Ewe Orisha a Treatise on the Role of Plants in the Yoruba Religion
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Ewe Orisha A treatise on the role of plants in the Yoruba Religion Oduwafun 2007 This work is dedicated to the memory of Baba Alafia Shango Dei Otura Meji Renard Simmons, my Baba Tobi in Ocha, the first African- American Oriate; Ibaiye, Baiye Tonu. Introduction In this treatise the importance of plants (ewe~ Yoruba, vititi finda~ bi-kongo, yerba- Spanish) in the Yoruba Religion is discussed. Much that will be said here will be based on Lydia Cabrera’s book El Monte. There is much in this work about African Religion and philosophy and about the feelings and knowledge of the Black African peoples in the diaspora and especially in Cuba. Persistent in the minds of black Cubans, with astonishing tenacity is the belief in the spirituality of the Mountain (el Monte (Sp), woods, bushes, forest, wilderness). In the rain forests of Cuba, as in the rain forests of Africa there resides the same ancestral divinities, the powerful spirits which even today as in the days before are feared and venerated and whose hostility and benevolence depends the success and failures of mankind. The blacks that venture into the forest feel a presence of spirit and the forces of nature which penetrates deep into their hearts. A direct contact is established with supernatural forces. They are in its domain when in the forest. These spirits are invisible and sometimes visible and the presence of God is felt: “And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from thy feet for the place whereon thy standest is holy ground.” Exodus (3:4-5) as so with the Jews, Christians, and Muslims, so this is how the blacks feel when entering El Monte. “The forest (woods) is sacred” for in it resides, living, the divinities. “The Saints are more in the Monte than in the heavens.” “Generated from life, we are sons of the Monte because life began there. The Saints were born in the Monte and our religion was also born in the Monte”, so says an old yerbero (Sp.- a santero priest who studies and uses herbs). Everything one finds in the Monte, the fundamental of the cosmos. All that one asks from the Monte, the Monte gives all. “We are sons of the Monte” for them the Monte is the equivalent of the Earth and the concept of universal mother, the fountain of life. Earth and El Monte are the same. There are the Orishas: Eleggua, Oggun, Ochoisi, Oko, Aye, Chango, Obatala and the Eggun: the dead, the ancestors, Iku, Ibbayes. It is full of the dead, the defunct. The dead go to the “manigua” (woods, Cuban Sp). In the Monte all is supernatural. It is the domain of the spirits. Certain spirits attach themselves to certain trees, certain bushes. Certain spirits, good and evil attached themselves to certain herbs. It is important to know the law and the rules established in the Monte. In Cuba these laws were taught to the criolles by the old Africans. In order to receive help form the Monte you have to know how to enter the Monte. The Igbo (Yoruba, monte) is like a temple. The whites go to Church to ask for what they don’t have, to ask Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary or whatever celestial saint. You must go to god to attend to your needs, because without the help of God what can man do? The creed of Black Africans, as spoken in Olodumare God in Yoruba Belief: “In All Things Religious”. Now the blacks go to the Monte as the whites go to church, because the Monte is full of the Santos and the dead, to ask them for all the things we lack, for our health, and our affairs. And as one enters a Church with respect, one must enter the Monte with respect. The Monte encircles essentially all that the blacks need for their magic in order to conserve their health and well being. All that is necessary to defend themselves from whatever adverse forces. Notwithstanding in order to take a plant or stick or stone it is precisely necessary to pay respect by giving rum, tobacco, money, prayers, and on certain occasions the blood of a rooster in order to have the right to take what you want. Within the Monte each bush, leaf, tree, herb has its owner and own attributes. It is necessary to have courtesy. If you do not greet or pay the Monte it will become angry. “No hay Santo sin Ewe”, there is no Orisha (God, spirit) without plants. Trees and plants are endowed with a soul, intelligence, and will, as is all that is born, grows, and lives under the sun. “Wasn’t Jesus born in the monte on a heap of herbs and in order to go heaven to become god didn’t he die in the monte, Mount Calvary? Always walking and putting himself in the mountain. He was a ‘yerbero’”. Each plant has a virtue of an Orisha, a supernatural force. The medicines are living in the monte. The root planted in the beginning of the 16th century is maintained firm and vigorous. The blacks in Cuba have not stopped being less African. They have not been able to renounce nor to forget the secrets taught to them by their elders. In Cuba, like Haiti, some parts of Venezuela, Brazil, and many parts of the Diaspora, the blacks have maintained their African traditions and customs. The first slaves were bought to the United States in 1619. The slave masters were Protestants, not Catholics as in the rest of the Americas. In the US the slaves were approximately 15% of the population. In Cuba they were 60%. These two facts lead to the reality that slavery in the US was the harshest of all the slave systems in the new world. Families were split, persons tortured. All groups of slaves were divided and tortured. The Protestants denied the slaves any religion, even their own Christianity. The first Black Baptist Chruches started in 1774 and only started to grow at the turn of the nineteenth century. After the Stono Slave Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739, the whites in the US fearing similar rebellions passed the Negro Act which denied Blacks the right to assemble, read, and to make money and gave whites the right to kill rebellious slaves. At this time whites also denied the use of African drums in the slave communities fearing that the slaves could communicate with the drums and fearing that the slaves would gain spiritual and physical prowess from the drums. In all other parts of the diaspora: Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean West Indies, and the Dominican Republic, the African drum has survived, but in the United States the African drum has no presence, no existence in popular Afro-American music. Also the Catholics, because of the clash with the Protestants during the Reformation which was taking place in Europe, treated the slaves as new converts to Catholicism with a soul and a humane spirit. On the other hand Protestants treated the slaves as nothing but inhumane property. As a result the slaves in the US were denied their African heritage and memories of past African heritage were erased from the minds of the slaves. A new race of people was created called the American Negro with no memory of their past or their ancestry. Malcolm X once said that the two most important studies in college were, economics and history. Economics to understand the system which suppresses us and history to know who we are, where we came from, and what has happened to us. Max Roach the famous Jazz percussionist who has worked with Charlie Bird Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, and Bud Powell, once said that Blacks in the United States are the only people in the world who do not have a country of origin, and who do not have an original language or second language. Italians come from Italy and speak Italian, Chinese come from a known place in China and speak Cantonese or Mandarin or some other dialect. American Blacks come from somewhere in Africa (but where?) and their ancestors speak what language? The Spanish poet, philosopher George Santayana once said “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In Cuba, due to the large numbers of slaves compared to the whites, the slaves lived together undivided and unbroken, The slave masters allowed the formation of cabildos, social houses, where the slaves could come together and maintain their original traditions from Africa. And the blacks in Cuba have continued to faithfully maintain their old magical practices and keep returning to the monte directing themselves to the primitive natural divinities which their ancestors adored and bequeathed to them. These spirits are living, lodged in stones, seashells or in the trunks or roots of trees. The black Cubans continued to speak, many fluently, their original African tongues: Yoruba, Ewe, Fon, Efo, or Bantu bi-Kongo. Felipe Garcia Villamil, an elder from Matanzas, Cuba, who is a Santero, Palero, Oriate, Emikeke Olu Anya Bioyo once said, “I am half Cuban, half African,” and then with a machete pointed vertically in front of him said, “the division is this way” and then oriented the knife horizontally,” not this way”. The Yoruba Religion, Santeria, originates from Nigeria, but in Nigeria it is subdued by Christianity, and Islam and for most of the populace it is ignored.