Baba Who? Babalú!

The sign Irete-Otura recounts the birth of a little known road of Babalú-Ayé called Agrónika.   The story goes like this: There was a Potter named Omó Bitasa who was the favorite son of Asojano, and he was famous for making beautiful plates, a skill he had learned from his father. When he was small, his father had also initiated him with a partridge and dressed in the skins of his favorite animals, and this protected him from much suffering. In those days, the Iyesá declared war on the Arará. They surprised Omó Bitasa working on his plates and carried him away as a slave. One day there was a terrible epidemic in the land of the Iyesá, many people were dying, and no one could stop it. Egunmoko, the king of Iyesá, went for divination, and Irete-Otura came out.   The diviner said in the kingdom was a man initiated in Arará and only he could end the epidemic.   Reviewing the prisoners, Egunmoko found one dressed like Shakuaná with his purple cape and his necklace. The ki...

Babalú-Ayé is always mysterious:   h e is a stranger wandering in from somewhere else. He speaks in a voice that is hard to understand, so you can never be sure what he is trying to say.   And so much of the experience of illness and of the body in pain remains beyond our ability to articulate. Like the Old Man, we fall mute in the face of these things.   Of course, no one really understands how he can push on despite the many losses he has suffered. Few of us can fathom how he continues despite smallpox and his bad legs. You sense this mystery when you witness Asojano being fed at night in a dark room lit only with a couple of candles. You sense it when you prostrate before Babalú enthroned in a cave obscured by vines or covered in herbs during ceremonies.   In some lineages he lives in a sealed pot, so the people worshipping him never see the fundamento inside. The elders say that they sealed the pots to contain disease and keep it from escaping. Othe...

My conversations with knowledgeable priests and priestesses generate lots of interesting insights, but only occasionally do these elders cite their sources--something I try to do here. To be fair, Ernesto Pichardo--Obá Irawo often refers to things he learned from his oyugbona, Romelio Pérez--Talabí, who learned from Armando Zulueta--Omí Toké. Pedro Abreu--Asonyanye acknowledges that he learned a lot from Benito--Oché Paure, who studied Arará traditions deeply. Magdelena Fernández--whose oricha name I do not know--will sometimes credit Margot San Lázaro with certain ideas or ritual practices. At the same time, Pedro is clear about the fact that he does not do ceremonies in the same way as any of his fellow Arará priests. He explains that he engaged in recopilación , a compilation of data, from Oché Paure and others before using logic to come to his own conclusions about how the initiation of Asojano "should" be. This recopilación includes conversations with elders in t...