Baba Who? Babalú!

My wife received Babalú-Ayé a few years back, and she is devoted to him, truly loves him. So, last week I asked her what she wanted to know about Babá. She reflected for a moment and said in her inimitable way, "I want to know where his compassion comes from." I don't know of any patakí that explains that, but I once had a dream which may speak to this question. In the dream, Babalú-Ayé and I stood together in a dark space. In the darkness, I heard his rough voice say, "I can feel all the pain in the world." Maybe the Lucumí elders learned their laconic style from the orichas themselves. Here Babá seems to say it all in a single sentence: He feels my pain. He feels your pain. He feels every one's pain. This is a very different take on what it means to be the Lord of the World. I believe it is his own suffering that leads to his compassion. Because he knows all the suffering in the world, he does not shy away from suffering in us. Because he knows that ev...

There is an interesting story in the odu Irete-Oyekun that speaks of powers buried in the Earth. The King of Hebieque was called Disu, and he had a twin brother, Ajuangan, who was a sorcerer, a witch, and just terrible. He fed himself and his shrine objects with human blood. When the King found out about his twin brother’s evil deeds, he made a great hole in the Earth and placed Ajuangan there with every kind of food imaginable. He closed the hole and in that way consecrated Ajuangan as a fodún (oricha) so that he could do no more harm. When the King thought his brother had regenerated himself, he stood before the hole and said: Vitse dokpo meyi Ajuangan kuko No one can cut Ajuangan, I defend him. The next morning, Ajuangan turned back into a man and more of a sorcerer than ever before, and he named himself Akpodjivodu-Kombo-Kumku-Mabo (meaning, “He who has no friends”). He continued to kill people, and so they made a great hole in the Earth, filled it with dry wood to make a ...