in what is today the west african country of senegal, a boy aadahi was once born to a family called pattuut. this was during the 14th century, and the mandinkan community, as is often the practice in less individualistic societies, put his family name before his given one so that he was called pattuut aadahi.

by an early age aadahi was recognized as sensitive by village elders, and so was chosen to receive training into the esoteric arts. not quite a shaman, he developed into what we might today call a dowser. when most folks think of dowsing nowadays, they usually picture someone walking around with a y-shaped stick searching for water. aadahi, however, was able to dowse without any external object whatsoever. instead, he used the "tools" that he was born with: his body and his breath.

by tuning into the vortices of energy that rise up from the earth in spiral motions of positive and negative electrical charges, he fashioned his body into a sort of antenna that could pick up and "listen" to vibrations emanating from nature. he could also perform a kind of analysis by breathing onto something and checking its "response." with these abilities, not only was he able to locate the healthiest sources of water, but he could separate out edible plants from poisonous ones. he knew the best times for seeding and fertilizing crops and the best locations for planting them. he advised fishermen on where and when to find the most abundant catches. and on the hunt he knew when an animal was ready for the kill, or when it was best to keep a distance for safety's sake.

have you ever had a sudden thought or feeling about someone - perhaps a close friend or family member - and then right then the phone rang and it was that person? or maybe on one or several occasions, you woke up one minute before the alarm clock went off, just in time to turn the lousy thing off before it made that awful sound? i suppose this is similar to the way aadahi practiced his art, and he could use it anytime and anywhere he wanted, with great accuracy, just by tuning in.

as he mastered his skill, he began to teach individuals in the village how to do it for themselves. and soon the community grew stronger and more self-sufficient, able to survive and flourish even given the highly unstable weather patterns. they even developed a system of deviceless long-distance communication using a form of what we today call remote viewing.

contemporary social scientists tend to write off these more "primitive" practices as mere superstitions, endearing but in their worldview, ungrounded. one day soon, if all goes well, this will change.