Getting Started -- Seek With Your Heart (part 3)

And so I waited, continuing to read and study on my own, even though I knew that that in itself would never be sufficient.

And I turned to Nature.  I felt driven to know the Orishas better, to somehow connect with them personally; so I went to the ocean to be with Yemaya; to the river to be with Oshun; to the mountain to be with Obatala; I sat under palm trees and tried to feel Shango in them; and I went into the chaparral, in the wilderness, to seek out Eshu, and Oshosi, and Ogun, since there is no real forest within a hundred miles of where I live.  If I had known of any volcanos at the time, I would have gone looking for Aganyu there.  Sometimes I made offerings, whatever I thought based on things I had read; other times I simply went to those places in nature and did my best to commune with the spirits there.  I listened for Oya on the wind, I joyfully celebrated with Shango on the rare occasions when we would get thunder and lightening here, and I did my best to be respectful of homeless people, lest it should actually be Babalu-Aye I might be meeting in the street.

I think that my choice to seek out the Orishas more directly in nature is not necessarily where most people would go, and that it bears some consideration.

In our modern world it has become all too easy to be disconnected from the natural world; that is why we humans as a race have become so neglectful, disrespectful, and destructive to the environment.  It's easy to disregard that with which you feel no connection or alliance.  And it has become too easy to forget, here in the Western World, that Ifa, and, by derivation, all of its branches that came out of the diaspora -- Santeria, Vodoun, Umbanda, Candomble, etc. -- are Nature Religions (or philosophies, if you prefer).  The Orishas are Supernatural Forces of Nature.  And I really believe, I feel in my heart, that you cannot know them just from books, and not even from bembes or rituals alone.

No, you must go to where they dwell in nature, and that will connect you to them in a profound and different way, one that is more visceral and has little or nothing to do with intellect; but by so doing, you attune yourself to their frequencies, like turning the dial on a radio, and when you reach the Orisha "stations" --  well -- that is when they can begin to speak to and with you, and begin to guide you to where you need to be next in your spiritual quest.  They speak to you in dreams, they whisper to you on the wind, they sing to you in the roar of the ocean, and they reach out to you in the profound depths of solitude and silence. You just have to listen with your heart.  They guide you along your path, they take you to the places you need to go, and they guide you to those human allies who will best be able to teach and guide you further on your journey.  That is what they did for me.

I Hear Oya Calling Me

Suddenly, suddenly, in the middle of the night it is ten degrees warmer than it is supposed to be, and suddenly, the wind has come up in great gusts.  One night into the New Year and the Winds of Change are whipping away.  What message do you have for me, yeye mi, whispered on those warm winds?

I will lie down to sleep now, and listen for you in my dreams.

Hekua, hekua, Yansa mi, I salute you.

Getting Started-- Seek With Your Heart (part 2)

Once I made the decision to say "yes" to the Orishas, at least to open my mind to see what this whole other world was about, I started to read, and I started to search for someone who might guide me.  I got readings from time to time from various babalawos or santeros.  Always it was in the Afro-Cuban Santeria tradition, and I just naturally assumed that that would be the way that I would go.  I didn't really even know that there were other roads, initially.  Some of them also had Spiritist leanings, but again, I couldn't distinguish because I didn't know enough yet. I attended whatever activities I could, gatherings, feasts, bembes.  I even served at some initiations by doing the hard work of plucking feathers of various fowl that had been sacrificed so that they could then be prepared by the cook for the feast later.  Instinctively I felt that this path of service was a correct choice for me, and the fact that I was a city girl and that this was quite new and hard for me mattered not at all.  I found that there were many who would be happy to take me on as their "ahijada", or goddaughter; and I desperately wanted to start that journey; but every time I would get close to committing, something in my heart would tell me NO, that I had not found the right ile or house for me yet.

One thing I knew for sure that made me different from the majority:  I did not want to merely belong to a house or ile, piling on initiations and elekes like going around a game board, just following prescribed steps.-- I knew that I had real capabilities, and that these needed careful development and guidance that could only come with a true apprenticeship, the old fashioned kind that would take years and someone really knowledgeable and willing to teach me.  In those early days it was harder for me, of course, to discern who was knowledgeable and who was not; how could I when I knew so little myself?  But it became clear that many were invested in keeping their ahijados ignorant and therefore dependent.  They did not want to teach them much, or anything.  That way, whatever your needs, you could never know or do for yourself, but had to always go running to your Padrino or Madrina or the Babalawo, who could tell you whatever they liked, then tell you that you had a problem that only they could resolve, and then charge you whatever they liked for it.  I felt that some were sincere and were simply behaving in the manner in which they had been brought up, but I also encountered some serious hypocrisy, and I even remember one poor woman, very dear, who offered freely to help me all that she could (although it was more in a Spiritist capacity) but who had herself actually lost her home because of expenses charged her by godparents.  I just knew that that could not be right!

I was torn.   More and more, I felt the orishas calling to me.  I also suffered from simple human vanity.  I gazed longingly at the piles of elekes around the necks of others, and felt the barreness of my own neck.  And, too, I wanted to belong.  I wanted, or thought I wanted, what others had; and yet every time I came close to joining another house, my heart would always tell me "no" once again, no, not this house. I was sorely tempted, and dissappointed, but I felt compelled to heed the warnings of my own heart; and I know now, with absolute certainty, that that was the right thing to do, and one of my first steps into real initiation.  I was being tested, and taught:  and the lesson, as well as the test, was one of the primary qualities of iwa pele (roughly translated as "good character"):  that being suuru, or, PATIENCE.