The Original African Book of the Dead

Every great tradition has a map for the soul's journey after death. The Tibetans gave the world the most famous one. But the primal map — the original — was drawn in Africa.

The idea is ancient and universal: that death is a passage, that the soul travels through stages, that the dying can be guided toward liberation. The Tibetan Bardo Thödol made this vision famous in the modern world. Yet thousands of years earlier, the priests of Kemet mapped the soul's journey through the Duat, and across the Yoruba world, sacred traditions charted the passage of the spirit between the worlds. What if these were not separate inventions — but the primal source from which the later maps descend? What if the original Book of the Dead was African?

In The Original African Book of the Dead, #1 bestselling author Ajarn Shaman Shu (Shri Surya Narayana Swamikal, Oluwo Jolaoso Osainbola) traces the death-and-liberation traditions of the world back to their African roots — the Kemetic and Yoruba wisdom that mapped the soul's journey first.

Inside you'll explore:



The Kemetic vision of the Duat and the ancient Egyptian science of the afterlife

The Yoruba traditions of the soul's passage between the worlds

How the African death-wisdom may have traveled from Africa to Tibet

The primal map of the soul's journey — the original Book of the Dead

The parallels between the Egyptian, Yoruba, and Tibetan bardo traditions

What these ancient maps teach the living about death, rebirth, and liberation

The opening volume of the acclaimed Spiritual Reparations Series, this is a reclamation of the world's oldest wisdom about death — restored to the African source where the soul's journey was first charted.

From Africa to Tibet. The primal map of the soul's journey. The original African Book of the Dead.



OrishaUniversity.com and these books represent the restoration of what was taken from our people. The 256 Odu of Ifa are the original operating system of human consciousness. Oluwo Jolaoso Osainbola has done what many generations prayed would one day be done. My full endorsement and blessing from Ile-Ife, the source of all.

— Araba Agbaye, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Àṣẹ.