The Altar of My Soul

by Marta Moreno Vega

  In preparation for my trip to Cuba, I had done extensive research on the religion. The images in the books recalled the objects I had seen in my abuela’s home; however, they seemed distant as I viewed them through the objective eyes of a scholar, rather than the eyes of my abuela’s granddaughter. The information gathered from my studies was coming to life in the vibrant stories of initiates who embraced the orishas as a way of life.

  That evening my dream was a prueba, a confirmation, of the words of Orula. Madrina Zenaida explained that a spiritual awakening occurred with a flowing together of messages from different sources, like many rivers coming into one.

  That evening the spirit of my great-grandmother, María de la O, came to sit by me. Her presence illuminated the room with clouds of white light. Her hand tenderly stroked my head, sending out smooth, soft waves of numbing electricity. For the first time, her face revealed a slight smile as she gently nodded her head in affirmation. Then she stood up and delicately lifted my left arm.

  Magically, a white-beaded Obatalá initiation bracelet, an ide, appeared on my wrist, confirming the words of Orula in my dream.

  The following day, Zenaida and I went to the public ceremony in celebration of Javier’s initiation. The house, located an hour from Havana, was filled with initiates and overflowing with chatter; the smell of food permeated the house as children played tag in the overcrowded room. When we entered, Olga, the medium, waved to us from the far side of the room, signaling us to join her. No sooner had we squeezed into our cramped space than we heard the drummers begin to play.

  The gradual, rolling drumbeats announced that a new babalawo was about to appear. The white curtains of the initiation room were gradually pulled to the side, and Javier could be seen walking at a measured pace surrounded by babalawos of all ages. All adorned in white clothing, they formed a calm, moving stream around Javier. Javier’s clean-shaven, honey-colored complexion glowed with the spiritual cleanliness that magnificently heralds rebirth. His features had acquired the intangible, noble quality that new initiates exhibit when the aché of the orisha is newly crowned. He was now a babalawo, a father of secrets and an oracle in training to become a voice for the sacred knowledge of Orula. Although babalawos do not fall into trances, there was an aura that confirmed the radiance and presence of the divine oracle Orula.

  Slowly the procession circled the room. Everyone present was resplendent in the glory of having given birth to another priest who would protect and pass on the sacred teachings of the ancestors and orishas. As the procession moved by us, I noticed the faraway look in Javier’s eyes as he was led into the front patio so he could carry out the ceremony called la siembra, the planting.

  Javier carried a hoe and a machete with which he would sow the earth in a symbolic gesture of his commitment to hard work and his intention to harvest the fruit of his labor. It is a ceremony that affirms the babalawo’s honesty and his desire to have the religion grow and expand. This simple ceremony formed a promise to the community, a vow that he would diligently study the teachings of Ifá, would honestly interpret them, and would dedicate himself to promulgating the religion. After Javier sowed the earth, santeras, who were daughters of Orula, performed the dance of los platos, literally, the dance of the plates. In the Santería religion, women are not initiated as babalawos, since this priesthood is restricted solely to men. However, women do undergo a ceremony in which they receive the blessings of Orula, Kofa. Kofa bestows women with Orula’s aché and designates women as daughters of Orula, apitibisas, who assist in ceremonies to Orula. The apitibisas danced around Javier holding white plates above their heads filled with different types of food, adimu. With slow, undulating movements, they rhythmically danced in a circle as other initiates watched jubilantly. The babalawos placed money on the plates as the women danced, singing, “Orunmila taladé, Baba moforibale … Orunmila, we honor you; Father, we salute you …”

  Once la siembra was completed, the babalawos proceeded to the dinner table, where a lavish spread of food had been placed in honor of the new initiate, the iyawo. The metaphorical ceremony of la siembra revealed how the elaborate ceremonies of Santería served to rekindle memory and recommit the community to their ancient ethical codes.

  The splendor of the ceremony was something I would come to witness in Trinidad, Brazil, the United States, and West Africa. Elaborate, lengthy ceremonial events serve as public declarations of commitment to the continued growth of the religion. Javier’s glorious ceremony helped me understand the importance of having our communities witness rituals affirming our historical legacy.

  The day after Javier’s ceremony, I returned to the rapid, breathless pace of New York City. The frenzied environment of Kennedy Airport rapidly overtook me. Customs officials snapped, “What were you doing in Cuba? Did you bring back cigars and rum?”As they rudely shifted through my bags, my spiritual experiences in Cuba seemed distant, trapped much like the island’s architecture in an antiquated past. The feeling of nostalgia and the nurturing spiritual memories I had experienced now felt as if they had all been part of a dream.

  However, when I arrived home, I began creating my bóveda, placing it in my living room to honor the dear memories and presence of my mother and abuela. I wanted my bóveda to become the center of my family’s lives, to give my sons the opportunity to be full participants in my spiritual growth, with the hope that they, too, would feel connected to our ancestral traditions. What was most important to me was that they learn to honor, respect, and rejoice in our cultural traditions. Unlike my mother and abuela, I did not want to hide or withhold my spiritual legacy.

  With my sons Sergio and Omar beside me, I went through our old family albums, selecting photographs to be placed on the ancestor table. Looking through the albums was like reliving my childhood, and allowed me to introduce my sons to family members they did not know. They met my mother as a young woman; her gentle smiling eyes, filled with hope, looked at them from a small sepia snapshot, probably taken by one of those quarter machines at Coney Island. Then they saw her as a proud middle-aged mother, sitting beside my father and surrounded by her young children. My brother, sister, and I were dressed in our best clothes, staring stiffly at the studio camera with forced smiles. This was our one and only formal family portrait. They saw her as an older, tired woman, just before her death, wading in the water of Luquillo Beach in Puerto Rico. They were introduced to my brother and my sister, Alberto and Socorro, as healthy infants in vintage, straw baby carriages with large thin wheels. My sons laughed at the outdated outfits of Alberto as a teenager, who smiled confidently at the camera. They teased me when they saw the wide, heart-shaped brim of my Easter hat, which I wore when I was eight years old. For the first time in years, I dared to look at my family photographs and allow myself to face the pleasure and pain they provoked in my heart. Omar asked about my sister: “Where is she? Can I meet her?” With unwanted tears in my eyes, I sadly said, “She is far away and we cannot visit her right now.” “Can we write to them?” Sergio asked. “When I get their addresses, we will,” I responded. Not knowing how to respond fully to their questions, I tried to hide the truth of our family’s separation by avoiding direct answers. How could I explain my brother’s and sister’s behavior to my four- and nine-year-old sons?

  I placed my guerreros behind the front door, just as my abuela and godmother had done. Every Monday, I woke up early and changed the water in the seven glasses on my bóveda and attended the warriors, stroking them carefully with palm oil, manteca de corojo; covering them with cigar smoke; spraying them with a mist of aguardiente; and offering prayers. As my sons watched me perform these simple ritual obligations, I explained each step to them. Using the simpler patakís, I introduced my sons to our spiritual family and the warrior orishas: Ellegua, Ochosi, Oggun, and Osun. Filled with my family photographs and the aché of the warrior orishas, our home acquired a feeling of ancestral warmth and spiritual solace.

  The weekly rituals in tribute to my ancestors
and the warrior orishas required that I stop and focus on my spiritual growth, setting aside, for those moments, other parts of my life. Meditating on the lives of my ancestors allowed me to relive the magical moments of my time in Cuba. And I also recalled my summers at Rockaway Beach with my family, Sunday dinners when my father and brother argued over what team would win the baseball series, and afternoons with Abuela, sitting in her sacred room and watching her change the glasses of water on her bóveda. But these ceremonies also brought back painful memories that I had tried to repress. Finally, I began to set aside the pain and follow my mother’s advice by letting in positive thoughts. I meditated on my love for my children. I thanked the spirits for giving me two sons who brought me such happiness. By speaking to the spirits and the warriors, I was able to learn from my past actions and begin to consider various ways to handle similar difficult situations in the future. And I was able to accept what I had known all along.

  Advice my mother had once given to me as a child came in a new light. “You cannot give what you do not have. If you don’t have any candy, how can you share it?” Suddenly I understood that in order to give, you must first have something to contribute. My mother’s words became the underlying principle of my work at the center—to gather information, you must be willing to share it with others. I was overwhelmed by the positive response of audiences, the large number of people desperate to find that missing part of their cultural heritage. I developed programs that included a balance of artists, scholars, and community leaders, thereby providing a rounded view of the cultural and religious themes we were exploring.

  When I first returned from Cuba, I developed a concert in celebration of Shangó’s day, on December 4. We invited an initiated scholar to speak about Shangó worship in the Americas, and had traditional drummers and dancers of Cuba and Brazil perform the music and dances of their countries for Shangó. The performance was sold out; we had a standing-room-only audience, as well as a long line of people hoping to enter the theater. We had priestesses and priests bring their godchildren dressed in ritual white to witness the beauty of their culture in an artistic setting. The audience and performers became one as the call and response to the chants and rhythm of the drums overwhelmed the concert hall. Initiates in the audience filled the aisles dancing to the rhythms of their orishas. Our religion was no longer hidden behind closed doors; it was on a concert stage for everyone to enjoy.

  At the end of the performance, one of the older priestesses sought me out with her godchildren in tow. With tears in her eyes, she said, “In 1956, I was present at the Palladium nightclub when Mongo Santamaria, the legendary Cuban drummer, presented a spectacular concert in honor of Shangó. Since then, I have not witnessed a single public presentation honoring our religion in a respectful manner. Thank you.”

  Although I performed the ritual obligations for my bóveda and warriors, I set aside my journal, letting it gather dust on my cluttered desk. Promising to review the notes in my spare time, I became overwhelmed with the responsibilities of directing and fund-raising for the center’s programs while performing the many chores of a single mother. A few months after the concert, I focused on re-creating Carifesta, the international African Diaspora festival of Cuba, for a New York audience. Using college conference rooms and major concert halls throughout the city, we transported the tropical extravaganza to our urban setting, and entitled the series the International Expressions Festival, October 1980.

  Among the many concerts and performances, the center hosted a panel discussion featuring priests and priestesses from Africa, Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti. They compared the religions of the Yoruba in West Africa, Candomblé in Brazil, Santería in Cuba, and Vodun in Haiti. By the time the panelists completed their presentations, they had proposed and convinced the audience that a similar gathering should take place in 1981 in Ile Ife, Nigeria, the birthplace of the orishas. It was decided that an international conference would be organized, with the center as the coordinating institution, working with organizations in the Caribbean, Latin America, West Africa, and the United States.

  Two months later, I was planning trips to Brazil, Trinidad, Haiti, Puerto Rico, as well as locations in the United States. When I called Zenaida to inform her of my new project, she immediately turned over the telephone to Elpidio; I repeated with tremendous excitement, “Padrino, I am planning an international conference on the orishas to take place in the sacred city of Ile Ife, next year.”

  Expecting a congratulatory response, I was surprised when he said, “I can see you have not been checking your journal. You have forgotten the words of Orula. Orula prepared you for this in the divination session. Remember, as I told you, Orula is never wrong.”When I hung up the telephone, I ran to my desk and uncovered the journal and feverishly looked through my notes. He was right; Orula had said that I would travel internationally in celebration of the orishas.

  Immediately, I started planning my trip and arranged for Tom to take care of Sergio and Omar. My sister-in-law, Laura, the deputy director of the center, would be responsible for the center’s programs during my trip. As I stopped to take stock of my life, I noticed that Orula was proving his power to me in several ways. I was forced to delve deeper into my soul to determine my spiritual commitment as the business trips began materializing. I received calls from scholars and initiates in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Caribbean as word began to spread of plans for the upcoming conference. I received a call from a santero in Uruguay, who conveyed the sentiments that most were expressing. Explaining that he had saved his pennies in order to place the call, he said, “I do not have the money to be with you in Ile Ife, but my soul and orisha will be there with you. I had to let you know that there is a religious community in Uruguay, and we are also struggling to have the religion respected.” Calls from the community of initiates affirmed the need and importance of uniting the varied branches of practitioners.

  My journal became my bible, helping me to understand Orula’s advice, and the guidance of the orishas that were now essential principles in my life. My studies intensified as I sought to identify the underlying commonalities that would assist in deconstructing the cultural borders that distance and time had created.

  As I was doing this, I learned that in New York our own communities were divided. Cuban and Puerto Rican initiates were vying for recognition, arguing over which group was most influential in the Santería community. African Americans who were introduced to the religion by Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the late fifties were establishing independent orisha houses devoid of Catholic images, correctly arguing that these church symbols had nothing to do with the Yoruba of West Africa.

  The growing Haitian and Dominican communities were introducing the practice of Vodun into the city, first brought to the Caribbean by the enslaved Fon people of West Africa. A small and growing community of Brazilians from Bahia were also beginning to practice the rituals of Candomblé, introducing orishas that no longer existed in the other religious systems. New York was already a global village of initiates, and my task was greater than understanding what scholars had written about the religion—it was to understand how our communities perceived themselves and their role in the international community of initiates.

  Like Oggun and Ochosi, I felt as if I were a warrior lost in the wood, still searching for more information on why people wanted to initiate into an ancient African religion. I began interviewing initiates wherever I traveled. It was important for me to understand why others sought out the spiritual forces of the ancestors and orishas. I wanted to understand how to bridge the varied orisha systems in Africa and the Diaspora. By speaking with practitioners throughout the world, I believed I could gain a better understanding of myself. Through their cooperation, much like that shared by Oggun and Ochosi, I could find what I was searching for.

  I started gathering stories soon after my arrival from Cuba in 1979. The teaching tales of initiates in New York connected to those told by the elders in Cuba. For example,
Norma—a producer of children’s television programs who was a consultant for a book project on Yoruba folktales for children that we developed at the center—told me how her first trip to West Africa changed her life. She had seen the faces of her brothers and sisters in Senegal, Ghana, and in other countries throughout West Africa. Though she did not know the native language of these countries, she felt a deep connection with them that began to fill her soul.

  As part of the black and Latino power movement of the seventies in New York, Norma had always been active in cultural activities that celebrated her Afro–Puerto Rican heritage. But it was not until she traveled in West Africa that she began to understand her heritage through the symbols, dances, songs, and clothing that she recalled from her own childhood.

  Norma’s light-skinned face flushed with excitement and her body trembled as she described that special moment when she connected to the orishas. She had accompanied a college friend to a reading with an oriate, a diviner, in the Bronx. “Imagine going to an apartment far on the outer part of the South Bronx, walking up four flights in an unlit hallway to meet a stranger, because your crazy best friend wants to know if her boyfriend is fooling around,” Norma told me, laughing. “Girl, was I pissed, after climbing all those stairs to see this priest.

  “Well, let me tell you, my friend walked into the divining room that was closed off with this white sheet, while I sat in the living room surrounded by an altar that covered every wall in the apartment. Blue and white was everywhere, on the sofa, chairs, walls, curtains, carpet, and ceiling. The altar to the orisha Yemayá was like a queen’s crown of silver and blue cloth, with a large Chinese enamel bowl decorated with blue-and-white fish. Blue metallic cloth hung from the ceiling, intertwined with a silver cloth to imitate a waterfall. When I sat down on the soft cushions, it felt as if I were going to drown in this beautiful sea of color. A feeling of tranquillity and serenity filled my inner being. The peace and spirituality that had begun to emerge in me in Africa were right there.”