this place just looks like where I'm coming from. My lands. The heat, nature, the plants, how everything is, the people. I'm like, I think at some point, we're going to have to do something in Texas. 

And since 2021, we've been trying to set up things in Houston. And we have our local temple over there for community spirituality, and Dogon wisdom, and all of that. And then after that, we managed to set our healing house, Ankhkasta Natural Healing, over there as well. And I'm like, let me travel to Austin and see what's happening in Austin because it's not that far. And then there was an event happening. So I decided to come for a week to that event, Medicine Festival. And I'm like, I like this place. I love this place. It treats everything that is in my composition as welcoming, and all of that. 

So I'm like, I feel welcomed in this place. Maybe this is why I'm back here. But I have to say thanks to your wife, Alyson. A very good warrior spirit. Spiritual warrior, I meant to say. She did the best that she could do to really get me here so that other spirits can get to benefit from me and so that I can get to learn from all of you as well over here. And I learnt a lot over the last two days. I've been learning a lot.

Luke Storey: [00:03:18] I bet. I bet. Well, when Alyson had you on her podcast, Ceremony Circle, she was more excited than I've ever seen her after an interview, and you guys did it on Zoom. And personally, I find Zoom interviews just a little less enthralling than sharing space with someone in person. But even her recording with you on Zoom, I mean, she was lit up for a week afterward.

And she's interviewed some brilliant people. And I'll ask her, how did it go? Oh, it was great. They were awesome. And she's happy. We forget about it. But with yours, there was something about it. She was just floored to the point that I've never really listened to a whole episode of her podcast, and I listened to the one featuring you, and I thought, okay, I get it. So when we found out you were willing to come here, we were very excited.

Naba Iritah: [00:04:15] I'm very happy to be here.

Luke Storey: [00:04:17] It's been cool. And your team, shout-out to your team. Everyone you roll with is also just very high vibe and beautiful, and there's a sacredness to the way you guys carry yourselves, which is cool. Very appreciated.

Naba Iritah: [00:04:33] Nowadays, I think that's what's missing around our planet. We're missing that concept of unity and community. I think that's what we're missing. For any achievements, you need to have people where there's respect for whatever you're doing. 

And respect for whatever we're trying to achieve is actually what comes to solidify our relationship and then give us the sense of, we're fighting for something, and small frustrations, and distractions, and all of that don't really come to take us away from what we're really trying to do. And then that dedication is what I appreciate in you guys. You've been working with me and all of that. I really appreciate that.

Luke Storey: [00:05:28] You also have a very multicultural team. Everyone's from all over. I didn't know, he was from Colombia. I was trying to place his accent yesterday. I'm like, I can't figure out where he's from. And I just didn't get a chance to ask him. But you got the light workers from all over the world doing this Avengers super team kind of situation. It's very cool.

Naba Iritah: [00:05:51] That the word. Avengers. Because I think that's how I look at our team. When our ancestors decided to bring this knowledge, our wisdom that we've been preserving out, the mission wasn't to just give it to a specific group of people. How there's those racist ways of viewing things and all of that to the point where humanity went so far away from reality to the point where we even end up putting race in culture. I just don't understand how we managed to do that.

Culture is just a way of life. Anyone can learn to live a certain way. And then when we came, we told everybody, this is a way of life of the Dogons. You want to learn and live like the Dogons? No problem. You're welcome. Our philosophy, our ideologies, our belief, the way we approach existence and all of that, you want to do that? No problem. So that opened the gates for our mission around the world to reach everyone. We have all kinds of faces. I don't want to say race, but we have all kinds of faces.

Luke Storey: [00:07:15] I like that. Different faces. That's a good way to put it. That's how I think of it too. Obviously, I understand there are different types of human beings around the planet, but I've never thought there was more than one race. Just the way I was raised. There's one human race, and then people look different and have different cultures based on their geographic origin and their history.

Naba Iritah: [00:07:40] That's right.

Luke Storey: [00:07:40] That's why I'm very much on board with that. For those that are unfamiliar with the Dogon culture, and you, and your work, and your lineage, give us a bit of background because this was new to me. Alyson knew about the Dogon culture and was very excited to meet you and get connected, but she's the first person that I ever heard talk of you and your people. So give us a bit of background on your life and what the Dogon culture is, where you guys come from, and so on.

Naba Iritah: [00:08:11] Honestly, I think even in our culture back home, most of the people, all of our dignitaries, and all of our royalties, and temple caretakers, and wisdom keepers, and all of that, we didn't even know that we are being studied by the West. We didn't even know that. But somehow, we see people traveling to our lands, looking different. We don't know them. They just happen to come. We hear there's a village here, there's a community here. They come. They live with us. We share food. We really, really are very hospitable. 

We receive you. We don't know you. We receive you. Why? Because in our culture, we feel like a stranger coming to your house, a guest coming to your house, someone you don't know coming to your place is almost like the divine world visiting you. It's like God sending someone to come visit you, to come check on you. That's how we view things. 

So around 1940, '60s, there was these French people who traveled to our lands. Just traveled. So we thought they were just coming for the same thing. Observe, live, share our stuff. But somehow, they end up going back to France and then writing about us. Because somehow, from discussions, they found out what we've been hiding, and why we've been hiding, and what we have, and how powerful what we have that we're hiding is.

Luke Storey: [00:09:57] In terms of knowledge or resources?

Naba Iritah: [00:09:59] In terms of knowledge and in terms of wisdom. In terms of our archives and all of that. So we have a lot that we've been hiding. And it's been hiding simply through an intense initiation process, a rite of passage process, and all of that. Meaning they found out that they cannot really have access to what we have if they are not initiated, if they don't go through the rite of passage, which is very difficult. 

I would not advise someone from the West to just get up and be like, I'm going to be initiated by the Dogon. It's very, very, very challenging. So they went back and wrote about everything that we have. So from there, the Dogon became the focus of some of the studies in anthropology, and history, and all of that. Astrology as well.  

We are a culture that is rooted in the Nile Valley. Our people, our ancestors migrated after a few years, before the fall of the walls of Misra, the temples in the Nile Valley. So yeah, our ancestors migrated, and then somehow, found a way to establish or resettle around West Africa, a way of protecting themselves from the invaders and all of that.  

So those who were invading our people, invading Nile Valley, did not really have a way of crossing the desert because it was too hard for them. And then it's almost like they can just disappear trying to cross that because it's hard. It's not easy for the people coming to challenge us. So then we end up establishing, resettling around West Africa. 

And at that moment, we didn't have the colonial countries that we have today where you talk about Mali, the Dogon in Mali, the Dogon in Ghana, the Dogon in Togo, Groumanche in Benin, in Burkina, in Chad, and all of that. So those countries did not exist. It was just like one big piece of land. We're talking about 3000 years ago. 3000 years ago, colonization has not really been conceived to even think about being born and then invade other people. 

It was so simple for our ancestors to settle there because they have time now to resettle and then restart everything, reproduce that same culture. But then the wise men would be like, no, we don't want to rebuild the same gigantic culture that we built before because that's actually what will attract the envy of the other groups of people to feel like they need to invade our temples in Nile Valley. So at this point, just let us build small structures, hide over here. It's hard to live here. It rains maybe five times a year.

Luke Storey: [00:13:15] Really?

Naba Iritah: [00:13:15] Yeah. Our lands are so dry. We live in Savanna. Sahara Desert and us, we're not really far. So that was a way of protecting ourselves, geographically, using the geography to protect ourselves. So then they were able to restart everything and all of that, but at a minimum exposure. They didn't want to expose themselves, still maintaining all of the projects, and researches, and discoveries, and all that. Everything continued. They didn't stop. Everything that was happening in the Nile Valley, they continued doing everything.

Normally, when people go in Egypt and look at the land and then go in and see the temples, the temples, for us, our ancestors, at some point in time, were called mystery schools because you enter a temple to learn the universe. Meaning those were the real universities. You go in the temple, you put yourself in some discipline, some purity, and some minds to be able to research and discover things. 

So then we have to do the same thing, but this time, we will not build big temples. We will use nature, what nature already built. Then we will use that. And then every year, from the age of eight to 14, young children are sent in the bush within the designated place to become the natural temple, where we didn't build anything. Nature already built it for those children to learn how to become young adults and then become useful in the society and all of that. 

So that's how our history went. And then we ended up settling around West Africa. But now, with colonialization happening, when the conference in Berlin happened in the 1800, those European countries decided to split Africa and all of that. So they ended up splitting Africa in the way that they even split our culture, where the borders that they set up, they didn't take into consideration that we live in tribes. 

We live in groups of people. They didn't take into consideration those things. So today, you may have a Dogon that is from Mali and another Dogon that's from Burkina Faso as a citizen of Burkina Faso and a citizen from Mali, or Dogon in Benin who is also like a citizen of Benin, different from the Dogon in Togo who is a citizen of Togo. But somehow, we all are the same, the same route, all the way to Nile Valley.

Luke Storey: [00:16:25] Wow. The colonization created an artificial grid. They superimposed a map--

Naba Iritah: [00:16:35] They imposed a map.

Luke Storey: [00:16:36] On top of the native peoples who already had their own maps going that maybe weren't even as clearly defined. More like groups of tribes that live in different places according to the land calling them there.

Naba Iritah: [00:16:48] Exactly. The natural borders were used. The indigenous Africa lived according to the natural borders because a river can be the natural border between two groups of people. A chain of hills can be a natural border between two groups of people. The forest can be something like that too. So yeah, we live in that way where we respect the natural borders, and we know that you don't cross to go hunt without the permission of the other group of people, or you don't cross to go fish without the permission of the other group of people.

That's what's bad about colonization. The pathway of colonization is evil because it separates you from your nature. It takes everything away from you. And that's the situation we're in right now at some point. And many people went through that too. Many groups of people.  

But somehow, because of us having a new system of functioning that is not the old system known to all of the civilizations and all of that, then that intelligence of creating a new system of preservation of wisdom and knowledge helps us to continue to exist up until today, where they decided to send us out to go and talk about ourselves instead of a French professor coming and talking about the Dogon. The Dogon children can learn French, can learn English and then go talk about the Dogon themselves.

Luke Storey: [00:18:38] Wow. What was your childhood like? Did you grow up in remote areas, or were you living in a city? What was what was happening when you were a kid?

Naba Iritah: [00:18:47] Yeah. I get that question a lot. But I will just say something that is so simple. My childhood actually prepared me for this, what I'm doing today. And I look at all of the suffering, all of the struggles, all of the challenges coming from nature, family stuff, and all of that. Family dramas and everything. Society and everything. I look at all of those things and then see myself in some type of initiation, preparing me for whatever I'm doing today.  

And honestly, it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy. It was a childhood where you don't know what your lunch is going to be, or even if that lunch is going to happen. It would be better to sleep without food at night, but it's difficult to go throughout the day without food. So lunch ended up becoming the most important meal for us when we were growing up. And I grew up with my grandmothers. I grew up with my grandmothers. 

Both of my grandmothers are healers, deep connected healers, and highly gifted clairvoyants. Both of them. So I grew up with them. And the time where you don't have food, grandmother just looks at you. And then you look into her eyes, and you know the message is that lunch is not going to happen. And next thing, you know what to do. I was going in the bush just to gather mushrooms. Or even go to other people's farms, and then after they harvest, whatever was on the ground, pick it up and put it together, and come home and then present it to my grandmother and be like, hey, I got something. And she will make it.

I think I ate an egg, chicken egg, and felt like, wow, I just ate an egg. Wow. That's the thing. To even eat an egg, I'm like, wow, I just ate an egg. Wow. My grandma cooked an egg for me today. And that was when I was, I think six or seven. And it was even an egg that was a good egg. That's the thing. When the chicken covers the eggs and then few eggs hatch and few didn't get to hatch, whatever is there, instead of throwing it away, we can cook it. And then I get an egg, a whole egg to eat by myself. 

So that was big for me. Maybe over here, that would be like offering a child an iPhone, or offering your child an iPad, or a video game. That was big for me then. I hunted rats, fish, just for lunch. And it prepared me, if I can say that, because even managing today, talking about how I'm leading this mission, this work that I'm doing, the way I'm conducting it, is because of everything I went through being a child.

I don't think anyone would see me today and think an egg was gold for me. So yeah, the childhood wasn't easy, but I don't look at it and make it be a situation of trauma for me. I actually advise people, even when people get readings for me, or counsel, and all of that, I always repeat, whatever happened in your childhood, use it. There's a reason why nature allowed it to happen. There's a reason why life allowed it to happen. It might not be bad, it might not be good, but somehow there's a reason. 

Use it, and then make that the foundation, the very foundation of how you would want to become in life, and then stand on it. Make it become the podium that you will stand on to be able to achieve something. And one good thing is I don't want to go back to that. I don't want my children to live that life. But somehow, I would want myself not to forget that I was here before getting to be here. And then from that, that's a good lesson. And then it ended up becoming the foundation, the motivation that allowed me to move forward.  

Some people can go through maybe half of that through their childhood and feel like it's a trauma. But I'm not going to call it a trauma. It's not a traumatic thing for me. I learned how to look at it, and then initiation built me to see any type of suffering, any type of challenge as the foundation of achieving something big. Because with that challenge, with suffering, it's going to be difficult for a human being to achieve stuff. We see it in nature, and then we just have to copy that.

Luke Storey: [00:24:29] So you mentioned your grandmothers being wise initiates. And from what I understand, your father was a really renowned Dogon priest and elder. What was that like for you as a kid?

Naba Iritah: [00:24:49] He was traveling a lot, if I may say that. The only time we got to spend one whole year with our father where he's not traveling abroad, he's not traveling for his mission, for his work, and we got to see him, spend time with him, a whole year where you wake up and your father is at home, all of that was in 2007. In 2008, he transitioned. And that's when he moved. Because he moved from America to settle back home in Africa, in Burkina Faso, end of 2006. So 2007, we had him. 

And then by July 2008, he transitioned. So that question is one of the other situations. Over here, in the West, my father wasn't around. That becomes a reason why I'm failing. My father wasn't around. That becomes the reason why I shouldn't be better than my father, better than you know myself. But growing up in Africa, we didn't have that privilege. You just want to be better than your father, no matter what.

Even if he was around, you still want to be better than him. He's not around? You still want to be better than him. He's a good parent, good father? You still want to be better than him. He's a so-so father? You still want to be better than him. At the end of the day, the foundation of the education is looking forward. They're using the path to build whatever you want to achieve ahead of you.  

And we have a saying that to build a new rope, you have to look at the old one. And looking at the old ropes, we learn how to be like the new ropes and all of that. He wasn't around. He was traveling a lot. None of us really grew up having him. And that's happened with me too. Now, I have to travel a lot. I have to travel a lot and leave my home, and then just keep traveling.  

But at the same time, I'm trying to learn from my father's situation and then create some balance, where three months, six months I can just stay home and then spend time with family and all of that. Which allowed me to continue learning as well, because elders want us to still be there and learn. So he allowed me to do that. Yeah. So it was amazing how I ended up standing or trying to fit my father's shoe because I look at the way he even educated me and the way he guided me.  

And what people don't know about me is that once the decision was made by our tribe to send us out to school and all of that, colonial school, to learn the European ways of doing things, the Western ways of doing things, I was good at it. Everything they were teaching was too easy. Already growing, I'm going through hardship that's not even-- you have to figure out things. To go in the bush, in the river, set up traps to get a rat and all. You have to have a big intelligence to be able to do that. Calculate everything. So I was good at school, and I'm an accountant. I'm a graduate of accounting.

Luke Storey: [00:28:33] Oh, really?

Naba Iritah: [00:28:33] Yeah. That's what people don't know about me. I'm a graduate of accounting. University. Accounting. But once my father passed away, I saw it to be like, when he guided me to do accounting, I loved it. I'm like, yes, I love the challenge of the numbers and all of that. And after that, he's like, stop. If you've finished accounting, now go study some literature. I'm like, I love numbers. Literature will be dealing with letters and all of that. So I did that. I didn't want to study some literature and everything, all of that. 

So I saw him already guiding me and making sure that even if anything happened to him, there's going to be someone to stand where he was standing. So even that makes him like a great father that I have to honor today. I have to honor today. I have to respect him for that. Because even though he wasn't 100% of the time with us, somehow, he managed to guide our life in the way that we ended up making it to this point.

Luke Storey: [00:29:47] At what point were you ordained to carry on his work?

Naba Iritah: [00:29:55] At the age of 12, I was called in front of an elder, and that was in Togo. That's where my mom is from. My father is from Burkina Faso. My mom is from Togo. The elder was the first one to tell my uncles that whatever you want this boy to achieve, his family has a bigger mission for him that he's going to achieve. He was going to become a priest. And everybody's like, what do you mean he's going to become a priest? We want him to go to school and become a doctor, become a minister of the country, politician, whatever they wanted me to become. 

I was like, well, I think I'm a doctor, but just a natural doctor. Doctor dealing with nature, using nature. From there, at the age of 12, I started thinking, what does that mean to be a priest? That's the amazing life. Being born in a lineage of priesthood, I have to question, what's that like? And when my father passed away in 2008, three months after he pass away, that's when I was called by the elders in the bush. Your father passed away. He was on a mission. He didn't finish the mission. Do you know where he was doing? 

Yeah. I follow him. I learn. Can you do what he was doing? I'm like, I don't think I'm going to do that. That's his life. They're like, well, you're the next one. I'm like, what do you mean I'm the next one? You can't just wake up and then be the next one into something. What do you mean? He's like, well, that's what the divination is saying. Like, what? Yeah. So three months after he passed away, I got ordained. Now you're standing there. And then I think six months later, I got my visa. Coming to America for the first time.

Luke Storey: [00:32:22] Wow. And is the foundation of carrying on his work, sharing the wisdom of the Dogon culture at large in the world? I mean, is that the core mission, this information that has been held close to the chest of your peoples for thousands of years with good reason?

Naba Iritah: [00:32:43] Yes.

Luke Storey: [00:32:43] And then the elders, through their various means, determined, okay, now the world needs this, this teaching, and it's on you to bring it out.

Naba Iritah: [00:32:53] To bring that. That's why I'm saying, your birth already decides how your life will be. And most of the time, when we grow up, different challenges in life, we end up allowing them to settle the distrust, settle the lack of confidence or low self esteem within, and then we end up feeling the challenge of life. And then we feel like life is too heavy and life does not like us. But I'm happy I didn't go that way, and I'm happy I went in the way that, like, life, you bring me a challenge, I'm going to hold the horns of those challenges and then show you that I can go through.

It's a long, long, long mission. A mission that's very old. When you look at Nile Valley and everything that happened, the civilization, Nile valley, everything they built and achieved, and the enlightenment, the awareness, and power, and all of that, the same thing, missions were sent across the world. When you look at the pyramids around the world that you see, you look at the big structures that you see around the world, we look at those structures as portals, gates.

The gate of the gates between the Earth and then the rest of the celestial system and bodies and all of that. So the mission of the mystery schools then in the Nile Valley was to set up those portals everywhere that was identified to be good, to create that connection with the rest of the celestial bodies. So that was then. So every other group of people benefited from that culture of the pharaoh giving the order for people to travel, and share, and help build those mystery places and mysterious things and all of that to see what manifestation will happen. 

So those missions were what, originally, we call the exodus army. The exodus army is about taking the knowledge. If I have to translate, it will translate into exodus army. So it's taking those achievements and then taking it to other people and allowing other people to benefit from it because one power benefiting from knowledge cannot benefit the whole universe. That creates a big imbalance in humans on earth, in our humanity, and all of that. 

Today, we have a G20, G7, G8, and all of that, and the other ones don't matter. The other countries don't matter, and all of that. And then we, at the same time, are  trying to say that we want poverty to finish, we want peace, and all of that. So we cannot gain peace if we haven't given the means to the other people to rise up and hold something in their hands that allows them to feel like they count. Because that's actually what creates the concept of revolution in people. 

I want to be like you, but you will not allow me to be like you. So what can I do? Well, I will try to see your weaknesses and destroy you first before I can get to be like you. Or maybe we all can be the same. So that's a human thing. So the pharaoh didn't want that. The pharaoh saw that it was better to send everything to everyone, everybody to benefit from it. And then you travel around China, Australia, everywhere you travel, South America, those archives are still in the temples. How the mission was organized.

So in this new area, the prophecy around the '50s was that everything we've been preserving can be lost, and it needed to be invested or reinvested. It needed to be shared. It needed to travel, again. Meaning they were even seeing it as another migration that would be coming on us, our people. As time goes, they keep checking and seeing what's going to happen to find out that a few years ago, 30 years ago, it's not going to be as a group of people migrating, but we're going to have to allow our knowledge to migrate. 

We're going to have to allow the wisdom to migrate. And then that's the only way we can protect it. We can invest it in people, and they protect it and preserve it. Otherwise, if we don't allow it to migrate, then the forces that are coming are not going to be like the forces that we were running away from before we settled around the desert. Those forces, just someone to press a button, and then a whole village can be destroyed. 

And that's a big chunk of wisdom and knowledge that's taken away. Now, today, as I'm talking, in Mali, in Burkina, in Chad, in Niger, where all of those original settlements happened, everybody struggles. Everybody has to run away from their villages because there's terrorist activities where they found gold, they found diamonds, uranium, and all of that, and then the superpower countries are digging. And if you don't leave, you are dead.

So now all of the villages have to leave. You can check on the news and everything. People have to run away from their villages and all that so that they can exploit the land and take those natural resources and everything. And then that's actually what they were projecting is going to happen. And lucky enough, 10 years ago, the mission already started.

And then now we have our temples in England. We have temples in Canada. We have temples in America. We still have temples around Africa that we maintain. In the cities. But our temple life in the city is very complicated. The temple life in the village, in the bush, is the best. But we still also are trying to buy land, buy some important lands and original lands, and all of that to try to restore, rebuild the walls, rebuild those temples, and all of that. So but that's how that mission started, and we're doing it now.

Luke Storey: [00:40:27] Wow. That's cool. It's interesting, the aspect of sharing this ancient wisdom with the intention of all of humanity benefiting from that and also serving as an act of preservation for the wisdom. Because if it just stays within these various tribal peoples in these various areas, it's going to be squashed out by the imperialism coming for the resources and creating all of this violence and territorial aggression. 

A certain cultural conception here that I guess could broadly be referred to as cultural appropriation, where people that are into learning indigenous ways and teachings and sharing that information, many of whom get a lot of criticism because if you're not originally from that indigenous culture, you have no business sharing that elsewhere. I've always just looked at this, and it's a nuanced problem because you have someone who maybe doesn't actually honor and respect the original culture, and they just want to capitalize on that as a commodity. So I'm sure there's an element of that. 

But I think there are also a lot of well-meaning people who want to serve humanity in the ways that you speak, that are drawing from wisdom, from different cultures in a way that is authentic, and integrous, and in the intention of benefiting all people. So as someone who's not from the United States and not from Western culture, how do you see cultures like yours and others from around the world, indigenous cultures and their ways, practices, knowledge being shared? What's your perspective on this idea of cultural appropriation?

Naba Iritah: [00:42:24] That's the problem in this mission. That's the problem that we have. Let's forget the concept of hate, or the concept of jealousy, or the concept of rivalry, why this person gets to do this and not me. I'm sorry to say that, but America is built on the concept of being the number one. And normally, in America, every human being who was born in America, grew up in America, is educated to think that no matter where they go, where they find themselves on the face of the planet, they are the number one. The chosen one. 

That concept is big because it runs in American families for generations to the point where even the reason why American families have problems is because even in the family, the mother think she needs to be the number one, the father think he needs to be the number one, the son thinks he needs to be the number one, and then the daughter thinks she needs to be the number one, and so and so and so and so, to the point where at some point, the family will clash on an emotional level.

On a physical level, and then a lineage level, we all are together. It's my brother, it's my sister, it's my father, it's my mom. But on an emotional level, everybody is broken. Now, when you are broken like this and then you travel to a group of people who have a structure that values the community, that values the togetherness, that's against individualism, that's against being-- I mean, selfishness and all of that, then you will have to struggle too. The struggle would be you will try to fit in that community. You try to fit in the reality.

When trying to fit in, it is going to demand for you to be so humble and so disciplined, something that's somehow the American upbringing, we don't give to people. We don't give people the concept of humility and discipline. And once you don't give people that and then they travel around the world-- America is not the end of the world. They will travel around the world and discover other realities.  

So when they travel around the world and then they meet cultures were family ties are very strong, everything is done in family, everything is done in the village, and when there's something, everybody comes to do it, and all of that, no one will call and say, oh yeah, I have work. I'm not going to be able to come. Everybody drops whatever they're doing, and then just converge and go do one thing that is for the well-being of the member of the community, then the person coming from the Western society will have to learn how to adapt. 

And in that adaptation, you face the challenge. So when people came and tried to learn from indigenous people, not just us-- I would assume every indigenous culture. When you come and try to learn from indigenous people, we only expect two things. Humility and discipline. To talk about discipline, discipline is something that comes from the self-respect. So when you put the when you put humility and self-respect together, that's what brings what we call community.  

That's what takes people away from individualism and then try to build together, and stay together, and all of that. So in my culture, in my way of doing things the way my father started, the way I'm continuing with it, I'm very rigid, very, very rigid when it comes to the initiate, or the student, or the person trying to learn from me coming and then learning. You're going to have to stand on those pillars. You're going to have to learn how to be humble. You're going to have to learn that you're going to have to start from somewhere to reach somewhere. And you're going to have to learn the self-respect.  

It's not about me. I don't need you to respect me. So when you're trying to act like you respect me, sometimes I just tell people, focus on respecting yourself first. I have a lot of work to do to respect myself too. So do that. And in doing the self-respect job, you end up focusing on the real matters of your life. You focus on what's real in your life, and all of that, and what's real in your community, what's real in your family, what's real on earth. 

And when you force the visitor who comes to be with you, learn from you, you force them to adopt that, they will struggle for some moment. But once they adjust to that, that's it. You got a very good ambassador of your culture. You got a very good and great ambassador for your culture, for your spirituality, for your people, and all of that. But once you don't do that and you just open the gate and allow the people to be the way they want to be, yeah, they will take everything from you. They will come, and then they will do it.  

But in any culture, in any spirituality, in any system, there's going to be the dissidents who have to happen. And then when that happens, you will have-- that's why we have many churches for the same belief. And that's why we have many, you know, Islam practices, Muslim practices for the same religion, and all of that. 

And that's how we have many Buddhist ways of doing things for the same person, the same belief, and all of that. Because at some point, the human fails to submit themselves to the demands of the authenticity of what they're trying to learn. And then when you fail to do that, then we end up having one reality that we cannot look away because it's a reality of the original and then the fake, or the reality of the authenticity and then the copy.

Luke Storey: [00:49:50] Right.

Naba Iritah: [00:49:50] We end up having that. Now, an intelligent person will know that this is authentic. This is an original. I can be from a Dogon lineage and still be fake if I didn't take the steps that it means to learn and then get wherever I am if I didn't get all the preparation. Just like you can come in my culture and then take all of the steps that are needed and be ordained, and you can become the Dogon more than I. You can become authentic more than I. So this is the problem.

Culture does not have race. Culture is a language. Culture is a way of being, a lifestyle. And within that lifestyle, anyone can learn. With dedication, anyone can learn to live that lifestyle. With discipline, humility, anyone can learn to be that lifestyle. So for us, you are from America. You come to my land, and there you learn, and then you become-- you follow all of the things that the culture demands, you speak my language? That's it. You are a Dogon. That's it. 

Because once you learn to speak my language, there's nothing I can hide from you again. You end up learning how to even become authentic because even things that we'll be doing, even if I want to hide it from you, I'm not going to be able to hide it because you speak my language. There's no other language I'm going to speak. Probably, I will speak your language, and then you speak my language. So that's the problem. 

And this mission, I impose people who come to learn to have that. Not impose. Actually, humbly impose people to understand that the concept of humility and self-respect is what makes indigenous people. When you travel to us, that's what makes us us. When you're traveling there, you don't want to go through that channel, then you lose everything. So do we have people out there now who are authentic? Yes. And what they're doing? It doesn't matter what indigenous culture they are, holding their hands, and all of that. But yes. 

But we have people who are copies and then panhandlers and trying to punt. Yeah, we have that too. Now, reality is this. What comes around goes around. In all time, before the rise of modern society, culture and spirituality was more than gold. That was the wealth, to have a culture, to have a language that you speak that tells you everything. To have a spirituality, that was the goal. 

People travel around the world just for that. But nowadays, we change it. We change everything in the way. The gold becomes something else, and then the culture is left behind. And people can just come and take the practices of an indigenous group of people and then leave the culture behind. And then come in the West and make it a commodity.

Luke Storey: [00:53:33] Right. Okay. Yeah. So the culture is, as you said, not about the race. It's about the way of life. But the way of life runs much deeper than just putting on certain garments, wearing a special necklace, and burning this type of incense. The accouterment, the rituals and the tools of a culture don't necessarily indicate that there's a full adoption of the culture.

Naba Iritah: [00:54:01] Thank you.

Luke Storey: [00:54:01] It's like picking and choosing some of that and commodifying it.

Naba Iritah: [00:54:05] Yeah, like in a salad bar. You go there, you pick what you want.

Luke Storey: [00:54:10] All-you-can-eat salad bar.

Naba Iritah: [00:54:11] Yeah. You pick what you want, and then the rest, you don't want it. So culture cannot function like that. And nowadays, that's what we see. We see people look outside when the inside has not changed yet. The outside is the one that is changing. Almost like the other people have to see me that way.

Luke Storey: [00:54:35] It's like a role that someone can adopt.

Naba Iritah: [00:54:38] Exactly. And then that's what we talk about self-respect. You have to respect yourself in that way. My father used to say that when stupidity is rewarded, wisdom will come worthless.

Luke Storey: [00:54:58] You just described America in our current state. I mean, I love America, but like, wow. I mean, you just turn on the news here, and it's like-- I mean, it's not just America. It's all over the world. Most Western cultures.

Naba Iritah: [00:55:13] Most Western cultures.

Luke Storey: [00:55:14] It's unbelievable. But I think you're pointing to some really valuable teachings, and that is the principle of humility and self-respect. If those are intact inherently in your character, I think one of the byproducts of that is authenticity. Because humility gives you an understanding of who you really are if you're real. That's one thing Alice and I have noticed about you. And one of the ways she described you is really powerful man, carries all this wisdom, but he's a regular guy. He's down to earth. He's humble. 

And I think that's a really important part of that because I don't know if you've heard of this term, but it has more to do with the gurus of India and whatnot. The word guru, the fallen guru syndrome, where it's like. Someone will amass a body of knowledge and maybe have some true spiritual gifts and powers, but for some reason, humility eludes them, so they start believing their own hype and becoming corrupted and inauthentic, and in some cases, even exploitive of other people and abusive of other people. 

What I call it is the fallen guru syndrome, where it's like somebody wrote some beautiful books, they had some beautiful teachings, they got a following, they became famous, got some notoriety, and next thing you know, they're abusing people and taking advantage of people. And they become all about money, and fame, and all this stuff. And I always think, how does that happen? It's like, if you have these spiritual gifts, can't you see that you're becoming full of shit?

Naba Iritah: [00:57:04] Exactly.

Luke Storey: [00:57:04] But if you don't have humility, you can't see yourself, so you don't know.

Naba Iritah: [00:57:07] You can't see it. Yeah, that's the problem in this work nowadays because I don't know what we're going to leave to our children. Everybody wants to be something except what they are. And then the self-knowledge, to know the self and to know why, where, how, about yourself as a human. Because normally, in my culture, at the age of seven, you're supposed to start questioning yourself. You're supposed to be asking those questions. Those are very existential questions. 

Why, Mom, why did you give me this name? Dad, why did you give me this name? What for? Why do you ask me to go to school? Those are questions that any seven-year-old child could start asking to the parent. And then there, already the person is building the foundation to know themselves, to know their role in the community, to know their role in on the face of the planet. But many of us didn't get that chance to be in the situation where we got to ask the questions and then we get the answers to those questions. 

Most of the time, questions we asked brought more questions. We ask questions, and then the answer they give you, we get buried more into questions and all of that. And then that ended up becoming like, okay, then everybody will have to develop their own personality. Being a priest, being a healer is a way of life. Being a shaman is a way of life. Being a guru is a way of life. And that does not take away the fact that you just a human being full of shit. You caca. 

With every reason that you and I share in this discussion, I love this discussion because it's almost like that's what most of the teachers need to be letting people know. Your disciple come in to learn from you, they need to understand that. They need to understand that you are a human being. Even Jesus uses the bathroom. Even my old man goes to the bathroom. Buddha goes to the bathroom, unless they're not human being, unless they are not in this physical body that you and I were in. So that means we are just full of shit.

Almost 70% of our bodies is just full of shit. So we are the only beings that eat things that are dead. Meaning to maintain our body, take care of our body, feed our body, give it energy, regenerate everything in our body, something has to die. Something has to die for that to happen, whether it's vegetables, whether it's fruits, whatever it might be. Something has to suffer. Something has to suffer before we survive. And yet we want the rest of the world to look at us as we were just pure light. 

And I love Alyson. I know Alyson saw that in me. A lot of people see that in me. I get that a lot, saying, hey, just full of knowledge, but also just full of human being shit. Just simple, normal guy trying to do his thing and then have a goal in his life and trying to achieve it. And that's what I do because I'm not going to-- even when you come to my home, my house, I'm not hiding anything from you. Everything will just be there. We eat together. My mum will cook for you. We eat whatever I'm eating. You're eating it, and all of that. Anywhere we stop to eat.

So that's what we need to change as the people being the pathfinders and changing people's life and trying to affect people's life and all of that. We have to let them know that it's not about becoming an angel because angels don't live on Earth. That's why they have wings. When you have wings, you're not supposed to be living on Earth. You're going to be living somewhere else. The Earth will be a wrong place for you. So we just have to teach people to be human. That's it.

Luke Storey: [01:01:47] I think in my experience, one of the most valuable teachings that I've had is the awareness of the different traps that come at your different levels of development. And one that was really impressed upon me was the trap of ego taking credit for the spiritual progress that you've made or the talents that you have. And I'm like, I'm sure I've done it many times, probably right, but not to the point of pathology, at least to my awareness. If I miss something, anyone let me know. You know what I'm saying?

I've always felt like a regular guy, even though I've made a lot of advancement over the years. I really have made a lot of progress. I'm of a much higher consciousness than I once was. And I think I'm getting higher. But I had a teacher once, and he said, you got to watch out for the trap, man. If you're not aware of how the ego operates-- this is just the vernacular that was used with me. I'm sure you have your own way of saying that. 

But if you're not aware of it and you're not in the observer witness perspective, like what you get when you meditate, you see, oh, I'm thinking thoughts. Oh, I'm having feelings. There's someone who's watching that phenomenon. He said, if you don't keep in touch with the one who's watching, the ego is going to come and start thinking you're a spiritual giant. It really got me one time. I'm going to be honest. This is how I learned this. 

I went to India on a 21-day silent retreat, and I was with some true spiritual masters, these Indian mystics. And one of the things that we were doing is being initiated into a practice called giving diksha. It's like you lay hands on someone's head, and they have a spiritual experience. And so you go through this training and whatnot. And I didn't know that lesson at the time. So I went to India. I came back wearing the robes, and the beads, and saying namaste to everyone. My ego took on a role that wasn't authentic, back to authenticity. I'm not Indian. You know what I'm saying? I'm from California.

Naba Iritah: [01:04:04] Just say hello instead of namaste.

Luke Storey: [01:04:07] I came back doing all the things, and what had happened was that my ego is sitting there and goes, oh, we found an identity to grab onto to elevate our self-perception. And that was one of the times when my teacher was like, you lost the plot. You go to India to become more spiritual, and yeah, I did, but also the ego was like, oh, we're going to grab on to this.

Now you're special. Now you got the beads and the thing. And I got my ass kicked when I came back. And thank God. It was harsh to learn. It was painful to be deflated in the way that I was, but thank God that happened. It was a huge lesson for me. Don't believe your own hype. Stay human, man. Just be down to earth.

Naba Iritah: [01:04:55] We have a saying in my place that no trees can see its own roots. There's no tree that can say that it sees its own roots. You always have to make sure the roots are strong enough, clean enough. So for that to happen, it's going to have to take another tree, another person to be able to see your roots and all of that. And then that brings the check and balance in your own evolution.

Luke Storey: [01:05:27] There's the accountant speaking.

Naba Iritah: [01:05:30] That's accountant speaking. So then that brings that where the other human can be the reason why you look at yourself, and then educate yourself, and fix, and keep moving forward. The event that we had yesterday was so powerful. After the event, we spent all night-- we went to sleep at 2:00 AM. We were just talking. So powerful to the point where I'm like, I have to question myself. I went and sat down outside. 

I'm like, what did I learn here? What was the teaching that all of these people came today to teach me? Over 50 people came to sit, and listen, and go through a ceremony that I will be the one leading. But after all, I have to sit in my own solitude gone and think like, what did these people come to teach me? Life, what are you here to teach?

Luke Storey: [01:06:32] That's it. See? And if you didn't have the self-awareness of your tree's roots, at the end of the day, your ego could be inflated, and you're like, I'm the man. Everyone came. I got all this attention. Everyone's bowing down to me. That's it.

Naba Iritah: [01:06:46] That's the trap. Even people I work with, we have a way that we greet each other, and I feel so uncomfortable anytime that happens. I'm like, hey, I'm doing my work right now. I'm just a human like you. I know you respect me as a teacher, but just, hey, what's up? How are you doing? Hello. Bye. Do our thing. And the ego, that's the one.

Luke Storey: [01:07:14] What's the Dogon terminology in your language for ego? How do you guys contextualize or say that word or that concept?

Naba Iritah: [01:07:22] Yeah, the concept would be someone will care for themselves but not for the rest. Meaning in the most selfish way.

Luke Storey: [01:07:39] So it's a self-centeredness rather than an other-centeredness.

Naba Iritah: [01:07:44] Yeah. If I say self-centeredness, some people in English might perceive wrong, but it's more so you are focusing more on what other people will think about you. You're centered on yourself to the point where, what will other people think about me? So then we end up using the concept of you don't have a [Inaudible]. Originally, that one would be a Ga, meaning a Ka, and then Ma. 

You don't have the justice of the spirit. Ka would be the spirit, and then Ma will be the justice. So your spirit does not have justice, does not have a way of doing self justice, checking itself. So already at that moment, you are someone that people might be like, he's a crazy person. He's a mentally sick person. That's how you go.

Luke Storey: [01:08:55] Okay. That's great.

Naba Iritah: [01:08:58] I lived with my dad, so--

Luke Storey: [01:08:59] I think that's a good standard to set. If somebody is too deeply identified with their ego, they are crazy. If I do it, I'm crazy. You know what I mean? You're not in your right mind when you're being motivated by that part of yourself.

Naba Iritah: [01:09:13] Yes. Yes. That's what it is. My father, I lived with him, and I saw his life and his life with all of the power and all of the knowledge that he has, and the power of clairvoyance that he had. You wake up and see him, and it's just simple food, simple life, simple rigidity that he follows. And then the rest is about just living life, being a human being, being a father, being a member of family, being a member of community, and all of that.

But once he found himself in the situation of work, then he's working. I cannot wake up and then be a priest 24 hours a day. I cannot now wake up and then be a healer 24 hours a day. Because at the end of the day, I still have to go in the bathroom, take off my clothes, and shower. That's something that can take 10 minutes to 20 minutes. I need to still go use the bathroom, sit on the toilet. It's the same thing. I need to sleep, and all of that. So there's a lot of problems in our people's minds now. 

When I say our people, I'm talking about us reclaiming some cultures and some ways of life, some indigenous ways of doing things. And that problem is we're making it a commodity. We're making it something that can be sold. Don't just blame the people who are coming from the West and seeing us and they say they want something. Don't blame those people. For those people, the value that they see in us is a value. They respect that value. That's why they travel to me. If you travel to my place to learn, it's because you saw some value in what I have in my place.  

And I'm going to have to be the one to be able to show you that indeed, it's a value. By the way, I'm going to be giving it to you. But if I make that value a commodity, where you give me this, I give you this, you do this, I give you this, then I make it valueless. It will lose its value. And then that's me being responsible, teaching you that whatever you came to get can be sold. Whatever. Can be used for whatever reason you want it to be used for.

And that's what we're doing wrong as the people in our indigenous cultures. We're selling the culture. We started selling it. And I'm saying it with all honesty. I'm not hiding anything because when you have self-respect, you will know that you are selling your culture. You will know that you are selling your ancestors' ways. You will know that people coming, instead of the person spending time with you, learning from you from day one to seven years before you can get to call them a priest, or a shaman, or a healer, or what, if the person comes and lives for two weeks, three weeks and then at the end you tell them they are a king, they are a queen, they are a shaman, they are a priest, they are this, that's your fault.  

That means me trying to hold the authenticity of what I gained from my father, I look at you, and I know that the person paid you something to make them be what they want to be. So you're selling the person the dream. And then it's a dream of a culture that you're selling to the person. But that dream, the person will come back in the West and try to now manifest that dream to realize that it was just a dream. It's not going to work. Would the person go back? No. They already spend a lot. 

They're not going to go back. What would they do? They will embellish it. Build around it. Make it become something that the West will take. And that's one thing that I personally don't do. I don't bend my culture for people. I make people bend down for my culture because that's the only way you can benefit from it. And everywhere I go to, I just tell people, I'm like, oh, this is how we're going to do it. But what about doing this? I'm like, uh-uh. This is how I saw my father do it. This is how I saw my elders and my temple do it. I'm not going to do it. 

Not because I'm in America, or I'm in England, I'm in Russia that I'm going to do it different now. We're going to do it the way I saw my people doing it. And that's the same way we're going to do it. As the indigenous people, we come to wake up to the reality and build the gates to protect ourselves, and then make sure that we protect the people coming to us because it's dangerous. It's very dangerous for someone born in a, I don't know, somewhere in Kansas City, you get up and then you're like, oh, I discovered light. I'm going to China, I'm going to India, I'm going to South America to discover something.  

And then two weeks later, three weeks later, or you do a few trips, and then you come back and you want to stand as not even representative. You want to stand as an owner of whatever you learn from those people, you saw from those people. It's so dangerous for the people who did not get a chance to travel to those places. It's so dangerous because you don't play with spirituality, and you don't play with any type of spirituality.  

So there's some type of spirituality that are engraved in the memory of the earth in nature, meaning it's so old that you cannot change it. It's too old, so old to the point where your life expectancy, what you lead since you've been born and everything you believe in will just be maybe a grain of sand on the beach. So there's a lot of things that we take people step by step. You have to take people step by step to reach certain things. Baby steps. You have to start from somewhere.  

But once you expose certain things to the people and all of that, that's a big problem that you're causing for the person. You're not protecting the person. But as a good teacher, I have to protect my student. I have to protect my initiate. There are some foods that my initiate may want to eat, but I would tell them, don't eat that food because it's not going to be good for you, even though I know he's hungry. I prefer that student standing with hunger, with that patience until we find whatever he can eat and that is going to be good for him.  

Same thing. I'm not going to let a child eat something that I know is going to be bad for them and then later on be sick. You have to guide. And that's where we even have to be calling ourselves pathfinders because we have to find pathways to get people to elevate, to get people to reach where they're trying to reach, but not just go with the flow of things.  

So if you come to learn from me and then another brother, another sister come to learn from me, you guys have different destinies. Different destinies, different background. Different experience. Different past lives. Everything is different. You're not identical. So the same thing cannot apply to all of you. The same thing cannot apply to all of you. So everybody will have to take responsibility through that culture, through the wisdom, the knowledge of the culture.  

Everybody will have to take the responsibility of owning it. And after you own it and then you give it self-respect, then it's going to work into you and make you who you're going to be and who the other person is going to be. The intelligence of our culture, you cannot use our culture and be like the other person. No. All of the wisdom that our ancestors preserved and everything, once you receive it and really put your hard work and dedication for it, with all honesty, all intellectual and spiritual honesty, it's going to make you be that being that you vow that you're coming to be on Earth.  

It's not going to make you be like me because that's not the vow that you made when you were coming on. The coincidence would be like, okay, we made the same vow. Unless that coincidence. Now, if there's no coincidence, you're just identical, whatever you learn from us, that's what you're going to be. So it's almost like pouring water in a bottle of Coca-Cola. That does not make that water Coca Cola. It's just water in a bottle of Coca-Cola. Unless we force that bottle of water, change it, take that bottle of water through the process of changing, and all of that, then we're going to have to colorate the water and put all of the aromas.  

And that's what people do with spirituality. But you don't want to pour water in a bottle of Coca-Cola and sell it as Coca-Cola. That would be so dishonest. And then the same way that we view how-- even in our culture, we have people who are ready to sell the culture. And that's why I'm saying, don't just blame the Westerners traveling to Africa, traveling to South America, traveling to Asia, traveling to those places where there's still some integrity towards nature and towards the invisible. 

Don't blame them. You have to blame the people themselves. I'm not very well-represented around the world or in some communities because I'm that kind of person where I don't give you. You have to work for it. I don't give you have to work for it. I make you work for it. It doesn't matter who you are or what you're coming with. I have people who come, and then in their houses or in their places, people bow to them and all of that.  

But you come in my temple, with my people, we're like, well, you take off your shoes here. Here, you take off your shirt, and we give you a wrapper to wear, traditional thing to wear. Here, you have to kneel down and then clap to this power here. There you go. Sit. We give you all of that. We have to give you all of that. But that, at the same time, teaches you how to teach people one day when you're going to be standing where we are standing.

Luke Storey: [01:21:37] Thank you.

Naba Iritah: [01:21:38] No problem.

Luke Storey: [01:21:38] Beautiful.

Naba Iritah: [01:21:40] I have to thank you for having me here. I like these discussions.

Luke Storey: [01:21:43] I love it.

Naba Iritah: [01:21:44] We can keep talking. 

Luke Storey: [01:21:46] It's fun. Dude, I got a lot more questions. So I hope you had your Wheaties this morning. Okay. So much ancient wisdom has been lost around the world from all indigenous cultures. And it seems to me that much of that wisdom has not only been lost, but it's been repressed, and history has been rewritten about so many things in so many ways. The nature of the universe, the nature of the human experience, who we are, where we came from, what we're doing here, all the things.  

And yesterday, you were talking about a couple different representations of that, and I'd like to go into both of it if we can. One was around the calendar and the way that we keep time, which really spoke to me because I struggle with it . Alyson's like, see, now we know why you can't read a calendar. You can't do time. I was like, I fucking knew it. We got duped. This isn't how time and calendars actually work. No wonder I'm always out of sync with it. I'm right. And the other one was language. 

So maybe let's go into to time, specifically the Dogon way of keeping time, and when your years and months start. How you break down the day. I think that this is fascinating, and I think that it's no accident that human beings are so confused. We don't even know what time it is according to the cosmos. We don't know what week it is, what season it is. Where we are in the universe is all been obscured. Where do we even start? So maybe a good place to start is like, what time is it?

Naba Iritah: [01:23:38] Yes. These are things that when you share, maybe now in the modern world, we are allowed to share those things because those archives have been sealed and protected. Sealed and protected for the fact that there was a time where when you speak about time and that time is not what Vatican decided, or that time is not what the power ruling decided, your head gets chopped off. You get beheaded for that. People were killed for that, for just talking about time, just speaking about things that the one who is in power is like, no, you don't talk about it. I'm the one in power. Everybody follows my time.

When the time that we're using in the modern society, modern world and the whole world nowadays, the time that we're using was introduced, it was supposed to be so perfect, it was told. Then that was the time where science and the Vatican religion, science and religion worked together. That was that time. And that was the time where the so-called witches and wizards were being killed. That was the time where the medicine man and the medicine woman were being burned at stake every Sunday. That was around that time. 

And those that were being burned were being burned and killed just because they were trying to say the truth about reality and the truth about our divine existence, and that is almost challenging the one trying to represent themselves as the divine representation in humanity. So the partnership has to exist between religion and the science then. And they came up with all of that. How can we do that?  

The calendar we're following today is not a calendar that's just-- people don't know what it is. The leaders don't know what it is. They know that it's not the real thing. But that calendar was introduced as an anti-spiritual movement because the human being cannot worship someone that they somehow call a god, or a goddess, or a tree in nature while the Vatican exists, someone that represents God on Earth exists.

So then every human being around that time in the history of the book, in the book of history, I meant to say, everyone then was obliged to worship the ruler in the Vatican. You don't worship your plants. You don't worship your medicine. You don't worship your village divinity. You don't worship your village entities. That would be against the Vatican law and the religion then. So then they made it so big that they have to come up with a reason to start a calendar.  

Before that, the Julian calendar was the one that was being used. And at some point, the calculations were wrong. There was a time in a human life, especially in Europe where time was counted different, where when you live in the mountains, the way you count time is different from when you live in the valley. And then the one leaving the mountain has 80 minutes to represent an hour, and the one living in the valley has about 40 minutes or 46 minutes to represent an hour because the sun sets long before it sets on those living on top of the mountain. 

That's how amateur the science was then, science and religion was, at that moment. One question I will have to challenge our viewers and listeners, all of these beautiful souls that follow this podcast, is that we start counting our time in the West. Even the watch that we're wearing, anytime we look at our phone, we speak about the minutes. We speak about the hours. We speak about seconds. No one ever asks a question why we started counting our time with second but not with the first. No one asked that question.  

You don't start counting time with a second when there is a first. What happened to the first? The whole humanity doesn't even pay attention to that. Indigenous people, we know. Even a child, a five-year-old knows that to count something, you start from one to go to two. You start from first to go to second. But we start counting our time from second, and then the next thing, we're in minutes. The next thing, we're like, an hour. The next thing, we're like, a day. The next thing, we're like, a week.  

Let me say this. The concept of one minute is based on the heartbeat of a human being. 60 heartbeats is what the concept of one minute is. And the concept of hour would depend on those heartbeats. Time, 60 minutes. But there's someone born and living on the Northern Pole. Their heartbeat will be different from someone living on the Southern Pole, different from someone living on around the equator. 

Someone living on top of the mountains will have a different heartbeat, and then someone living in the valley, on the plane, by the rivers, and all of that, will have a different heartbeat. So already we're just facing now a contemporary agreement on even how to count time. And that contemporary agreement is let's just make it 60 minutes because an average human being, if your heart beats 60 times, then you have a minute. 

And when you put in the two perspectives, it doesn't make sense. So even those living in the mountains counting time based on the 60 seconds for a minute is wrong. A pregnant lady's heart beats, I think, normally, a 120 times a minute, what we call a minute. But then is she living in our time or is she living outside of our time? So when we consider all of those realities, we will see that the modern society lied to all of us.  

They lied to all of us because they have to work hard to suppress and almost eradicate and then get indigenous people who have been holding knowledge out of the picture. And also educated the modern human being not to go and look for the answers. And now the modern human being, even when they do have a way to go look for answers, they'll go to places where life is comfortable, everything is shining, and all of that. They don't they're not going to tell you to travel to Africa. That's the cradle of humanity. 

If there's any answers that you're looking for on Earth, that's where people are supposed to be going because that's where awareness started. But somehow, they painted Africa and African indigenous cultures as evil, as voodoo, all of those things that people know about African practices. But our practices are just pure intelligence of nature and of the universe. It's like a teaching. It's like mystery schools. 

Let's go to the month. We're following a calendar that's telling us that it has 12 months a year. And then those 12 months a year, we have months that are 31 days. We have months that are 30 days. We have months that are 28 days. It's actually one month in a year that changes depending on what's happening. Either 29 days, either 28 days. And on top of that, if it still doesn't make sense, because for us human, it's supposed to be why we can't time that, it's supposed to make sense, but we don't question.

We even learn that at university. We even get degrees, PhDs, and all of that with those things. And then we even have months that are-- when we take the month of September, in French, to say the number seven, you say, sept. Sept. And the September is almost saying the seventh month. But somehow, the seventh month being the ninth month of the year in our calendar. And then we go to October. Oct will be eight. And then we end up counting our time where October is the 10th month of our calendar when the name of the month itself let's us know the number eight is there. 

November, like neuf, nueve. We count time thinking that we're counting it to be like an 11th month of the year, but the name that tells us that it's the ninth month. December, same thing. 12th month of the year, and then we call it by the name of something that is in the 10th position. Ten, December. But even that, all of our PhDs, politically, no one questioned that. No one thinks it's time to rewrite the history of humanity. 

If we don't want to rewrite it, then let's reveal the archives that indigenous people have been keeping they wouldn't want anyone to know about. Because if you tell the world to go to the indigenous people to see the archives, then the center of humanity changes. It's not going to be any more the so-called superpower country, because the concept of superpower country is not necessarily based on the knowledge of our time and our space.

It's based on the knowledge of how to destroy our time and our space. The capacity of destruction of our time and space is what makes some countries become the superpower countries. Not based on the advancements of the human genius. Not based on the advancement of ingenuity that humanity produces. 

And another discrepancy that you can look at and understand that we are really being led as rams and cows and all of that in our modern society, or our modern world now, is that we talk about midnights, which in perfect English would mean the middle of the night. We talk about midday, which in English would mean the middle of the day. And at the same time, we made some gymnastics in our approach to time and space in the way that 60 minutes after midnight, we count 1:00 AM. Meaning we are in a new day.

Because when you check 60 minutes after midnight, you will see that time and day changes, and we are in a new day. And no one questioned what gymnastics, or what acrobacy, or what magic allowed a human being to go from middle of the night to a new day in 60 minutes.

Luke Storey: [01:39:03] The new day should be when the sun comes up.

Naba Iritah: [01:39:05] Sun comes up.

Luke Storey: [01:39:06] That's day time.

Naba Iritah: [01:39:07] That's day time.

Luke Storey: [01:39:08] Yeah.

Naba Iritah: [01:39:09] So what magic did we use to go from midnight--

Luke Storey: [01:39:12] You need to run for president. Change some shit around here.

Naba Iritah: [01:39:16] You need to run-- 

Luke Storey: [01:39:16] These things never made sense to me.

Naba Iritah: [01:39:20] We'll vote for you.

Luke Storey: [01:39:21] And what about yesterday too? You were talking about we what we call the new year on our Gregorian calendar as January 1st is in the middle of winter when everything's dead. There's nothing new. That's the oldest time of the year.

Naba Iritah: [01:39:36] Exactly. Everything's dead.

Luke Storey: [01:39:38] Like, ah, God.

Naba Iritah: [01:39:42] Who goes and celebrates a new year when everything's dead, when in nature, you look, and even flies don't fly. Mosquitoes are not alive. All the birds migrate. Hide. All of the natural lives and all of that go to hide. But that's when humans, we come out to say, oh, we're celebrating a new year.

Luke Storey: [01:40:10] Do the Dogon people in your archives have a totally different calendar that's established?

Naba Iritah: [01:40:17] Yeah, yeah, we have a different calendar, and it's actually the oldest. We like saying that, and then people don't like us saying that we have the oldest calendar that exists. But we say that we have the oldest calendar that exists because we haven't changed the way we count time since the time of the pharaohs. We haven't changed the way time is counted. And then if Africa is the cradle of humanity, you don't reach the state of awareness if you don't know your time. 

For even Africa, the continent, or the Nile Valley civilization to be considered a place where humanity for the first time came to achieve awareness is the day that we have actually completed the map of the sky. The day the map of the sky was completed, that's the day that they said, okay, now we know our space. We know our time. Then with space and time, because you cannot separate the two, the two concepts work together and you cannot separate them. There's no way you can separate them. 

You cannot talk about time without space, and you cannot talk about the space without time. That's what existence is. So the whole existence, by itself, the whole universe is time and space working together to reach somewhere. And the day our ancestors in the Nile Valley, human ancestors, achieved the ingenuity, and all of that, that's the day that they declared they reached awareness. 

You wonder why people in the modern society are the way they are? That's because there no awareness, because no one knows what time it is. No one knows the space they live in, and everybody just knows about their job and then how to bring the bread on the table. All of that.

Luke Storey: [01:42:40] And the latest episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

Naba Iritah: [01:42:43] Exactly. Keeping up with the reality shows and all of that. People have time to distract themselves but don't have time to research and question their existence.

Luke Storey: [01:42:55] Right. Well, this is the path of the mystic, the one who sits in nature and observes in solitude. And these are the people that we go to the mountaintop in the Himalayas or wherever and get the wisdom from those people who don't know anything. It's like the uneducated are the initiated.

Naba Iritah: [01:43:17] Yeah. And developed and all of that. Yeah, it's sad the way our cultures look at the modern world. We appreciate the planes. The concept of plane is like imitation. In our culture, in our teaching, we teach people that there is no emptiness in the universe. The universe is already full. That's why we call it the universe. That's how we call it the cosmos. Universe is something that is unique, but within it, there's a lot of diverse things that can manifest, where everything is in perfect order. The cosmos. And nothing can be added. Nothing new can be added within it.

Luke Storey: [01:44:16] Oh, that's a trip. I'm thinking just from the Vedic philosophy, that there is only one thing. Consciousness. So uni, one, versatility. So it's multiple expressions of one.

Naba Iritah: [01:44:37] One thing.

Luke Storey: [01:44:39] Okay. Is that what you're saying?

Naba Iritah: [01:44:40] Yeah, that's how I'm putting it with that religious perspective.

Luke Storey: [01:44:47] Sure. That's just where I know that concept.

Naba Iritah: [01:44:50] Exactly. But on the intellectual perspective approach on that, we will say that it's like one thing that exists, and within that thing, everything is different but functioning for the advancement of that thing. It's like a human body. A human body is like a universe. We can call you a human body a universe where it's one thing, but everything in the human body, different organs and different stuff, and all of the cells and everything, everything working together from the smallest to the biggest. All of them working together for the body to achieve whatever is supposed to be achieving. 

Same thing as the universe. And within that universe, we learn, once the rise of, I think that was Industrial Revolution in England, when the Industrial Revolution was born in England, then science, technology, all of that started  now producing these dreams, utopic dreams that certain things can be added, certain things can be done. But we have to do those things by-- I mean, things that nature did not do, we want to do those things. Things that nature did not make, we want to make those things. Meaning we want to challenge nature, or without destroying destroy nature, make what it has not done.

Maybe it was slower without the highways, but people traveled around the world. Maybe it took them time without the planes, but somehow, they traveled. Even when the pilgrims came to America, they traveled from East Coast to West Coast. They did that. How did they do that? We don't question. But we just get to be in the state of enjoying what we call creation, what we call invention.

We have recognitions that we give to those people who are inventors for whatever they invented. But to invent something, that thing has to be something that does not exist. To create something, it has to be something that does not exist and then you're creating it. In our teachings, the human being's brain is capable of everything except one thing. Creation. The human being's brain will not create something that it hasn't been exposed to. Either in your dreams, either in a nature. 

So for the brain to be able to create something, it has to be exposed to it first. It has to be something that the brain already perceived or seen for it to be created. Now, what we end up calling invention and creation is the mistakes that we make in trying to copy what nature made. When we take the plane, it's like a bird. We watch how the birds fly, and then we try to imitate. And we wanted to fly like a bird, so we did that. 

And then we look at cars we drive. Every car that you see, once you turn the lights on and you watch it from far in the dark, it's like an animal. It's like the face of an animal in nature. We even give them the names. Jaguar, this, this, this, that, and all of that. That's how we even--

Luke Storey: [01:49:04] Even boats are like a duck on the water.

Naba Iritah: [01:49:07] Exactly. A duck on the water.

Luke Storey: [01:49:10] With their feet, the little propellers.

Naba Iritah: [01:49:12] Thank you. So it's the same thing. So we have to watch something in nature to copy it, but we don't call that invention. Now, once you copy it and then you copy it wrong, that's what you call invention, that's what you call creativity. But that's what the modern society rewards. So you see, at the depth of the human brain, the modern society, or Western society, rewards mistakes, reward things that are fake, rewards things that are not the reality.

So then why will you and I be sitting here blaming this American guy, young boy or young lady who is like, I want awareness? Let me travel to Peru and go get it. Let me travel to the Amazon and go get it. Let me travel to China or India and go get it. And then they come, and then they make mistakes. People like that. People don't like people who do things real because in the depth of every brain in this society, whatever is not real is more worthy. 

That's why we have all of the, how do you call them? Stars in Hollywood and all of that. They have don't live the way Hollywood presents them. I think you even can be better. They have their way that they live. They have their families. They have their things that they do every day like normal human beings. But because they are paid to show a fake of them, then that fake of them is rewarded. So that's a big problem of our society nowadays.

Luke Storey: [01:50:56] Very interesting. Interesting perspective. I'm going to really have to ponder that one. Yeah. What about language?

Naba Iritah: [01:51:06] Language.

Luke Storey: [01:51:06] Now we look at all the Latin languages. It's like they represent different cultures, yet they are still essentially rooted in the same foundation. And you were talking yesterday about your language and all the many dialects of your people. And then at one point, you even talked about when you were playing your drum, which by the way, sent me into a really unbelievably deep state, which is a whole other conversation, probably. 

But you said, yeah, my people, when I'm playing my drum, it's actually speaking, and it's speaking a language, and they would know by the way I'm hitting the drum and the different notes that it's producing exactly what I'm saying. I thought that was fascinating. So tell us a bit about your language and language as a whole. 

And what I think is most interesting about that is the limitations of most of the languages in the world. Let's just say the Latin languages, again, that they really lack the true expression of the expansiveness of nature in the natural world, and the cosmos. It seems, with the language that I speak in English, for example, that I'm limited to a very limited bandwidth of communicating my experience.

Naba Iritah: [01:52:27] Yes. English, because we're speaking in English, it's called a language because we don't know what the concept of language is. In French, the tongue is la langue. So that's where the concept of even la langue is coming from. It's even a borrowing. So for someone who speaks English, to say that English is a language is even controversial because you call your tongue in a language that belongs to another tongue. The French word for the tongue is langue.

Luke Storey: [01:53:26] Yeah. Spanish, lengua. Is that right? Lengua?

Naba Iritah: [01:53:30] Exactly. So then for an English person to say, English is my language, it doesn't make sense to the brain. So English has, I think, 26 letters to manifest its language. Twenty six. A, B, all the way to Z. And with 26 letters, how will you be able to manifest the whole universe, the whole nature, the whole existence with only 26 letters? If we are considered to be intelligent beings, how can we manifest our intelligence with 26 letters? 

You can see we are limited. And because of that, we end up using concepts. Now, we end up putting words together to explain a concept. We end up putting sounds together to make up words, and then all of that. And when we say tran spawt, transports, transformation, and all of that, is because in English. There is no way to just explain the concept of something that is a changing.  So then we have to be using two different concepts to do that. 

Now, English is not a language. Any language "that's derived from the Latin roots" is not a language. We call that a dialect. That's called a dialect. Dialect is a deterioration of a language. It's a degeneration of a language. And then anyone who speaks French, English, Spanish, and all of that, those are just the generation of the Latin concept, which itself is also a combination of many other civilization languages that are put together to make it. 

So when we look at English, we cannot make sounds. We only speak letters. Let's say you teach a child that the letter B-- you call it B, right? Let's say B. In English, you don't teach a child that the letter is B. You teach your child that that letter is B. But it's a letter, where the letter has two letters to describe it. Because B will be like the sound ba, and the sound eh to describe a letter that we call B.  

And then you have the letter N. And then in English, you call it N. So technically, you're using two sounds, eh, and A, and na to describe the sound N. That's how we teach our children. A, normally, the sound that it should make is ah. The letter should make the sound ah. But somehow, we use the concept of A to describe the sound because we don't teach our student English to say ah, be. We don't say that. We tell them to say A, B. 

So let's say a child that's so intelligent that's not conditioned yet, that has a brain that has not been conditioned yet, let's say that you write the words banana on the board and you ask the child, after learning the letter, can you read this for me? If that child has a brain that's so fresh, unconditioned brain, and that child resonates with nature, with whatever makes sense, and the whatever's logical, that child will read it beanene.  

Now, you're not going to let him say that You're not going to let your child that. You're going to be like, no, it's read banana. But it doesn't make sense because you told me this is this. This is this. This is this. When you put them together, this is what they make. So we call that the contemporary agreements. And that's the language that we speak, and that's the language that is leading the world. A language that's a contemporary agreement. A language that does not have anything to do with nature. A language that does not have anything to do with who we are. 

So you cannot speak a tongue. You cannot be uttering things out of your mouth that your heart's ordered your brain to order the tongue to say when it doesn't even have anything that it looks like in nature. It doesn't even manifest the nature, represent nature that you live in. So when you take the letter A, the way we even write it, nothing in nature really looks like it. Nature does make things that look like that. When you take letter B, nature doesn't make things that look like that. 

All of the letters that we have, you look at them-- we even have the letter W. When you really write letter W, that letter, the way we write it, that is almost like a double V. We are taught to read it as W when it's supposed to be a double V used to make that letter. So all of that is what's causing the mental degeneration of our societies nowadays because we say things that don't even exist in nature. We see things a different way. We don't even see nature anymore. We see things a different way.

In Africa, in our indigenous places, we speak the sounds. We don't have letters, but we have sounds. And most of the languages that I speak have at least 400 sounds that we make, and then about 300 ideograms. So we speak based on sonograms and ideograms. I can only speak about Africa. All of the languages that we speak in our continent, in our villages, in our continent, are languages that have their roots directly connected to the language that the ancient Egyptians were speaking.

I'm not talking about the Arabs in Egypt now. They speak Arabic. But the language that the original ancient Egyptians spoke before the Arab invasion of that land is called the Medu. Medu, which means the speech. Medu Neter, which means the divine speech, the sacred speech, which when you look at those characters, and the sound, and the representation, everything is nature represented. Our concept A is a bird, eagle. Our concept of M, where you will say M is a, what do you call that bird again? The bird that has big eyes?

Luke Storey: [02:02:32] Owl.

Naba Iritah: [02:02:32] Owl. So you will see that most of the characters and most of the sounds preserved are rare like nature. So we're speaking nature. So that also travels all the way to the traditional languages that we speak today. My language, that I speak, [Inaudible] or Gurmukhi, they have at least 60% of their concepts that are directly connected to the Nile Valley language that was spoken. The Greek called the language hieroglyphs, meaning the sacred writing. Hieroglyphs, the sacred writing. 

So that's even why they call it that way. When they came to study, they saw that that language is about things that are very sacred. And there's no way for you to curse in that language. For you to even be planning to say wrong things. It's difficult for the brain. The brain gets challenged. So technically, you speak a language that does not give you the option of saying evil, saying bad things.

Luke Storey: [02:04:04] That's heavy. In these ancient languages, are there words or concepts for ownership for a person to be able to say own land, or own an ox? That's my thing. That's my that.

Naba Iritah: [02:04:22] No. Even in the writing, to say my-- if I want to say my hat, that's in front of me here, I would say, [Inaudible]. And then that character is a human being. It's not me.

Luke Storey: [02:04:47] Wow. That's cool.

Naba Iritah: [02:04:49] The character of I is the human being.

Luke Storey: [02:04:55] Wow. In the hieroglyphs in Egypt, for example, in the pyramids and whatnot, and I know nothing about history, so bear with me if I don't get any of it right, but are those hieroglyphs all or most of them pre-Arabic?

Naba Iritah: [02:05:19] That's the very first language. I think Arabs are still looking for the origin of their language. You can question the Arabs. Do they know where their language is coming from? No, seriously. The origin of their language, where does it come from? When we want to speak about English, origins of it is Latin. French, some of it is Latin, Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, and all of that. So you can trace certain languages like that. The Arabic language is the one that cannot be traced yet because no one knows where that is from.

Luke Storey: [02:06:03] Oh, Interesting. What about Sanskrit?

Naba Iritah: [02:06:05] Sanskrit is a variation of what we call the hieroglyphs. It's a variation. That's why it doesn't even carry the name of the glyphs, but more so like the script. So script means what? Sanskrit? Script means that someone came, someone learned something, and then tried to write it, develop it. With the glyph, it's like writing itself. Meaning you write the book, I read the book, I can take that, whatever I read from your book, and then we make a script of what I learn from your book. 

So there's a lot of languages that became, and they became from their original language, which is just nature speaking nature, and they want to teach people. Egyptology is a discipline that is created in modern world universities that I don't like. And I'm sorry for the people who really follow the Egyptologist, and the anthropologists, and all of that. They're just doing the job of what religion and science started. That's what they just doing.

Luke Storey: [02:07:37] Well, it seems like there's a lot of controversy around the temples, the pyramids, etc, in Egypt. There's a school of thought that many people hold that those structures are pre-Egyptian and that they've been commodified because of tourism, and academia, and such that the true origin, and history, and age of these structures is not what we've been told too. And again, I don't know a lot about that, but--

Naba Iritah: [02:08:11] Yeah, I know, I know. I know a lot about it because I get those questions a lot. And people like talking about Atlantis. They saying that Atlantis is older than the civilization in Egypt. Atlantis, that concept itself, for us, we're not emotional. In our culture, in any African culture, we don't move forward, approaching things with emotions. We use the logic, the brain. 

Atlantis, itself is a Greek word. That's a Greek word. Atlantis, it's a Greek word. But the Greeks were traveling to Egypt to learn. The Greeks are the students of Egyptians. That only should tell people that, okay, you just want to take the credit away from a group of people, but you don't have a way of doing it. I want to say something here in front of these cameras and then challenge anyone and say, gather your strength, and have courage. Get some more courage, buy your ticket, and travel to Africa.

Africa is not what they tell you. Travel to Africa. You will discover Africa. Travel to Africa, and then decide to-- that's why even most of the countries in Africa were painted in red and said that it's terrorist activities. You shouldn't go there. You shouldn't go there. That's rolling people with fear. People live there. People live there. Your embassies are there. You have military bases over there where they tell the citizens not to go because of whatever you discover and all of that.

Luke Storey: [02:10:32] Probably not any more dangerous than Chicago or San Francisco.

Naba Iritah: [02:10:35] Or San Francisco anyway. So the logic is that Atlantis is a Greek word, and then if we consider it to be a Greek word, then the Greeks were just people who were coming to study under the Egyptian priesthood, and temple, mystery schools, and all of that. There's a story I'm going to tell you that you will laugh. I know you will laugh. People will laugh about that story. But that story is that the foundation of what you call modern society? The story is the foundation of what you call modern world.  

At some point in time, people were traveling to Kemet, what we call ancient Egypt, to go and study philosophy, astrology, astronomy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, all of that. People were traveling in Egypt for that because, at that moment, that's where the awareness is, almost like how people want to travel to Dubai. Because Dubai is rising now. The rise up. So everybody wants to go see there. Everybody wants to go buy things there. Or China. Everyone wants to go buy things there because it's cheap, and all of that. 

So for that time, in human history, in that area, Nile Valley was the area where awareness was valued. Everything was like, you want to evolve, you have to travel there. After many generations of people traveling, then rivalry, and jealousy, and envy started coming. Those people, especially the Greeks, asked if there was a way for them to stop traveling to Africa now that they studied, they apprenticed, they became so well known in whatever they were coming to learn. 

Is there a way for them to stop coming to Africa every year to honor the temples, and then they can just build their own temples on their lands? And the priest said, but why will you build a temple on your lands? Those temples already exist here. That built you and all of that. Show some integrity and some dignity towards the powers that help you elevate. They're like, well, because they want to honor their temples and stop traveling here because now they feel like they can become themselves. 

Just like how everybody is doing today too. Everybody goes and takes and comes and wants to use it to be like, yeah, now I have it too. So the priest in the temples then asked them, so what God will you have in your temples there when you build that? They say, we will have this God. Well, isn't that the God that we have here? What will your God do? We will have a god for sun. We'll have a god of war, a god of famine, a god of rain. 

Then the priests in Egypt were like, we have all of those gods here. That's the temples. Those gods already have temples where the whole world is coming to worship, because the goal was the unification of humanity. So you shouldn't have your own temple somewhere. You're supposed to have one authority, which is the temple that the pharaoh recognized, one authority under which everybody comes to learn, which makes the whole world disciplined.

And every year, the whole world will converge towards one location, what people are doing today. People are going to Mecca every year to go on Hajj. People are going to Vatican on a pilgrimage every year, Mecca on a pilgrimage every year. People do that. So that's what was really the goal. Every year, everybody has to go on the pilgrimage to the Nile Valley and then take advantage to honor all of those powers in nature that those people were able to connect with and then establish temples for. 

They said no. They want their own temples. Then they say, okay, since all of the things you're trying to create already have a temple over here, is there something that does not have a temple yet? And the priest in Kemet told them, well, everything has a temple already. Everything has a temple. All the temples are already occupied. There's nothing in the universe that you can look at and think it doesn't have a temple. Everything has a temple already occupied.

And that's when they asked the priest, is there a temple for nothing? He's like, what do you mean? Come again. Do you all have a temple of nothing? He's like, no, we don't even have that concept. It's like, okay, then we will create our temple, and then our temple will be temples of nothing. And the priest, just for curiosity, who will be the god of your temple? Said, the god of nothing. Okay. Another curiosity. What will your God do? What will be the function of your God? 

It will be a god that allows you to do anything you want to do and everything you want to do. Anything you want to be, everything you want to be. Then the new principle, meaning a temple that worships a god who is a god of no principle. The god of freedom. The concept of freedom. And yeah, that's what built a society. And they took that concept. In their mythology, you can see that. You can see in the mythology how the mother and the children would team up to kill the father and all of that.

What do you see in the modern society? So when the modern society traveled around the world-- freedom, democracy. Freedom, democracy is just a fake. It's like they know what they're doing. No one is free over here. And what does freedom mean? Freedom means you're living a life without principle, a life without discipline. And that's why the concept of laws have to be put in place. You have to create laws. 

Through the Greeks, a Western society gets to stand on the rock that is against principle, but for law. Because normally, principle is something that comes from divine. Principle is something that's divine that came from the divine. And then the law is something that's made by men. So then because we're worshiping a man-made god, then everything we have to stand by will have to be made by man too. In good English, how do you call a god that is made by a man?

Luke Storey: [02:19:23] A counterfeit.

Naba Iritah: [02:19:25] That's a demon.

Luke Storey: [02:19:26] Oh, demon. Even worse. I like where you're going here because lately, I've been contemplating-- how do I articulate this in a way that's concise? Looking at the geopolitical landscape in our country in the past few years, it's a clown show. I mean, it's literally a circus, right?

Naba Iritah: [02:19:54] It's a circus.

Luke Storey: [02:19:55] And so we're all under the assumption that if our society is off track, that we have the "freedom" to elect someone different that's going to make things different. It's like we're outsourcing our culture to people that we hold the false conception of being people that have some inherent God-given right to rule over other people. 

And so the older I get, and hopefully more wise I get, it seems that the error is that we have a superstition as a people that certain special people are bestowed with the right to impose their will over other people. And we believe that we have a choice AKA freedom because we can pick one ruler over another ruler, even though I don't really think we have much choice in who rules. 

But I'm of this concept that no human being has the inherent right to rule over any other human being. And to your point, these laws, these demonic laws that are made of the laws of man and not the principles of God or Spirit keep us spinning in this perpetual fantasy that somehow, we can affect change by picking a different false law. So it's this illusion of choice wherein if we're following the principles of God, there is no law higher than that law?

Naba Iritah: [02:21:44] No.

Luke Storey: [02:21:44] So we don't need the people. We don't need the government. But we've been so conditioned to think that we need government. And that's how they trick us. That's how we give up our power, and we allow them to travel around the world and extinguish the wisdom of all the indigenous cultures, all the medicines, all of the connection to nature, all of these ancient teachings that are being put out. And they're the fires, the embers that keep the human civilization moving forward.

Naba Iritah: [02:22:17] Yes.

Luke Storey: [02:22:18] It seems that much of the root of that is our superstition in believing that someone needs to save us or rule over us and has power over us.

Naba Iritah: [02:22:28] Not even that. It's just this system that has established the Western way of doing things is a system that scared of competition, and it does not like another system to exist. And the only way that system can exist freely and not worry and feel like it's safe is by extinguishing any other system that existed before it.

Luke Storey: [02:23:02] Yes.

Naba Iritah: [02:23:03] Let me shock you a little bit. 

Luke Storey: [02:23:05] Please.

Naba Iritah: [02:23:08] The reason why you and I cannot run for the White House, to be in the White House, is because you and I, we are not the descendant of the Founding Fathers of America. If you and I were somehow direct or distant descendants of those who signed the American Constitution, the Founding Fathers who signed the American Constitution, then maybe one day you and I can dream that our children can run. 

So technically, the reason why every four years we change the person in the White House, or every eight years someone has to be changed-- when you look at all of them, they all are either direct or indirect descendants of those that are called the Founding Fathers. So technically, they are being chosen to keep safe the legacy of their ancestors.

Luke Storey: [02:24:17] Yeah.

Naba Iritah: [02:24:18] So if my ancestor was brought in America as a slave, that's who I'm going to be. There's no way I'm going to be something else. If my ancestors will run from Italy and come and live here and then have to struggle to establish, that's what he's going to keep doing. If my ancestors ran from Ireland to come and then do that, that's what he's going to be doing. It will never get closer to that. 

Now, is there any shortcuts to get through that? Yes. Then you have to sell something. You have to exchange. You have to sell something. You have to sell your soul, your dignity, your integrity. You have to sell something for you to get the way. So that's why, being in this work and a spiritual and cultural revolution activist that I like saying that I am, I just don't trust any human being that feels like they are in a position to make the law.

Luke Storey: [02:25:29] Word.

Naba Iritah: [02:25:30] Yeah. I just don't trust--

Luke Storey: [02:25:33] Me either. Because in your heart, in your gut, if you just think about it-- again, I'm going to say the same thing, what gives the right for one human being to exert their will over another human being? Because they're born to a bloodline, because their founding fathers were this or that? It just goes against my nature. In my heart, I know that that's not right.

Naba Iritah: [02:26:00] It's not right. It's not.

Luke Storey: [02:26:02] And yet here we are in this matrix that we call civilization that's been superimposed upon ancient civilizations that were already here doing just fine. I mean, not that there weren't always problems with humanity and warring tribes and whatever, but now you actually can't leave the system. Really. I mean, try to go live in the woods and be left alone. You can't do it.

Naba Iritah: [02:26:33] There's no way you can do it.

Luke Storey: [02:26:34] You have to have a birth certificate, a passport, a Social Security number. You really can't exist outside of the system unless, I don't know, maybe there are remote tribes in the Amazon or elsewhere that are just born of their mother, and they live on the land, and are left uninterrupted. But that group of people is minute and very rare.

Naba Iritah: [02:26:59] You're just a property of the one. People thought that slavery is finished. Now slavery is not just on black people. Everybody's a slave now to--

Luke Storey: [02:27:15] Free range.

Naba Iritah: [02:27:16] For few families.

Luke Storey: [02:27:17] Free range slavery. I can drive down the road, but I always say, try to not pay taxes.

Naba Iritah: [02:27:22] Now you will see what will happen.

Luke Storey: [02:27:23] Let them know how free you are. And that's not to diminish actual slavery, obviously, but there are degrees of slavery, right?

Naba Iritah: [02:27:32] Exactly.

Luke Storey: [02:27:32] There's degrees where you're in a forced labor camp and you can't leave the property. But there's a spectrum of degrees, and we all on the planet, for the most part, experience some degree of that, right?

Naba Iritah: [02:27:45] Exactly. Yeah. You can be a slave and wearing a tie, no problem. Wearing a suit. But you just--

Luke Storey: [02:27:53] I would argue that you're volunteering yourself.

Naba Iritah: [02:27:56] Exactly. 

Luke Storey: [02:27:58] I've tried wearing a tie a couple times. I thought, I don't feel right. Wearing something around where you breathe, man.

Naba Iritah: [02:28:07] It's a good symbol. People just don't look at reality because reality is built for people to look at, but not the reality itself. Sorry to say, at my place, goats, and cows, and rams are the ones that carry ropes around their necks. Now we put ropes on the necks and all of that. But the working class or the politician is aware of the fact that they are in the system where they cannot get out of. It's like you and I have something that we can do in life. Do you think a good politician knows how to do something in life if it's not talking?

Luke Storey: [02:28:58] Acting.

Naba Iritah: [02:29:00] Acting. That's it. So it's just what it is.

Luke Storey: [02:29:04] I knew we were going to have fun.

Naba Iritah: [02:29:08] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [02:29:10] I would be remiss if we didn't cover this. I know we've been going for a while, so thank you for your generosity of time. When I'm interested in someone, I could go forever. You're an interesting dude.

Naba Iritah: [02:29:21] I'm here. I'm not going anywhere.

Luke Storey: [02:29:22] Going back to the Nile Valley, and again, I've never been terribly interested in Egypt, or the pyramids, or anything. It's starting to come into my awareness because many of our friends here go there often, and I hear some pretty impressive stories. But one of the things that I find interesting, and you alluded to this earlier, are these structures that we can't explain through modern science, technology, mathematics, and so on, that seem to pop up on the planet in different places with cultures that were supposedly not in touch with one another, that all exist on very specific ley lines on the planet?

Naba Iritah: [02:30:05] Correct.

Luke Storey: [02:30:06] So that gets my interest because when I'm being lied to, it instigates a yearning and curiosity for the truth. Well, if this is not true, then what is? And one thing I find interesting about the Nile Valley and the situation of the temples and pyramids there is if you look at that river, you can look at it as a spine with the chakra systems, and that shit lines up.

Naba Iritah: [02:30:35] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [02:30:36] And it's like you were talking about yesterday, the macrocosm and the microcosm. As below, so above kind of thing. I don't know. What's your perspective, or the Dogon perspective, on these energy centers and their placement, and if the people that were building them were in some communication physically or telepathically?

Naba Iritah: [02:31:01] Magnetically, yes. Spiritually, yes. And when we want to use the telepathic, that's just leading people to think that you can just sit and think about something and it will manifest. But it's not the culture that built those pyramids, that build those rocks, and all of that. It's a culture of reality and pure thinking. That's what built those cultures. And those structures are, in my language, we will call them jinglis. They're like gigantic jinglis, meaning portals.

What's a jingli? A jingli is a place that has a concentration of energies that a human identifies. And then through that, the human then will set the technology that allows us to set that thing in the way that you tell the other realities, invisible realities, that from now on, between you and I, this is the border, and this is where we meet to exchange. Almost like getting some embassy where you meet and exchange and all of that.

Luke Storey: [02:32:37] Between the seen and unseen.

Naba Iritah: [02:32:39] Seen and unseen realms. So the jingli is almost like the border between the two, the material and non-material world. That's the border. And then the physical manifestation of it can be from small rocks like this in your space, very spiritual space, or can be even big structures that can be constructed. So one thing you have to notice, in the modern societies, when the a monument is built, a monument is built on a concentrated energy.

That's why when they build the monuments, it's closed. Because there's going to be stuff to be done before that monument is placed there. So they close it to the point where you don't see what's being built. It's only when it's finished that they come and unwrap it so you can see. That way, we clap like we achieved something. So at that moment that's what it was too. 

You remember I was saying, the pharaoh, his job is the unification of humanity on every level, not just physically, spiritually, intellectually, magnetically, energetically, and all of that. Everything has to be unified because that's what will allow the outer celestial body to feel realities or existences, to feel like we are not a danger to them. And then to feel like they can interact with us. We can exchange and do things.

Luke Storey: [02:34:16] So it's like a neutral meeting ground. 

Naba Iritah: [02:34:19] Meeting ground. Thank you. So then all of the things that were built are on ley lines, Stonehenge, those in South America, those in China, those in Australia, all of those. Even in the Pacific. All of those things are centered. And then their communication goes from those other places all the way to the Nile Valley. And then one specific thing about Nile Valley is that that's the only river that you see that will flow from South to North.

And then that's the only river you will see that in its flow, it starts from a body of water, Lake Victoria, and then travels through the mountains, forests, through the desert, and then go into another body of water, the Mediterranean Sea. That's the only river you see that. So the technology is pure. That's what I'm saying we shouldn't-- I don't want to lead people to think it's something that you have to be imagine. It's not an imagination. 

It's a reality. Pure fact that ancestors have to pinpoint to be able to do that. So even our concept of time, when we're talking about the calendar, our concept of time was based on that, but that's even something that allows time to be very well verified by making sure the space was verified as well. And that's how they did. And then we created the calendar. We call it the sidereal calendar based on the series star and all of that.  

And then it has its cycle. It has its spiritual thing. It allows you to practice your spirituality, tell you the period you were born in, under what our power were you born in, what are the forbiddens, and all of that. Things you should eat. Things you shouldn't eat. Things you shouldn't kill, all of that. It has all of that. They tell you when to worship your ancestors, when to worship the divine powers. 

It gives you all of that because there are some days where even the divine powers and all of that don't respond. There's some days they don't respond. We call those days the days of rest. So those days are the days that normally everybody would take time to clean their space, clean the temple, clean their shrine, reorganize everything, all of that. So we have all of that that exists in that calendar. And then we have the app as well. People can look at it.

Luke Storey: [02:37:11] An app. Is that what you said?

Naba Iritah: [02:37:12] Yeah, we have an app.

Luke Storey: [02:37:13] Oh, cool. Is that is that on your website or something?

Naba Iritah: [02:37:15] It's on the website.

Luke Storey: [02:37:17] Oh, cool. We'll put that in the show notes. And I forgot to mention the show notes, you guys listening. It's going to be lukestorey.com/dogon. D-O-G-O-N. lukestorey.com/dogon. With the pyramids and other ancient sacred structures, I mean, the golden question here is, how did they do it? A lot of people think that there were advanced alien ETs and stuff. I don't know. 

And I don't know that much about this. I'm just a guy. I watch a few YouTube videos. I'm an idiot. But it seems to me that it's very likely that these ancient civilizations had an understanding of physics that had been lost, that we don't understand. Some use of electromagnetism, using the forces of nature and energy in a way that would seem magical to us now because we've lost so much of our intelligence. Do you think that it's something like that?

Naba Iritah: [02:38:32] It's not lost.

Luke Storey: [02:38:33] Okay.

Naba Iritah: [02:38:35] If I have to answer that question--

Luke Storey: [02:38:37] It's only lost to me and a lot of other people.

Naba Iritah: [02:38:40] I will answer that it's not lost because, how do you call it? It's things that have been preserved and hidden. Imagine those powers have to be in the hand of the modern society. Those are knowledge. Just with the small archives that they were able to steal in the temples, digging the graves and steal in the temples in Nile Valley, and all of that, you saw what they built. You saw what they're doing. So imagine if they were able to have access to those powers. 

We still have pyramids in the desert that are been dug up now. they're digging out, and they're taking archives as well in the desert. They're simply amazing. Not just those that are in our valley, because when the migration happened, it happened in settlements, from there all the way to Sudan. That's why even now, the Egyptologists are bringing the confusion that there's a difference between ancient Egypt and then Nubia. But they don't understand that it's settlements. 

During the migration, before the temples and the civilization started falling over there, then people started settling. Moving, migrating, and then settling as they move. When we speak about the concept of migration, people don't understand what that means. That means that you're moving with all of your chickens, goats, human, men, children, pregnant women, elders, everything. You're moving with all of those. And then on top of that, all of the spiritual acquisitions and spiritual things that you already acquired and everything, you're moving with all of that. 

So you can only continue working for so long because you have to stop at some point and restart. And that's what they did. The generation would be in one settlement, and then they will continue. They will be, okay, now this new generation will continue. And that's why you will see in the migration as the Dogon, we went from East to West, where it was-- and then where we tried to realign ourselves, it's easy for us. We just knew the direction to take. And the direction would be from West, we go East.

And when we go East, we know where all of the settlements are because the language will still remain there, and the practices will be there. And then we have the concept of the norms. So we still have the norms. And when we see the norms, it tells us already where we are and how we should be conducting ourselves in that domain and all of that. So yeah, those things still exist. They haven't been lost. It's just preserved. And then falling in the hand of the modern society, modern society will decide to kill--

Luke Storey: [02:41:50] Yeah. It's like giving a child a weapon.

Naba Iritah: [02:41:53] A weapon.

Luke Storey: [02:41:54] All right. Last question for you. Yesterday, during the proceedings of the ceremony, we were working with all these different herbal concoctions, teas and the eggs, and kola nuts, and at one point, we had this brain-cleansing snuff that would closely resemble the experience resembled the experience of hape. It didn't make me nauseous, though, but really lit the brain up. In the Dogon culture, or in your experience, is there ever a place for any psychoactive plants, iboga, or kanna, or what's considered plant medicines now? Is that part of y'all's world at all?

Naba Iritah: [02:42:37] Yeah. Let's talk about iboga. Iboga is a plant that comes from the people in the forest. And we are the people from the Savanna. And then for us, we have different ways of approaching existence, the hidden part of existence. And then those ways don't necessarily involve the psychedelics or the alteration of human mind because those practices that we use are purely hard work where we give you the technique.

It's like a Shaolin temple. You don't go to Shaolin Temple and they give you psychedelics to know how to do yoga, tai chi, and all of that. They just teach you the technique, and they get you the discipline. They get you to work hard. For something like that, people like doing yoga. People will put all kinds of money, all kinds of time into practicing yoga. But when it comes to practicing spirituality and investigating the non-material world, people will just take the shortcuts and then take the plant medicine to do that.

Now, as the Dogon, even if we do have it, I would never, never expose it because the exposition of it is what now is leading all of the Amazon and all of those other cultures to be invaded and corrupted, and then being destroyed, and all of that. For us, we expose our gold, and then we die for that.

Now let's talk about medicine. No. And psychedelics is becoming scientific. It's like modern science again. Modern society is gaining. It's taken from indigenous people some techniques or some knowledge to make it their property, which is another way of usurping something, using something that is not yours without even recognition or saying thank you, without even finding a way to give back to the people, and all of that.

So when you look at where iboga is coming from, Gabon, some parts of Cameroon, and those who know the African geography, Congo, and all of that. So when you bring our lands together and then try to take the sea out of the picture and put them together with South America, you will see there's a continuation. They are the same thing. So those people will need to really depend on those things to be able to evolve. It's too wet. It's too wet. But for us, in our temples or where we're from, in our villages, our lands, we just make you work. We just make you work. You work. You work. You do things, and then it will start happening.

Luke Storey: [02:46:09] Well, I can tell you, yesterday, when you started playing your drum, and I didn't have any substances or anything other than the herbal cleansing teas that you guys served which weren't psychoactive or anything, dude.

Naba Iritah: [02:46:25] I know. I know.

Luke Storey: [02:46:28] It wasn't like I was having hallucinations or something like that, but what happened for me was-- I've only had this happen a couple other times when I was working with plant medicines. So that's what was very interesting. Very sober. And I didn't have to even work that hard. I just sat and listened, right?

Naba Iritah: [02:46:45] And then adjust the beats.

Luke Storey: [02:46:46] But man, I started having this energy move in my body. And I know that energy, and I know I'm not doing it, and I know I also can't stop it.

Naba Iritah: [02:46:56] I trust you. I believe you. And I knew that it was intentional too.

Luke Storey: [02:47:02] It was beautiful.

Naba Iritah: [02:47:03] For me to be beaten and that, you could see how dedicated I was as well. It was intentional. I wanted to make a point where even vibration, the beats and its vibration, the sound, the beats' vibration can get you to visit the invisible.

Luke Storey: [02:47:21] Well, you did. I mean, I was crying and shit, and it went on for two hours. It wasn't just like, oh, I felt a funny feeling. I mean, I just surrendered to it and rolled with it because I knew that it was good, but it was very powerful.

Naba Iritah: [02:47:37] Yeah. When you come to my place, you'll be amazed. You come to our place, you'll be amazed because few techniques and technologies that we have, all from nature. You said an egg, kola nuts, flowers, things like that. Drum. And then at summer, you get people. You can get your ancestors' spirit activated in you just drumming. You can get your past life play to you just drumming, without any affect of any stimulant or anything like that. But the music, the beats, the sound will be the stimulant that will resonate from your feet all the way to your crown and get you there.

Luke Storey: [02:48:35] Yeah. Well, I can't wait to do more of it. Before we close, where can people find you? We'll put in the show notes, again, at lukestorey.com/dogon. D-O-G-O-N. I know you guys have your African herbs and stuff I've been taking. And anything you want to send people too?

Naba Iritah: [02:48:53] Yeah. Well, my father started an organization when he came. Because it's a modern society, you have to align by the law. You have to abide by the law and then do your activities, and all of that. So he started a nonprofit called The Earth Center of Maanu Inc. And it's a nonprofit that does great work. For 25 years now, has been doing a great work for our people.  

Even now, our people are misplaced or maybe have to leave their lands and all of that. That's the nonprofit that has been taking care of those people, and helping them, and giving them homes, and all of that. So that is actually a cultural institution where most of the Dogon mission when it comes to everything that we share in the history, philosophy, spirituality, initiation, rite of passage, all of these things that we share. And that's where we do those activities and all of that. That's the organization that is in charge of that. 

And a few years ago, we started another nonprofit. We call it Ankhkasta Natural Healing. And Ankhkasta Natural Healing is the nonprofit that we started that actually comes to complete the job that the other nonprofit, The Earth Center, is doing. And complete the job in the way that it's good to have the knowledge. It's good to sit and listen to the problems. It's good to sit and listen to the good prophecies, and good messages, and all of that, but it's better when you have the practicality of it, when you have a way of solving those problems, when you have a way of dealing with it practically, the thing.

So Ankhkasta Natural Healing comes to open that gate and allow the human being to practically deal with their spirituality, deal with their energies, deal with their physical body, and all of that, so any elements, any spiritual blockages, and any blockages that a human goes through. So Ankhkasta has a network of Dogon priesthoods, Dogon eldership and priesthoods, and Dogon healers. Those people have long, long lines of healing in their DNA in their families and lineage, and all of that, or those who have that priesthood also in their lineage.

So it's like a network, a very big network of priests all around who are now at the service of anyone in the modern society or even in those indigenous societies who are in need of those services and that help and all of that.
And Ankhkasta and The Earth Center have been working a lot to rebuild all of the temples that have fallen, rebuild all of the original temples.

Because people don't understand the difference between a shrine and a temple and temple, a shrine is just a space where you do your thing, but a temple is many shrines coming together. So many lineages come together where everybody's bringing their piece of gift to nature and putting it together for the service of the people. 

So yeah, we've been building the temples and then buying back the lands that the indigenous people have been taken away from. They've been ripped off. We've been buying those back and saving the natural forces. Especially natural forces that exist, that's what we save. So people, if you want to look us up, you can look at just maybe Naba, Naba Lamoussa, on the internet. You'll find us, or go to www.theearthcenter.org, or Ankhkasta, www.anhlife.org, and you'll see everything we do.

Luke Storey: [02:53:28] Awesome. We're going to put it all in there. Well, man, thank you so much for coming to Austin, Texas.

Naba Iritah: [02:53:32] Thank you. Thank you.

Luke Storey: [02:53:33] It's been an incredible couple days with you. I'm so glad we got the time to do this.

Naba Iritah: [02:53:35] Thank you for the hospitality.

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