7

Spirit-Materialities in Afro-Cuban Religion

Kristina Wirtz

126-156

p. 126

"Evidence of nonmaterial entities -- spirits -- is everywhere".

"these spiritual entities are benevolent ...; some come unbidden, but most must be coaxed ... .

p. 127

... All are imbued with powers exceeding and saturating the mundane plane of everyday human existence, powers enacted through the immanence of

nonmaterial entities in the material world."

"spirit biographies are perhaps necessarily fragmentary, mysterious, and even obfuscating rather than fully revealing or coherent."

{Typically, a divinity will at any instant be aware only of whatever may be its duty to know in connection with its work in a particular project of a committee of deities (functioning within a network of such committees of divinities). The divinity's self-identification may be shiftable in accord with such duties : little wondre, then, that any divinity's autobiography will naturally be "fragmentary, mysterious". [written Jan 13, 2015]}

"Talk about (and with) spirits is constitutive of Cuban popular religious practice precisely because relationships with the spirit world are of primary concern. Many forms of talk among practitioners focus on spirits, in ritual genres and in everyday interactions, whether addressing them directly, pointing out their actions, discussing their messages, or telling stories about them."

Notice, for example, ... information about Eleggua {Elegba} ... : he controls the domain of openings and closings, ... as a sign of his cooperative presence in "keeping the way open" ... .

{WP-WLwt 'Opener of Ways' is the aequivalent Kemetic god.}

... Eleggua's cooperation ... she had properly called upon ... while shaking a maraca (rattle) and singing several invocations to Eleggua in ... esoteric ritual register, Lucumi`. ... These communications were directed at

the small cone ... with cowry shell eyes ... -- Eleggua himself , as materially represented by this ritually prepared icon".

{Cone is variant of pyramid, shewn on the U.S. dollar bill.} {Cowry serveth (like unto dentalia in North America) in Africa as money : cowry-eyen would see only money. Openings and closings are controlled by (Matthaios 16:19) the "key" of hagios Petros, aequivalent to the "key" which is (Ys^a<yah 22:22) laid upon the shoulder (to denote dubbing into knighthood). Likewise was Hai:des wounded (according to the Iliad-) on the shoulder; indicating a relationship with Ploutos god of money.}

p. 130

"Generally speaking, spirits are understood to be fleeting presences infusing everyday objects and ritually treated substances alike, or causing bodily sensations, or even possessions, as temporary changes of state, albeit with the potential to leave traces.

Ritual interventions ... are

p. 131

necessary conditions for spirit materializations of all kinds that practitioners, in turn, perceive and comment on. ... As Cubans understand it then, spirits act in the world

through materializations ...,

{through putting in quasi-material appearances}

and ritual practitioners seek to capture the attention and power of spirits through complex manipulations of the material world."

p. 249, n. 7:2

"A broken plaster saint statue or threadbare "chichereku`" doll ... may ... be specifically tossed away in a place thought to spiritually denature it, like ... a crossroads."

p. 250, n. 7:2

"For a deeper analysis of spiritual contamination of ritual materials, see Wirtz (2009)."

"a "cabildo," religious cofratermity of the sort organized by and for Africans in Cuba ... (see Brandon 1993; Howard 1998). ... .

... her cabildo originated with cimarrones ["maroons"] who had formed a palenque ["maroon settlement"]

located right under where her building currently is located,

{temples of Mithra were usually located underground}

and ... her spirits of these Africans were ... who originated her cabildo."

[remarks by another santera] "she ... described her as blanca [white], having a cabildo below her house. ... . ... she explained that a group of people had once lived on that site -- Africans ... -- and that she had sensed the energy of the place from their presence."

p. 135

"it is the divergences and contrasts between people's lived experiences and the biographies of spirits ... that open a virtual space of imaginative potential for what might otherwise be unspeakable, ... unattainable ... possibilities in the practitioner's own life.

Cardoso gives examples in her chapter of the transgressive povo da rua dramatically intervening in the lives of their devotees at moments of crisis (and ... these interventions as signs of potency)."

p. 250, n. 7:4

"I take inspiration from the empathetic portrayals of marginalized ... people finding solace in spirit possession in Crapanzano and Garrison (1977)."

p. 136

"Most folk religious practitioners I have worked with openly enlist their spirits in their projects of material advancement ... . Cuban folk religious practices have a decidedly this-worldly focus : practitioners expect their relationships with spiritual entities to help them solve practical problems and advance materially as a result of advancing spiritually."

p. 137

"Abundant scholarship on narrative constructions ... has shown how the figures and characters that populate the stories people tell do not simply reflect the categories of the social world but serve to actively construct them (e.g., ... Bauman 1986; Hymes 1996; Ochs 1994 ...)."

p. 137

"Her [autobiographical] stories authorize her access to esoteric African spiritual knowledge by describing her lifelong spiritual sensitivities and her ... joining the ritual lineage ... in the Havana suburb of Guanabacoa, a location recognized throughout Cuba as a center of black {Afro-}Cuban culture and religiosity. ... [Her] religious practice is primarily based in a form of Spiritism crossed with ... the Reglas de Palo, or what scholar taxonomize

p. 138

as espiritismo cruzado (Argu:elles Mederos and Hodge Limonta 1991; Espi`ritu Santo 2009, 2010; James Figarola 1999; Roma`n 2007)."

"Spiritists ... call upon the spiritual aid of anonymous collectives of spirits, which they refer to as comisiones (commissions) ... . Sometimes spirit commissions share some common characteristic, as in the various commissions of maroons, Gypsies, and doctors".

"When ... initiated ..., she was confirmed as a "daughter" of the oricha Yemaya`, female deity of ... the litoral ocean ... . ... In addition to celebrating the annual ... day of ... Yemaya`, she also dedicates annual ceremonies to the twin orichas known as the Ibeyi and often pictured as children ... (as it happens, she has two children of opposite genders, just like the Ibeyi)".

p. 143

"the spirit she describes as her cabildo's president (by which she means its presiding spirit and her spirit protector) is el Doctor Negrito Fino y Precioso, the Fine and Precious Little Black Doctor."

p. 144

"an African woman spirit named Gai`fa who was the Doctor Negrito's mother ..., ... closes each ceremony when she possesses [J.], grabbing a broom and sweeping the bad influences out of the house."

p. 146

"When they manifest by possessing someone or speaking though

p. 147

a medium, sometimes their voices take on distinctive qualities, ... speaking ... the "broken Spanish" of the Bozal sociolect associated with African slaves (Castellanos 1990; Wirtz 2007a)."

p. 148

"Those recently deceased may manifest themselves by ... speaking only in weak voices, because they have not yet ... begun to gain spiritual force."

"in Cuban literature, ... the tropes of Afro-Cuban mysticism are romanticized to the point of cliche'."

[p. 250, n. 7:9 : "A list of examples would have to start with novelist Alejo Carpentier and folklorist Lydia Cabrera, and the tropes are also evident in Cuban feature films".]

"I have suggested that the agency of spirits (of all sorts) requires materialization to become manifest, and thereby to impact the possibilities for human agency."

{To be plainly discerned by mortals, deities need not visit the material universe at all. Instead, deities may affect mortals who are visiting deities in the deities' own universes -- the dream-universe, the trance-universe, etc. etc.}

"shivers can signal spiritual energy, ... interactions with spirit presences, ... receiving their messages in the form of inspired words issued ... in the voice of the spirits she channeled as a medium. The shivers and the messages, both, are ... materializations of spirit agency".

{The shivers and the messages are effects transmitted by the divinity (which remaineth immaterial) to the mortal's soul (which is immaterial by nature) : only thereupon can the mortal's soul transmit such shivers and messages into the material world. What is the basis of such facilities is the steadfast immateriality of the soul (atman), which due its non-material nature (subtlety, suks.matva) is able to sense effects from other immaterial (subtle, suks.ma) entities.}

"Understanding the semiotic and experiential basis of different ontological orientations has (re)emerged as a concern in contemporary anthropology, especially of religion. See, for example Duranti (2009), Espi`rito Santo (2009), and Holbraad (2008)."

"I planned our preparations for a spiritual mass she was to hold for my deceased father ... . ... She then discussed her preparations for the ceremonies, implying that the spirits and saints intercede for her because she knows how to take care for them. She described the extensive purchases and detailed preparations necessary to hold a festive ceremony for the saints and spirits, ... setting out offerings for the saints and for her family's "fundamentals," or ritual power objects in Palo Monte (usually called "prendas" ... in the Reglas de Palo).

She paused to tell me that her family were all "rayados como paleros," or initiated into Palo Monte, and knew how to prepare their prendas".

"Our appeal to nomic truth in reciting a proverb

{Such aphorisms are commonplaces to ritual diction in As^anti, Yoruba, etc.}

triggered the sensible presence of spirits, charging ... with spiritual currents ... .

Her description of prickling currents across her body, culminated in her siren-like cry, "!Aaaaa! (construed as a natural index of feeling spirit presence), mark a confirmation of her spirit sensitivities and religious expertise."