Skip to main content

Shakuaná’s Secret Place to Eat

People know that Jundesi planted the secret of San Lázaro at Armando Zulueta’s house, but no one really knows what the secret is or why Jundesi planted it there. Many new compendia of religious information are being published these days, and in one of them, I found the following mythic narrative in the divination sign or odu called Oyekun-Ojuani:

In this road of the odu, Shakuaná—another name for Babalú-Ayé—did not stay in any single house, but when he arrived at the house of a priest called Oyekún for divination, the sign Oyekún Ojuani came out. The priest marked the following sacrifice: two pigs, sixteen fish, two pots of palm oil, and a hat. Shakuaná made the sacrifice, and since he had no secret place to eat, the priest sent him to leave the offering exposed at the entrance to the town. When Shakuaná arrived to leave the sacrifice on the Earth, he heard the voice of Elegba, the messenger of the orichas, from behind him: “The sacrifice that you placed on the Earth will be separated from you if you do find it here. You, seated in this place, will leave all your evil children here and you will call them each time you need them. You will do the following: open a hole, sacrifice a pig and a rooster, which you throw in there. You put earth from the ocean, the river, the lagoon, the forest, the plaza, the street, the house, the foot of a ceiba tree, and Asojano. You add herbs from all the orichas and divination powder marked with the sixteen major odus, making a little hill at a crossroads. On top, you plant a cactus and you place a pocked stone on top. Then you consecrate the stone by feeding it with a speckled rooster. You hang red, black, and white cloth around it. Cook the rooster and eat it. This was the birth of the first kiti of Asojano, destined to guard the evil children of Shakuaná.

Could this be the origin of the secret of San Lázaro that Jundesi planted? Did she want to give Armando access to the evil children of Shakuaná? Did she know this story and understand her actions as an extension of the godly precedent?

Or is this an invention by priests who gather information indiscriminately and package it for sale?

A very similar description for the kiti appears in Bernard Maupoil’s book La geomancie a la Côte des Esclaves on pages 357 to 360. This book was originally published in 1936, and it seems pretty clear that the description for how to make the kiti comes from here. If the “recipe” for the kiti story comes from this ethnography, how did the priest decide to place it in Oyekun-Ojuani and not one of the other 256 divination signs? Did he divine to find out where it went?

To my eye, this looks like a story about Shakuaná making sacrifice with a separate recipe tacked on the end. Why else would there be two similar but different sacrifices described? And who knit them together? When and why?

So the secret—its meaning, its internal form, its function—remains a secret.
Labels:

Comments

  1. IanNovember 5, 2010 at 9:00 AM

    So, here's a question. All of the reference to kiti I have read were exclusively in connection to Dahomey. I know Maupoil's primary informant came from that region, so I'm assuming this recipe, too, is Dahomean? Do you know of any comparable installation to the kiti among the Yoruba? For Babaluaye in specific or the orisha more generally?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michael Atwood MasonNovember 5, 2010 at 11:06 AM

    So here is the beginning of an answer. If you click on the “secret” tag, you will find several posts about similar installations around the Oricha Atlantic. There are some other references to altars on the edge of towns for Babalú in Yoruba communities, but nothing like the richness here or in Maupoil, so it is hard to know if they are really the same thing or not.

    I recently came across notes from an interview I did years ago with a master of ceremonies in Havana, and he listed “Akitikatá” as a road of Babalú. I have not been able to reconnect with him to follow up on this. Robert Farris Thompson cites three songs from various places that all include the word “akitikata,” which he translates (roughly) as “Earth mound.” These appear in the section on Nana Buruku in Face of the Gods. The songs all come from Verger’s Notes sur le culte des orisa…

    A couple of other notes of interest: When I asked Pedro Abreu of the Arará Sabalú about this story, he did not know it or the kiti.
    I do think the secret at Armando Zulueta´s is likely to be a kiti. If the kiti turns out to be from Dahomey, then it will be another bit of evidence that substantiates the Zulueta family claim that they are Arará-Dajomé.

    I am sorry I cannot provide full citations with page numbers, but I am not at my desk.

    ReplyDelete
  3. IanNovember 5, 2010 at 2:07 PM

    Oh, now that is very interesting, thank you for pointing toward Faces of the Gods--I hadn't picked up on that bit about the 'akitikata.'

    I think Robert Ferris Thompson may have the directionality (Yoruba to Akan regions) of Nana Buruku wrong--the very title, 'Nana,' is from Akan and shows up both among nobility and spirits, like Nana Tongo or Nana Bruku. Allman & Parker, in their book Tongnaab, note this somewhere...

    One thing I couldn't help but notice in the case of Tongnaab, is the importance the spirit acquired as an anti-witchcraft spirit (sounds not a little like Babaluaye), with people carrying away small portions of one Tongnaab mound to found others.

    The mound itself is a fairly popular form roundabout those parts--you find it among the Tallensi and LoDagaa (Dagara) people, too, all bound up with issues of fertility and the earth.

    It does make me wonder how old the ritual commerce Allman & Parker discuss really is.

    Wow, wouldn't that be something if Babaluaye and Nana trailed those ritual complexes behind them as they moved on down West Africa!

    Hmm, is "Sabalu" a reference to the region around Save/Sabe in what was Dahomey? If so, has anyone tried linking the mound to the worship of Oke and Ile among the Yoruban population there? That's one of the main centers of Nana Buruku's priesthood, too, right?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Michael Atwood MasonNovember 10, 2010 at 12:08 PM

    I just spent two days working through William Bascom's field notes from his 1948 trip to Cuba. He spent most of his time in Jovellanos, Matanzas Province. There and then, many people associated Nana Burukú with the word Akitikatá, but Bascom never pressed them on what it meant, so it remains unclear to me if it is a common praise name, a more "secret" name used for invocation, or a road.

    The Arará Cubans identify with four different sub-groups, the largest being Sabalú, Majino, and Dajomé. These names clearly link back to regions in Dahomey.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

MOST READ

Nanú, the Mother of Babalú-Ayé

So little is known about Nanú that many elders refer to her simply as “the mother of Babalú-Ayé,” “the mysterious one,” or “the stronghold” or “strength.” She is related to the other roads of Babalú-Ayé and has many of the same functions. She comes to remove obstacles to health and well-being, and she is treated in much the same way as other manifestations of Babalú: she is treated with great respect because of her awesome power. She is feared because death is always with her, and she too rules infectious disease. She is secretive, but provides important revelations. She is wealthy beyond our understanding. She lives in the wilds and wanders on the road. She struggles with how to express moral ideals in an imperfect world. She seems to be dead, only to rise again. Nevertheless, her iconography and ceremonies are slightly different from the other Babalú-Ayés. Nanú has a broom, which is received by her devotees the first time she eats goat. The já points to her work as cleans
5 comments
Read more

Echú Afrá, the Messenger and Guardian of Babalú-Ayé

The odu Obara-Irozo contains both references to how Babalú-Aye made his way to the land of the Arará and to the role of cundeamor. Changó was returning from war and passed a garbage dump on the edge of the town of Osá-Yekú. There, he found a ragged, sick, old man. Changó sent his lieutenant to bring food and water to the old man. After installing his enormous army at the town of Obara-Koso (a nickname for Obara-Irozo), Changó returned to the place where he left the old man, who was none other than Asojano, and directed him toward a narrow pass. Changó told him to go through the pass and put on a cape made of tiger skin (some say leopard skin) that Asojano would find at the other end. Changó also told him that he would find a boy who would give him water and point out certain herbs that Asojano could use to heal sores and other illnesses. The boy was none other than Elegguá Echú Afrá, and he pointed out  cundeamor , aguedita , zarzafrán , mangle rojo , and hierba de sangre , among
2 comments
Read more

The Many Roads of Babalú-Ayé: Afimaye

Dasoyí , the father of all the Babalús, is the most common road of this oricha today, but the next most popular is Afimaye.  His white beads with blue stripes are perhaps the most commonly used for Babalú-Ayé . This path of the oricha is said to be the youngest of the Asojanos, and some say he lives in a pumpkin plant and works as a lawyer. Some say he also comes to find the initiates to Arará deities at the hour of their passing. Afimaye’s youth evokes a physical strength and vitality for which he is renowned. When worshipped, he is famous for reinvigorating his devotees.  In the house of Magdalena Fernández in Havana, I once participated in giving Afimaye to an 84 year-old woman. At the beginning of the ceremony, she sat speechless and inert, slumped over in a chair watching the ritual.  After she was cleaned, Afimaye ate and then mounted her. After contorting for a few minutes, she rose and danced with great power for half an hour. Later she was a different woman, and the trans
Post a Comment
Read more

Working with Substances: Cundeamor

Perhaps no other plant is more closely associated with Babalú-Ayé than cundeamor . Not only do many people cover his vessel with this herb, some houses wrap cundeamor around the horns of the goats they offer to Babalú. In fact, as part of the awán , everyone present must place a strand of this climbing vine around their neck. At the end of the ceremony, these necklaces are cast off and into the basket. Cundeamor grows aggressively at the end of the rainy season, fruits near Babalú’s feast day on December 17th, and then dries up and disappears completely. The fruits have a distinctive brilliant yellow-orange color and bright red seeds. Cundeamor  acts just like the deity: emerging at the beginning of the dry season, he grows toward his feast only to disappear again. Not only does its growing habit mimic Babalú, both the leaves and fruits of the cundeamor have a long and well-documented history as a medicinal herb. In Cuba, both Momordica charantia and Momordica balsam
2 comments
Read more

Babalú-Ayé Basics

The elders say that Babalú-Ayé stalks the night accompanied by his dogs and the spirits of his children. He is immediately linked to the world of the spirits. During the day they rest in shade, leaning against the shade of large trees. He is especially fond of the yamao, the jaguey, the flamboyán, and the ceiba, and all are used in ceremonies of the oricha. They say Babalú lives in the heart of the forest during the rainy season, but in the dry season he enters the city, bringing epidemics. In fact, some people say when there are epidemics, you should not play for him, you should not call him. Instead, you should placate him with food and simple offerings. People also link him to epidemics of every kind: bubonic plague, yellow fever, the Spanish influence, AIDS. Historically, though, he was thought to control smallpox. By extension he has dominion over all skin sores and diseases. Since smallpox leaves visible scars, any transfiguring disease comes under his purview. Many pe
Post a Comment
Read more

Pedro Abreu—Asonyanye, Son of Asojano-Afimaye

I first met Pedro Abreu in 2001. David Brown had been telling me about him for a few years at that point and when David introduced us, I immediately understood David’s fascination. The first time we met, Abreu outlined his whole history in the religion. He was born in Los Sitios in Centro Havana. He had a prenda from the African-inspired Regla de Congo from a young age, but he had not really believed in religion. In 1975, he received Asojano-Afimaye in Havana from Matilde Sotomayor—Asoninque, the famous Asojano priestess who worked with Pilar Fresneda—Asonsíperaco . The famous Ñica Fernández—Onojome and Victor—Quemafo were also there. On February 20, 1992, Abreu made Asojano- Afimaye at the Cabildo Arará Sabalú Nonjó in Matanzas City. It had been 36 years since anyone had made Asojano there, but his godmother María Isabel Reyes—Asonsímeneco did have Asojano made direct as tradition required. At itá he given the oricha name Asonyanye, after the famous Havana priest know
2 comments
Read more