THE POWER OF POWDER: LIFE-FORCE AND MOTILITY IN CUBAN DIVINATION Martin Holbraad ANA and Transgres- cal propositions’ (156) . If mana consists of a ‘series of Such a move is possible just because the ‘universality’ concrete senses of ‘aché’ come together most clearly. sion fluid notions which merge into each other’ (134), that of mana cuts systematically across this distinction: it is Asked how aché relates to divination, babalawos’ ini- can only be because, taken in itself, it has no meaning both a thing and a concept (e.g. see Mauss 2001: 134- Along with ‘totem’ and tial response is most often that aché is the power or at all. A ‘symbol in its pure state, [and] therefore li- 5). So, the question is this. If, as was so widely com- ‘taboo’, the Ocean- capacity (in Spanish usually ‘poder’ or ‘facultad’) that able to take on any symbolic content whatever’ (Lévi- mented in the literature, mana is both, say, a stone and ian term ‘mana’ is one enables them to divine in the first place: ‘to divine Strauss 1987: 64), mana is the ‘floating signifier’ par ritual efficacy—both thing and concept, as we would of the few words to have you must have aché’, they say. In fact, conducting the excellence. In this sense, says Lévi-Strauss, terms like say—then might thinking through it provide us with crossed over from the séance, as well as other rituals, such as consecration, mana are analogous to words such as ‘thing’ or ‘stuff’ an analytical standpoint from which we would no language of ethnographic report to the vocabulary of is also said to ‘give’ the babalawo aché, which he may M – contentless forms that allow us to speak of things longer need to make this distinction? Might there be anthropological analysis – and, partly by that virtue, also ‘lose’ if he uses his office to trick people or do about which we may know little (see also Sperber a frame for analysis in which mana does not register as has also managed to lodge itself in the general lexicon gratuitous evil through sorcery. The importance of 1974, Boyer 1986). And by this virtue, he argues, an ontological anomaly, as it does when we say—sur- of Euro-American intellectual discourse (Bracken aché as an enabling condition or force is enshrined in they stand at the very beginning of the evolution of prised—that it is both thing and concept? 2007). In this sense, the term has become something the liturgy of the divinatory séance, with babalawos human knowledge. At a loss on how to allocate his of an icon in and of itself. Having translated mana Taking a cue from earlier writers who considered invoking it by name as part of the various Yoruba ‘signifier-totality’ to an as yet unknown ‘signified’, variably, and with vague traction, as ‘life-force’, ‘sacred mana as just an Oceanian version of a much wider incantations that need to be chanted for a successful 1 man at the dawn of language finds solace in the power’, or even ‘energy’ , it was always its transgres- phenomenon, this argument will be made from an divination. But while these invocations were usually sweeper-like quality of mana-terms, whose role is to sions that most impressed anthropologists: its pecu- otherwise parochial ethnographic standpoint, name- explained to me in rather vague terms—sometimes ‘soak up’ the ‘signifier-surfeit relative to the signifieds liarly double universality, one might say, of semantic ly that of Cuban Ifá, a male diviner cult of West Af- as appeals for the aché of ritual ancestors, other times to which it can be fitted’ (1987: 62). The implication breadth (‘mana is everywhere’, said the native) coupled rican origin that I have been studying in inner-city as solicitations of the aché of nature, or of the deities, being, of course, that Polynesians, and other people with geographical diffusion (‘mana-terms are every- Havana since 1998. As we shall see, Ifá diviners’ or of Orula (the patron deity of divination)—there for whom mana-terms are more salient than words where’, replied the anthropologist). Commenting on seemingly nebulous appeal to the notion of ‘aché’, on were evidently also senses in which aché was under- like ‘thing’ are for us, are closer to the dawn of knowl- Marcel Mauss’s General Theory of Magic (2001 [1902- which I focus, displays apparent ‘anomalies’ that are stood much more precisely, to refer specifically to the edge – which is to say, not quite yet in its bright of day. 3]), where the ‘category’ of mana was presented, with analogous to the ones anthropologists have associated secret powders that are an indispensable ingredient Kantian overtones, as the condition of possibility for Ingenious as it is, the argument is somewhat perverse. with mana. in just about all Ifá ceremonies, including divination. all magic, Claude Lévi-Strauss diagnoses the sources For one thing, whatever mana may be, it certainly is Aché in Cuban Ifá Divination I’ll describe only the uses to which aché-powders are of anthropological fascination with mana in not a thingamajig or a whatyoumaycallit to those who put, and not their ingredients, which babalawos guard invoke it. Lévi-Strauss’s provocation, in this respect, is Aché is relevant in one way or other to all aspects of Ifá closely, since—and this is, really, the point—powders no more convincing for being intentional. But more worship – as well as Santería, the other main Yoruba- are a principal source of their divinatory powers. the apparently insoluble antinomies attaching to [it], importantly for present purposes, we may note also based cult in Cuba, with which Ifá largely shares its Unlike spirit-mediums and other seers, babalawos which struck ethnographers so forcibly, and on which that by mustering the semiotic machinery of signi- cosmology (cf. Brown 2003). Its ‘universality’, in this divine only with the help of certain consecrated para- Mauss shed light: force and action; quality and state; fiers and signifieds, Lévi-Strauss flatly contradicts sense, renders it as much a ‘mana-concept’ as mana phernalia. The method is basically similar to other substantive, adjective and verb all at once; abstract the transgressive quality of mana in the very effort to itself. By way of illustration consider El Monte, the geomantic systems found throughout sub-Saharan and concrete; omnipresent and localised. account for it. For even if the logical and ontological classic monograph on Afro-Cuban religion by Lydia Africa and elsewhere. Most importantly, at initiation, excesses of mana can be thought pacifically as a ‘float’, Cabrera (2000), in which aché is mentioned eleven (Lévi-Strauss 1987: 63-4) babalawos receive a divining-board and a number of such a float traverses the axiomatic division between times, and characterised differently in each one of palm nuts (ikines) of which they use 16 in order to di- signifiers and signifieds, which could only be a variant them. Sometimes Cabrera writes of aché in the ab- stract as ‘grace’3 (ibid: 16), ‘magical power’ (ibid: 99), vine for ceremonial occasions from then on. This is Like magic, in other words, mana presents itself as an of mana's other famous ‘antinomies’ – abstract versus ‘all the powers, force, life, the secret of the earth (ibid: done by clutching all 16 nuts with both hands, and aberration, since it systematically transgresses distinc- concrete, quality versus thing, and so on. 103), or ‘luck’ (ibid: 301). But, elsewhere, aché appears then separating most of them off with the right hand tions one could be expected to consider axiomatic. It Explaining mana away in this way may be no crime. concretely as ‘Orula’s [ie the patron deity of Ifá] grace so as to leave either one or two nuts in the left. If only is, to use a mana-term, more contemporary than ‘en- Maybe we should just admit that the transgressions [kept by the Ifá priest] in his saliva’ (ibid: 106), a ‘pow- one remains, the babalawo marks two lines with his ergy’, excessive. of mana are there to be pacified, like the savages who der that belongs exclusively to a deity’ (ibid: 481), or, middle and ring finger on a layer ofaché -powder, also The classic anthropological response to mana has first presented us with them were. In this paper, how- yet more specifically, asiyefá, the white powder full of called iyefá, which is spread on the surface of his di- been defensive.2 If, as Lévi-Strauss shows, the prob- ever, I wish to explore the obverse possibility. Rather virtues which is spread on to Orula’s divining-board’ vining board. If two nuts are left, he marks a single lem mana presents is that it transgresses distinctions than assuming that the task must be to uphold the (ibid: 494). Furthermore, aché appears as something line with his middle finger. The process is repeated that are deemed axiomatic, then the strategy for its axioms mana transgress by showing how they can ex- with which deities are born (ibid: 314), or it may inhere until eight (single or double) marks are made on the solution must be to confirm the authority of the axi- plain the transgression, my aim is to explore how, in in plants (ibid: 113), or be invested on idols through board, arranged in two columns of four (referred to oms by showing how they are nevertheless equipped its very transgressions of our axioms, mana may offer consecration rites (ibid: 103). But rituals themselves as ‘legs’). In what we might call a random way, this to ‘explain’ mana. Axioms are, after all, axioms, and occasion to change them – how it may trump them.