The Starry Cave

  Photo: Graciela Iturbide Life is a beautiful condition of being – it can give all, poverty and riches - disgrace and grace – it is the playground of Fortune and Chance. The best teachers in giving value to this are of course those that understand death. Those that lived until Death gave them wisdom.  Myth tells many stories of how the dead interacts with the living and give advice, they be ancestors in a blood line or a spirit line. The dead ones as teachers is something that is subject for great forgetfulness as the world rushes towards a greater materialism. Our world is a repetition of sameness that effectively eradicates the other as something that does not belong – like death that is now the other. The other as a teacher thrives well and good in those parts of the world deemed ‘primitive’ – the embarrassing backwaters of modernity that sustains vivid and pulsating tradition. In the Halls of Hades Hell was everywhere and paradise was i...

Power is a curious term. It can denote your power to replicate something and it can also define the strength of your office. This strength of office manifests in the ability to get things done and to exercise influence. As such the idea of power simply states an effect – but it does not state the quality of the power exercised or the character of the one that is wielding power nor the effort of the machine that produces power.  It its most optimal presentation power is omnipotence. Power is a constant theme in Foucault’s discourse where the whole idea of power is taking institutional forms in the Panopticon. Here the material and profane government usurp omnipotence by control over the actors in the material world. From this comes opposition as a natural consequence of being confronted with a tyranny that abducts your sense of humanity and choice.   Power is a force that denotes influence and invites what supports it. A machine for instance...

Traditional Witchcraft is a term subject for a series of misconceptions that in fact stems from the term itself. For one, the whole idea of witchcraft is a category immensely wide across history and geography and counts a whole array of concubines, prisoners, astrologers, beautiful women, seedy people, criminals, heretics and so forth. It is a pejorative term denoting what defies civic social order and boundaries. This means the whole idea of ‘the witch’ is a term developed by the profane social order and as such it is only natural that the idea of the witches’ craft invites equally invites those who desire to restore the intent at the heart of the matter as much as lost souls living in alienation of the Craft that seek to impose their gospel upon the witches’ Craft.  Given the diversity the word itself have been subject for it is only natural and true that the Craft is subject to diversity in faith and rite – but this never changes the doctrine a...

The Yorubá Word for pride is ìgbéraga , a word composed of several interesting facets. Ìgbé is usually used in reference to something solid – like bones – which gives way for ancestral imprints. ‘ ra’ means to rub, massage and quicken something while ‘ agan ’ amongst many thing can be both a ladder and a wolf tooth. We can understand pride to be a way of massaging ones bestial memory in an ascending way, the wild and aggressive elements are used as a support for our sense of self importance. Envy is in Yourbá ilara , the contrast of ‘ ilera ’, to be of good, stable health’. Ilara is to be in a miserable, unstable condition. Ilara is an elision of ‘ile ’ and 'ar a ’. Ara can mean both ‘body’ and ‘thunder’ and ‘ile’ denotes a resting place, it be house, home or womb. As such ‘ ilara’ or envy is seen as a physical state where the body is infused with thunderous tension. Whenever we see ‘ara’ mentioned in Yorubá language it has a physical conno...

6th of January, the Day of the Magi Kings announcing the epiphany is a most peculiar day. It announces the end of the 12 days of Christ Mass and thus it celebrates the zodiacal signs and the truthful apostles of Jesus. Confusion reigns whether the day of kings commences on the 5 th or 6 th of January which brings in the wild card, Iskariotes – the element of motion and transformation that made the theophany possible.  It is the day of illumination, declaration and manifestation of promise made possible by the three magi-kings. It is also the day sacred to ‘the old one’, Befana in Italian folk beliefs. Befana takes the form of the well known broomstick riding witch-hag who in the likeness of St. Nick and Krampus crawls down the chimney to reward and punish children.  In Haiti it is the day of Simbi – a class of spirits associated with magic, the woods and miracles appearing in the obscure corners of creation. A day when the woods reveal t...

Ifá teaches the importance of sacrifice. When sacrifice is mention in relation to African faiths the life force offering rushes to the mind – but it is not so. Life force offerings are only one of many modalities of sacrifice. A host of materials can be subject to sacrifice, a food for restoring divine equilibrium – and in fact the sacrifice of one’s attitude values more than blood. To sacrifice your attitude, it be your vengeance, your anger, your misplaced justice and prejudice is at times as hard as moving mountains. Ifá speaks in the odù Òtúrárosù the following: Wúyéwúyé A dífá fún wón ní tibó Wón níkí wón rúbo Kí ohun gbogbo ti wón máa se Kí ó má ba máa se tibó Ifá ní ki eníkan rúbo Kí ó má bá máa ri òràn tibó Kí ohun ti ó múu má bó lówó rè Kò si lè te ni ohunkòhun Translated: Gently, gently This was the advice of Ifá For those at an impasse Ifá said they should sacrifice So that all they were doing would not come to an impasse. Ifá says a p...