Dia de los Muertos 2018

 Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) accompanies a radical transformation, here in the temperate regions, when summer transforms to winter.  The leaves which have absorbed so much sunlight during the summer, now turn every shade of yellow, orange, red, and brown and fall to the earth to nourish the soil.  The tree trunks left reflect the palos within the fundamento, showing us how the Earth is one great big Fundamento with every palo imaginable within her.  This year we chose to make our Day of the Dead offerings in a new Batey that we are building for our son, Hatuey.  The tree in the center is his tree, planted when he was one years old, over his placenta.  The stones of the Batey itself are from an older Batey that was in the forest.  Everything changes and shifts, and shape shifts in life.

The cemis, Opiel Guabiran and Guatauba Maquetaurie, are present, representing the Taino ancestors. Various batons and palos are present representing ancestors, as well as various other elements of the ancestors.  The petroglyphs visible are all Taino petroglyphs.  While we are honoring "Day" of the Dead, in reality everyday for us is the "day of the dead".  As Nganguleros, Taino, we see the Dead as being instrumental, essential and present in every day movements.

Our offering consists of all the vital elements, cooked and raw, that can be absorbed by the ancestors.  The aromas are of particular importance in this process.  Cooking the food allows the aromas to be carried upon the winds in all directions, calling the ancestors to approach.  Essential elements such as the sweet guayaba for the muertos is present year to year.  The sacred root of the Taino, Yuca, is always present, here cooked with name, jautia.  Bacalao and smoked fish from the oceans are present.  Maiz tostada, grown from our conucos here, and a cacao cake with chili peppers are also part of the offerings.  

The offering is varied, as we are making offerings to ancestors from many traditions.  We acknowledge the Indigenous ancestors of this region, the various ancestors whose bones are buried here.  We honor our Taino ancestors, our African ancestors, all our ancestors, known and unknown.  We honor those ancestors we knew in life, and those we never met.

From day to night, the energies shift, revealing faces that were not visible earlier during the day.  It is important to us that the ceremony continue throughout the two faces of life (light and dark), the whole circle of life.  The night blessed us with a clear sky of stars.

 In this time of extreme Earth Changes, we continue to affirm the continuance of our spiritual traditions, teaching our children that their ancestors and cultural/ spiritual traditions are the most precious, sacred aspect of life.  We bring out our Taino cemis, Opiel and Guatauba, to affirm the ancestors, to acknowledge the dead, to make the statement that we are the living, walking extension of our ancestors. We remind these semis of the stories of the Taino Casike Hatuey, the freedom fighter!

Uncovering ghosts in the trail of Palo in the Caribbean!

Two Worlds Merging

With the passing of the so called "good friday" event, our thoughts and contemplations turn towards the roots of the typical practice of utilizing this day for throwing brujeria at our so called "enemies".  


First of all, we all can recognize good friday as a christian event; a Christian event commemorating the murdering of their "savior" which has little concrete historical evidence to support it.  This murdering of their "savior" has (and continues to be) blamed on "the Jews", in fact over the last couple thousand years a Christian practice of murdering and falsely accusing Jews has run rampant, resulting in multiple massacres and genocides, culminating in the Nazi institutions of genocide.  Even ridiculous accusations of Jews "spearing the host" (in other words the wafer eaten during church service representing (allegedly) the body of the savior) resulted in multiple mass murdering sprees throughout Europe over hundreds of years.  Children that were murdered with no obvious perpetrator were raised to the status of "saint" (for example: St. William and St. Hugh in England) once Jews were blamed for the murders (accused of sacrificing the children) and then put to death.  These "saints" became huge money making schemes for the churches.  This behavior was not exclusive to the catholic church but was shared between the various Christian branches.   What is important here is the BEHAVIOR.  


There is abundant factual evidence of the Christian churches BEHAVIOR of presenting false stories and false accusations in order to advance their agenda, with their primary agenda being wealth and spiritual and actual power.  Jews were a convenient target for the Christian leaders and their largely ignorant and definitely bloodthirsty masses.    However all other traditions were equally targets of the church's brutality and psychological madness.    The church waged spiritual war against Indigenous Traditions (including Indigenous African Traditions) and this spiritual war included a very powerful psychological component that enable the spiritual war to be effective.  Make no mistake, this Spiritual War continues...


When we trace Palo Mayombe to its "Roots" we find those Roots to be within a situation of very difficult conflict and oppression, not only within the Caribbean but also within the Kongo kingdoms.  It was 1488 when the Portuguese first arrived at the mouth of the Congo River, and it was 1492 when the Castilians arrived in the Caribbean.  The church was behind each of them, validating, and indeed guiding their actions.  Along with conquistadors armed with weapons and disease, friars, missionaries and priests were the second arm of the attack.  One attacked the physical body of our Ancestors with murderous violence, the other attacked the mind of our Ancestors with equal violence, but a violence cloaked in a lethal combination of ancient sacred images and falsified history.  


When we look at the Kongo in this time period we see that the Portuguese went into the Kongo first "selling a dream" to the Kongo leaders, promising wealth, education and power and boasting of the power of their savior and their god.  By the time the leaders realized the true intentions of the Portuguese (wealth, power and control over the whole of those regions of Africa from East to West Coast), the damage was largely done.  The Portuguese did what all European invaders did (and incidentally continue to do), which was exploit divisions that were already present within the populations of both Continents.  By promising one chief wealth, and power over their historical "enemies", they were able to hide the fact that they themselves were a far greater enemy than the Indigenous Population could possibly fathom at that time.  There were of course notable exceptions to this, one being Hatuey, the Cacique that saw through their diabolical plans, another being Queen Nzinga who waged war against the Portuguese in her country of Angola for many decades due to her fierce opposition to the slave trade.  We must realize that not only was there utter imbalance, chaos and brutality occurring within the practices of slavery in the Caribbean but there was also utter imbalance, chaos and brutality occurring on the other side of the Atlantic in the Kongo where the people were being kidnapped from.  


Not only were physical bodies being brought in hell ships to the Caribbean but the ghosts of those who died on the journey were also being both left in the Kongo on the roads traveled by slave traders, in the forts along the coasts with their slave dungeons, on the ships and arriving in the Caribbean.  The number of dead equaled the number of living and this is not including those who died early deaths due to the harshness of slavery in the Caribbean.  


Meanwhile it was the Indigenous Population of the Caribbean who were also being slaughtered, who held the knowledge of the Natural Environment of this environment which was new to the Kongo people who arrived against their will.  It was to the Taino (the Indigenous People of the Caribbean) that the Kongo turned to to discover the healing plants and the Sacred points within the Rivers, Caves, Mountains, Forests, Lagoons and Oceans.  Various diverse Kongo traditions were practiced throughout the Caribbean, and these traditions eventually coalesced into what we call Palo Mayombe.  In speaking of Palo Mayombe we cannot be ignorant as to the conditions that were occurring in Cuba, in particular) during the last 100-120 years.  All of these conditions had their effect on Palo, and the conditions that we continue to live under continue to have an effect on the practices of Palo.  


During good friday, many practitioners of Palo (not all), are engaging work with their Fundamentos (Prendas) which is primarily about attacking enemies.  Good friday is seen as the day when so called "evil" got the upper hand over "good" and the savior got "sacrificed", "good" then became triumphant once again on the sunday following.  (It is vital to note that Indigenous People of this continent have been accused by the very same Christians of doing human sacrifices, when by their own admission it is the Christians who are speaking of human sacrifice with the murdering of their savior, in fact they glorify this particular human sacrifice).  


In looking at this spiritual-psychological battle that has been waged against our People we need to engage a profound Spiritual Realization within ourselves to recognize that the behavior of attacking our "enemies" during the good fridays is reminiscent of the divide and conquer behavior of our oppressors.  We are blindly continuing the behavior that was originally exploited by the invaders of our  Two Continents.  We continue to expend energy and resources on fighting each other rather than utilizing those resources for progression and evolution and for strengthening our understanding of both Our-story and His-story.  


Note:  We will continue to build on this understanding in further articles...