Baba Who? Babalú!

All along the Way to Campostela there are allusions to San Lazaro. In many towns, including Cacabelos where we are right now, there was a special hostel dedicated to San Lazaro located at the edge of town so pilgrims with the plague or leprosy would not have to mix with others. Imagined as a lame man on crutches with two dogs traveling with him, San Lazaro is a classic icon of suffering, isolation, devotion, and dynamism. Another similar figure is San Roque. Son of French nobles, Roque became a mendicant. On pilgrimage to Rome, he came down with the plague. With open wounds he walked to Campostela, attended by a faithful dog that licked his sores clean and brought him food to eat. He is always represented as a pilgrim with sores on his legs and a dog at his side. He caught people's imagination in the Middle Ages, and there are churches for him all along the Way. Yesterday I was already thinking about a post about San Roque, who in Cuba is often linked to Babalú-Ayé, the ...

I woke up this morning with my thoughts squarely on the pilgrim’s road. I love the image of moving out from a town and into the largely asocial and empty space. This middle place is outside of usual relationships. This middle place is neither here nor there. It is the betwixt-and-between space that many associate with rites of passage.  You know another town is over the horizon or over the next hill, but you spend most of your time between specific places. Similarly, the image of walking between more fixed social worlds intrigues me deeply. The pilgrim’s body literally moves out of one space and into the middle ground. It is the work of the body that propels the pilgrim forward, and it is the body that is marked by pilgrimage. The pilgrim sweats and drenches his clothes. With time, the sweat mixes with clothes worn day after day, and the pilgrim begins to reek. The pilgrim’s feet strike the Earth again and again. Her legs again, and her feet begin to swell.  Most pilgri...

In the religion, there is a long tradition of honoring the spirits once a week with simple offerings. The most famous of these offerings is tending the Warriors on Mondays. Pedro Abreu—Asonyanye taught me to tend Asojano and his family every Thursday.   Since Asojano only eats eat at night, so it has to be in the evening after dark. After placing a mat before Afrá , Nanú , and Asojano, you kneel and press your forehead to the floor. Then you do the Arará version of the invocation of God, the fodunces (orichas), the ancestors, and the living.    Unlike the Lucumí version that relies on the repeated use of the phrase “ mo juba,” the Arará invocation revolves around the phrases “ sofalú ” and “ emí chelé .” You can light incense if you want to. Next you make the simple offerings.   You spray Afrá with white wine or aguardiente (cane liquor, like rum). He also takes cigar smoke. Nanú and Asojano take white wine, rum, and gin. When you blow the alcohol f...

When Antolín Plá needed to make Babalú-Ayé in Miami in 1976, the community leaders turned to Josefina Beltrán and Romelio Pérez—Talabí. Beltrán had received Babalú-Ayé Arará and was one of the elders on the scene at the time. Pérez grew up across the street from the house of Armando Zulueta —Omí Toqué, and he had worked Babalú with Zulueta for many years. Beltrán maintained that there was no way to make Babalú-Ayé direct in the US at that point. Direct meant Arará , and it was simply impossible from her point of view. First, there were not enough Arará people to make it direct. Arará tradition said there had to be at least seven people with Babalú direct who were also possessed by the Old Man. There was also concern around the language of the invocation and the songs. Again, Arará tradition dictated that from the first prayer to the last song, the whole ceremony had to be in Arará language. To make matters worse, there were no obaces in Miami who had officiated in a direct Bab...

Late last week as I sat with the ancestors, I had a very clear image of María Isabel Reyes—Asonsimeneco.   When I met her in 2004 with David Brown, she was all heart. Never a star, María Isabel was content to live in her small house and offer coffee to those who visited. Just as in life, she appeared warm, grounded, unambitious and just grateful for the attention. Until her passing a couple years back, she was the senior Asojano priestess at the Cabildo Arará Sabalú Nonjó in Matanzas.   Born on April 16, 1944, she was initiated on July 6, 1954 at age ten.   Amelia Mora—Chiarré was her oyugbona, and Dolores   “Lola” Vinajera—Juniko had Asojano made and served as her godmother. Lola had been made by Flora Heredia, who had made Towosi (the Arará Yewá). María Isabel waited 36 years to initiate her first priest, and that was Pedro Abreu—Asonyanye on February 20, 1992.   In time she gave other Asojanos and even made a young man from Miami.   While a le...

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...

I continue to reflect on differing aspects of pilgrimage in the Yoruba and Dahomean worlds. The grounded elder Susanne Wenger in her book A Life with the Gods in their Yoruba Homeland writes about a wandering sort of pilgrimage: If the god wishes it, a Shoponno priest goes from town to town as a mendicant, the living recipient of ritual gifts (formerly copper coins) which are means of atonement for the giver. He dresses in a short camwood-red smock, his hair finely plaited. On his frock, cowry shells and little bells are sewn as a warning of a dangerous god’s arrival. As he proceeds on his way, reciting the praise songs of Obalúayé and all the cult [ sic ] subsections, broom--straws are thrown at him together with the coins. In picking them up, he adds prayers on behalf of the donor to his recitations. The blossoming broom-shrub is his alter ego, but can be impersonated by the the broom of palmleaf stalks [known in Cuba as the já ]… The mendicant uses the donated coins for ...

So today I am reflecting on pilgrimage. Partly I am trying to honor the major spiritual work of the festival of Babalú and the thousands of people who made the journey to Rincón last weekend. Partly I am trying to prepare myself, because this summer I hope to walk the Road of Santiago with my thirteen-year-old. Moving toward the divine is a very old practice. The ancestors name its origin in the divination sign Ofún-Ojuani, and they taught us the value of this kind of prayer. In old Dahomey, the ancestors held an annual pilgrimage to Dassa-Zoumé. The ancestors said this was where Nana Burukú lived when she was on Earth, and each year those who worshiped her children Mawu-Lisa, the Obatalá-like sky deities, carried offerings to her special shrine there. Similarly, new initiates to Mawu-Lisa made a trip to Dassa to worship Nana Burukú. When they arrived, everything was provided for them. However, only the greatest and most powerful priests of Nana Burukú entered the temple becaus...

While we were calling and feeding Babalú-Ayé as part of his annual feast, the great NPR show On Being posted a nice piece on the public festival in Rincón, Cuba. Check out the mainstreaming of the Father of the World here !

I first met Pedro Abreu in 2001. David Brown had been telling me about him for a few years at that point and when David introduced us, I immediately understood David’s fascination. The first time we met, Abreu outlined his whole history in the religion. He was born in Los Sitios in Centro Havana. He had a prenda from the African-inspired Regla de Congo from a young age, but he had not really believed in religion. In 1975, he received Asojano-Afimaye in Havana from Matilde Sotomayor—Asoninque, the famous Asojano priestess who worked with Pilar Fresneda—Asonsíperaco . The famous Ñica Fernández—Onojome and Victor—Quemafo were also there. On February 20, 1992, Abreu made Asojano- Afimaye at the Cabildo Arará Sabalú Nonjó in Matanzas City. It had been 36 years since anyone had made Asojano there, but his godmother María Isabel Reyes—Asonsímeneco did have Asojano made direct as tradition required. At itá he given the oricha name Asonyanye, after the famous Havana priest know...

Dasoyí , the father of all the Babalús, is the most common road of this oricha today, but the next most popular is Afimaye.  His white beads with blue stripes are perhaps the most commonly used for Babalú-Ayé . This path of the oricha is said to be the youngest of the Asojanos, and some say he lives in a pumpkin plant and works as a lawyer. Some say he also comes to find the initiates to Arará deities at the hour of their passing. Afimaye’s youth evokes a physical strength and vitality for which he is renowned. When worshipped, he is famous for reinvigorating his devotees.  In the house of Magdalena Fernández in Havana, I once participated in giving Afimaye to an 84 year-old woman. At the beginning of the ceremony, she sat speechless and inert, slumped over in a chair watching the ritual.  After she was cleaned, Afimaye ate and then mounted her. After contorting for a few minutes, she rose and danced with great power for half an hour. Later she was a different w...

Two weeks ago, I was in San Francisco to participate in the good work of the Second Earth Medicine Alliance conference . As we did last year , my goddaughter Phoenix Smith and I led a public ceremony focusing the oricha’s energy on healing the Earth. Last year we did an awán for Babalú, and this year Elegguá directed us to perform an awán for Olocun along the edge of San Francisco Bay. Phoenix found an amazing little park in West Oakland, right next to the port facilities, and just before the ceremony began, she learned that people refer to this area as one of the points of the toxic triangle in the Bay. The area where we worked last year is also one point of the triangle, and next year we plan to work the third point. The ceremony was beautiful. We had about fifteen people turn out on a gorgeous day. We set up an altar right on the beach for egun, Elegguá, and Olocun. To honor the spirits of that place, we sat on the beach with the ancestors for an hour or so, sharing messages fro...

When Ña Octavia Zulueta—Jundesi gave Babalú-Ayé to the nine-year-old Armando Zulueta , she taught him that they were Arará-Dajomé, and he in turn passed this idea down to his family and godchildren. This is interesting because in common parlance today, Armando’s Babalú is commonly referred to as Lucumí. While the Lucumí label may have come from the fact that Armando made santo much later in a Lucumí house, it also provides a short-hand description of differences in form and practice that matter a lot to some people. But I want to explore the idea that the Babalú-Ayé and the people who work him in Perico really are Arará-Dajomé. Aurora Zulueta-Omí Saidé was Armando’s favorite niece and goddaughter, and before she joined the ancestors in 2002, she told me that she had always known they were Arará-Dajomé. She reminded me that the Arará had their own language, and she explained that they did not “mojuba” the same way as the Lucumí. Instead of repeating “mo juba” to invoke each...