New Worlds of Body, Mind & Spirit Since 1901
The rain is slicing down in sheets and it has become difficult to see the road as my Padrino Miguelito and I slow to a crawl along the carretera, or highway, cutting through the Cuban countryside on our way to the Marianao home where I would be performing the deep divination to see what oddun my Orí would be born in. A huge storm had suddenly made its appearance about half an hour before we left the casa particular (private home) we were renting for our visit. "I'm not going to say a word about what oddun I'll be coming with today," I said cryptically to my wife before leaving. Being a child of the oddun or Ifá sign Baba Eyiogbe I was more than a little familiar with the ...
Ever wonder why statues of Catholic saints are sold in the same shop next to mandrake roots and Eleggua candles? How the saints joined forces with the African pantheon that would become Santería or Voodoo is a story dating back to the late 1600s. Huge populations of African prisoners of war, mainly from the kingdoms of Benin and Yoruba in western Africa, were enslaved and shipped to the Caribbean to work in mines and on cane plantations. The plantation owners baptized their slaves as Roman Catholics and prevented them from practicing their Pagan faith. But, recognizing similarities between the saints and their old gods, the slaves simply renamed their gods using the saints' names ...
