Notes on the Writing of This Book
1. The Anagó or Lucumí language used in Santería was formed from a number of dialects, particularly those of Oyó and Egbado. The Yoruba tones have been lost, but are sometimes approximated with the accents borrowed from the Spanish language. Words are spelled phonetically according to the Spanish orthography, so often several different spellings can be seen for the same word. I attempted to use some of the more common spellings of words without falling into using pseudo-Yoruba spellings that fail to represent how the language is actually used in either Cuba or Yorubaland. In this book I have also used the spelling “oddun” when speaking of the Ifá signs, and “Odun” when talking about the Supreme Being. Although they are usually spelled identically, I used this form to make it easier for the reader to differentiate between the two. A well-researched work that explores this subject is Anagó by Maria “Oggun Gbemi” Concordia.
Introduction
1. Samuel Johnson’s History of Yoruba places Ifá as being present at the founding of the Yoruba religious capital of Ilé Ifé with evidence of habitation going back as far as the sixth century BCE. But, on the other hand, oral traditions state that Ifá divination may be more than eight thousand years old.
2. While the patakís and refránes themselves are not considered secret, many traditional Lucumí babalawos, including myself and my godfathers who initiated me, refrain from publicly stating which oddun the histories and sayings are associated with, so this information is for the exclusive use of fully initiated Ifá priests who have the aché and authority from Olófin to interpret or work Ifá. This is to prevent further misuse of the information by those who have not been properly consecrated as babalawos. Exceptions are of course made when the context demands it, such as during divination or to illustrate the influence of a particular oddun in a person’s life.
Chapter One: What Is Ifá?
1. Ulli Beir gives an accurate description of the view most of us have regarding faith and belief in his book Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Suzanne Wenger.
2. In fact, we often refer to people as the omo of their patron orichas. For example, “Emiliano is an omo Obatalá.”
3. Quoted from Santeria: The Religion: Faith, Rites and Magic by Migene Gonzáles-Wippler.
Chapter Two: How Ifá Works
1. This famous proverb comes from a patakí where a hunter went to Orula and was warned that not sacrificing his hunt could lead to his death. The hunter not only refused to perform the sacrifice, but he openly mocked Orula. The hunter returned with his catch, which included porcupines, and held a big dinner to further humiliate Orula. But during the dinner he accidentally swallowed one of the porcupine’s spines, which got caught deep in his throat, and within a few minutes the hunter bled out and died. Upon hearing of the tragic dinner, the babalawos merely remarked, “Orula’s word never falls to the floor.” Unfortunately, this proverb has become an example of the misuse of Ifá books by non-babalawos as I have seen where again the oricha in the proverb has been changed from Orula to another oricha. Besides the obvious issues that come with changing the oricha, the proverb does not make sense in the context of the parable from which the saying originated.
Chapter Three: Babalawo
1. The Anagó Language of Cuba by Maria Oggun Gbemim Concordia is an expansion of her Master’s thesis taking the position that the Anagó language is not a corrupted form of the Yoruba language, but a separate language that evolved from the various ethnic groups and their experience in Cuba in much the same way as the Lucumí religion did as a whole.
2. For years, we heard reports from Africa that all learning occurred there before initiation into Ifá. But later, we found that at least in certain parts of Yoruba country, the practice is very similar to Cuba where a person must be initiated as an Ifá priest before learning the secrets of the odduns. The secrecy surrounding the odduns seems to be the traditional approach, and in the 1930s and 1950s William Bascom encountered strong opposition to recording the verses throughout Yorubaland as they were considered professional secrets. This attitude appears to have been far-ranging as Bascom’s research was conducted heavily in Ilé Ifé, Oyó, and Meko, and he spent time in about a dozen other towns throughout Yorubaland in Nigeria. It is possible that as the traditional Yoruba religions became more and more endangered by colonialism and the encroachment of Christianity and Islam, they may have loosened these restrictions in order to prevent the loss of verses.
3. Pichardo, Ernesto. From Pichardo’s press release posted to his social community site (diasporaorishanetwork.yuku.com/topic/894/Lukum-ifa-book-unveiled-and-authenticated) said that he had acquired two copies of Iwe ni Iyewó ni Ifá Orunmila, which he was turning over to the Africana Knowledge Group of South Florida that he helped to found. Later, when this Working Group apparently floundered, Pichardo reclaimed the copies of the book.
4. The preface with the disclosure that three copies of the book had fallen into the hands of three non-babalawos and the subsequent measures he took to prevent a reoccurrence of the event is taken from a copy of the second edition of Iwe ni Iyewó ni Ifá Orunmila in the author’s possession.
5. I intend to release this second edition of Iwe ni Iyewó ni Ifá Orunmila, which is the probable source of the information in many of the various Dice Ifás published later. The book will be first published in Spanish and later in an English translation. In the spirit of the original versions, the book will only be made available to babalawos.
6. I am hoping to be successful in my attempts to acquire a copy of the earliest version of the book in the near future. If I do succeed, I will try to release the version of this book in Spanish and in an English translation. They will be sold under the same conditions as with Iwe ni Iyewó ni Ifá Orunmila, in that it will only be sold to babalawos.
Chapter Four: Ifá Comes to Cuba
1. In this book the patakís and refránes are not associated with the oddun they are from, except in special cases such as where they are being used to illustrate how a particular babalawo’s life matched the predictions of their oddun. This is the traditional attitude in Cuba and appears to have been traditional in Africa until fairly recently as well. My padrinos Pete Rivera (Odí Ogundá) in San Francisco and Miguelito Perez (Ogbe Dandy) in Cuba follow this tradition, as do I. The abuses of this knowledge by non-babalawos who gained access to books on Ifá intended for the exclusive use of babalawos confirms the wisdom of these measures. One particularly grievous example occurred when a Miami Oriaté copied an entire Ifá book and replaced Orunmila’s name with Changó throughout.
2. This song is asking Elegguá to ensure the bird will go to heaven for having given its life for the sacrifice. Those present pull on the skin of their necks acknowledging that we all will die someday, just as surely as the bird is dying.
3. From the song for applying Epó (palm oil), “Palm oil soothes Ayalá, palm oil soothes.” Ayalá is the oricha who constructs our orí, which in turn rules our destiny.
4. In his book Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba, J.D.Y. Peel provides an outstanding account of how Christian missionaries, particularly those connected to the Anglican Church Missionary Society, created a Yoruba identity as well as the first Yoruba dictionaries in an attempt to standardize the language. As an interesting side note, this standardized Yoruba was constructed using Egba dialect with Oyó grammar. This is reminiscent of the mixing of languages that occurred at about the same time in Cuba.
5. While in Yorubaland there are some exceptions to this rule regarding reading only twelve odduns, the vast majority adhered to this practice which is the tradition in Cuba as well. An excellent description of a priest of Obatalá who read all sixteen signs and the verses he used can be found in William Bascom’s book Sixteen Cowries. The book is also interesting in that it clearly depicts how only the one oricha speaks in the classical diloggún system and few references to any other orichas are to be found.
6. David Brown writes in his book Santería Enthroned that this washing and feeding amounted to a re-initiation of Adechina, but this is an error. Re-initiations are not performed in Lucumí Ifá and never were, with the possible exception of the Villalonga line, which was hermetically sealed off from the other branches of Ifá until well into the twentieth century. If a person could be re-initiated that easily, we would have people being re-initiated simply because they don’t like the oddun they came with, or because they came osogbo or for any reason at all. Secondly, to be initiated in Lucumí Ifá, Odun/Olófin has to be present in the room, and Odun/Olófin hadn’t been brought to Cuba yet. Finally, in Yorubaland, babalawos wash and feed their Ifás every year for the annual Ifá Festival as well as for other major ceremonies.
There is an account by elder babalawo Hermes Valera Ramirez (Otura Sa) in Heriberto Feraudy Espino’s book Macua describing these events as an ebbó, which would be more accurate. This serves as an example of how ethnologists can come to erroneous, although usually well-meaning, conclusions and illustrates why their books need to be read with care rather than blindly accepted at face value.
That said, a few years back I did hear rumors of a case where a person was supposedly re-initiated because the new initiate had come with his godfather’s sign Baba Eyiogbe. The godfather was terrified by this turn of events as the oddun speaks of betrayal on a massive scale on the part of the godchild (something which the godfather was said to have done to his own godfather), so the babalawos re-consecrated the new initiate’s ekin nuts, and the divination was performed anew where the sign Ogunda Meyi appeared. If this even occurred, the person is and will always be a child of Baba Eyiogbe and nothing can change that. The oddun that appeared the second time, Ogunda Meyi (an oddun of harsh justice), was most likely Ifá’s sentence on the godfather and the babalawos present for having committed such a travesty, either through lack of knowledge, fear, or greed.
7. An excellent description of the origin of Efunché’s kariocha ceremony, including the war with opposing santera Obatero caused by the innovation can be found in La División de la Habana by Miguel W. Ramos.
8. Accounts of babalawos performing tasks such as shaving the head of the new initiate, which would later become the exclusive responsibility of the obá oriaté, the master of ceremonies for oricha initiations can be found in David Brown’s Santería Enthroned and Lydia Cabrera’s Koeko Iyawó.
9. Ño is an honorific title denoting great respect, and was almost exclusively used for those priests who came over from Africa.
Chapter Five: Lucumí
1. When a person is mounted or possessed by an oricha, they are not conscious of anything the oricha has said or done, and must be told later what occurred in their absence.
2. A well researched account of this war can be found in Miguel Ramos’s paper La División de la Habana.
3. The famous ethnographer Fernando Ortiz lists Aña Bí as being a babalawo, although he is not remembered as such by the babalawo or drumming communities. Ortiz does not mention the fact that Atanda was a babalawo, so there is a chance he confused the two drumming priests.
4. Israel Molinaire, City of Matanzas historian, informed Miguel Ramos of an inspector’s report that Adechina had been seen playing the batá drums in his cabildo on December 3, 1873. Personal communication between Israel Molinaire and Miguel Ramos reported in Ramos’s paper La División de la Habana.
5. In his book Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion, David Brown references letters written by Miguel Gomez claiming babalawos, including Tata Gaitán and Guillermo Castro went to drink water at the fount of Ortiz’s library. It is interesting to note that Brown himself buys into this myth of a Yoruba purity, and therefore validity when he writes that Gaitán ‘completed’ his knowledge through the information he found in Ortiz’s library (Brown, 2003).
6. William Bascom conducted extensive field studies in Yorubaland in 1937–38, 1950–51, 1960, and 1965 in the cities of Ifé, Meko, Oyó, Ilesa, Ilaro, Ilara, Abeokuta, Ibadan, Iseyin, Oke-Iho, Irawo, Ogbomoso, Osogbo, Sagamu, Ijebú Ode, Ondo, and a half dozen towns in Ekiti. Bascom became initiated into the Ifá and Ogboni cults as well. He and his wife-to-be Berta Montero also spent an entire year in Cuba and made several return visits during the ensuing years. Bascom was so meticulous that it took him thirty-one years to write Ifá Divination: Communication Between Gods and Men in West Africa, and twenty-nine years to complete Sixteen Cowries: Yoruba Divination from Africa to the New World.
7. In Obí Agbón: Lukumí Divination with Coconut, which I believe to be the most accurate study on Obí divination, Ramos describes being present at a meeting with Abimbola in Puerto Rico, where Abimbola stated that he had been sent by the Ooni of Ilé Ifé specifically to recuperate some of what had been lost in Africa, and to promote greater understanding between African and New World practitioners as a religious institution, a culture, and as a people. Ramos claims Eddie Faiña (Yomí Yomí), Julio Ruíz (Ilarí), Roberto Boluffer (Ogundá Lení), and santera author Marta Morena Vega were also present, among others.
8. In fact, the religion is listed as one of the eight world religions along with Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity by Stephen Prothero in his book God Is Not One.
9. An account of how Olófin was brought to the US and the subsequent initiations can be found in David Brown’s Santería Enthroned.
10. Fortunately, we have the book Manual de Orihate written by Nicolas Angarica, one of the handful of oriatés directly trained by the first professional oriaté Obadimeyi. This book authoritatively shows us that iworos, including the oriatés, who are the acknowledged experts in diloggún divination, held to these traditional limits as late as 1955. Angarica confirms these limits of the diloggún and past the twelfth letra all you have is the number of shells that have landed mouth up. Metanla meaning thirteen, merinla meaning fourteen, marunla meaning fifteen, and merindilogún meaning sixteen (Angarica, 1955). This is confirmed by Lydia Cabrera’s informants from the 1940s and 1950s recorded in her classic El Monte as well as her other books (Cabrera, 1957). Because the diloggún is designed as a mouthpiece for the orichas and not Ifá it is extremely rare for these signs to appear in the first two throws, with odds lower than one in one thousand, and many iworos go through their entire lives without ever seeing these letras appear in consultation.
11. Again, we have Angarica’s authoritative book showing that the Afro-Cuban tradition regarding reading the diloggún were actually interpreted as late as 1955, where the double signs were not read in the same form as Ifá. Instead, each sign of the double throw of the cowrie shells were interpreted. For example, if the sign Ogundá appeared followed by Odí, the iworo would give the advice from Ogundá followed by the advice associated with Odí.
12. For a detailed account sprinkled throughout with such experiences by a well-known oricha priest and drummer who came over in the Mariel Boatlift, see Drumming for the Gods: The Life and Times of Felipe García Villamil, Santero, Palero, and Abakuá by Maria Teresa Velez.
13. Informants for Lydia Cabrera mention babalawos having performed the tasks now conducted by the oriatés in the past as well as in Africa, which she mentions in her work Koeko Iyawó.
14. In his book Santería Enthroned David Brown cites the case of Jose Miguel Gomez Barbera, whose own 1929 initiation in Ocha was directed by babalawos who conducted the main ceremonies such as the shaving and ritual painting; even the itá was performed using the Table of Ifá instead of with the shells. It also appears some of the most important santeras of the time were present, such as Latuán and Tiburcia Sotolongo. Brown encountered this information in a letter Gomez had written to Radamés Corona on October 21, 1989. The fact remains though, that the oriaté became the universally accepted master of ceremonies of the initiation ceremonies by the end of the 1930s, most likely due to agreements with the prevailing babalawos of the time, such as Tata Gaitán.
Chapter Six: Orichas and Powers
1. This profound conversation between Bernardo Rojas and his son was told to David Brown by the elder babalawo Hermes Valera Ramírez in 1993.
2. Palo Monte is often mistakenly depicted as black magic and sorcery. Also referred to as La Regla Kongo, it is the religion hailing from the Bantu or Congo areas of Africa. The fact that there is little imposed morality has led some to the confused conclusion that it is black magic. In fact, most practitioners, known as paleros, work for the good of their godchildren and clients. The palero works heavily with the Dead, who like the living, can be good, evil, or everything in between. Also, the nganga and the religion in general rely heavily on the palero’s personal ethics.
3. Though the title Olófin does not seem to be commonly used any longer in Yorubaland, its existence is confirmed by E. Bolaji Idowu in his landmark book Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief where he depicts Olófin as another name for Olodumare (Bolaji, 1995).
Chapter Seven: Initiations
1. This means, “The elder is making blindness pass away, the elder is making loss pass away.”
2. According to some of Lydia Cabrera’s informants, the elekes were traditionally only given when an oricha was calling for a person to be initiated as their priest or priestess and the person could not afford it. The initiates were then given their necklaces to appease the oricha until the person could acquire the means to become initiated. This is where the term medio asiento, or half-seated (initiated), came into use.
3. Warriors given by santeros are similar to warriors given by babalawos, though there are a couple of differences. One, the Elegguá they give doesn’t come with a name or path until the person is fully initiated as a santera/o, if that is their path in the religion. The other difference is that only the babalawos can give Osun, which is an Ifá staff. There is more information regarding the differences between the Echu given by the babalawo and the Elegguá given by the oloricha in Chapter Six.
4. At the time of this agreement, the babalawo’s tasks began with the consultation and ebbó de entrada, where Ifá would give his advice to the initiate-to-be. The iyefá from the divination would then be added in the secret mixture called the machuquillo to lend Orunmila’s aché to the ceremony. During one initiation as a santero my padrino, the famous oriaté Guillermo Diago (Obá Bí-ibaé), informed me that traditionally the babalawo would also use the ecuele to find out which otanes (stones) were acceptable to the orichas. The next day the babalawo would perform a short cleansing and blessing of the plants that were to be used to make the omiero in the ceremony, which is called making Osain. Later, the babalawo would add Ifá’s blessing to the omiero itself. During the kariocha proper, the only official role the babalawo had was to present the razor to the initiate’s head and then hand the razor to the oriaté to perform the head shaving. This act itself seems very much like a re-enactment of how the babalawos turned over a number of responsibilities to the oriatés. Finally, in the oddun Irete Untedí, Ifá warns that olorichas and babalawos need to unite or everybody will lose. This is a warning I take very seriously as it is my oddun from when I received Olokun.
Chapter Nine: Odduns
1. Traditionally, the manner in which the diloggún is read is in the form of combining the advice of the two letras that make up their combination odduns. In other words, if the combination Ogundá Oché is thrown, the oloricha will give advice from Ogundá followed by advice from Oché, but during the 1970s, as santeros began to get their hands on Ifá books we began seeing the diloggún being read like Ifá. This is far from traditional, and olorichas who do this are forced to omit a number of patakís that reveal embarrassing contradictions in their practices. These olorichas attempt to rationalize these contradictions by claiming the troublesome histories are not traditional, while all the while the very fact they are attempting to interpret the shells as Ifá is anything but traditional in the first place.
Chapter Eleven: Women and Feminine Power in Ifá
1. This is the traditional salute to an Ifá priest, “Sacrifice offered, sacrifice accepted, sacrifice is blessed.” Often the rank of the priest is included as part of the salute. For example, “Oluwo iború, Oluwo iboya, Oluwo ibocheché,” or, “Oyugbona iború, Oyugbona iboya, Oyugbona ibocheché.”
2. Just as in the case of the babalawo, the oddun from the Abo faca or kofá ceremony is considered to have been an interim oddun until the person passes through their second initiation, with the new oddun superceding the earlier one.
3. Accounts of these santeras and their babalawo husbands can be found in Miguel Ramos’s La Division de La Habana and in David Brown’s Santeria Enthroned.
4. In Africa, each oricha have their own enclosed grove or forest where secret ceremonies such as initiations occur. In Cuba these have been replaced with sealed rooms for practical reasons. Odun’s vast importance is seen in the fact that the name of the initiation shrine for Ifá is Igbo Odun (elided together as Igbodun) instead of Igbo Orunmila or Igbo Ifá.
5. Although the Yoruba religious capital of Ilé Ifé, the current Araba (highest-ranking babalawo) and the Awishé (Official Spokesperson and Inspector General) Wande Abimbola now support the idea of initiating female Ifá priests, it appears that this may not have always been the case. Accounts by Ikulomi Djisovi Eason, scholar and priest of Hevioso associated with Oyotunji African Village in South Carolina point to a recent change in the attitudes of the Ifá hierarchy in Ilé Ifé. In the book, Orisa Devotion as World Religion, Dr. Eason recounts how in 1992 the King of Oyotunji Adefunmi, under pressure from women at Oyotunji to allow them to be initiated as Ifá priests, was forced to go to Benin to initiate them because Ilé Ifé still didn’t permit it at that time.
Chapter Twelve: Tata Gaitán
1. Though we often refer to different lineages as ramas, practically speaking, Cuban Ifá consists of only one rama with different lines interlocking and collaborating. It is very common for babalawos to have padrinos from different lineages.
2. Although Oluguere and Ño Cardenas were born in Africa they were both initiated to Ifá in Cuba by Adechina, and were therefore brothers in Ifá. The fact that Oluguere and Ño Cardenas were African born has led some to assume they had been initiated as babalawos before coming to Cuba, but this is not the case. Thus, the Tata Gaitán rama of Ifá is actually itself a branch of the Adechina rama.
Epilogue: One Babalawo’s Story
1. Although our lineage is named after Tata Gaitán, our roots go back to Adechina, who was Tata Gaitán’s grandfather and oyugbona in Ifá.
2. My Ifá lineage starts with Adechina, who brought Ifá to Cuba from Africa. Adechina (Obara Meyi) initiated Oluguery (Oyekun Meyi) to Ifá. Oluguery initiated Tata Gaitán (Ogundá Fún) with Adechina serving as the oyugbona. Tata Gaitán made Ifá to Alfredo Rivero (Otrupon Bekonwá), who initiated Octavio Ayala (Oché Fún), who made Ifá to Lazaro Sanchez (Irete Untelú), who made Ifá to Erminio Ogbe Funfunlo de Santa Cruz del Norte. He initiated Domingo Sanchez (Ogbe Che), who initiated my Padrino Pete Rivera (Odí Ogundá), who then initiated me.
3. The elekes (collars in Spanish and necklaces in English) are usually the first initiation received from an oloricha. This puts the initiate under the protection and care of the oloricha’s orichas and makes them a member of their ilé or oricha house. Only olorichas should give the elekes.