The Baró Family of Jovellanos, Land of the Lost Majino

In my quest to get to know the Arará world, last week I travelled three hours from Havana to the little town of Jovellanos, Matanzas Province. There I spent the afternoon in conversation with the Patricio Baró and his son Manuel. Patricio is the last surviving son of the famous Esteban Baró; his older and widely respected sister Miguelina died recently. Esteban’s parents were from Savalu and Atakpame, and he spoke both Yoruba and Fon-gbe, which he called Nago and Fono.  Devoted to Dan Aïda Güeró, Esteban presided over the Sociedad San Manuel in Jovellanos, and his Güeró was impressive when it came down. He was also infamous for being irascible, refusing to share information outside of his family or the tiny Majino community.

Apparently these traits have been passed on. While Patricio at 81 years old was both coherent and cordial, neither he nor his 47-year-old son Manuel would share anything of substance.  There were a few snippets of songs, including one for Oshumaré in Nago and one for Ajañajaña (Elegba) in Arará. They described their old annual tradition of playing for the fodunces from the night of December 31^st through January 6^th, a practice now lost because of lack of funds. Similarly, they still play on the 16^th of August to commemorate Esteban Baró’s birthday. They also mentioned the set of four drums they maintain, including one with a serpent carved into to represent Dan Aïda Güeró.

Even when my godfather, Pedro Abreu—Asonyanye asked a few simple questions, the Barós held back. After they mentioned the need to start ceremonies with Arará-language prayers, Pedro suggested finding some kind of unity between the different Arará groups and recited an Arará prayer he uses to open his ceremonies. But the Barós were having none of it. “You would not understand,” explained Manuel, “Neither your parents nor your grandparents were Majino. You would not understand.” This claim to familial relationship with the tradition is not one frequently heard in Havana or beyond, but it has been paramount in Jovellanos for more than 60 years. Even Manuel said his father had never found the time to teach him the family's lore, and he was resigned to the fact that it was going to die with the old man.

In Matanzas City, we visited with Pedro’s godfather in Knife, Barbarito—Jevioso, who is active in the Cabildo Sabalú there. He was unsure if anyone in the Baró family had actually made oricha, explaining that until very recently most people in the countryside simply washed their heads and received a washed fundamento of the their head-oricha.

On the way back to Havana, Pedro reminded me of something Victor Quemafo had said to him as he prepared to be initiated. “Los arará somos muy pocos y muy mal llevados.” We Arará are very few and very badly behaved.

Where Lázaro de la Caridad Zulueta Soa Got Irete Meyi

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It happened that Lázaro was having a hard time. Storms had cost him a great deal of money. He was unemployed like so many other people, and he was witnessing the slow degradation of all that he loved.  So Lázaro saved his pennies and brought down Orula. The three diviners pulled the odu Irete Meyi. The sign came in osobo ikú otonowá, the difficulty of natural death. Here is what the diviners said:

This is the sign of the Earth and it controls all that is implied by Death. The Earth’s greatest aché is endurance through difficulty, upheaval, and change. It is Asojano in person, and his spirituality is born here.  This sign takes on everything that is cast out in life.

Orula says you will die when Olofi ordains it. You will die at the right time, but the sign comes with negativity, so you have to be careful to avoid its pitfalls. This sign is the birthplace of many illnesses. With negativity, you are moving toward death, and if you get sick, it will be hard to save you. Sickness is the entryway to Death. The main illnesses that are likely to manifest fall into several main categories:

1.       Communicable diseases:  For example, smallpox, leprosy, pleurisy, pestilent fevers, epidemics, infections that do not respond to antibiotics. Epidemics start with one but endanger us all.

2.       Skin diseases:  For example, Abscesses, boil, pimples, sores on the arms and legs, scabies, eczema and other skin eruptions.

3.       Breakdown of bodily systems:  For example, infertility, impotence, digestive disorders. It can be very difficult to have children in this sign. Children do not develop normally in the womb, and birth defects and miscarriages are common here.

4.       Paralysis:  You may have herniated discs that it hard to move. You must be extremely careful not to fall, as you can injury yourself severely. Be extra careful when climbing or getting on or off a bus or bicycle.

5.       Blood diseases: For example, leukemia. Where illness is is born, the blood is sick. The parasite is in the blood.

You may have terrible ringing in your ears, and you may feel a great weakness in your hands and legs.

The elders in your family are likely to pass away soon.

The sign also says the one who drains the river destroys the home of the fish. This reminds you of the need to maintain a healthy environment for yourself, your family, and your community. It speaks of environmental contamination that can harm you and yours.

This sign resuscitates the dead, as it went to the land of the dead but returned to walk with the living. Here you see why we say that Irete Meyi is Asojano in person.

Although you are not likely to listen, the odu says go to the doctor and get a check-up.

You suffer because of your character. You tend to be proud, hardheaded, vain, willful, and capricious. You think yourself superior to everyone, and you think that you do not need to follow the same rules that everyone else does.  This leads to swearing, law-breaking, and even perversion. You may even delight in breaking taboos.

You like to praise yourself and enumerate your accomplishments, but you do not like to work hard. It is difficult for you to sacrifice for anyone else. Rather you are inclined to sacrifice to get what you alone seek. You have difficulty admitting your mistakes. In fact, with osobo, you are capable of being extraordinarily cruel and cold. When angry, you are truly terrifying to everyone around you. The furious sledge hammer sinks the anvil into the Earth.

These characteristics do not endear you to the people around you. In fact, your disregard for other may lead to your infecting them with your illnesses.

This is a sign of judgment, and your attitude and behavior may also be judged very harshly by Olofi and the orichas.  In this sign illness is sometime a punishment. There is a famous story about Babalú-Ayé in this sign that speaks to the ramifications of a difficult character. Where Babalú-Ayé cursed Coconut Tree.  Babalú was exhausted and hungry from his long walk, when he arrived to a place in the forest where a beautiful coconut tree grew. He drew near and asked Coconut Tree, “If you would be so kind as to give me one of your children to slake my thirst and calm my hunger…” Coconut Tree was very proud and answered that his children were not to be given away as gifts but rather were for sale, explaining that if Babalú had money, she would sell him one of her children. But he didn’t even have a place to fall down dead and looking at Coconut Tree said, “Lorobí eminé ofún lorobí aquelle lorobí.” (I curse you, the parasite will enter your body and by the time you realize it, you will be yellow.) After he continued walking for a while, he returned to the same place and saw that Coconut Tree was completely yellow and her children were spread across the ground.

Temporary insanity and the associated outbursts and acting out can destroy a person’s reputation in this sign. Similarly a crazy person here can ask for death, and Heaven will respond because the person has been disobedient and pigheaded.

The remedy for these character issues is simple: The wise man practices humility and respect in all things. He who comes from above will eventually lay his head on the Earth.

This is a sign of war and confrontation, so your strong character can engender hostility in others. The resulting conflicts are hard to manage. There are traps and plans made to thwart you on your road.

Simple problems turn out to be quite difficult here, and tranquil situations turn violent with little notice. Well-kept secrets are revealed, and things you thought were forgotten come out. The oil’s surface is clear and still, but at the bottom it is dark and dirty.

In fact, the intense and charged atmosphere of this sign can lead to curses being placed on children in the womb (usually by another woman who is jealous); a curse like this can cause all sorts of problems for both mother and child. Issues of paternity can tear families apart here, with doubts, accusations, insulations, and tragedies. Seduction of minors, incest and rape are all too common here as are other forms of abuse (breaking taboos). In this sign, Ochún had a difficult child who abused her, and children sometime mistreat their parents in this sign, and it is important to maintain order and respect in the home.

Here you may learn that you have a child you did not know about.

Strange blood packs and racial tensions also present themselves here. Secrets come out.

With blessings, this sign brings prosperity, so much prosperity that it creates envy in the people around you. But with osobo, it makes clear that you will continue to have hard times. Scarcity and difficulty will define your path for some time to come. You should prepare for losses.

If you are well-off now, you must work to avoid a reversal of fortune, as masters become servants in this sign.

The odu says you must be careful not to fall into the hole of prosperity. There is a story here where Olofi tied up all the money in the world and hung it in a tree. Through ebó, Orunmila was able to get to it and share it with his children.

Specifically, Orula says you have to give coconuts, candles, and cool water to Orula. You have to be cleaned with a hen that is fed to Oyá. And you have to give your children spiritual baths regularly to protect them. (This sign includes a story where a woman loses three of her six children.)

In addition, you need to do an ebó on the tablero of Ifá with a hen, white cloth, red cloth, black cloth, a bow, a mouse trap, an egg, a bone with meat on it, a small fish and the other ingredients.

Make ebó to Asojano on a regular basis. Pay any debt that you have to him. This sign has everything to do with Babalú-Ayé, as a model for redemption and as a spiritual actor. Humility, obedience, and respect are essential for success here.

More generally the sign suggests a cleaning with two guinea hens if you become seriously ill.

This sign is nicknames Eyi Elemere, because it is strongly associated with the emere, the forest spirits who teach medicine to those who meet them.  These spirits can bring great blessings to those who get to know them, but they can be unpredictable and therefore dangerous. Here again you see the link to the powers of the Earth.

If you have been told that you will need to make ocha, you should do it within the year.

This is the birth of astral body so you may experience some kind of astral travel.

You cannot open or cross holes in the ground.

You should not eat many grains.

You should not eat animals that live underground.

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Lázaro de la Caridad Zulueta Soa heard the babalawos and made the ebó. Only time would tell how much negativity he would avoid.

How the Forest Spirits Gave People Their Gods

When working in Dahomey, Herskovits recorded a very interesting story:

When people came into the world, they had no medicine. No one knew that leaves could cure. When people fell ill, there was no knowledge of what to do to cure them.

Now there were hunters in those days who went into the deep, deep bush. One day a hunter came upon a mound of Earth in the bush. When he was about to pass it, a voice spoke from inside it. The hunter’s wife was a leper, and this voice said, “Hunter, I will show you a medicine to cure your wife. When you give it to her, she will become well again.” Then the voices said, “Turn your back to me and wait.” It was Azizan, the Forest Spirit, who was in the mound, and as the hunter’s back was turned, Azizan put the leaves beside him. When Hunter looked again, he saw the leaves. The voice said, “Take these leaves, crush them, and mix them with water. Then give some of this to your wife to drink, and use the rest to wash her sores.”

When the hunter came home, he did what Azizan told him to do, and his wife was cured.

Now Azizan had also told him, “When someone in your village is sick, come and tell me, and I will give you a cure.” So the hunter showed the way to all who were sick, and these came to the mound of Earth and told their troubles, and to each of them Azizan gave a medicine and explained its use. Those who followed Azizan’s instructions were cured.

One day a hunter brought a sick stranger to Azizan, and this stranger went to the king of his country and told him that there was a kingdom where the sick only needed to tell of their ailments before a mound of Earth, and they were cured.

The king said, “I will go there myself. I want to see.” So the king went to the bush where the mound of Earth was, and took with a goat, a bottle of rum, and some palm oil. He killed the goat on the mound of Earth, and said, “In my country we have no vodun. I want to take you to my country to be a vodun. If someone in my kingdom is ill, I will send him to you for medicine.” And Azizan gave him magic and told him what vodun where to be worshipped that his country might prosper. Azizan gave to this king various deities including Sagbata (Babalú) and told him to build a house for each of them. Azizan also said that if people wished to have any of these vodun, they had only to come for some dirt from this mound.

So the vodun and the magic that is in the world were all given to people by Azizan. (See Dahomean Narrative, pp. 217-218, and Dahomey, Vol. ii, pp. 261-262.)

This story raises intriguing links and interesting questions. I do think it is interesting that the hunter only finds the wisdom that heals in the “deep, deep bush.”  This reminds me of what the famous babalawo Hermes Valera—Otura-Sá told David Brown about the religion requiring us to go “monte adentro”—deep into the forest—to find the ingredients and wisdom we need to survive. (See The Garden in the Machine.)

Could it be that Nana Burukú in Dassa-Zoumé is a particularly primeval and powerful form of Azizan? Could the covered earth-mound on the mountain the place from which all other vodun emerged? That would help explain Nana Burukú as the creator.

At the same time, this story seems to be very much related to Babalú-Ayé. The hunter’s wife has leprosy, the most illness most strongly associated with Babalú wherever he is found. The fact that the hunter encounters Azizan at a mound of Earth is fascinating. Here the small forest spirits speak out at an Earth mound with a single voice that carries healing wisdom. In the story about the origin of the kiti from Oyekún-Ojuani, the wise voice of Elegba speaks to Babalú himself at a mound of Earth, where he can call and feed these spirits in secret.  Incidentally, I just found that in Dahomey, Kiti was described with Azizan as two of several classes of spirits “partly human, partly supernatural who live in the forest” (Dahomey, Vol. II, p. 260).

These small “forest people” have an interesting role in the West African-inspired world where it is localized. Johnson describes the ijimere in Yoruba communities, and in Cuba the odu Irete Meyi is still sometimes called by the nickname Elemere because of its link to these forest spirits. Bascom documented similar spirits called iwin, and in fact some of his people suggested that the iwin will teach secrets (medicine?)  to hunters and tell them the future (Bascom Papers Carton 27, Folder 39). Other people told him that the iwin work with Osain and Babalú-Ayé specifically (Carton 30, Folder 6), and still others said that Babalú-Ayé is actually one of these spirits, who appear to a person when ill (Carton 27, Folder 37). These notions also bring to mind the ebó in Irete-Iwori where the person has to feed sixteen different places in the natural world to engage the spirits living in those places, all the while praise Babalú-Ayé-Dasoyi.  They also call to mind the sixteen positions that are fed in preparation for the New Year. While these forest spirits are no longer central to our practice in Cuban-inspired traditions, they continue to exert their influence and call out for praise.

The Work of Pilgrimage III

I continue to reflect on differing aspects of pilgrimage in the Yoruba and Dahomean worlds. The grounded elder Susanne Wenger in her book A Life with the Gods in their Yoruba Homeland writes about a wandering sort of pilgrimage:

If the god wishes it, a Shoponno priest goes from town to town as a mendicant, the living recipient of ritual gifts (formerly copper coins) which are means of atonement for the giver. He dresses in a short camwood-red smock, his hair finely plaited. On his frock, cowry shells and little bells are sewn as a warning of a dangerous god’s arrival. As he proceeds on his way, reciting the praise songs of Obalúayé and all the cult [sic] subsections, broom--straws are thrown at him together with the coins. In picking them up, he adds prayers on behalf of the donor to his recitations. The blossoming broom-shrub is his alter ego, but can be impersonated by the the broom of palmleaf stalks [known in Cuba as the já]… The mendicant uses the donated coins for a ceremony for the god; the broom-stalks he would bind together to sweep his shrine praising the god on behalf of the donors (pp. 173-175).

While Wenger is describing how people worship Babalú-Ayé in Nigeria in the 1980s, the African-inspired traditions in Cuba certainly still see him as a mendicant. This wandering somehow seems both related to and different from pilgrimage in its usual sense. The priest—and the god he is imitating—is not moving from a home place toward a specific destination thought to be the residence of some special manifestation of the divine, as is usually the case with pilgrimages. Rather he wanders from place to place, receives offerings, makes prayers, and gathers up his ritual broom. His place of departure and his destination are the same, his home shrine, where again he prays for everyone who has donated to his ceremony and his broom. With these prayers he sweeps out negativity of all kinds.

The overwhelming social aspect of this ritual wandering is intriguing. The priest encounters people in different towns, reminding them of the god and providing an easy opportunity to engage with him. While this pattern reminds me of the missionaries of San Lázaro in Cuba, it also recalls the story from Ojuani Meji where Babalú-Ayé, covered with sores, wanders from place to place. The random people he meets greet him only by throwing water on him and saying “Nlo burukú!” (evil be gone). Again Babalú-Ayé embodies the unwanted reality of sickness and carries away the negativity for everyone he encounters.

The Work of Pilgrimage Revisited

There are many small ceremonies in Oricha religion that could be thought of pilgrimages, where we travel out onto the land to connect with the divine, making an offering to a specific oricha. As part of giving Babalú-Ayé, many lineages carry Babá to a ceiba tree, a cemetery, and finally the egun altar in the home, giving him white wine, cigar smoke, toasted corn and other offerings at each stop.  Similarly some lineages feed Nana Burukú at a spring or a place of stagnant water before giving her to a new devotee.  And, of course, the initiation of a new priestess always requires a trip out to feed the river with her favorite foods.  When someone is consecrated to one of the Warriors, there are extra ceremonies to feed them in the forest, offerings that cool them before they arrive in the house for the principal ceremony.

People usually gloss these trips into the natural world as preparatory ebós, little ceremonies that must happen before the “main” ceremony takes place. As Ernesto Pichardo recently said to me, “They are part of the alchemy of what we do when we give birth to a new oricha.” Still each of these ceremonies requires that we travel out of our houses and find the oricha in a natural state to start the process. In this way, each of these ceremonies can be considered a kind of understated pilgrimage to connect with or engage the oricha.

This week in Havana (and Miami too, at least), small teams of babalawos are making these trips into the natural world to feed the “positions” before they gather to open the New Year on January 1. They feed the sea, the river, and many other positions, and after making the offering at each position, they divine to be certain that the ebó is accepted. They report back to the babalawos who coordinate the whole ceremony. Only once each position is fed they are ready to prepare for the New Year with other ceremonies on the 31st. Only after all this is completed do they take the odu for the New Year early on the 1st.  After reaching out to the whole natural world, they can mark the road for the coming year.

The ancestors have told us that Changó taught the 16 positions in Iroso Meyi, and the opening of the year comes from the odu Obara-Odí. As with most things, we know from the ceremonies that these two things are related, but exactly how and why remains elusive. The wise ancestors arranged them into the ceremonies we use today to make the most of the roads we travel.

The Work of Pilgrimage

So today I am reflecting on pilgrimage. Partly I am trying to honor the major spiritual work of the festival of Babalú and the thousands of people who made the journey to Rincón last weekend. Partly I am trying to prepare myself, because this summer I hope to walk the Road of Santiago with my thirteen-year-old.

Moving toward the divine is a very old practice. The ancestors name its origin in the divination sign Ofún-Ojuani, and they taught us the value of this kind of prayer. In old Dahomey, the ancestors held an annual pilgrimage to Dassa-Zoumé. The ancestors said this was where Nana Burukú lived when she was on Earth, and each year those who worshiped her children Mawu-Lisa, the Obatalá-like sky deities, carried offerings to her special shrine there. Similarly new initiates to Mawu-Lisa made a trip to Dassa to worship Nana Burukú. When they arrived, everything was provided for them. However only the greatest and most powerful priests of Nana Burukú entered the temple because it was said that once a person entered the sacred precinct, he or she “learns how to speak a hundred languages at once” (Herskovits in Dahomey, Vol. II, pp.  102-103). While we don’t know much about how Nana was honored, we do have a sense that it was an important part of the annual cycle of rituals that knit together Dahomey as a society.

Still I do wish we had more records of what those pilgrims were experiencing. I do wish we knew more about their inner lives. Did they contemplate the stories that explained the origin of the pilgrimage? Were their heads filled with prayers for the people they left behind in their home towns? Did they hope to learn something about themselves in the process? Did they have some sense of this pilgrimage as a way to honor Nana Burukú as the Creator?  Were any of them disappointed that they could not enter or when they saw the face of the deity resided in a mound of Earth covered by a straw covering? Did any of them go crazy when they accessed this whole new kind of knowledge? I am not sure we will ever know, but it is possible to imagine rich stories in response to each of these questions.

Babalú-Ayé Hits NPR's On Being!

While we were calling and feeding Babalú-Ayé as part of his annual feast, the great NPR show On Being posted a nice piece on the public festival in Rincón, Cuba.

Check out the mainstreaming of the Father of the World here!