Thrones
Tronos de Los Orisha
By David H. Brown
Copyright Material
January 22, 1998
Copyright Material
January 22, 1998
(T)o make Santo is to make a
king, and Kariocha is a ceremony of Kings, like those of the palace of the Oba
Lucumi (Calixta Morales, Oddedei, 1954, quoted in Cabrera 1983:24 fn.).
[A throne] means that a new king is being born. It is luxury. The saint is there receiving everything being done. Everybody comes to give moforibale to that oricha (Iyalorisha Melba Carillo, New York, March 20, 1987).
Everyone is familiar with the "thrones" (tronos) of the orishas, special celebratory altars constructed mainly for three events in Cuban Lucumí tradition: 1) the initiation (asiento or santo); 2) the drumming (tambor); 3) the "birthday" (cumpleaños). Usually taking the form of a canopy structure in the corner of a room--the cuarto de santo or igbodú--thrones are built of colorful cloth for most of the orishas and "leaves" (yerbas) for the three guerreros, Elegbá, Ogún, and Oshosi. What is the origin of the Lukumí throne form? Though its ultimate origins reside in the altars and royal adornments of the Yoruba of West Africa, the throne's form was adopted from the baroque iconography of the Spanish monarchy and Catholic church, and first instituted in the colonial period's Afro-Cuban cabildos de nación to honor their reyes and reinas. Later, the throne form was deployed t opresent not these mortal kings and queens of the cabildos, but "kings", "queens", and "warriors", who were none other than the orishas themselves.
In its essential role in presenting an orisha--in the earthly manifestation of a fundamento or ìyawó--the throne is a special form of altar. The throne--altar, as well as the canastillero, has its origins in Yoruba shrines. The throne or canastillero is, foremost, the site of the orishas' ashé, where gifts, prayers, and gestures--plaza, derechos, mojubas, moforibales, and oros are respectfully rendered. In Yorubaland, an altar carries the double reference of 'place of sacrifice" and "throne of dignified authority". The Yoruba altar is called the "seat"(ijókó) of the òrìsà (e.g., ijókó-elegbá). It can also be called ojú(e)bó, the "face" or "surface" (ojú) where the òrìsà is given ebó. Ojú also translates as "throne", where the òrìsà is considered a personage of dignified royalty. For example, a Yoruba praise poem (oriki) for the deity called Olokun describes this òrìsà's "bush shrine", from which priestesses walk in procession with the calabash (igbä) of Olokun's secrets upon their heads: "Bií Olókun lé mi legbee / ó ye yín yeye lójú òdee". It means, "Walking with self-composed dignity like Olókun / It befits you and befits the throne in the open place". Olokun's "bush shrine" is an enclosed place with mariwó over the entrance, next to a well of water. Inside the enclosure offerings of Olokun's foods and sacrifices are made to a hole in the ground as the ancestors are praised.
At the same time, the Yoruba also have shrines within temples in the "town"--as opposed to the "bush". The shrine's altar (ijókó) is typically a series of mud or cement tiers, atop which is a raised pedestal, which elevates the calabash (igbá) or pot (ikòkò) of the òrìsà's secrets (awo). Elegbá's ijókó raises a black, lidded calabash holding his secrets. In shrines for Sàngó, the odó or mortar raises his wood bowl of thunderstones (edún àrá). Behind the òrìsà's seat may hang cloths (aso). Sangó has beaded cloth sidebags called làbà. In front of the ijókó on the ground are straw mats where the priests sit and cast the obi (kola nuts).
In sum, the ojúbó of the Yoruba "bush shrine" and temple is directly comparable to the Lukumí altar--a canastillero or trono--except for the fact that the orishas "under" the trono are "dressed" for public presentation, succeeding and completing whatever intensive ritual work was done previously. However, the throne is often part of a larger ebó, such as a drumming (tambor) that has been preceded by special sacrifices, wherein the orishas themselves have dictated the throne's very aesthetic arrangement.
The Lucumí/Afro-Cuban altar is located in the enclosed cuarto de santo/igbodú, complete with mariwó over the entrance. At the same time, the Lucumí have also made offerings at myriad "altars" that are outside, on the natural and man-made landscape: e.g., in the monte or manigua, at the río or mar, at the cuatro esquinas, or encrucijada, beneath the ceiba or palma real, at the cementerio, muralla vieja, and plaza, and so forth. The Lucumí trono is also comparable to the public, ceremonial setting of Yoruba king-ship. In Lydia Cabrera's El Monte, Iyalorisha Oddedei (Calixta Morales) compares the making of a santo to the ceremonies of the "palace of the Obá Lucumí". Historicaly, Yoruba kings were presented under the verandas of their "palaces," wearing their beaded crowns (adé), dressed in beautiful expensive cloth (aso), and carring their horse-tail flywhisks (ìrùkèrè) or ceremonial swords (àdá). At the same time, according to anthropologist Andrew Apter, Yoruba priests themselves (àwòró), especially those of the royal cults associated with the king's palace, are considered not only "kings" and "queens", but also the "kingmakers". They are responsible for gathering, protecting, and "refreshing" the àse of the king, so he can fight against negative witchcraft and rule the kingdom effectively. These àworò also own crowns, which are encrusted with beads and cowrie shells, such as the Shangó priests' baàyòn.nì headgear, a Yoruba crown that is the origin of the one owned by the Lucumí Dadá. In sum, in Yorubaland, king, priests, òrìsà are "royalty."
In the Afro-Cuban Lucumí tradition, the trono is the important place where the "new king" or "new queen" is dressed in a crown and beautiful satin cloth, carries the appropriate beaded herramienta, and is presented to "the people" on the Día del Medio. The throne is comprised of the canopy, curtains, paños, the odó/pilón and the estera. As Obá Miguel Ramos "Willie" Ramos has suggested to me, the pilón is indeed a "throne" on which a person is consecrated, and where the orisha "arrives in a seated position" in the asiento--that is, in the dignified, enthorned position of "royalty." It is not coincidental that the "throne"--the odó or pilón--of the quintessential Yoruba king, the historical Aláààfin called Sàngo, came to be used in Cuba for almost all of the orishas, except the Warriors, who use a stone or trunk (piedra or tronco) that represents their distinct habitat in the forest (monte). As Obá Ernesto Pichardo suggested to me, because of Sàngó's kingship as the Alafín of the `Oyó kingdom, the odó retains important meanings in the Lucumí ritual setting as a royal object, specially consecrated for the occasion of the asiento.
Certainly the Iyalorisha Oddedei was right in her identification of the "palace of the Obá Lucumí" as the origin of the Lucumí initiation (kari ocha). Yet, the style of the "Middle Day" presentation is not Yoruba in its entirety. As indicated, the tradition of the orishas' sacred garments (ropa de santo), pasteboard crown, and the canopied throne form, have precedents in the finery of the reyes and reinas of the cabildos de nación. The cabildos adopted these formal signs of prestige from the Spanish crown and army and made them their own. For example, in 1853 the Swedish traveler Frederika Bremer visited a well-appointed Lucumí cabildo in Havana's barrios extramuros ("outside the walls" of the fortress-like Old Havana). The cabildo's king and queen possessed "a throne with a canopy over it, " under which stood their seats and near which was a crown painted on the wall. Drumming and dancing took place before the throne. In another contemporaneous example, during one Día de Reyes (January 6, Epiphany) carnival street procession, a journalist observed: the cabildo king wore "a genuine costume of a king of the Middle Ages, a very proper red, closed coat, velvet vest and a magnificent gilt paper crown." Other kings wore "long military coats, starched shirts…flamboyant double-peaked hats, gold braid…swords on the belt…[etc]…All of these adornments, " noted Fernando Ortiz in 1921, "were taken principally from the Spanish Army."
In other words, the tradition of luxurious cloth worn by the Lucumí orishas has multiple sources in the Cuban, as well as the African, past for example, West and Central African rulers utilized European luxury goods--brocade cloth, carved seats, silk banners, etc.--for hundreds of years before, and during, the slave trave, and continued to do so up through the present. At the same time, the luxury of the Lucumí orishas clearly has its parallel in the luxury of the Catholic santos. For example, the four santitos that survive from the famous Regla cabildo of Adeshina and daughter, Eshubí Pepa-La Virgen Mercedes, La Virgen de Regla, Santa Barbara, y La Caridad del Cobre--are beautifully crowned and haloed in gold metal, lavishly dressed in hand--embroidered or painted capes (mantos), and each is enshrined in its own miniature capilla. The orishas were (and are) not "the same" as these santos, became their status-equivalents, if not their rivals. Were not the brocaded square paños of floral design and the circular metal crowns with multiple points that adorn the orishas' soperas modeled after the style of the mantos and crowns of the Catholic santos? In many cases, it is likely that the same seamstress produced both the brocaded paños of the orishas and the mantos of the santitos, in particular, the multifarious local Virgins and "royal" saints, such as St. Barbara. For example, Eshubí Pepa is said to have made some of the mantos that adorned her santitos.
Since the 1960s, some practitioners have chosen to "rectify" and "purify" the Lucumí tradition by "reverting" back to Yoruba origins." The Black American Yoruba Movement unser Adefunmi I began to wear West African clothing and, when Oyotunji Village was founded between 1971 and 1975 in South Carolina, they modeled their shrines and rituals garments after the Yoruba traditions they had seen in their travels and in ethnographic books, Oyotunji means "Oyo rises again." They would no longer use the porcelain soperas, which were Lucumí appropriations of the luxurious domestic adornments of the Cuban bourgeoisie, and they revived the use of African igbá and ìkòkò--calabashes and pots. A number of Cuban--and Puerto Rican Americans, as well as Cubans on the Island itself, have recently rejected not only the "syncretic" use of Catholic icons, but also the styles of adornment received from colonial times, such as the traditional traje del medio with pantalones de bombachas and pasteboard crown. They substituted, instead, carved Yoruba--style sculpture, "traditional" cloth, and beaded headgear. Since 1995, a group of babalawos in Reparto Puey in Havana has taken on the Ife, Nigeria, model of Ifá practice. This sociedad is called Ile Titun (La Nueva Tierra Sagrada), "The New Sacred Homeland," and considers itself a renaissance of Yorubatraditional practices from the "cradle of the Yoruba," the kingdom called Ilé-Ifè. The member babalawos wear Yoruba-style clothes for public ceremonies, as well as carry carved divination tappers (irofá) and horsetail flywisk (irukerè). As early as 1975, of course, a group of babalawos in Miami went to Oshogbo, Nigeria in Africa to receive Olofín, instead of receiving it from their elders in Cuba. A babalawo group in Central Havana has gone back to having its members make ocha via the Cabeza y Pata method prior to making Ifá, a practice they believe is based on the "African model" of making the "Head" and the "Foot" only during the initiation.
The Lucumí tradition of altar-making and adornment has always been dynamic. Just as prestige styles were appropriated during the colonial period and afterward for the greater glory of the orishas, so to are priests now creatively looking for expressions that are befitting of the orishas, while, at the same time, maintaining the religion's most basic principles. There will always be debate and controversy over such practices, which detractors will call mere inventos and others will call "recovery" of la verdadera tradición.
Sources for this article include fieldwork and the following texts:
Aimes, Hubert, H. S. 1905. "African Institutions in America." Journal of American Folklore 8:15-32.
Angarica, Nicolas VaLentin. Nd. [1955], Manual de Oriate: Religión Lucumí Havana: N.p. 336 pp.
Apter, Andrew. 1992. Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society, Chicago; University of Chicago Press.
Bascom, William. 1969. The Yoruba and Southwestern Nigeria. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Blier, Susan Preston. 1995a. African Vodun: Art, psychology, and power, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
Bremer, Fredrika. 1853. The Homes of the New World: Impressions of America. Two vol. Trans. Mary Howitt. New York: Harper Brothers.
Brown, David H. 1993a. "Annotated Glossary for Fernando Ortiz's The Afro-Cuban Festival 'Day if the Kings.' "In Cuban Festivals with annotated Glossary: The Afro-Cuban Festival: 'Day of Kings.'", ed. Judith Bettelheim, pp 49-98. Studies in Ethnic Art Series, Vol. 3. New York: Garland.
Brown, David H. 1993b. "Thrones of the Orichas"; Afro-Cuban Altar."African Arts. Vol.26, no.4 (October): 44-59. 85-87
Brown, David H. 1996. "Toward an Ethnoaesthetics of Santeria Ritual Arts: The Practice of Altar-Making and Gift-Exchange. "In Santeria Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin American art, ed. Arturo Lindsay, pp. 77-148. Washington D. C. Smithsonian Institution Press.
Brown, David H. 19999. "Altared Spaces: Afro-Cuban Religions and the Urban Landscape. "In the Gods of the City Religion and the Contemporary American Urban Landscape, Robert A. Orsi. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.
Cabrera, Lydia. 1983 [1954]. El Monte: Igbo-finda, ewe orisha-vititi nfinda; notas sobre las religiones, la magia, las superstitiones, y folklore de los Negros criollos y el pueblo de Cuba. Miami: Colección del Chicherekú en el Exilio.
Cabrera, Lydia. 1980b Yemayá y Ochún. New York: C.R. Publishers.
Caribbean Cultural Center. 1984. Orisa/Orixá/Orisha/Africa/Brazil/New York: An exhibition on the survival of African belief systems among Yoruba descendants in the Americas. Exhibition. Comp. Marta Moreno. New York: Caribbean Cultural Center.
Cosentino, Donald J. 1995a. "Introduction: Imagine Heaven." Ed. Donald J. Cosentino. In Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, pp25-55. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History.
Cosentino, Donald J. 1995b. "It's all for you, Sen Jak!. "In Sacred Arts Haitian Vodou, ed. Donald J. Cosentino, pp 243-63. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History.
Coulson, John. [1957]. The Saints: A concise Biographical Dictionary. New York: Guild Press.
Curry, Mary Cuthrell. 1997. Making the gods in New York: The Yoruba Religion in the African American community. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc.
Drewal, Henry John, John III Pemberton, and Rowland Abiodun. 1989. Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought. Exhibition Catalog. Ed. Allen Wardwell. New York: Center for African Art in Association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers.
Feduchi, Luis. 1969 El Mueble: Colecciones Reales de España. Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa.
Gleason, Judith. 1987. Oya: In Praise of the Goddess. Boston, Mass: Shambhala.
Fay-Halle, Antoinette, and Barbara Mundt. 1983. Porcelain of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Rizzoli.
Herskovits, Melville J. 1941. The Myth of the Negro Past. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers.
Hunt, Carl. 1979. Oyotunji Village: The Yoruba Movement in America. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America.
Mason, John. 1985. Four New World Yoruba Rituals. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Yoruba Theological Archministry.
Matory, J. Lorand. 1994. Sex and the empire that is no more: Gender and the politics of metaphor in Oyo Yoruba religion. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Ortiz, Fernando. 1921. "Los Cabildos AfroCubanos." Revista Bimestre Cubana 16 (January-February):5-39.
Ortiz, Fernando. 1960 [1920, Revista Bimestre Cubana, Vol. XV, No. 1, pp5-26]. La Antigua Fiesta Afrocubana del 'Dia de Reyes'. Habana: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Departamento de Asuntos Culturales, Division de Publicaciones.
Pemberton, John III, and Funso S. Afolayan. 1996. Yoruba Sacred Kingship: "A Power LikeThat of The Gods". Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Polk, Patrick. 1995. "Sacred Banners and the Divine Calvary Charge. "In Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, ed. Donald Cosentino, pp. 325-47. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History
Thompson, Robert Farris. 1983. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York: Random House.
Trujillo, Pardo, Carmen, Miriam Mendez-Plasencia, and Margarita Suarez Garcia. Nd El Museo de Arte Colonial. La Habana: Editorial Letras Cubanas.
Valdés Garríz, Yrmino. 198. Es de Sabios el Rectificar, Bulletin of CECRY (Centro de Estudios y Culto Religioso Yoruba, Inc., Vol. 1 (January-March), privately published.
Verger, Pierre. 1957. Notes sure le culte des orisa et vodun à Bahia, la Baie de tous les Saints, au Brésil et à láncienne Cote des Esclaves en Afrique. Momoires de L'institut Francais D'Afrique Noire, No. 51. Dahar: Ifan Dakar.
[A throne] means that a new king is being born. It is luxury. The saint is there receiving everything being done. Everybody comes to give moforibale to that oricha (Iyalorisha Melba Carillo, New York, March 20, 1987).
Everyone is familiar with the "thrones" (tronos) of the orishas, special celebratory altars constructed mainly for three events in Cuban Lucumí tradition: 1) the initiation (asiento or santo); 2) the drumming (tambor); 3) the "birthday" (cumpleaños). Usually taking the form of a canopy structure in the corner of a room--the cuarto de santo or igbodú--thrones are built of colorful cloth for most of the orishas and "leaves" (yerbas) for the three guerreros, Elegbá, Ogún, and Oshosi. What is the origin of the Lukumí throne form? Though its ultimate origins reside in the altars and royal adornments of the Yoruba of West Africa, the throne's form was adopted from the baroque iconography of the Spanish monarchy and Catholic church, and first instituted in the colonial period's Afro-Cuban cabildos de nación to honor their reyes and reinas. Later, the throne form was deployed t opresent not these mortal kings and queens of the cabildos, but "kings", "queens", and "warriors", who were none other than the orishas themselves.
In its essential role in presenting an orisha--in the earthly manifestation of a fundamento or ìyawó--the throne is a special form of altar. The throne--altar, as well as the canastillero, has its origins in Yoruba shrines. The throne or canastillero is, foremost, the site of the orishas' ashé, where gifts, prayers, and gestures--plaza, derechos, mojubas, moforibales, and oros are respectfully rendered. In Yorubaland, an altar carries the double reference of 'place of sacrifice" and "throne of dignified authority". The Yoruba altar is called the "seat"(ijókó) of the òrìsà (e.g., ijókó-elegbá). It can also be called ojú(e)bó, the "face" or "surface" (ojú) where the òrìsà is given ebó. Ojú also translates as "throne", where the òrìsà is considered a personage of dignified royalty. For example, a Yoruba praise poem (oriki) for the deity called Olokun describes this òrìsà's "bush shrine", from which priestesses walk in procession with the calabash (igbä) of Olokun's secrets upon their heads: "Bií Olókun lé mi legbee / ó ye yín yeye lójú òdee". It means, "Walking with self-composed dignity like Olókun / It befits you and befits the throne in the open place". Olokun's "bush shrine" is an enclosed place with mariwó over the entrance, next to a well of water. Inside the enclosure offerings of Olokun's foods and sacrifices are made to a hole in the ground as the ancestors are praised.
At the same time, the Yoruba also have shrines within temples in the "town"--as opposed to the "bush". The shrine's altar (ijókó) is typically a series of mud or cement tiers, atop which is a raised pedestal, which elevates the calabash (igbá) or pot (ikòkò) of the òrìsà's secrets (awo). Elegbá's ijókó raises a black, lidded calabash holding his secrets. In shrines for Sàngó, the odó or mortar raises his wood bowl of thunderstones (edún àrá). Behind the òrìsà's seat may hang cloths (aso). Sangó has beaded cloth sidebags called làbà. In front of the ijókó on the ground are straw mats where the priests sit and cast the obi (kola nuts).
In sum, the ojúbó of the Yoruba "bush shrine" and temple is directly comparable to the Lukumí altar--a canastillero or trono--except for the fact that the orishas "under" the trono are "dressed" for public presentation, succeeding and completing whatever intensive ritual work was done previously. However, the throne is often part of a larger ebó, such as a drumming (tambor) that has been preceded by special sacrifices, wherein the orishas themselves have dictated the throne's very aesthetic arrangement.
The Lucumí/Afro-Cuban altar is located in the enclosed cuarto de santo/igbodú, complete with mariwó over the entrance. At the same time, the Lucumí have also made offerings at myriad "altars" that are outside, on the natural and man-made landscape: e.g., in the monte or manigua, at the río or mar, at the cuatro esquinas, or encrucijada, beneath the ceiba or palma real, at the cementerio, muralla vieja, and plaza, and so forth. The Lucumí trono is also comparable to the public, ceremonial setting of Yoruba king-ship. In Lydia Cabrera's El Monte, Iyalorisha Oddedei (Calixta Morales) compares the making of a santo to the ceremonies of the "palace of the Obá Lucumí". Historicaly, Yoruba kings were presented under the verandas of their "palaces," wearing their beaded crowns (adé), dressed in beautiful expensive cloth (aso), and carring their horse-tail flywhisks (ìrùkèrè) or ceremonial swords (àdá). At the same time, according to anthropologist Andrew Apter, Yoruba priests themselves (àwòró), especially those of the royal cults associated with the king's palace, are considered not only "kings" and "queens", but also the "kingmakers". They are responsible for gathering, protecting, and "refreshing" the àse of the king, so he can fight against negative witchcraft and rule the kingdom effectively. These àworò also own crowns, which are encrusted with beads and cowrie shells, such as the Shangó priests' baàyòn.nì headgear, a Yoruba crown that is the origin of the one owned by the Lucumí Dadá. In sum, in Yorubaland, king, priests, òrìsà are "royalty."
In the Afro-Cuban Lucumí tradition, the trono is the important place where the "new king" or "new queen" is dressed in a crown and beautiful satin cloth, carries the appropriate beaded herramienta, and is presented to "the people" on the Día del Medio. The throne is comprised of the canopy, curtains, paños, the odó/pilón and the estera. As Obá Miguel Ramos "Willie" Ramos has suggested to me, the pilón is indeed a "throne" on which a person is consecrated, and where the orisha "arrives in a seated position" in the asiento--that is, in the dignified, enthorned position of "royalty." It is not coincidental that the "throne"--the odó or pilón--of the quintessential Yoruba king, the historical Aláààfin called Sàngo, came to be used in Cuba for almost all of the orishas, except the Warriors, who use a stone or trunk (piedra or tronco) that represents their distinct habitat in the forest (monte). As Obá Ernesto Pichardo suggested to me, because of Sàngó's kingship as the Alafín of the `Oyó kingdom, the odó retains important meanings in the Lucumí ritual setting as a royal object, specially consecrated for the occasion of the asiento.
Certainly the Iyalorisha Oddedei was right in her identification of the "palace of the Obá Lucumí" as the origin of the Lucumí initiation (kari ocha). Yet, the style of the "Middle Day" presentation is not Yoruba in its entirety. As indicated, the tradition of the orishas' sacred garments (ropa de santo), pasteboard crown, and the canopied throne form, have precedents in the finery of the reyes and reinas of the cabildos de nación. The cabildos adopted these formal signs of prestige from the Spanish crown and army and made them their own. For example, in 1853 the Swedish traveler Frederika Bremer visited a well-appointed Lucumí cabildo in Havana's barrios extramuros ("outside the walls" of the fortress-like Old Havana). The cabildo's king and queen possessed "a throne with a canopy over it, " under which stood their seats and near which was a crown painted on the wall. Drumming and dancing took place before the throne. In another contemporaneous example, during one Día de Reyes (January 6, Epiphany) carnival street procession, a journalist observed: the cabildo king wore "a genuine costume of a king of the Middle Ages, a very proper red, closed coat, velvet vest and a magnificent gilt paper crown." Other kings wore "long military coats, starched shirts…flamboyant double-peaked hats, gold braid…swords on the belt…[etc]…All of these adornments, " noted Fernando Ortiz in 1921, "were taken principally from the Spanish Army."
In other words, the tradition of luxurious cloth worn by the Lucumí orishas has multiple sources in the Cuban, as well as the African, past for example, West and Central African rulers utilized European luxury goods--brocade cloth, carved seats, silk banners, etc.--for hundreds of years before, and during, the slave trave, and continued to do so up through the present. At the same time, the luxury of the Lucumí orishas clearly has its parallel in the luxury of the Catholic santos. For example, the four santitos that survive from the famous Regla cabildo of Adeshina and daughter, Eshubí Pepa-La Virgen Mercedes, La Virgen de Regla, Santa Barbara, y La Caridad del Cobre--are beautifully crowned and haloed in gold metal, lavishly dressed in hand--embroidered or painted capes (mantos), and each is enshrined in its own miniature capilla. The orishas were (and are) not "the same" as these santos, became their status-equivalents, if not their rivals. Were not the brocaded square paños of floral design and the circular metal crowns with multiple points that adorn the orishas' soperas modeled after the style of the mantos and crowns of the Catholic santos? In many cases, it is likely that the same seamstress produced both the brocaded paños of the orishas and the mantos of the santitos, in particular, the multifarious local Virgins and "royal" saints, such as St. Barbara. For example, Eshubí Pepa is said to have made some of the mantos that adorned her santitos.
Since the 1960s, some practitioners have chosen to "rectify" and "purify" the Lucumí tradition by "reverting" back to Yoruba origins." The Black American Yoruba Movement unser Adefunmi I began to wear West African clothing and, when Oyotunji Village was founded between 1971 and 1975 in South Carolina, they modeled their shrines and rituals garments after the Yoruba traditions they had seen in their travels and in ethnographic books, Oyotunji means "Oyo rises again." They would no longer use the porcelain soperas, which were Lucumí appropriations of the luxurious domestic adornments of the Cuban bourgeoisie, and they revived the use of African igbá and ìkòkò--calabashes and pots. A number of Cuban--and Puerto Rican Americans, as well as Cubans on the Island itself, have recently rejected not only the "syncretic" use of Catholic icons, but also the styles of adornment received from colonial times, such as the traditional traje del medio with pantalones de bombachas and pasteboard crown. They substituted, instead, carved Yoruba--style sculpture, "traditional" cloth, and beaded headgear. Since 1995, a group of babalawos in Reparto Puey in Havana has taken on the Ife, Nigeria, model of Ifá practice. This sociedad is called Ile Titun (La Nueva Tierra Sagrada), "The New Sacred Homeland," and considers itself a renaissance of Yorubatraditional practices from the "cradle of the Yoruba," the kingdom called Ilé-Ifè. The member babalawos wear Yoruba-style clothes for public ceremonies, as well as carry carved divination tappers (irofá) and horsetail flywisk (irukerè). As early as 1975, of course, a group of babalawos in Miami went to Oshogbo, Nigeria in Africa to receive Olofín, instead of receiving it from their elders in Cuba. A babalawo group in Central Havana has gone back to having its members make ocha via the Cabeza y Pata method prior to making Ifá, a practice they believe is based on the "African model" of making the "Head" and the "Foot" only during the initiation.
The Lucumí tradition of altar-making and adornment has always been dynamic. Just as prestige styles were appropriated during the colonial period and afterward for the greater glory of the orishas, so to are priests now creatively looking for expressions that are befitting of the orishas, while, at the same time, maintaining the religion's most basic principles. There will always be debate and controversy over such practices, which detractors will call mere inventos and others will call "recovery" of la verdadera tradición.
Sources for this article include fieldwork and the following texts:
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