Baba Who? Babalú!

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 the 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 voice 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...

The elders say that Babalú-Ayé can possess anyone, because he is compared to an ancestor, and anyone can get possessed by an ancestor. Similarly, they say it is because all human beings are subject to illness. So it is no surprise that many people seem to pass Babalú-Ayé or ancestral spirits who serve him. In fact, in Matanzas City, Chino Pérez is widely known as a horse of Babalú-Ayé, even though he is the keeper of the house of Ferminita Gómez, the home of one of the original Olocuns in Cuba. While he has received Babá’s fundamento , when last I visited him, he had not undergone the full initiation known as the asiento , nor was he inclined to. It seemed unnecessary as Babalú-Ayé came and went quite fluidly in possession, and he frequently did miraculous things when he did appear. In fact, when Saúl Fernández—Babá Ni Beleké made Lucumí Babalú-Ayé direct in Havana in the late 1990s, he called upon El Chino to create the secret that went inside. Justly or not, many people in Ara...

I have written before about the road of Babalú-Ayé called Soyaya , who is strongly associated with Olocun, the oricha of the bottom of the sea. While these two share deep mysteries and untold wealth, I have wondered about their connection, and this week I think I understand it a bit better. Being in San Francisco for the Earth Medicine Alliance Conference , I decided to spend some time at UC Berkeley exploring the papers of the anthropologist William Bascom, who spent the summer of 1948 researching Africanisms in Jovellanos, Matanzas Province. He spent days discussing Lucumí and Arará traditions with the famous Esteban Baró, an African-born child of Ochumaré, the oricha of the rainbow, who is also known as Dan or Güeró. At some point, their conversation turned to Olocun, and Baró explained laconically, "Olocun is the Earth of the sea, oldest of all the orichas."