Baba Who? Babalú!

The bakonos , as Fon-speaking babalawos in Benin are known, regularly deposit their sacrifices in the natural world. But oricha people everywhere know that it is sometimes difficult to make it to the sea or the forest or another natural location to hand over an offering to an oricha. So the bakonos have devised a remarkable solution: they have something called Kiti where they can deposit any offering. (It is called  Ñawo in Fon-gbe.) At a crossroads, a bakono opens a hole in the earth and offers a goat and four chickens. To the hole, he adds Ifá herbs, a wide variety of earths from different locations, a bit of money, and other secrets. He closes the hole, places a rock sacred to Sakpata on top, and plants a special tree. (Sakpata is a name for Babalú.) On the tree he hangs red, white, and black cloth. After offering a chicken to the stone and making the standard prayers for protection from death, sickness, and evil, Kiti is ready to work: from then on, the bakono leaves his offe...

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 separate...