Baba Who? Babalú!

There are many ways to give Babalú-Ayé, and I never tire of contemplating the ceremonies as a vessel for information about the oricha. One Matanzas lineage I know takes Babalú-Ayé on a journey as they prepare to give him to a new initiate. They take Babalú out to a cemetery and feed him with a guinea, white wine, and cigar smoke. Then they continue to the foot of a ceiba tree, where they do the whole ceremony again. Next they feed Babalú a rooster on the altar for the ancestors at the house where the main ceremony is to take place. While I have thought about this imagery in terms of travel and the Earth, the ancestors play a strong role here as well. By taking Babalú to the cemetery and feeding him with the many ancestors there, the ceremony stresses his role as an egun. Similarly, the ceiba was historically where people in Cuba went to salute the ancestors and pray when the dead actually lay buried at too far a distance—the Africans used to feed their ancestors at the ceiba,...

Elders often refer to Babalú-Ayé as the oricha of the Earth, and his name alludes to this fact. Ayé means “world” or “earth,” so the whole name translates as “Father, Lord of the Earth.” The Earth supports us in all we do and is thought of as the universal witness of our actions. Forbearers of the Arará in Cuba, the West African Fon, traditionally made oaths with one hand on the Earth. In fact, husbands and wives would promise to be loyal to each other as they drank an herbal mixture with Earth mixed into it, knowing that the Earth would see if they broke their promise and in turn punish them. This bit of West African tradition intrigues me, because most lineages in Cuba include a bit of Earth in the herbal mixture called osain,  which is made to wash and cool the oricha when he is born. One Matanzas lineage I know focuses on travel and Earth as they prepare to give Babalú-Ayé . They take Babalú out to a cemetery and feed him with a guinea, white wine and...

Key to understanding Babalú-Ayé is the fact that he moves: he moves out of the land of the Lucumí and into the wilderness. He moves out of the wilderness and into the land of the Arará. He becomes king of a foreign land. More simply, he moves from well-being to destitution and back to well-being. In addition to moving physically from place to place, he moves people´s emotions with his suffering. It is impressive, unforgettable even, to see people imitating him in the caminata, as they drag themselves along the pavement. The sound alone sticks with you, but their bloody hands and knees remind you of the pain you have lived through. In Spanish, the verb conmover captures both this shared moving and being moved. Even in the ceremonies that the now-dead elders taught to the living, Babalú-Ayé moves. In many houses, he travels to the ceiba tree and then again to the cemetery, eating at each stop. He then travels to the family shrine for the dead--the egun--and again shares a meal w...