Baba Who? Babalú!

 Last fall, my goddaughter Phoenix Smith—Olá Otón Adélele asked me to participate in first activities of the Alliance for Ecotherapy & Social Justice . She asked me to explore how oricha religion provides us with a robust model for nature religion and healing as part of a video series called Ecotherapy for Everyone: Healing with Nature for Peace and Justice.   My presentation focused on three major aspects of oricha religion and how it links individuals to the natural world. First, the presentation explored the idea of the sacred forest as the source of divinity within the religion and how different ceremonies channel that divine energy back into human life. Then, it looked at many of the ways that specific religious ideas and practices link individuals to ecosystems or natural phenomena; this section of the talk also explores how the Arará deity Dandá-Jueró can be understood as a model for ecological connections that lead to wellbeing. Finally, the presentation intr...

“Babalú-Ayé wants everyone to place his altar directly in front of the main door of the house,” a friend texts from Perico , Cuba. “He wants everybody to place seven gourds in front of him, each with a different kind of grain, a red onion, and cigar. And most importantly, he wants everyone to light two candles and pray to Him to scare away the pandemic.” This admonition is followed by another prescription for a cleaning at the foot of the Old Man. In this moment, the coronavirus pandemic has killed thousands of people, paralyzed whole countries, and quarantined millions. So oricha communities around the world are naming ways to acknowledge his impact and pray that he go easy on us. As one traditional praise song says: Ason kuele, Ason kuele, Ason kuele, Ason ño Sickness, be gentle with us Babalú is sometimes said to “rule” infectious disease, but in fact, he is infectious disease and its antidote. So at this moment, we are becoming intimately acquainted ...

Check out this discussion of the Feast of San Lázaro and Babalú-Ayé. The conversation begins around 4:20.

Babalú-Ayé does not play a formal ritual role in the itutu, the funeral ceremony for those oricha priests that have passed away. However many elders contend that he delivers the body of the dead person to the cemetery on a cart, and so he is always strongly linked to death . Given the recent passing of friends, I have seen several itutus lately, and like most ceremonies in the religion, they invite reflection. The itutu brings transformation, as the deceased moves from the world of the living to the world of the dead. Essentials from the priest’s initiation are placed in an open gourd on the floor within the egun altar. We sing oro egun , the nine songs to praise and move the ancestors. For first time, we name the spirit of our departed colleague as part of the invocation, and we sing to them as an egun. We also feed the new spirit with a bird. For those of us who regularly honor the ancestors, their presence is constant, but we never lose track of the fact that we are living o...

In both Cuba and Benin, the road of Babalú-Ayé known as Suvinengué is strongly associated with the vulture.   His name can be translated as “vulture-child of Dasoyi .”   The elders in Cuba say that Suvinengué is a vulture with the head of human being, and in Benin they also say he is bald and gray, like the vulture.   Some Dahomean elders say Suvinengué flies from Earth up to Heaven carrying messages from human mouths to God´s ears. They say he indicates whether an offering has been accepted or not. When an offering is left outside and then disappears overnight, it is thought that Suvinengué has taken it to the deity it was intended for.   Still others say simply, “He eats the dead.” This link between Babalú and the ancestors is quite profound, and other roads of the deity revolve around this link. Afimaye is said to seek out Arará priests at the hour of their deaths, but in Benin, he is seen as the overseer of a collective workforce made up of the spirits...

Perhaps the most common road of Babalú-Ayé in Cuba is Dasoyí, who is also known as Asoyí, and Dasojí Kajua. People commonly refer to him as the father of Babalú-Ayé, and really this just suggests his authority and generative power. Together with Nanú , the mother of Babalú, he brought forth all the other roads of the Earth deity. He is commonly imagined reclining against the trunk of a ceiba tree surrounded by his children.   In some very traditional houses, Dasoyí can be seen resting on a divination tray supported by four skulls. The tray symbolizes the Earth, and seated on top of it, Dasoyí rules the world. The skulls tie him to the ancestors, who are buried in the Earth he rules, and they could stand for the generic dead of the four cardinal directions. However, they also allude to a time when he placed his throne on the skulls of the four vanquished kings of a legendary place called Igoroto. The skulls could represent these kings or royals from the Dahomean dynasty, wh...

In 1992, when I first visited Cuba, an elder told me a simple story about the ritual broom of Babalú-Ayé that is usually called the já . He explained that when Babalú was wandering the Earth, at some point he was so sick that he could no longer speak. In the laconic Cuban style, he said, “So that’s why Babalú-Ayé has 16 cowries sewn to his já and why he does not speak through the shells.”  Throughout the stories of Babalú, speech is contested and fraught with difficulty. Common to all aspects of Lucumí religion, different accounts provide explanations and justifications for who has the authority to speak for Babalú-Ayé and in what contexts. These accounts are of intense relevance because speech is usually homologous with knowledge in the religion, and knowledge is perhaps the most potent currency that moves between people. The classic tale from the sign Ojuani-Odí explains how Babalú-Ayé united with Orula . No one could stop Death except Orula, and s...

Large and noticeable on the low, flat floor of the Rift Valley in Kenya, it is easy to appreciate why people see termite hills as both an eruption of the underworld into this world and as an access point to that unseen land. The termites move comfortably between the worlds, and we can only hope to emulate their chthonic wisdom.

A couple weeks back I had to go to New York City for work, and I called Judith Gleason to see if she wanted to have dinner. No answer, so I left a message. The next day, her son left me a message explaining that she had joined the ancestors on August 5th after having a stroke. I have "known" Judith since 1987, though I doubt anyone really knew her. In all honesty it is terribly difficult for me to separate her from Oyá, the oricha of her devotion, the oricha of lightning and winds, whose unpredictable movements shake up the status quo and reveal new opportunities. So here I am cleaning up after this storm. When I was twenty-one, I found Judith´s book, Oyá: In Praise of the Goddess. I read it again and again, as I tried to follow the shifting currents of its prose and as I worked to digest the world it depicted. I still have the original copy whose binding has been broken by wear and double taped for reinforcement. The book is a masterpiece of original, synthetic...