Kontomblé Community Ritual: A Group Converstation with the Spirits of the Water
Theresa C. Dintino and Amy Tanzman, Diviners with the Strega Tree Collective
Thursday, April 24, 2025, 7:00 - 9:00 pm

Experience a transmission of wisdom from the Spirits of Water, sometimes called Fairies, Nymphs, or Elemental Being. This is an interactive event. Please bring a question and an open heart.

In this unique event, Theresa Dintino and Amy Tanzman will discuss and offer an opportunity to experience an encounter with the Kontomblé – elemental beings – as part of the voice divination practice of the Dagara culture in Burkina Faso. Divination is a check-in time with the otherworld. The ancestors, elemental beings and angels and more come and inform us through divination. Divination opens the space where this information can come through. It is a place of deep listening and connecting with your soul. While many are familiar with tarot and psychic readings, the form of divination Strega Tree offers is called prescriptive and is a bit different. This means that you may be given rituals to perform that are medicine for curing, cleansing or opening communication. You may be asked for an offering of ash or water, the two primal forms of physical matter. You may be encouraged to speak your heart’s desire into a stone. You may be advised to pour milk into running water to help clear an ancestral wound. These are but some examples of the prescriptive rituals you may be given.

Voice Divination is a unique form of divination in the Dagara tradition in which a diviner facilitates a direct conversation between the Kontomblé and the community participating in the ritual. The Kontomblé are gentle and playful beings and divinations with the Kontomblé are often lighthearted and joyful conversations. In the special community divination at Many Rivers, Theresa will act as the diviner and sit behind a curtain while Amy will act as the facilitator to support the divination.

Theresa C. Dintino writes: "My path to becoming a diviner began long before I ever knew I was on it. Only after I had been divining for years did I realize that my life had been leading me here from the beginning. I was born into a personal family lineage of the Italian Strega through my father’s Abruzzese line. His grandmother, Domenica, has been my strongest mentor. She guided me to become initiated into the tradition of stick divination held and generously shared by the Dagara people of Burkina Faso. The interaction of these two paths at a pivotal point in my life constellated all the work I had done through writing and research into a form I could offer as service to my community. That service is divination and all the work that flows out of and through it. My work is a three-pronged combination of my Italian Strega lineage, Dagara stick divination as well as intimate work with the places and entities in my local ecosystem." Theresa is the author of many books including the recently published, The Oscan Oracle: from the Ancient Janarra of the Moon.

Amy Tanzman was initiated as a stick diviner in the Dagara tradition in 2018. She was first introduced to the Dagara through a Kontomblé voice divination in 2013. That profound experience changed the trajectory of her life and she eventually found herself walking the path to becoming a diviner herself. Developing a loving, reciprocal relationship with the Wedemé and Kontomblé (elemental beings of the wild and water), as well as her own lineage and ancestry, has given Amy the tools needed to assist others in their path towards healing and wholeness. As a reiki master, she has 20 years experience in the healing arts, focusing on therapeutic bodywork, energetic rebalancing and Ayurvedic medicine. Her background as a highly skilled healer, allows her to finely tune into her client’s energetic fields during divination. In this space, prescriptive ritual is often given to help heal any imbalances she may find.


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