Meh horse Ozy shared this on my FB page this afternoon.

At first, I was elated! Estatic to find Daddy on youTube, but I played the clip and my grief rushed over me and instead of hearing Mansa Musa, master drummer for the Orishas, professional rebel, original loudmouth, educator, musician, playwright, I heard my DADDY.

And I missed him, I miss him… I miss my Papi.

Video – Mansa Musa – Tribute To Ogun.

Lyrics via The Online Guide to Salvador da Bahia, Brazil: FAQs.

I find myself agreeing with her on much.

While I have an historical interest in Egypt, and of course authentic human anthropology, I have often wondered why it easier for African descendents in the ‘New World’ in seeking to identify with their lost identities, choose to model their spiritual lives against lineages not related to them except by ideologies in the farthest reaches of antiquity.

The enslaved Africans who helped to people this part of the world WERE from West Africa. So why are Rastafarians modeling their spiritual beliefs against Judaic religion, or why do my Khemetic leaning brothers and sisters choose a system that hasn’t even been fully or correctly translated, and whose rituals are thousands of years out of practise, when the living traditions of our WEST AFRICAN ancestors exists still in largely unbroken lines down to us today?

The sisters commentary is interesting, and touches quite a few points I’ve raised myself. I often wonder if the state of our communities is directly related to an inability on the whole of us to connect with this West African heritage. Without it, we’re still not a cohesive unit, still labouring under false pretenses and mental slavery.

In a facebook discussion, a young man who I have discoursed with for years, and who incidentally I share very little intellectual or ideological common ground with, asserted that the sister in the video had nerve to imply disrespect because of other people’s priorities and choices.

I replied, ” I actually understand many of the forces that shape these ‘choices’, which are often ‘no real choice’, not always, just often, and I put them in what I see is the appropriate context. Also, ‘depends on the question’? What is her question here? It’s the same one I frankly ask on a regular basis… I put it to Rastafarian brothers and sisters, to Khemetic brothers and sisters, to Christian brothers and sisters and Muslim brothers and sisters… and I find the answers (often ‘non answers’, not always, but often) very grounded in a particular world view and mind set. ”

I also want to ask a couple more questions, and I included it there too. When you look out across the Atlantic, what do you see? Just the Sea?

I see a turbulent ocean true, but I can never look at the Sea and not see Yemoja and Olokun. I see that too…

When I look out across the Sea, I can never forget that across this water, the next land mass is where my Ancestors came from.

When I look out across the Sea, I can never forget the millions of Africans lost to it’s depths, and when I see that choppiness of the water, I hear them call out to me… to something inside me asking me to remember them and honour them.

So for me, I can never look past my spiritual roots, beyond it to something else. I am not denying the African origins of Egypt, Christianity, Judaism or Islam. I accept these this as part of my historical understanding, even if many others cannot see it, or reject it.

My only point of divergence, is I would say, her comments on the origins of humanity in north-eastern Africa. I am fairly convinced of that. Even the Yoruba believe they walked out of Khemet, across the desert and into Sub-Saharan Africa thousands and thousands of years ago, with an intact religious system handed down largely unchanged until (colonialism) recent times.

My question I put to many across the Diaspora–and I mean those who are seeking, those who have invested themselves in homegrown spiritual solutions, Rastafarism and Khemetic philosophy in particular–why they feel the need to create something from strands of something else, when such a powerful tool as their own Ancestral practise and their spiritual inheritance is there for them to use.

My Madrina posted this article to her FB recently. It is written for Christian evangelical missionaries, discussing not only Orisha based traditions, but specifically the conversion of Orisha devotees to Christianity, and demonising of one of the most powerful energies we honour and venerate.

I read this article a few years ago, I may have posted it to my old blog or not, but I still felt the need to add a comment. When I was reposting it to my FB feed, my attached comment grew and grew, until it exhausted the character limit, and herein contained in this blog post.

I am excerpting a small part of the article, from the portion discussing conversion of devotees and hoping to inspire more personal fervour  in missionaries to fuel a more convincing approach to converting us ‘poor misguided savages’.

Except, as I read their argument, it seemed to prove why they’re failing to stem the bleeding away of young, African descendants in the ‘New World’, and in fact the attraction of non-African peoples to Orisha devotion, one of multiple African Tradition Religions in the West that is growing and thriving.

Read:

Strategies and methods may vary from country to country, and even within countries, but the gospel must never be compromised. Perhaps it is an indictment on today’s preaching and the witness of Christians that Santería is now flourishing in the United States. It has already been observed that centers of Santería are abundant in Miami, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The excuse given is the large influx of immigrants from Latin America. However, in 1970 Santería also came to where it could not previously take root. The Oyotungi Village on the South Carolina coast near Charleston was established for the worship of the African orishas. It seems obvious that Murphy’s observation on the power of Protestant preaching that demanded conversion is a good one. Could it be that Santería is now on the move across Latin America and in the United States because our strategies for reaching the unsaved have failed to give priority to God’s ordained way to reach the lost?

via Santeria: African Gods In America.

Hmmm… it’s interesting my tradition doesn’t convert, but include and encompass… flows around the hard edges of politics and history, to create a way for itself in the face of persecution.

And when they tell you about the ‘Gospel’, you need to ask yourself about the Council of Nicea, (don’t mind Christian propaganda, this is world History) and WHICH Gospel are they talking about? The excoriated portions not in support of European-based phalli-centric world domination, or the four severely-doctored-for-political-purposes ones that finally made the cut of the Council, at the expense and excommunication of the Cardnials and Bishops supporting the former and not the latter. You know it’s the King James Bible they are bringing you, a further mistranslation of this ‘acceptable-to-Constantine’ Bible.

Yet, for these missionaries, the writer of the piece, and those already guilty of some of the worst kinds of colonisation and culturally divisive ‘evangelism’ and oppression in the not so recent past (someone PLEASE say Rwandan genocide AND ‘there is no ETHNIC difference between the Hutus and the Tutsis until the Catholic missionaries went to Leopold’s ‘garden”), in our day and age, still don’t seem to understand one basic principle, “Do onto others as you would have them do onto you”. Which is why I ever charge this sort of thing with hypocrisy at its root.

It’s like Taran said in his post recently, about why religion is often like genetalia; that so many religious people feeling the need to mentally hump their religions in your face.

I could never convert anyone to my tradition… it’s not something someone can be converted to. You’re either called or not. That’s it. But for these people, and so many other people I have met of this persuasion, they feel it’s either their right, or their life’s purpose to convince me their choice is the right one, and hence it is the ONLY choice for me or for you. As though my choice for my life is wrong or somehow less valid than theirs. As soon as they start talking, I hear “Lay down G.I. lay down G.I.” or Gimli the Dwarf saying, “In the language of Orthanc, help means ruin.”

Frankly, this is a kind of narrow myopia that continues to plague our enterprise here on planet Earth. It’s not the message you bring (because who can refuse ‘God is Love’, it’s your delivery mechanism… instead of literal the knife-point, whip and lynching-rope, it’s now an intellectual knife or a battle in the minds of the INHERITORS of MY tradition in particular. And why? For reasons they weakly attempt to explain, or outright refuse to acknowledge, or for more nefarious reasons of LOSS of CONTROL, and FEAR of the MENTAL EMANCIPATION of so many young people in our post-colonial world, who are being CALLED back to their traditional religious roots.

So many of us are actively seeking to close one of the most hideous of gaps created by the Trans-Atlantic slave trade; the divorce of the Africans brought here from their spiritual expression and the language they used to talk to and interact with GOD. That is our COSMIC right. For all the BOOK learning of so many, they do remain enslaved in thought and deed to a spiritual system that fails us as a PEOPLE because it’s motivation is not really the empowerment of it’s adherents, but the empowerment of the SYSTEM of religion, and their OBEDIENCE to ‘leaders’ under the guise of submission to God. God isn’t the focus, but the trappings of the system and it’s own power, and the empty ritual associated with it. If this is something that works for you, then I say, keep doing it. But you have to be honest about it if and when it stops working for you.

It is almost as though, they [the missionaries writing this piece I quote and the fervent born-agains] are DESPERATE to prove to you that their message or religious thought is the only acceptable one, and I refute that.

I also keep to the forefront several STAND OUT comments. One made by my father, that: Modern Christianity is European culture deified.

The others, made by John Henrik Clarke, remain ever part and parcel of why I went the opposite way and abandoned Catholicism at age 16, after reading some of his writings. I kept walking until I found a spiritual path that spoke to me as a woman, and a woman of African descent, and that is my right under Cosmic law. So no one will be teefing my head. I include them here for your perusal:

“My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is a part of you, then in your imagination God is supposed to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people.”

“Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it.”

“Religion is the organization of spirituality into something that became the hand maiden of conquerors. Nearly all religions were brought to people and imposed on people by conquerors, and used as the framework to control their minds.”

John Henrik Clarke

(I got these from here, but I’ve read the pieces they belong to.)

• Currently playing in iTunes: When I Think of You by Janet Jackson

The ceremony was simple and beautiful, and I was glad we waited until my sister and one of Dayo’s godparents Faizah got to Bim to do the job.

The people I chose to help me look out for him over the years, were with one exception present. For most of them, this was there first experience with an traditional African rite, so Faizah made sure to explain each step as she went through the ritual.

I was in tears most of the time.

When it was over, I gave Faizah a hand-made paper wishbox I had created for her, and she loved it.

May everyone’s good wishes take my little King through life.

You can see more photos of the beautiful day under the cut.

Read more…

I find myself, for the second time in two years on the edge of disillusionment when it comes to Orisa communities.

Understand me, I do not mean Orisa; I mean human communities of Orisa devotees. And when I say communities, I mean those both offline and online.

I am for the most part, disgusted with the kind of people that seem to populate these communities. So few of them that I have met, or encountered have any honour at all and as for iwa pele (true and noble character) forget about it. To my memory, there have only been a few who I felt were honorable to the core.

It seems as though these communities are rarely driven by spiritual truth, and more often by more corporeal motivations, chief among them financial gain, and at the least petty one up man ship.

I am deeply unimpressed by the spite, the bile, the lack of compassion, the ease and quickness with which people inflict pain and suffering on one another; the penchant towards cult mentalities and most of all, the way in which some of these people discourage personal empowerment.

This thing with ‘elders’, people who are initiated, and people who have been involved in the religion for a number of years… many of them are voracious about demanding respect from all, but rarely do they reciprocate. For them, they can bear no criticism whatsoever, yet are quick to criticise everyone who doesn’t agree or go along with their own game plans.

I have watched, over and over, as Orisa devotees pull down other people’s houses to build their own. I have watched how people contort themselves to be nasty, unkind, unforgiving and to maintain control of others.

One of the biggest breeding grounds for these kind of people I have come across is the Internet. If you are searching for god parents, or searching to learn more about this tradition, it’s easy to say, let me look online for communities of Orisa devotees. This is especially true if you live in towns and cities that are isolated and has no visible Orisa community present.

I wasn’t necessarily looking for god parents on the Internet, but looking for discussion and avenues for growth. What I found for the most part was a cesspool, a morass of spiritual mediocrity masquerading itself as Orisa.

I have come to realise a few things.

Because people know a lot of rituals (or claim to online), and they know a lot about the religion, it’s easy to think that this person can teach you, that you can learn from them. And maybe you can. However, on the Internet, people really aren’t who they seem. In the four years since I started my spiritual journey with Orisa, I have found that even people you meet in the real world, are not what they seem. The Internet only exasperates this further.

In that time, I have joined a number of online forums for Orisa devotees and practitioners and have been consistently disappointed. Most of them devolve into petty arguments about lineage, people take pot shots at each other,

But to me, I don’t want to learn anything from someone who doesn’t have the basic milk of human kindness. I don’t want to learn anything from people who insist on crying down other people so they can feel superior. I am sick of the cliquism, and the way people manipulate and use each others as tools to attack and destroy each other.

Well… I had a guarding Orisa reading last night to definitively find out who my tutelary Orisa was, and while it was a nice surprise and no surprise….

My MAMA is Yemoja!!!

However, Osun is walking with me hand and foot. The two of them take care of me. I am in fact what they call Dos Aguas in Lukumi… a daughter of two waters.

The way it was explained to me was that Osun said “Okay Mama, you can have herhead, but she’s mine from the neck down.”

I guess I always knew it… there is no other explanation for the supernatural relationship I have always had with the Sea, and water in general and very specifically.

Read more…

Ochun says you’re feeling drained away, something which is pretty unusual in so restless a person like you. Action is the keyword in your character. The point is you feel disappointed and anxious deep down inside. Your guarding Orisha recommends you to pour some beer all over you before taking an ordinary bath. Let the suds dry and then proceed to take a normal shower.

From: Caribbean Inside: a portal of the Caribbean and the America

Sweetness, care, concern, TRUTH, HONESTY, regard, respect and love draw me on and I am helpless to turn away.

The warmth of the Sun shines on me… a Lion awaits, basso profundo purring and all.

I…. travel, and my fears begin to slip away. Safe harbour is ahead and messengers came down the road to urge me on.

I am blessed child of Love and Beauty, tied forever to He who know the past, the present and the future. Where are we going Baba? Somewhere deep into strange unknown territory? Are we going somewhere warm and redolent with love? That’s a place I have inside me, and a place I have been looking for.

They told me in sign miles aback that joy was rushing down towards me, and I struggled through dark places turned away from dark faces to get here, and only my faith drew on. I am blessed, I am blessed, and dreams encourage dreams and I long for rest and succor.

I am coming! Announce me! Me shoes are filled with pebbles and stones, my feet are cut and bruised, I have danced through the last few miles, tears flowing and my heart sure you were there waiting.

Fire to inflame fire, trined and longed for, bedraggled by battle and starvation I have kept the glow alive

I see it up ahead… my resting place…. see now, the father of secrets awaits….

Aboru, Aboye, Abosise….

Alafia!

Look, some of this has to come out or I am just going to pop; bust up, implode or something. Some way, some how I have to find a way to express this thing from my mind to some outside form.

Thing is, somehow I feel as though I may take a long time to finish this, post this and even if I post this, access to it will be limited. I doubt this will be posted before it takes shape and manifests itself.

Why is this? I think this is mostly because of my spirituality and a missive I received to keep big things to myself before it’s done. So I am not going to tell you what’s ACTUALLY happened, what’s happening, what’s likely to happen.

Instead, let me tell you how I feel.

The world reels, colours are richer…. all of a sudden the tapestry of my life must contemplate skeins and skeins of the richest kinds of threads.

I am reeling… I am spinning and spinning and spinning… it’s something like I experienced during ritual work in Trinidad. Spinning, spinning, spinning away something haunting me, and turning, turning, turning into freedom.

I am feeling the freedom that the bonds of friendship, love, loyalty and spiritual work can provide me, that which I have sought for more years that I tell you. I am feeling safe and protected and as always, just when I felt the connection between me and my spiritual self were slipping away, forces beyond me organised itself to bring me back to it.

All I have prayed for is right there in front of me, being offered to me of a platter of bronze, surrounded by plumes of peacock feathers. All I have to ask is if it’s mine. My eye is as big as my heart, my heart is bigger than it’s ever been, and I’m salivating with want for this… for my life to change, for that which has held me back for so long is beaten into a permanent retreat. For my life to become all I’ve dreamed, all I have known and been told over and over and over again by the mystics and seers who have reached out to me and gave me the messages from SPIRIT, you’re alright, it’s alright, it’s going to be just fine, finally, finally MANIFEST.

What can you say about how you feel in moments like these. Utter terror? No, it feels normal. Like I’ve been waiting for it, isn’t that right babies? Wasn’t Mami waiting for it for so long, and filled pages and pages, outputted gigs of binary on the subject?

Shucks…. I am no fool. All is chance and fortune, and my fortunes are changing, I haven’t just been praying in my bed, I’ve gone out and met it come hard come soft… and it’s done both. There are too many wicked souls in the world, too much jealousy and insecurity and a dear friend likes to say, “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

I feel as Aragorn must have, when Gandalf returned with Eomer at the Battle of Helm’s Deep; like Gandalf himself must have felt at the gates of Minas Tirith fighting off the Witch King of Angmar when light broke and the horns of Rohan exploded across the Battle of Pelennor Fields. (You can tell I’m reading LOTR… all things lead me to elements of Tolkein’s tale. I cannot help my epic imagination and appetite for this story. I identify!)

I have been embattled. Ya’ll think I was kidding when I said I was struggling under the weight of something. I’ve written about it more than once, but because the depth to which I have been hampered, wounded and violated, although I have begun to heal, it still isn’t done yet.

Yet, I am at the end of the fight, finally at the end of the battle and I am blessed to find both protection and protector.

I guess for the first time I’m beginning to realise that Orisa loves me, my Guardian Angel, my Ori, all are there rooting for me, so no matter how bad things are in terms of this NEGATIVE ENTITY that’s trying to harm me, I have love all around me protecting me from the worse of it, and more… the more I help myself, the more help I get.

I am feeling it… feeling that love, and it’s got to get worse before it gets better, but with Ifa’s blessing when I come out the other side they’re will be strong, solid support waiting to catch me and help me to recuperate.

I am on the cusp of another huge leap in faith. I am on the axis of yet another evolutionary turn, a fundamental CHANGE in my life. I feel it coming on, seeing it up there on the road.

I am blessed to be here… yet again a feeling of being blessed to be alive and approaching yet another watershed moment.

Mojuba Oludumare! Mefererun Egun! Mojuba Orunmilla! Mojuba Osun! Mojuba Yemoja! Mojuba Gbogbo Orisa!

I have come to the last spasm in a cycle, and I am strengthened by the love all around me.

I am scared. Scared to the marrow of my bones, but I am not so scared to reach out for something with both hands and hold on, hold on, hold on. I have to hold on for my babies, my old people to come again, hold on for my husband to be, hold on for all the work I must do.

I see the road I’ve walked and the road I am still walking, and for the first time clarity is there, all I am waiting for is blessing and ritual. It’s all starting to make sense for the first time in a long time.

What also comes back to me strongly is a warning I got in divination earlier this year, that I paraphrase here “If you want to do something, don’t talk about it until it’s done or you’ll have doubts and it will lead to it remaining unfinished.”

This is perhaps the biggest thing I’ve attempted in my life. This happening, this event, this momentous discovery of the sweetest, greatest opportunity I’ve ever been presented with, is the kind of thing I would have blogged in a heartbeat, but this unwillingness to divulge in and of itself is remarkable and rare.

The thing is, this thing isn’t as mundane as fuck, an argument, a